Yep. Gotta play 500 hand traps so you can Imperm the Snake Eye Ash, Veiler Diabellestar, Ash Bonfire... Then brick, watch your opponent topdeck Poplar and concede. This style of deck is what makes hand traps an auto include, and it still doesn't even guarantee a win for you. It's just whoever draws better and can push their combo through first wins.
@@FakeHeroFang that's the most damning aspect of the format. The amount of handtraps being played STILL doesn't guarantee you the win just shows how powerful these one card starters/extenders have become
@@FakeHeroFangthe funniest part is that even in the situation you described, they can still end on a promethean princess interruption after you've handlooped yourself for 3
It’s interesting that as YGO keeps its deranged evolution the more it actually resemble old formats like GOAT: you have less than half the deck actually your “deck”, the rest is actually the generic cards everyone play, difference’s there is less green/purple and more orange
Very insightful and underrated comment. While I do think that the one card combo problem has gotten really bad, I enjoy the amount of utility in the game
it's a self enforcing problem. as handtraps (and breakers, non-engine in general) become more plentiful and powerful konami prints stronger engines that can play through more handtraps (like fiendsmith ) so they print more handtraps (mulcharmies, dominus traps) in a infinite loop of powercreep.
@@JackHugemantrue although that is not Infinite. The game will boil down to rock paper scissors without an actual deck archetype or theme to the deck. We kinda are already there perhaps 1 step or max 2 steps of powercreep left. The game needs a reboot sadly due to greedy powercreep management.
Yes but even negate boards are a symptom not the cause, lifepoints no longer matter, if you made both players immune to all damage for 8 turns the meta will change.
Because as tenpai has shown as in master duel, having a strong going second deck actually makes turn 1 decks more oppressive, since most decks will kill you in one turn if you dont build a hundred negates, they are the symptom of lifepoints being too small, if everyone had 100,000 life points for example, negate points will be irrelevant, same if players had 2 draws per turn, the chance of drawing a board breaker or kaiju would outweigh you using all of you gas turn 1 on a board that isnt even able to beat the opponent
There are 3 sizable problems in modern yugioh gameplay imo: 1) Tiny meta engines: Not long ago you needed some 30 cards of any archetype to be able to have your deck perform optimally. By making effects broader, longer and much more powerful, now you can do with one card what you'd need 3 or 4 some years ago. Handtraps wouldn't be such a problem if you had less than 10 spaces to put them in your deck, you'd have to think way more about matchup than just sticking every conceivable negate in your build because your full meta engine is just 15 cards. 2) Powerful one card combos: There were good one card combos before MR4 (like Zoodiac, for example), but the rise of links, which were supposed to slow down the game, is where Konami lost its marbles. Everything became a one card combo. People complain about pendulum summon, but that's once per turn. Link climb is infinite, to the point where Firewall had to be banned and eventually reworked to be less broken. Does anyone remember extra link? And because links were broken, anything that came afterwards had to be even more broken.Including handtraps. 3) Lack of actual cost in effects: As strong as Sky Striker is, for example, you can't have monsters in your main zone in order to activate their spells. Sure, there's lots of ways to get around that, but it is a hard limitation that prevents the deck from being all-powerful. Even at its peak in 2018, it lost worlds. The next year is the last one where cards had any actual cost, at least imo: 2019. From 2020 forwards where Eldlich's effect is specifically written to get around Skill Drain, meta decks lost any resemblance of cost, now most cards' costs being not a negative but actually a positive for their archetype or interaction with another powerful card. By the time we hit Tearlaments and Kashtira, cards can simply do everything, respond to anything, enter the field without trigger like kaijus, giving the opponent not only almost no room for his response but most of the time card disadvantage if they manage to respond (unless he plays said decks or their counters). And that's not gonna change, Konami just wants to sell so the powercreep will continue to accelerate indefinitely. What we as a community need to do is take the rules into our own hands (remember Smogon's tier system? That's entirely community run and well accepted by the larger community), create and support more formats (time wizard formats are not enough), make our own banlists and events. Especially because Konami events, for the most part, suck.
@@TurtleneckSweater-tw7hw Yugioh was too big to fail in 2008, when DAD decks ran away with the game at the time, it was too big to fail when dino rabbit made a large percentage of players drop the game. If that didn't work back then, it will not work now, even if it's the correct answer.
What's funny is that Pendulum, at face value, requires more than 1 card to function, you need at least 2 to perform the summon and at least one other card to pendulum summon.
If there is a hand trap problem, then there are other underlying issues that need to be solved. No handtraps= watch your opponent combo for 8-12 minutes with one of three results: ftk, lose your hand, stare down an unbreakable board
@@heykhan1420 that’s usually due to oversight in engine synergies versus a single card playing through hand traps. If you summon an Ash and get it imperm/veilered you have to have an extender to even continue playing. The problem is when Azamina, Snake Eye and Fiendsmith all share an overlap due to a generic extra deck monster bridging them together. This is something I believe Konami does intentionally not only to sell the latest set, but to keep certain decks from being 5+ year contenders in the meta. I don’t agree with konamis “solution” to the issue, but most players are just wrong objectively on why the issue exists in the first place.
@premejon8300 I agree 👍 In Josh's deck, Lacrima required 2 handtraps to stop (or shifter) because the link-1 is almost like a built in second normal summon.
@@torakandwolf6786 yes? you can identify a problem (it's too easy to play 20 handtraps because engines are so compact) and still play the most competitive deck.
Why ofc it is, at least ever since it changed its way with the ariseheart ban. I for the life of me don't understand how people can complain about fenrir in particular with the current state of the game, outside of being boomers, but even then, I AM a boomer and I love fenrir.
