Most players today, including those who abuse synchros, XYZ, dragons, and other widely-regarded meta decks, are complaining about the Wind-Up and Inzektor decks. In this day and age, with increasingly broken cards, anything from an older set becomes obsolete because it is "not as good". When even the pro-meta players complain in unison about a specific archetype, it is truly a testament to brokenness. In this examination, I would like to take an in-depth look into how and why these deck types are so broken.
For almost as long as I can remember, every professional Yu-Gi-Oh deck revolved around a fundamental strategy known as card advantage. There may be a few rare exceptions within certain niche decks, usually alternate win conditions (e.g. Exodia, Last Turn, etc.), but this practice is important for all the mainstream aggro, control, and themed archetypes. Unless a substantial payment of life points is required, players rate cards in terms of what advantage they pose - whether that be a +1, or -1, for you or the opponent. Put simply, a +1 means the affected player has 1 more card under their control than before, while a -1 means said player has 1 less card under their control than before. Additionally, a -1 for the opponent is often seen as a net gain of +1 for the turn player. A classic example of this fundamental concept is Snatch Steal; by playing this 1 card we immediately gain 1 monster, and the opponent loses 1 monster. So, this is a +1 player, -1 opponent, or net gain of +2, at least in theory. In practice, it was a +3 (-2 for opponent) because the person using Snatch Steal would take the larger monster and attack the smaller monster. This all came at no substantial cost (the 1000 LP gain seldom happened, and was insignificant when it did). Thus, Snatch Steal was considered "broken". It was banned specifically because of this unbalanced card advantage, in order to make the game more playable. In contrast, cards with a significant cost for such effects were considered "balanced". A good example of this is Dark Bribe (stop 1 of your opponent’s cards but they draw 1).
The controversy about why people like or dislike this particular card has some deep roots that can take up another post on its own, so I'll skip over that topic for now, but needless to say Dark Bribe has never been banned and has never hurt the playability of the game. That's because despite the versatility it has a net gain/loss of 0 for both players; it’s perfectly balanced. This card advantage fundamentally affects most complicated and unusual decks as well, with one example being Winged Kuriboh LV 10: -4 for near-game-breaking effect, but uncompetitive because a single well-placed Divine Wrath (-2) can leave the mighty Kuribohs’ wielder completely defenseless.
There is specific type of card advantage I would like to focus on, known as hand control. Hand advantage is any card advantage involving adding or removing cards from a player's hand, and hand control means exploiting this to significantly limit the opponent's options. Most players today are very familiar with the net gain aspect of hand advantage, mainly drawing/searching. You draw/search a card from your deck to your hand, your options increase, and you're significantly more likely to make a good play that turn, or at least build up to one in the near future. In contrast, excessive hand control means you have no options. Every single card matters, and if you discard 1 or 2 cards, it is going to cause significant harm. The problem with hand control, in comparison to field advantage, is that a card on the field had to have been played at one point or another, but if it was discarded directly from the hand, the owner never had a chance to play it. From the receiving end, you are at a -1 before you even had a chance to respond. Losing a powerful monster that was dominating the field, by a broken card like Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning or Dark Armed Dragon can be frustrating, but at least that card was able to have a meaningful impact (or expend some backrow resources). Losing it from your hand before you had a chance to play it is just plain unfair.
Now, we introduce Wind-Ups and Inzektors. As has been stated before, Konami is particularly busy printing broken cards to boost new card sales. Specifically, Konami is interested in manipulating card advantage concept. Often they focus on loops (sometimes infinite, but not necessarily). The loops are part of why we have had so many FTK decks, such as frogs, and nearly all loops are broken by design. This is exactly what Konami had in mind with Wind-Up/Inzektors, and it's exactly what they had in mind with Rescue Rabbit, Tour Guide, and Leviair. Back to the topic at-hand, Wind-Ups and Inzektors play on exactly this to exploit hand and field control, respectively. Why is it everybody hates Wind-Ups? Well, if you start your first turn without any cards in your hand, you may as well not play at all. Just losing a single card first turn with Trap Dustshoot is frustrating, because now not only did your opponent go first, but they automatically had a better hand than you. Add a (Drastic) Drop Off or another discard and you're very unlikely to win. The game is already severely unbalanced in their favor before you start your first turn. It's not FTK, but if you can’t do anything except watch your opponent win by default; it's just not fun anymore. You don’t have to be hyper-competitive to take issue that. Just like with FTK, going first or second has an ominous, profound impact on the outcome, and in an alleged strategy game the toss of a coin (or outcome of Rock/Paper/Scissors) should not decide who wins.
