If you are reading this blog post, then chances are you, like many before, are reconsidering your feelings about the game Yu-Gi-Oh. No, this is not about the mind-numbingly melodramatic American TV series, or the many kids who think the self-contradicting rules on the TV show align with the actual card game, but the card game itself.
Yu-Gi-Oh has long been known as a game for the rich, its poor sportsmanship, and the hyper-competitive players. Ask anybody who plays a different card game, such as Magic the Gathering or Pokémon what they think of Yu-Gi-Oh and you'll get an earful about the everyday fights over whether a player cheated (typically by stacking their deck), and maybe a complaint about how "before Yu-Gi-Oh" nobody in the other card games was as anal about how to shuffle decks. This was even before the Shonen Jump Championships, with the $5,000+ cards and profit-motivated card shop owners joining the competition. However, for many people including myself, it was still enjoyable for a long time, and there were always a handful of good sports.
Generally speaking, with each set, some new and interesting cards, with new types of effects (and sometimes new rules) made the game more complicated and interesting. In the first set, the trump-cards consisted of the fabled Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Summoned Skull; with an attack of 3,000 and 2,500 respectively, and each player beginning with 8,000 life points, they could quickly and easily win the game. They were countered with what is today known as monster removal: one of Raigeki, Dark Hole, and sometimes Monster Reborn on the monster just destroyed. With the release of Metal Raiders came some new twists, including ritual monsters, some useful effects and the first ever counter traps. Subsequent sets released more and more interesting effects. Although the game started out with effectively only 1 type of deck, by the time I began playing (shortly after the release of Labyrinth of Nightmare) you could find decks doing anything from clown-control/Exodia/stall, to the more common warrior toolbox and Mechanicalchaser/Gemini Elf/Dark Elf/Jirai Gumo/Goblin Attack Force heavy-hitter beatdown.
In that day and age, there was a "meta" game, but there was also plausible diversity, and a truly skilled player could was just as likely to win with a Gravekeeper's Servant stall deck as with a top-tier deck (a close friend of mine was known for Jam Breeding Machine). Although a number of cards were universally considered superior to others, no 2 games ended alike, and this is what made the game fun and interesting.
The first signs of problems came about gradually, with so-called "staple" cards: cards that "should be in every deck". While initially manageable, it came to be that you were a fool not to run some card and would get beaten by somebody else who did. Some were relatively benign, like Pot of Greed, but others were just becoming more and more rampant like the Duster-Buster followed by Raigeki for a one-turn-kill, Jinzo and Imperial Order were abused to selectively lock the game down before going for the win.
When Legacy of Darkness came out, there were new types of cards as always but a new type of deck became rampant - you guessed it: hand control. One of the secret rares was Yata-Garasu - a single card had the ability to guarantee victory on its own. Decks everywhere included Delinquent Duo, The Forceful Sentry, Confiscation, Drop Off, and a handful of other card that involved the opponent discarding cards. Although it didn't immediately become that bad, coupled with control and eventually Chaos Emperor Dragon, this is the first deck I would call truly broken (worse, if you consider Divine Wrath wasn't even thought of yet, and Horn/Solemn were too costly).
Controversy erupted as Japan introduced the first forbidden list. Players were fairly split on the idea, with some protesting that certain cards were simply too powerful and took away from this diversity, while others argued nobody could tell them not to use cards they purchased. Upper Deck Entertainment initially published a press release stating that they had no intention of ever telling people what legitimately purchased cards they could or could not play with, but before long the game evolved from a complicated strategy game to one of luck and money, where everybody ran roughly the same deck and the player who drew the "broken" cards first would win, and the one who bought more broken cards was more likely to draw them. Eventually in response to complaints, Upper Deck published an "advanced" format for those who were sick of broken cards, which would be the official tournament rules, and a "traditional" format for those who still wanted to get use out of their Chaos Dragons.
The first ban list wasn't bad. It meant players didn't have to worry about a lot of "staple" cards for the first time ever, and the game was more fun without them. People who favored banned cards joined the rest of the players, even if only so they could play the same set of rules in tournaments; many were even surprised to find the game was still fun. Very few people played with banned cards, and they sat in people's binders as "memorials" or were cheaply traded/sold/given away.