@@Frogleeoh tbh i think fenrir kinda punishes bad players, like sure its a strong card, but often times the people who complain about it just played like shit vs it
The problem in YGO is that every good deck is effectively an OTK. Either they actually kill you, or they set up so many interruptions that you can't play, effectively killing you. This means the turn 1 player in essence always wins. In order to combat this you need the turn 2 player to have turn 1 interactions. This is where an arms race is created. There is a battle between the turn 1 player OTKing, and the turn 2 player stopping that OTK. The more powerful the OTK, the more powerful and consistent the response needs to be. In order to meet the standard of consistence, people have to maximize stopping power, and minimize engines, so they always have enough stopping power turn 1. YGO needs to reduce the power of end boards that decks can put up. If they do so then they can safely get rid of these hand traps that are now the absolute majority of deck building. It does not matter if someone can combo through 40 cards in their deck, if the end board they make with that is still balanced. End boards need to be taken down several pegs, so that hand traps can be safely removed from the game, or at least heavily reduced.
Agree. Adding to this, if the absurd power of Turn 1 boards gets tuned down, there needs to be something done about generic extra deck cleanup tools - you die way too fast in this game. Accesscode Talker(and before that Borrelsword Dragon)and similar trivialize OTKs in a way that is detrimental to back-and-forth gameplay. If you don't have an interruption and your opponent is able to play in any way, you are almost guaranteed to be dead.
Unfortunately, they've backed themselves into a corner unless they are willing to for good get rid of the notion that "it's too early to ban X." They did it ONCE...unless they show they're willing to continue doing that, then they're still stuck in "We have to print something even stronger than what we have now in order to sell this new product." Then they've got something even stronger out there that they won't ban because "it's too early and people will be pissed because they spent a ton of money."
I only partially agree with this. If I have a hand of all engine pieces and there is no interruption by the opponent, I should be able to make a strong end board. The problem is not so much the strength of the end boards, but the ability of modern decks to make those end boards with a single piece of engine. Additionally, for decks like Tenpai, these end boards are often all-or-nothing; they either full-combo, or scoop, leading to unsatisfying games.
FINALY SOME ONE WHO GETS IT, the biggest problem with this game is that the game ends in a single battle phase, they need to ad damage caps where nether player could deal damage more than 1000 per turn
FS having infinite grind is still a problem since it's (semi) permanent. It's just not on the level of SE/Yubel full combo. Ideally you want both of them hit in the long run. As a side note, Unicorn ripping the ED is still one of the most frustrating things you can run into in this game.
@@donovan7132That is objectively incorrect. Despite what people might have you thinking, it is literally the toxic, powerful, and widespread engine in the game’s history. It does more than adventure did for somehow even less, even in a post-Lacrima world this is still the case.
As someone that recently came back to the game, I can tell you it has an everything problem, the power creep is insane. Every card has like 6 different effects, normal monsters basically don't exist (except BE or DM), every card seems to lead to another card in the deck and don't even get me started on link monsters. All this leads to such a bad experience where you sit around for 5 minutes waiting for someone to play 52 cards to kill you in a single turn, so hand traps basically become a necessary evil, so you at least have some engagement instead of twiddling your thumbs for 5 minutes.
I hated those formats where everyone was running D-prisons, bottomless,torrential, compuls and mirror force. Always felt like the most sacky era of the game imo.
20 traps in 2011 or 20 other kind of staples in older formats are still something that allows some back and forth, the explosiveness and resilience of snake eyes and yubel combos is unbearable
@@Kukuklock321I feel like people don't seem to realize getting hit by a torrential or bottomless back then was just as bad if not worse than getting hit by ash in modern day Just because you feel like you're playing the game doesn't mean you are, if you getting mirror forced you accomplished nothing except losing your board and your opponent is still gaining advantage
> Is there a handtrap problem? absolutely. > Is the deck you're talking about here "the problem" or merely a symptom of current format? The latter. These two statements are not in contradiction.
The problem is the fact that we embraced the handtrap future a decade ago. Their existence allows Konami to ignore solitaire boards and even literal FTKs under the excuse of “it dies to ash”. Instead of fixing the game and managing the power level carefully, they're free to print any bullshit they want including 1-card combo that ends on more interruptions than you have cards in hand. And now we're suffering the full symptom: the cycle of “turn 1 too strong > more handtraps > decks need to play through interruptions > turn 1 too strong > even more handtraps”
This is the essence of power creep. The next group of decks don't just have more powerful end boards than their predecessors, they're able to play through the prevailing counters of the meta. Three things I expect relatively soon: 1. A handtrap that specifically prevents your opponent/both players from looking through the Main Deck for a turn. This would "ash" any effects that set/activate directly from Deck as well as what Ash already does. 2. Cards that allow your other effects to go unimpeded. Basically like Called/Crossout except instead of generic, they are archetype-specific. Konami has tested the waters with these types of effects like with the new Arcana Force Hierophant, but soon the meta decks will have those effects too. 3. Effects that negate without using the chain. Kinda like how some cards will allow you to banish from GY to prevent destruction (Toon Bookmark), but for effect negation or negation negation. Ryzeal Cross is an example of this.
Yes, the game does have a hand trap problem. That problem though is the necessity of them. Decks are way too powerful and without them, you'd literally lose on the spot going second in most decks. Board breakers are getting less and less effective even after banning things like Baronne, Appo and Savage to the point where a deck has to be stopped in its tracks or you just aren't breaking them. Decks have gotten to the point where you can hand trap them twice and they can still play like nothing happened to them. This isn't healthy. The meta itself may be more diverse, but deck building is becoming a lot more constrained.
Agree with the rest but saying FS is a fair Engine is kind of a joke. If you don't see a problem with a generic engine that you can get into with any 2 monsters that always provides value, has minimal main deck investment and recycles itself indefinitely I don't know what to tell you. Generic engines that don't lock you into anything and that are also the most powerful in the game are the biggest pain point of the game for years.