This type of brokenness is nothing new, and it's not the first time such a strategy has been implemented in Yu-Gi-Oh. The last time hand control was what led to the first forbidden list, and ironically the game was much more playable back then. It first surfaced when Yata-Garasu was printed in Legacy of Darkness (Yata has left such a legacy I'll skip over explaining why it was broken). Most every deck had some combination of (usually all) Delinquent Duo, The Forceful Sentry, Confiscation, Drop Off, and Time Seal. Before LOD, going first or second was largely a matter of personal preference, but once going second meant you might have half of your hand discarded before the first turn, everyone insisted on going first. The hand control fad reached its climax with the introduction of Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End, where in combination with Witch/Sangan it instantly fetched a Yata-Garasu; an instant victory was guaranteed with a mere 2 cards. The public outcry from this, along with the cheap-shot strategy of discarding from the hand before a player's first turn, prompted a 180° about-face from UpperDeck Entertainment (then owner of American Yu-Gi-Oh brand) and the establishment of the first forbidden list in the United States, contrary to their previous stance against telling people what cards they could use.
Now, in this time the game was certainly broken, but discarding 2-4 cards in the first turn was relatively rare. Players were frustrated because just a single card from one’s hand can be game-breaking. Today, Wind-Ups can easily discard anywhere from 2 to all of the opponent's cards before their first turn. Worse, because it's done in a loop, it comes at no cost to the turn player, who can proceed with a full field, in contrast to the Yata-era when these cards were each -1 for the turn player (play 1 spell and send it to the graveyard). Even if you don't automatically lose per se, starting your first turn topdecking against a full or nearly full opposing field essentially means there is no point in playing. The outcome of this duel was decided by who went first, making it a game of chance. An interesting twist to this is, because hand control never completely went away, a theme known as Dark World was introduced to specifically combat it with coercive trigger effects that applied when discarded by an opponent's effect. Wind-Ups were specifically worded in a way such that Dark World effects don't apply, and by design there is nothing short of being lucky enough to draw a Maxx "C" or Effect Veiler in the opening hand that can beat the 3-6 iteration discard loop. Back then top-tier meta players consistently got their footholds through hand control, and honest-to-God, in my hometown I played in a tournament during this era where in the final match the top 2 players refused to play cards and mutually agreed to decide the final match with a coin toss -- because it would be "more exciting" (best of 3 tosses, of course) -- but at least the game was playable.
Inzektors have a slightly different, but not incompatible strategy. Instead of hand control, they focus on field control, or +1/-1 field advantage. Like Wind-Ups, Inzektors invoke a sustainable loop, which comes at no cost to the turn player but repeatedly removes cards from the opponent's field. In practice, an Inzektor deck will destroy every card on the field, then swarm and attack directly. It is effective because, as with Dragunity and Wind-Ups, its cost does not involve life points or the hand; instead it special summons from the deck, for a +1, then sacrifices the +1 gain for a -1 until no cards remain, before finally swarming the field with Giga-boosted insects and heavy-hitting XYZ monsters for an OTK. It's a classic Konami-esque loop, and because it works the same against every deck, it takes the fun and diversity away from the game.
Contrary to popular belief, these 2 themes are not incompatible. The video below shows a proof of concept hybrid (decklist), crushing the opponent’s chances with a Wind-Up loop, then finishing them off with an Inzektor loop. This deck is also very capable of knocking out the field then switching over to a Wind-Up loop. The ability to splash either of these themes is a testament to a fundamental problem with this game.
