Almost Every Topic Under the Sun

So, we are now on the last leg of my series of Yu – Gi – Oh blog discussions. Before anyone can burn me for this, I would like to inform you that the following paragraphs are taken from the viewpoint of a casual player who faced the meta plays too many times to count in a browser game.

Also known as me.

So now I can start my views and opinions in peace.

Meta game. Where will I start?

Back in the days where tribute summoning trumps any other special summon, Summoned Skull dominated the game due to its raw power of 2500 attack that only costs 1 tribute to summon. Just Desserts and Waboku are among the famous trap cards of the day due to its simple effects.

By the way, these 2 traps are called tech cards due to these cards being able to be splashed in any deck regardless of theme. Raigeki, Monster Reborn, Seven Tools of the Bandit and Solemn Judgment are the most sought after spells and traps of the day.

Back in the day, if you summoned this monster, you pretty much dominate the game.

Then came Relinquished and its evil twin Thousand Eyes Restrict. Not everybody can get a hold of these 2 cards and the ritual. But if you get the four cards and add something to get the ritual materials out of the deck faster, you pretty much own the game.

Then GX `came and since the day Contact Fusion is introduced, there are too many monsters to fuse to Elemental Heroes deck that summoning from the Extra Deck is common. Also, the Extra Deck at that time is called the Fusion deck and can contain an unlimited number of monsters.

Cyber Dragon is also one of the most powerful monsters that can be special summoned if you have no monsters at that time.

Then came the banlist and banned Monster Reborn, Raigeki, Sangan and Witch of the Black Forest. The game almost died down that day.

Then Synchros came and introduced tuners. The Fusion Deck is called the Extra Deck to accommodate Synchros and limited the Extra deck to 15 cards. The players can still special summon monsters, but then the only problem that they will have is the set requirement. Synchros need levels and even specific monsters to summon it.

On that format, many players try to special summon Quasar Dragon and Odin, the most powerful synchros at that time.

Then the xyz format came, and they are now summoning same level monsters to get a rank monster. They get some of the effects by detaching a material. The strongest xyz at that time are the Utopia cards.

Archetypes came, and there came some powerful monsters from each respective archetype. Nordics, Madolches, Ghostricks… Yep, they are too many to name them all. And some of these archetypes are not working well without being built to its specific specs.

Pendulums came, and the monsters are scaling to be summoned even faster. Even more surprising is that the Odd Eyes Archetype did not dominate the game until much later. It was the Zoodiacs with the unhealthy requirement of one of the xyz monsters requiring only one monster to summon that dominated the game. Along with this came the more balanced but still unhealthy True Draco archetype.

With this, the game is now divided into tournament archetype and casual archetype. Casual Archetypes are further divided into rogue decks that can be almost on par with tournaments, low tier deck archetypes and Greatest of All Time decks (GOAT).

I belong to the 3^rd part of the classification, which is the “Create Your Own Deck” classification; although I don’t think it even exists anymore since I technically copied the deck from Aki Izayoi and just modified it to suit my play.

Now that links came, a new meta will be born. I don’t know what will it be, but I’m sure that it will dominate the game, and everyone will follow it and spawn their own versions of the meta for it.

As a player who plays at the browser game, what are my opinions of it?

If you have just noticed, I listed several examples of a vicious cycle of which decks dominate the game. But the ever – unchanging fact about this game is that the cards that are in the winning decks are designed for an unholy beatdown and nobody can challenge or even win the game with ordinary deck builds.

Not even Yugi and his heart of the cards can do justice to the reality of the game.

And I just designed the deck to suit (or not suit, whatever their opinion may be) to their tastes.

Taking from the base deck of Aki Izayoi, my deck is usually a trial and error on how my opponents play the tournaments in the game. I may not win, but I can still last a few turns, which is considered as a win for me. Summoning powerful monsters that they don’t expect is just an added bonus.

If they say that most games only last one or two turns, I beg to differ.

Using plays that I employ and strategies that even I don’t expect my deck to do, this is the real challenge for me. I’m not aiming to win the game. I’m only placing possibilities on my opponents to make them overthink or reconsider their plays.

For example, Ash Blossom and Joyous Spring is a hand trap (a card that can be discarded to activate the effect, taking the mechanics of the effect after Effect Veiler and Battle Fader). But what they didn’t do to this card is that it can be a tuner too.

Summoning Ash Blossom is a foolish move for them, until I summoned Star Eater using Tytannial. Guess what happened next.

Yep, a string of curse words in capital letters appeared on my screen.

And I’ll never forget how Beelze first hit the field by using Witch of the Black Rose and Botanical Lion as materials. They’re expecting me to do a plant burn strategy, but with this card hitting the field, it turned into an all out war on how to remove Beelze from the field.
But this one is the most entertaining of my deck.

Plant monsters equipped with the equip spell card of Thorn of Malice made them stop and reconsider how many effects this equip card has. The first time I used it made me confused too at first until I got the hang of it and used it against most of the players that I encounter.

Most of the time, they miss 2 or 3 effects, and so they are hit by a listed stray effect that they did not read on the card.

For most of the players with a tournament mindset, they will always see me as another player with only a few tricks up the sleeve. They may even see me as another staller.

But for the players who just aim to win the game through copying each and every card currently on the tourney, they see me as a merciless player even though I lose the game.

One player even said that my deck is as scary as Aki Izayoi’s deck. I don’t know if it’s a compliment or an insult.

It may trigger many factions of the game, but all I can say is that the times are changing. If Konami wanted this game to be this fast paced, you go with the flow and enjoy the game for what it is or take the darker route, be serious about the game and take out all the fun.

Most of the old time players that I have encountered have done the latter, and yep, it’s not really fun playing with them.

I prefer to enjoy this game for what it is even though Konami did raise up the prices of the cards. Browser games are free anyways.

And with that said, that is my general opinion of the meta games that Yu – Gi – Oh have today. I hope that more old timers will follow my advice of going with the flow and have fun with it.

If you didn’t notice it already, Yu – Gi – Oh can work as a puzzle game only if you know how to place puzzles on your opponents.

Like what I have said to all the players that I encountered in two browser game sites:

Have fun.