When your splashable engine can dish out the best D/D/D boss monster from a one card combo without even wasting your normal summon, and it's way easier to summon than within its own archetype, you know there is a design mistake somewhere. I can't believe Fiendsmith got actually printed into the game. Even the Verte DPE engine had downsides to it, with two garnets which effectively turned into two more after summoning DPE (the extra Fusion Destiny copies). Fiendsmith has none of that, I've never seen a more degenerate engine in the history of yugioh to be honest.
If the idea is to shut down your opponent to play yugioh might as well do the same with floodgates, how can we say "oh this is such a diverse meta" when all of the decks run 50% of the same 15-22 hand traps to prevent the 7-9 starters from searching their 3-4 extenders.
@@guillermoandresramirezvera2899I'd consider Mulcharmy, Droll, Shifter to be floodgates. They simply last a turn or two and take effect on resolution.
That's the issue, shifter doesn't work really well in a lot of decks and some meta decks can play through shifter. And if you run shifter, you can't run droll. So you have to choose one or the other Even if you do run droll, alot of decks set s/t cards from deck to activate on field. And lastly, running back row is a gamble cos Tenpai shits on it
Yes, handtraps with continuous effect are literally floodgates. If real floodgates are banned and at 1, Shifter, Droll and the stupid jellyfish need to be the same.
Unpopular opinion. I like handtraps. Yeah it sucks to be handtrapped. But its even worse to sit across your opponent and watch them build a ridiculous board and not be able to do anything. Now more than half your deck being handtraps is to much but Id say 12-15 in 40 is a good ratio. I always want to open something that I can interact with my opponent when I lose the dice role. So whats the real issue? Konami making small powerful engines. Simple as that. Archtypes need to require more cards to function at full power. OR make the small engines significantly weaker. BTW Josh. There simply is no satisfying yugioh players and this community. Last format we were complaining about tier0 and that the banlist didnt do enough. But now that we have a diverse format and it would seem the banlist did in fact do its job POST ROTA, we now complain that there are to many handtraps
The problem is definitely the build-a-board card design philosophy that has plagued this game for 5+ years now. And then band-aid fixing it by creating even more problematic cards like hand traps. I don't know how faster the game can get
Nah any more than 9 handtraps is just scummy in any deck regardless of reason. Should be limited to absolutely maximum of 10 hand traps, board wipes etc. Oh and only be allowed to banish face down 3 cards maximum a game. That playstyle and mechanic is just wack.
One problem at a time. Solve one another surfaces. We got 3 big problems in yugioh one got fixed. Two to go. Weaker end boards that need more engine (basically older yugioh) when that gets solved we can remove handtraps. Konami needs to recognize these fixes to these problems and bank on the idea that a slower more fairer yugioh will result in more money instead of the powercreep model. That is the reboot this game needs. At a given point they can probably powercreep again to get people excited again that way. Or not perhaps they find themselves satisfied at a different money earning model.
Making small engines weaker or harder to set it then negating it won't fix it. I agree we have a degenerate op engines, but handtraps are an issue as well. Handtraps should be limited or banned. Archetypes should require more cards to set its board. Archetypes should disqualify of special summoning monsters other their than their archetype/type. If Knoami won't make this happen, then at least they should have different ranking systems based on your archetype or the cards you're using. It should be formed like this META ranking (all degenerate crap is allowed with its ban list) Rogue ranking (band hand traps or limit them, ban extra deck staple and powerful archetypes are banned) Mediocre ranking OG ranking. (oldest format for boomers) This is the only way to make most players satisfied. They won't complain about limiting power creep or facing a power creep. They did something similar with yugioh duel master events and it was healthy and more fun.
Long turns and ridiculous boards are undeniably the biggest issues in yugioh. And I don't mind a lot of handtraps if they are played in a deck like Marincess. I wish all decks were like Marincess and Branded. Weak engine, more spots for non-engine. Strong engine, very limited spots for non-engine
The goal of modern Yugioh has always been to make sure your opponent doesn't get to play. Previously this has been done through wombo combo decks like Adamancipator and Spyral, and handtraps were a tool for the player going second to prevent an unbreakable board. The Mulcharmys heavily punish these decks, and they lost the main three extra deck negates. However, now we have decks filled with 1-card-combos that make very strong boards very efficiently. This allows players to load up on handtraps, which are interruptions, mainly negates, that are unaffected by the Mulcharmys, Nibiru, and many other handtraps. And multiple 1-card-combos allow you to play through more handtraps. 23 handtrap decks are a symptom of the rise of 1-card-combos, but 1-card-combos are a symptom of handtraps, which were a symptom of the wombo combo decks. But the wombo combos are dead, and the handtraps remain. Full disclosure: I am *very* anti-handtrap. They come from and go to zones that are very difficult to interact with. They stop people from playing Yugioh. There's barely any risk. Any card in hand can be one. Most can still be played going first. They warp the format. They're simply bad game design. They were always going to lead to 1-card-combo decks because they punish 2+ card combos.
Yup, they are a fantastic example for the cobra effect They were made to combat the worst uninteractive decks, but they had such strong effects agains any other deck too that those uninteractive decks were the only ones which managed to survive making the problems even worse And now we have reached a point where the actual cards you play dont matter anymore, just the ratio of cards in your starting hand Also, if you reach a point where a mulligan would completely break your game, you know that something is severely wrong with it
Imo handtraps overuse is something I started to see since 2023 and now standardized in 2024. I wouldn’t say last 5 years. Most decks ran 9 at most. 3 Ash, 3 Imperm and 3 of wtv. Now decks are trying to fit in 15-20.