Co-Authored by Devia Umbra.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Exodia FTK
Widely considered one of the most despicable decks to play against is Exodia FTK. I was never particularly irritated by it, but I can relate to those who are. With the number of people unhappy with Exodia, it seemed this was an excellent opportunity to highlight one of the downfalls of Yu-Gi-Oh. There are several variants, but the general strategy is always the same: draw through your entire deck in the first turn (or quickly as possible) and automatically win by the effect of Exodia. Losing before your first turn is never fun, and there will be more about that in future posts, but a lesson is to be learned from this particular type of FTK. This post aims to analyze what makes such a deck possible, and speculates on how to retract the mistakes that led up to it, if possible.
Long ago, drawing cards was quite common and not broken. Neither Pot of Greed nor Cyber Jar was banned. The problem arose with the dominance of hand control decks, and a drive to ensure success of such decks, or the complaints of players running these decks about "broken locks". Hand control becomes much more potent when there are no options to recover, so no-cost cards like Pot of Greed and Cyber Jar were banned and haven't been seen since. Because of their popularity, Konami has re-released a number of cards with the same effect, each with some drawback, cost, or theme requirement attached. In order to accommodate a variety of decks, many different variants were printed, and thus the problem was created.
To be clear, if such drawing cards were re-introduced into the FTK-centric meta today, they would not balance the meta. They would only increase the likelihood of any given player winning by going first, and not just Exodia. I suppose that type of competition is exactly what Konami wants, so it's a surprise they haven't unbanned it already, but it's probably because Exodia doesn't involve any newly released cards. A workable solution, in my humble opinion, would be to ban all the themed/restricted drawing variants and set Pot of Greed back to one-per-deck; this would mean everybody has that same drawing card, and at one-per-deck it's insufficient to cycle through the entire deck as will be demonstrated below. Pot of Greed was never broken, and setting it at 2 will do no more harm than having Dark Armed Dragon or Judgment Dragon at 1 (oh wait...).
As an incidental side effect, a few creative early adopters found a way to capitalize on this. Each card had some drawback, some bound to a certain type of deck. But, they found, with so many different drawing effects, all spells, if someone could design a deck to support all of the drawing spells instead of a monster theme, with some luck, they could cycle through an entire deck. The first I saw, several years ago, involved Broken/Golden Bamboo Sword, Royal Magical Library, and endless deck thinning spells. Other variants tend to involve some combination of Trade In, Destiny Draw, Alure of Darkness, Cards of Consonance, or Super Rejuvenation, and the corresponding light/dark/dragon/tuner/monsters to discard. Another interesting variant of this is Magical Explosion FTK; although it's a burn deck and not Exodia, the general strategy is the same and like Exodia it relies on the same fallacy made by Konami to function. When combined with general deck thinning, such as Upstart Goblin, One Day of Peace, and Dark World Dealings, this means it is quite possible to draw 35+ cards in a single turn.
Speaking from personal experience with several variations, both as someone who played against it and as someone who ran several variants of such decks, the deck is not consistent enough to be considered broken. Note I said it is not broken — That does not mean it doesn't make the game less fun; just that it can, in fact, lose quite often. It just doesn't matter what skill set or deck the opponent has. Like many other decks today, this is a fine example of Yu-Gi-Oh's degradation from strategy to a game of chance. The deck is difficult to perfect both in style and ratios, but once completed it requires less strategy than poker (no poker face necessary), and approximately the same degree of luck. Then, if it goes first there is a very real possibility of winning before the opponent has their first turn. If it has a bad hand, nearly any deck will be able to tear it to shreds within a minimal number of turns, and for the lucky victors the most convoluted and original strategy that will be of use is haste. In either case, the game is hardly enjoyable for the opponent, and only enjoyable for the troll, or the type who cares only about winning. Essentially, Exodia and Magical Explosion were proof of concept experiments to demonstrate Konami's reckless disregard for the playability of the game, which being ignored, grew out of control to the obnoxious Exodia FTK we know and hate today. The problem with the game, demonstrated perfectly by Exodia FTK, is that it has devolved from a game of skill to a game of luck.