Games became a little more diverse and challenging, and less about luck, although some broken cards still existed. With this precedent set, UpperDeck experimented with different formats, and banned or unbanned different cards of varying degrees of power, such as different combinations of Monster Reborn/Call of the Haunted/Premature Burial, repeatedly banning and unbanning Mirror Force, and banning cards that searched broken cards out of the deck, like Witch of the Black Forest. Then, as newer cards were released, and some were (predictably) too powerful, they were banned shortly after. The ban list was revised in roughly 6-month intervals to account for new cards, and try to perfect the balance of what old cards were too powerful.
With each new banned/restricted list, there was always a dichotomy of group who were either relieved, or disappointed. Nobody can truly agree on when the lists became a nuisance or "necessary evil" as opposed to the boon the first one was. Early lists were a godsend to keep the game enjoyable, with very few people unhappy about them once implemented, but more recent lists have been more about monetizing then sustaining the game.
UpperDeck did make some mistakes in the ban list, I believe this pattern of misusing the ban list for short-term profit became prevalent after Yu-Gi-Oh was purchased by Konami. A prime example of this is Crush Card Virus. First released as a Shonen Jump Championship Series trophy-type card, only a handful of copies of this clearly overpowered, game-breaking card were printed, and distributed in a set quantity at tournaments. This led to record-breaking attendance at events around the country, with attendees often attending solely in an effort to get their hands on this trump card. Months later, the same card was re-released in a limited edition "Gold Series" pack; now it was pretty rare, but more obtainable; $300 instead of $6,000 if you look on eBay, and many more copies existed. Next, Konami released it once more as a common in a starter deck, giving a few months for players to rush into stores and saturate the market with a broken card, before banning it. This same pattern was repeated with other powerful cards with similar effects to banned cards, such as Judgment Dragon (similar to Chaos Emperor Dragon), and Snipe Hunter (similar in practice to Tribe-Infecting Virus).
Before long, Konami introduced (and heavily marketed) a new monster type they called Synchro monsters who are kept in the Extra Deck (formerly Fusion Deck). These weren't terribly broken at first; just a couple decent effects (like negate something that destroys cards) at the cost of 2 or more monsters to summon, with a level restriction. Then, Konami started coming out with cards clearly intended to raise the appeal of such monsters, such as Assault Mode Activate (which in my opinion still wasn't broken, at least not yet).
In time however, the game evolved into a much more fast-paced, OTK-oriented style of play. Nearly every "variety" of deck is just another method of getting the same synchro monsters out before the opponent does. The strategy consists of repeatedly special summoning tuners and non-tuners from the deck or graveyard, then combining levels to pick out the most powerful synchro monsters for this particular moment. Many believe Reborn Tengu is the cause of all this, but I claim it is not just Tengu. Most decks of this type involve some combination of Reborn Tengu, Spore, Dandylion, Glow-Up Bulb, Plaguespreader Zombie, and Level Eater, though some themes such as Dragunity cycle through just as well. Additionally, the effects of these monsters became increasingly game-breaking. Brionac, which allows the controller to discard any number of cards to return that many cards from the field to the owner's hand, is a prime example of this - discard a few cards and attack directly with everything, for a one-turn kill and T.G. Hyper Librarian and Formula Synchron accelerate this. Others involve negating spells/traps (although most are admittedly tied to a certain type of deck), or destroying cards at little to no cost.
Now, in the past month or so the latest and greatest new type of cards are "XYZ" monsters (What was that about? Did they run out of names, or just lay off half their marketing department?). Starting out, I was discouraged because of how they have no level and Konami says they're thus unaffected by Gravity Bind — which they promptly unrestricted in a not-so-subtle nudge to buy the new XYZ monsters (else deal with rampant stall decks). Again somebody told me they weren't that bad, and actually quite balanced. I'm not sure I would go that far, but I responded Konami will come up with new cards to make them as broken as possible. Sure enough, along came Rescue Rabbit and Tour Guide from the Underworld. Based on Konami's past behavior, you can expect more cards just like Rescue Rabbit to be printed. Rescue Rabbit will probably be restricted or banned, as a gesture that they care about playability, then new cards just like it will be printed, XYZ will be just as broken, and Konami will strive to make them at least as broken as synchros.