@ I promise you during 2019-2021 it starting get really bad. Ash, imperm, Nib,Gamma, Phantazamay effect veiler could all be in the main then Ghost belle or crow in side for graveyard , Winter cherries for mirrors , etc. Plus cards like shifter were printed like 2 years before the card would be frequently used/ a meta option if your deck could play it. Plus you can argue cards like evenly match (which has been around since 2018 and basically never stopped being good) is quite literally a hand trap lol It’s been a problem long before 2023 ! Edit: The fact you can find multiple videos from those dates of content creators having the same convo is nuts! Let alone the power creep , bad generic extra deck monsters , etc . Time wizard is Goated for a reason (no pun intended 🙂)
@@619ver1at least ryzeal designed to be more midrange deck, 1 card combo they have isn't as powerful as snake eyes or yubel. They just play good into handtrap war and good vs maxx C and charmies.
You could still play non-meta and not feel steamrolled 5 years ago every game. Now, every format's got a deck playing during your turn and can reconstitute its full board from nothing. The worst part of it is how we still have cards like the Bystials floating in the background waiting to just ruin the game again when the age of fire is over. To be playable a deck needs to break a game mechanic these days in the meta, and its massacred the legacy of the game in the process. Like, Monarchs are never going to be a thing again after Floo. Fusion is never going to be anything like its been for 10 years after Albaz / despia / bystials. They took the Zodiac concept with XYZ, and that EVERY meta deck, with a litany of ways to do fusion, tribute summon, synchro, exceed, or so on, without actually running decks do it rules as written. Tuners? Chaos Angel. Same level stacking? Nah man, we can cheat exceeds in every possible way. Fusions? We can use our extra deck, our banishment zone, our deck, or whatever, to fuel the effect. Am I missing anything? Oh, links are just broken by design. And the funny thing is, you still get balanced or slightly ridiculous cards being released in these metas that never see play because the Meta is just broken mechanics on steroids.
The hand trap problem is the result of cascading effects from design decisions. I'm gonna start with Ash Blossom, even though it isn't the first hand trap, just because it's where I see this problem really starting. Ash is a fairly healthy card, and it solved a pretty big issue with a lot of decks at the time feeling like they're playing solitaire and having fairly rigid and linear game plans. Ash allowed the game to feel a lot more interesting on the first turn, and changed the way decks were built going forward in fundamental ways. If your deck can't play through an Ash, it can't perform. Ok, so in order for our new archetypes to be exciting and powerful, they need to be able to play through an Ash Blossom. So you just play a deck that isn't trying to, say, normal summon a starter to go search for an extender and risk your normal summon getting ashed leaving you with nothing. But now Imperm is out, and it's better than Effect Veiler ever was, so you've gotta worry about that. Now good decks can play through Ash, but the best decks can play through Ash _and_ Imperm. This effect starts to stack on top of itself a couple times throughout the years until you get decks like Tear and Snake-Eye that can sometimes play through 4+ hand traps and still do alright. And now that you wanna run so many hand traps, decks have to work around that. And how is a game with a 5 card starting hand gonna work around wanting to draw 3 hand traps on the first turn? With one card starters. The link-1 that searches the field spell that searches the etc.. My girl and Mo Ye drowning together. The hand trap problem is a classic Yu-Gi-Oh type avoidable issue that they designed into a corner. I don't really know what Konami can do to change this, but I've thought that before and they've somehow managed to stay afloat this long so who knows. To me, nothing short of a fundamental change in design philosophy will fix this problem, and I don't think Konami is interested in doing that kind of introspection.
Aside from a fundamental change in design philosophy, they ALSO need a fundamental change in banning philosophy - namely, the idea that "we can't ban X because it's too new and we have to wait until we sell reprints." As long as that remains their guiding ethos, this can NEVER change.
13:35 It would seem to me that Konami doesn't really consider 'balance' when designing decks currently. The aspects that make up a good deck, like consistency, required cards to start a combo, recovery, resiliency to interruption, resource expenditure, and end board ceiling should all be balanced so that no deck is optimal in most categories. For example, Virtual World on its own could put up a pretty okay board with varied interaction and a floodgate along with recoverability in Shenshen, and you couldn't stop the main deck monsters through targeting which gave the combo resilience. However, you did require 2 of the right combo pieces in hand and your hand would look pretty sparse by the end, limiting follow-up if your board was broken. Contrast with SE which had a ton of 1 card starters, extenders, plenty of room for non engine, strong recovery, varied interruptions and I'm pretty sure you could still end up with more cards in hand by the time you finish comboing. Similar with Yubel, SEFK, and even Centurion to an extent. Then you have the sort of other end where some decks can FTK or get pretty close to it if uninterrupted so the only metric by which your deck is judged is how many hand traps you can open with, which isn't very fun. I'm not a competitive player, only really got in with MD, but it feels like Konami has been releasing all around strong decks to shape the meta, anti-meta decks for counterplay, and decks that either don't stand a chance on release or have a significant uphill battle. Financially it makes sense to increase FOMO/demand but it pushes the limits of game balance to these fracture points.
One card combos does to much nowadays... Remember Meltdown? One card lead to mechaba and an Aleister in hand Now one Card lead to 3 negations, 2 destructions, 2 banish and still 5 cards in hand
1 card combos helped push out the all-out combo decks of the firewall dragon era. Yes, they cause the handtrap problem, but that is the lesser of two evils. The way to solve the handtrap problem, in turn, is to create decks that are both very resilient to handtraps and weak to boardbreaker (similar to Ryzeal, and the opposite of Fiend Link)
I don't think being weak to board breakers is a good solution. Getting sacked by cards like raigeki feels just as bad as getting overwhelmed by handtraps imo. We just experience that less because we rarely get good going 2nd decks like Tenpai. I think decks should be resilient to handtraps and board brakers, but the pout up weak boards. If more decks ended on boards like pure Melodious, I think the game would be a lot better. I don't think games should be decided by how much non engine you drew, whether it's handtraps or board breakers.