Long ago, drawing cards was quite common and not broken. Neither Pot of Greed nor Cyber Jar was banned. The problem arose with the dominance of hand control decks, and a drive to ensure success of such decks, or the complaints of players running these decks about "broken locks". Hand control becomes much more potent when there are no options to recover, so no-cost cards like Pot of Greed and Cyber Jar were banned and haven't been seen since. Because of their popularity, Konami has re-released a number of cards with the same effect, each with some drawback, cost, or theme requirement attached. In order to accommodate a variety of decks, many different variants were printed, and thus the problem was created.
To be clear, if such drawing cards were re-introduced into the FTK-centric meta today, they would not balance the meta. They would only increase the likelihood of any given player winning by going first, and not just Exodia. I suppose that type of competition is exactly what Konami wants, so it's a surprise they haven't unbanned it already, but it's probably because Exodia doesn't involve any newly released cards. A workable solution, in my humble opinion, would be to ban all the themed/restricted drawing variants and set Pot of Greed back to one-per-deck; this would mean everybody has that same drawing card, and at one-per-deck it's insufficient to cycle through the entire deck as will be demonstrated below. Pot of Greed was never broken, and setting it at 2 will do no more harm than having Dark Armed Dragon or Judgment Dragon at 1 (oh wait...).
As an incidental side effect, a few creative early adopters found a way to capitalize on this. Each card had some drawback, some bound to a certain type of deck. But, they found, with so many different drawing effects, all spells, if someone could design a deck to support all of the drawing spells instead of a monster theme, with some luck, they could cycle through an entire deck. The first I saw, several years ago, involved Broken/Golden Bamboo Sword, Royal Magical Library, and endless deck thinning spells. Other variants tend to involve some combination of Trade In, Destiny Draw, Alure of Darkness, Cards of Consonance, or Super Rejuvenation, and the corresponding light/dark/dragon/tuner/monsters to discard. Another interesting variant of this is Magical Explosion FTK; although it's a burn deck and not Exodia, the general strategy is the same and like Exodia it relies on the same fallacy made by Konami to function. When combined with general deck thinning, such as Upstart Goblin, One Day of Peace, and Dark World Dealings, this means it is quite possible to draw 35+ cards in a single turn.
Speaking from personal experience with several variations, both as someone who played against it and as someone who ran several variants of such decks, the deck is not consistent enough to be considered broken. Note I said it is not broken — That does not mean it doesn't make the game less fun; just that it can, in fact, lose quite often. It just doesn't matter what skill set or deck the opponent has. Like many other decks today, this is a fine example of Yu-Gi-Oh's degradation from strategy to a game of chance. The deck is difficult to perfect both in style and ratios, but once completed it requires less strategy than poker (no poker face necessary), and approximately the same degree of luck. Then, if it goes first there is a very real possibility of winning before the opponent has their first turn. If it has a bad hand, nearly any deck will be able to tear it to shreds within a minimal number of turns, and for the lucky victors the most convoluted and original strategy that will be of use is haste. In either case, the game is hardly enjoyable for the opponent, and only enjoyable for the troll, or the type who cares only about winning. Essentially, Exodia and Magical Explosion were proof of concept experiments to demonstrate Konami's reckless disregard for the playability of the game, which being ignored, grew out of control to the obnoxious Exodia FTK we know and hate today. The problem with the game, demonstrated perfectly by Exodia FTK, is that it has devolved from a game of skill to a game of luck.
Friday, January 13, 2012
About card advantage
For almost as long as I can remember, every professional Yu-Gi-Oh deck has revolved around a fundamental strategy known as card advantage. There are rare exceptions with certain niche decks, usually alternate win conditions (e.g. Exodia, Last Turn, etc.), but it's important for the mainstream aggro, control, themes, and just about everything else. Unless a substantial payment of life points is required, cards are rated in terms of what advantage they pose - whether that be a +1, or -1, for you or the opponent.
Quite simply, a +1 means the affected player has 1 more card than before, while a -1 means said player has 1 less card than before. To simplify things, a -1 for the opponent is often seen as a net gain of +1 for the turn player. A classic example of this is Snatch Steal; by playing this 1 card we immediately gain 1 monster, and the opponent loses 1 monster. So, this is a +1 player, -1 opponent, or net gain of +2, at least in theory. In practice, it was a +3 (-2 for opponent) because the person using Snatch Steal would take the larger monster and attack the smaller monster. This all came at no substantial cost (the 1000 LP gain rarely happened, and was insignificant when it did), and Snatch Steal was considered "broken". It was banned specifically because of this unbalanced card advantage, so the game would be more playable.