@@flamewizard9022there're ways to buffer against something like Raigeki, Forbidden Lance, multilayered interaction (mix of monster, spell, and trap interaction).
Or stop printing any card that is just a wall of text and go back to one or two simple effects on cards. 2-3 lines max. Go back and limit cards that are just text dumps. An engine should be a suite of 25-30+ cards leaving with with only a few slots for spells and traps as it should be. Bring back cost to activate on just about all cards that let you add cards, summon cards and above all banish cards either face up and most definitely face down. They need to to stop printing so many cards with negates and make it so every boss monster in extra deck is only summonable by its named archetype
I think it's a dull way to play. This format has some variety, but the word I've landed on is "Volatile". It only takes one card resolving to establish so much advantage you can easily lose to it. I know there's been more and more of that over the last few years, and I'm kind of used to it, but it's just exasperating when the game is just "do I have enough handtraps to stop them entirely". I don't think Fiendsmith is the problem with the current meta, but I'm also not a fan of how generally applicable it is. I know there has to be some generic stuff in the game, but I'm never that happy when you can chuck a small engine into quite literally any deck with zero drawbacks, and it just 1-cards into Wave King or Desirae. I'd always be happier if there were multiple small engines that had their own restrictions that meant there were lots of options that were suited for certain kinds of decks, rather than just one option that suits every deck. Fiendsmith is also still expensive. I mean, the entire game is expensive, but you get me lol
I think Handtraps can be really good for the game. The problem is when you have too much room in your deck to run 20 of them. I definitely agree with what other comments are saying when handtrap overuse is more of a "symptom" rather than their fault.
I don't even know why we're having this discussion right now, everyone identified that this was a symptom of 1 card combos last format. Why are we acting like we forgot?
@@quijassajiuq900 That much I agree with, I'm just wondering why everyone is acting like they have dementia and are saying "no, handtraps are the problem!" when we already figured out that the handtraps are a symptom of tiny engines with 1 card starters last damn format. It's like I've how I've watched Branded players literally spend 9 months flip-flopping on whether or not Sanctifire is the problem, or Gimmick Puppet is when we already identified the problem and are just bored and revisiting old questions we know the answer to.
@@DarkAuraLord Because people DO have dementia, don't agree or just can't accept it. There's actual people in this very comment section in earlier "discussion" comments that blatantly say that hand traps ARE the problem.
"Diverse Meta" Just for reference, currently in Pokemon TCG there are over 20 viable decks in Standard. A more LIMITED format. Same for MtG. upwards of 20 decks in standard is the norm. Meanwhile in Yugioh, you have around 3 meta defining decks and the rest is antimeta. If there ever was a case for standard rotation, it's this. I'm sick and tired of cards being designed to power creep what came before and artificially rotate the format.
Handtraps being numerous is absolutely a problem, but it’s more of a symptom of the underlying issue of cards doing too much in modern Yugioh. It’s an issue that has snowballed for years. Decks progressive get more powerful over time, with cards being able to do more. Konami tries to bandaid this issue by printing new interactions that slow down the pace. New cards get printed to push through the out. Next thing you know, you get 1 card starters that become extenders and and build a board all by themselves, leaving ample room to load in the most efficient ways to prevent your opponent from going off before you do, or insulate your combo. Hitting the 8K damage threshold has never been easier, and decks have become so efficient, that the most common win cons have become •Flood the board with enough damage to OTK •Build an imposing board strong enough to shrug off any way your opponent can break it •Cripple your opponent with enough disruption that they cannot surmount any sort of comeback or build any defense for your combos. As the game gets faster & more efficient, we’re going to continue to have this problem, until Konami finally decides to adapt a new design philosophy & overhaul the fundamentals of this game.
Yeah I love playing Modern Yugioh.... I normal summon... Imperm Ok I play my Spell ASH! OK i discard from my hand... Called by! Sigh....ok...I Fuwalos and Shifter! Ok I end my turn Watches as they play solitare for 20 minutes and end me....
Agreed. The real problem is one card combos. I've played against enough Rikka & Snake Eyes to realize that hand traps are the only way you can possibly have fun with the game. I've basically turned all of my favorite decks into hand trap slop.
But why is running a lot of handtraps a bad thing for the game? Isn't it a good thing that decks are made to interact with the opponent? And those interactions don't completely bone the opponent into passing turn.
@@haydenz0 Because it slowly kills any form of deck building creativity and choice, and overall just contributes more to power creep. Any deck that does not have enough free space to cram the suite of 20+ handtraps into a deck is now behind the newer decks. And there are still some old rogue decks running around, who are getting pushed out due to not having the space for this suite of hand traps that are becoming mandatory at this point. Hell, I'm surprised we haven't hit the point of a deck trap. Opponent activates a thing? Activate an interruption from your deck. Which at that point the game would be beyond repair.
hand traps are a major part of the problem tho. they make it so cards need to do more things so decks dont just end their turn on 1 hand trap. its a spiral that has reached a abysmal point.
The problem is a little bit the amount of hand traps and the flexibility, but mostly I think the issue is the 1 card combos with fiend smith and other engines. If your deck doesn’t have a card that lets you go full combo then it can’t compete because of the sheer amount of interruptions they’re likely going to draw. I said before they came out the Bystials were too strong and they got limited. If they’re going to allow this many hand traps then we need 3 called by back. 3 called by plus 3 cross out would deal with this deck like no one’s business.
Yugioh doesnt have a handtrap problem, it has a powercreep problem where Konami keeps making every new deck better at playing through disruptions, including ht's. This powercreep has impacted ht's such as dshifter, nib & mulcharmy's where they usually end turns if resolved. It doesnt help that Konami knows they can sell sets by making these new ht's mandatory 3 ofs + secret rares. Solution 1: No more 1 card combo decks. That should be reserved for control decks like striker or lab where that 1 card doesnt make them go +10 Solution 2: ht's need more restrictions. "After this card resolves, you cannot activate card effects from the hand for the rest of the turn" Solution 3: ht's need to be hit on the banlist, and we need to shift away to archetypal-handtraps like havnis or r-ace impulse. *they dont need to print quick effect: negate, disruption like a BoM is fine*
I can't comment on what the root problem is nor what a solution would be. But as a Master Duel only gamer, I can already say that the problem with these hand trap wars stemming from modern YGO deckbuilding principles are unfun for one simple reason: NEITHER player gets to play their deck. There's broadly 3 scenarios on MD ladder right now. 1) Duelist A tries to play, duelist B throws like 3~4 hand traps at them, shutting them down completely. Because OTKs in modern YGO are incredibly easy, Duelist A realizes there's no point to stick around for an inevitable loss the moment they click to Pass, and scoops. 2) Duelist A tries to play and pushes through Duelist B's hand traps - maybe B didn't open enough/any, maybe A opened double Called By, whatever. Because modern YGO decks either end on full setup or end on nothing, no in-betweens, Duelist B realizes they just minused their hand for no real purpose since A ended up doing full combo anyway, and now A has more disruptions on the field than B has cards in hand, rendering the game unwinnable. Duelist B scoops. 3) One or both duelists hard brick on hand traps and spend the next 5~6 turns passing back and forth, negating any topdeck that attempts to play the game. Eventually, one starter resolves for either player, and the other player immediately scoops because this implies an unavoidable OTK. Notice that even the winning player doesn't get to actually combo in any of these situations. The only cards actually seeing the light of day and resolving are non-engine.
I think that cards nowadays have too many effects. Like they have an effect on hand then on summon then on graveyard that just reduces the amount of engine that a deck needs to function
Handtraps are the new trap cards. It's just like old formats like the belived GOAT not to mention even older formats. I don't see why this is suddenly a problem.
can we just like... erase everything after AGOV? I swear, since then it's just been downhill... the only archetype I found genuine interest in past AGOV was White Forest and even that gets more played like all the other solitaire decks in the format (only from what I've seen searching for lists and stuff tho)
Yeah, card design after agov plummeted, only white forest and voiceless really attempt to play a back and forth game of yugioh since, which means they're just not competitively relevant in a format like this. Glad to see a more interactive deck did well, but how many handtraps you need and how ineffective breakers are have become major problems post-agov
Snake eyes came out in AGOV man. Snake eyes is the primary example of all the issues we are talking about, insane small engine which leaves room for way too many handtraps.
Been saying this for last 2 weeks. Meta has become 75% about not allowing the other person play & 25% about gambling that you get what you need to crush em after you do not let them play.
Interacting with the opponent isn’t about “not letting the opponent play” if that’s your definition then your definition is laughably warped. You can’t compare something like idk Unchained to something like TDK, Calamity, or Sanctifire who literally locks the opponent out of the game. Yes, endboards have gotten a bit too strong for decks to realistically break through post POTE but the answer is pretty easy to address just stop printing decks under post POTE card design and limit decks that have released after which is already mostly done just 1 decent size banlist would do
The solution at this point is an overhaul in the banlist, blanket hitting hand traps to 1 or 2 and hitting currently relevant one card starters and searchers down to one or two. Hand traps were meant to stop starters that were going too far with their combo lines, hitting down both would open up some space while being vigilant for stun strategies that went unnoticed and stamp them out. They already stamped out most floodgates, for the toxic lines of play they enabled, attacking hand traps and starters would be the next step.
@invertbrid it would indeed also require a change in card design. That step would have to follow a mass banning of cards, cards that would have to be acknowledged as too efficient and look to design cards with those failings in mind.
A solution is either a Master rule change around Extra-deck summon mechanics and / or special summon mechanics and / or how monsters interact with effects. Like the Flip summon mechanic being as dead as they are is atrocious; a normal monster is usually forced on a deck as part of a bad engine; tributes are dead. Hitting Link summon mechanics into the ground is probably where you need to change the game, but even then, the extra deck is just too versatile and powerful in modern Yugioh. It does EVERYTHING better than actual spells / traps
@@nm2358 Links already have a lot of restrictions as is, you still have to be mindful of zone placement for multiple links, link climbing still forces the card into a specific zone which can be utilized in some limited capacity. The issue isn't so much the Links or extra deck, it's the consistency of decks nowadays paired with the speed to build a powerful board and lingering hand traps and effects that warp the game to many degrees. Consistency should come at a cost for something like what cards you can use for the rest of the turn. Machina Unclaspare and Snake Eye Poplar have a similar effect to self summon when added to the hand, except Unclaspare restricts your summons to just Machine types for the turn.
hand traps are fine, people that hate on it either dont know shit about the game or are people that just wanna throw combos at each other till someone dies. Most of the chat in the video has no idea wtf they are talking about
The solution to this problem is Deck Traps. Traps that activate directly from the deck so you don’t need to draw them. We need to go full speed ahead on Power Creep
I don't understand why people complain about hand traps when without them the game is a mess of building an unstoppable board state turn one then they pass and you lose. Handtraps are the ONLY form of interaction you have against omni-negate. Which in my opinion, omni-negates are why the entire game is screwed up, its too easy to build a win state not a board state. At this point that's what those board states should be called.
You are not taking into account that your opponent also has access to handtraps, meaning he can build an unbreakable board while interrupt everything you will do with handtraps.
No it has a general power creep problem. Without handtraps, so many decks can just win turn 1 if not interrupted. They are the answer to the real issue, not the issue itself.