In contrast, cards with a significant cost or drawback for such effects were considered "balanced". A good example is Dark Bribe (stop 1 opponent's card, they draw 1 in return). The controversy about why people like or dislike this particular card has some deep roots that can take up another post on its own, so I'll skip over that topic for now, but needless to say Dark Bribe has never been banned and has never hurt the playability of the game. That's because despite the versatility it has a net gain/loss of 0 for both players; perfectly balanced. This card advantage fundamental affects complicated and unusual decks as well, such as Winged Kuriboh LV 10 (-4 for near-game-breaking effect), where a single well-placed Divine Wrath can leave the player completely defenseless.
There is another type of card advantage I would like to give special attention to, known as hand control. Hand advantage is any card advantage involving adding or removing cards from a player's hand, and hand control means exploiting this to significantly limit the opponent's options. Most players today are very familiar with the net gain aspect of hand advantage, mainly drawing/searching. You draw/search a card from your deck to your hand, your options increase, and you're significantly more likely to make a good play that turn, or at least build up to one in the near future. In contrast, excessive hand control means you have no options. Every single card matters, and if you discard 1 or 2 cards, it is going to cause significant harm.
The problem with hand control, in comparison to field advantage, is that cards on the field had to have been played at one point or another, but if discarded from the hand that meant it was never played. From the receiving end, you are at a -1 before you even had a chance to respond. Losing a powerful monster that was dominating the field and took a lot of effort and resources to play, by a broken card like Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning or Dark Armed Dragon, can be frustrating, but at least it got a chance to do something. Losing it from your hand before you had a chance to play it is just plain unfair.
Quite simply, a +1 means the affected player has 1 more card than before, while a -1 means said player has 1 less card than before. To simplify things, a -1 for the opponent is often seen as a net gain of +1 for the turn player. A classic example of this is Snatch Steal; by playing this 1 card we immediately gain 1 monster, and the opponent loses 1 monster. So, this is a +1 player, -1 opponent, or net gain of +2, at least in theory. In practice, it was a +3 (-2 for opponent) because the person using Snatch Steal would take the larger monster and attack the smaller monster. This all came at no substantial cost (the 1000 LP gain rarely happened, and was insignificant when it did), and Snatch Steal was considered "broken". It was banned specifically because of this unbalanced card advantage, so the game would be more playable.
In contrast, cards with a significant cost or drawback for such effects were considered "balanced". A good example is Dark Bribe (stop 1 opponent's card, they draw 1 in return). The controversy about why people like or dislike this particular card has some deep roots that can take up another post on its own, so I'll skip over that topic for now, but needless to say Dark Bribe has never been banned and has never hurt the playability of the game. That's because despite the versatility it has a net gain/loss of 0 for both players; perfectly balanced. This card advantage fundamental affects complicated and unusual decks as well, such as Winged Kuriboh LV 10 (-4 for near-game-breaking effect), where a single well-placed Divine Wrath can leave the player completely defenseless.
There is another type of card advantage I would like to give special attention to, known as hand control. Hand advantage is any card advantage involving adding or removing cards from a player's hand, and hand control means exploiting this to significantly limit the opponent's options. Most players today are very familiar with the net gain aspect of hand advantage, mainly drawing/searching. You draw/search a card from your deck to your hand, your options increase, and you're significantly more likely to make a good play that turn, or at least build up to one in the near future. In contrast, excessive hand control means you have no options. Every single card matters, and if you discard 1 or 2 cards, it is going to cause significant harm.
The problem with hand control, in comparison to field advantage, is that cards on the field had to have been played at one point or another, but if discarded from the hand that meant it was never played. From the receiving end, you are at a -1 before you even had a chance to respond. Losing a powerful monster that was dominating the field and took a lot of effort and resources to play, by a broken card like Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning or Dark Armed Dragon, can be frustrating, but at least it got a chance to do something. Losing it from your hand before you had a chance to play it is just plain unfair.
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