A big problem is also that being the player that hand traps, you can still be on the losing end, if you spend 3 cards to try to stop your opponent and they can still put up some sort of board, you are stuck with just 2 cards to attempt to come back
2024 is the first year in 25 years that I have decided to stop playing. I just stopped having fun when Snake-Eyes came out. Don’t get me wrong, Tearlaments was not fun to play against at all, but a couple cards could shut that down. It ALMOST felt like a 50/50 game against Tearlaments. However, once SE hit the scene, if you didn’t have three pieces of interaction at a given time, the game was over. I gave Magic The Gathering a try and have been having SO much more fun.
I'll tell you what, I can't even enjoy playing my non-meta decks in Master Duel ranked without getting Ash Blossomed or Impermed every first turn I play. It's almost like the game spawns the Ash in the opponents hand every game. For casual decks handtraps is HUGE problem, but for competitive meta 1 card combo decks, it's really not too bad for those decks, I guess. I feel like 2011 Yugioh is where it was actually still fun and interactive for ALL decks and not just meta. Right now, at least on the competitive level, modern Yugioh is just insane where lots of games end in turn 1 or 2 which is not good. I think the issue needs to be addressed not just on the YCS level, but the game in general.
@11:30 I think saying one talents beats “the entire deck” is a bit disingenuous here. One talents beats the entire end board, not the entire deck. If you use two cards to make fenrir plus caesar, then you still have to contend with 3-4 potential hand traps. Considering you probably lose a card to the caesar before you can talents, a lot of decks will still lose to that. Fiendsmith is certainly not healthy. As long as any two monsters in the game represent a full fiendsmith combo, that is far too strong for most decks to deal with. I think requiem needs to be banned, or at the very least moon needs to get banned and they can never print a generic light fiend again. Knightmare mermaid 2 is not okay, stop coping. Even if it’s less unhealthy than snake eyes or yubel, that does not equate to a good format with a good dynamic of interactions in an average yugioh game. Pure fiendsmith would be fine if it couldn’t play 30 hand traps, and I don’t think that deck ever exists as long as requiem does.
Long story short, ygo is now the literal "Just Draw The Out Bro" and the only play to not turbo lose is play half of deck handtraps. Fantastic not a toxic format what so ever :), Also you should call this deck "The Out"
"healthiest engine" that has 0 requirements thanks to link 2 goddess and turns any 2 cards into two negates. Sure, maybe if they ban goddess it would be healthy since it would actually have deck building requirements lol
@@abdurachmanromzy4778 Banning requiem would be an hot take, something Konami is known for not taking. Ban the shitty common link 2 so this engine can't go in 99% of the decks and it's already somewhat reasonable. Still 0 reqs for 2 negates in Yubel but oh well
"The only reason we play over 50% handtraps is because snake-eyes dose so much" look they designed ash blossom ages ago, its been clear pretty much since it was printed that EVERY deck runs 3 ash blossom. As a result of ash blossom warping the game new power creep cards had to be THAT much stronger. Its clear some hand traps mere existance have crippled yugioh, they do too much; ash blossom should only do 1 of the 3 things it dose do but because it is what it is here we are in a meta game where you need half your deck to be hand traps otherwise your opponent will combo of a single card into a 5x omni negate board with a target removal and a board wipe interrupt that reccurs half the cards you lost. The 25th aniversary was an opportunity to run a second yugioh product that went back to old yugioh, pulled some punches on iconic card power levels and then moved forward on a new design philosophy, theyd have had a much more balanced game if theu accounted for synchros and xyz from the start by making fusion monsters either so much stronger or way more generic in materials. Simple design rulea like; each hand trap only has 1 handy effect to play around. Quick effects are a premium on monsters so either that monster stats suck, it's difficult to summon, or both. Any spell card that draws needs a hard once per turn attached to it but also more spells need OPT text anyway: if a trap and a spell functionally have the same trxt, the spell should probably say OPT.
As someone that's been playing MD on and off since it's release, the most fun I've always had was when the gameplan of whatever the Meta was got interrupted enough that we can now have a back and forth. I honestly wish something like Edison Format would be introduced as a more fair YGO back and forth variant in MD, but I guess Konami rather wants us to play some "Oops all handtraps" 🤷
Facts, MD should've have ladder for time wizard event that rotates every few weeks or so. They can rotates the format also, 2 weeks of Edison, 2 weeks of tengu, HAT, GOAT, etc.
Hand traps are fine, as long as the amount is low. Always hated when modern ygo decks go to double digits in ht they can cram in without sacrificing consistency
In an ideal world those decks’ sacrifice would be on the power ceiling of the end board so their follow up is stronger, but frequently the best 1 card combos don’t have those. Ask yourself this, were you ever as angry in 2021-22 playing against prank kids/evil twins/marincess vs playing against snake eye/yubel/tenpai in 2024
Hand traps are fine and the people that complain about them are the people who haven’t been playing for very long. Effect Veiler came out in 2010. The thing has been seeing pretty steady play for longer than Skyrim or Dark Souls have been around. Affect Veiler came out a few months before COD BO1 too. Way back in the day we were using DD Crow to mess with dark counts to play around DAD and set up your own DAD. Hand traps have been around for forever and have been an integral part of the game well before we even hit the fledgling stages of modern Yugioh during Duelist Alliance. Even cards like Ash and Imperm are pretty old at this point. We’ve just substituted older staples for hand traps instead. The only way I see hand trap use slowing down is if we get a Havnis for every new relevant archetype. Tear didn’t really play hand traps because they could reliably play on your turn with Havnis.
Strong going first→Hand trap Strong hand trap→Stronger starter Strong starter→Board breaker cuz hand trap isn't enough Even stronger starter+built in extender+grind game→More hand trap cuz board breaker isn't enough so not letting people play at all (not even have something left in GY for follow-up) is the only option.
There's an alternate universe out there where Ash Blossom and Maxx C were banned in the OCG years ago instead of moving back from 2 to 3. Maybe in that universe they actually stopped designing this escalations of combos with the premise that it's fine cuz it loses to whatever hand trap. Now we would need so many things banned to fix this. Can't wait for Konami's next solution be combo starters and pieces that are also unaffected by card effects.
I'd rather see them go back to the Nekroz school of design and print engine monsters that just have two functions including a discard function and have themes require a lot of those multipurpose engine cards. each applicable interaction then forces a decision to use a themed card to advance your gamestate or to use it as disruption.
There is actually only 1 ultimate problem in all of Yu-Gi-Oh: Unlimited Special Summons. What is now required in order for YGO to be fixed is a "Summon Cap" per turn (ie. only allowed to summon a total of 15 times per turn) and this could easily be accomplished via a new Master Rule. Players can simply do too much on their turn which requires the usage of so many handtraps and toxic gameplay in order to counter it. Imagine not a "Midrange Format" that everyone enjoys, but rather a Midrange game altogether where gassy combo decks can no longer summon a billion times and build these insane and unbreakable boards requiring us to play billions of handtraps to stop them. Instead with a Summon Cap players can expect less actions being performed per turn and dont have to worry as much about having to play 20+ handtraps to stop an unbreakable board from being made because it can no longer be made in the first place!
I have a similar take on this, it could also be something like if you special summon more than X times (I'd go as low as 5) Maxx C activates (as a game rule) against you
The engine-requirement for a deck to actually work should be way higher. One card combos are not a problem, but they shouldn’t end on more than 1-2 interruption. If you want more, you should have to invest more cards .
The game is just poorly designed at this point. Power creep got to the point where decks just need 1 card to make crazy boards so the only real interaction that could stop them are equally unbalanced like handtraps and floodgates. Yugioh became a constant loop of making broken cards, broken answers for those, then broken cards than can play around those answers, repeat
Things like GOAT, Tengu Plants, Geargia and the current thing makes the most annoying periods in yugioh. Whenever staples get out of control and start dominating deck building it is a symptom the game needs a design renovation.
I see hand traps like counterspells in magic some decks like to play some to keep tempo and come decks and really load up on them and be a real control deck… knowing how to play around and into them is a skill that some people don’t have and rather then learning to acquire the skill it’s easier to complain about them… and like in every game ever there is variance and you can get blown out by them or ur opponent and brick on them
Hot take: the problem with handtraps is that there's too few of them. No one would care if it was like back 10 years ago and some decks were running 20+ traps, but handtraps (for most decks) have taken the niche of generic traps. The weird thing about handtraps compared to regular traps is that there's only about a dozen that do anything, so decks end up all looking the same. Unlike older traps, where you had loads of options based on synergies and matchups, modern handtraps lists look very similar with some slight changes based on the format. So for an older deck, it didn't look like 25 cards of actual deck and 15 mandatory traps, it all looked like one deck.
Tru! Give us more decks like RACE and tear with their own built in handtraps too. It really looked like they were headed that direction but then tear spooked em away.
I'll just say this, Tenpai Dragon would be a much worse deck if we had a spell/trap Imperm. Yubel and Snake-Eyes would also get much weaker with the existence of it as well. The best part is that it doesn't hurt older decks nearly as much which is unusual for handtraps. Although honestly, I kinda wish we had more cards that would help you set up turn 0 without necessarily being disruption. Bystial Magnamhut is the perfect example while also being a handtrap but it doesn't have to be hard disruption like this. Something like if your opponent summons 4 times, special summon this and add a spell/trap to your hand during the End Phase. Stuff like that.
Archetype handtraps being more of the norm would make the game feel like you're actually playing your own deck going second. I honestly wouldn't mind if every archetype had their own version of Havnis that lets them turn 0 and get some stuff on the board that had the power to stay there until turn 2.
If you hard lock all ED monsters to their archetypes, people will still complain that not archetypes are created equal & that their fav tier 3 deck is still trash against more modern archetypes. We know that only modern archetypes or busted legacy support will keep a archetype relevant long past its expiration date
The problem that very few of these meta decks lock you, or if they do its a generic lock, thats easy to overcome. For example i play hero's and its key cards lock you to Heros either for the rest of the turn or for the entire turn. So without these archetype locks you can just throw any and all small engines together and everything still be fine
This has been a problem in Yu Gi oh for years. It’s not about back and forth or anything it’s about making absolutely sure your opponent cannot play because if they resolve one card it’s likely the access their entire deck and go full combo. Plays more than 50% handtraps calls it innovation LMFAO
Honestly, when I hear him and other "pros" use the words "we invented-" I reel so hard at how cringe that sounds. Literally anybody can make this deck. People have. For a long time now. They just want to take the credit because they are "pros" and act like they are the only people playing YGO and build decks. These people aren't special. They just built a deck others have used for awhile now and the only reason why it won as well as it has was because of Yubel and Snake Eyes match-ups and whatever "team" format non-sense YGO has been doing. If it was any other deck at play, that deck would not win. (Josh even said it himself, it was built only to combat SE and Yubel.) This is just natural evolution of a shit game getting worse. People adapted. They didn't innovate anything.
@ for me it’s simpler than that…. What exactly is innovative about adding more hand traps????? And not even unique ones… the same ones everyone else is using lol that’s literally not innovation
Even in Master Duel gold, so many are playing these handtrap heavy decks where they always will want to go first, and setup a board where they are +2 with 3-4 hand traps to counter in hand, with additional handtrap effects on the field, plus graveyards hand traps if they run Purrely. It makes sense to use it against someone who is trying to pop to a near unbreakable board, because toxic players that pop to an unbreakable board deserve to be hand trapped. What often happens, is that the most toxic players will create a handtrap spammy deck and make it near impossible for you to play, while they easily pop their own board. Most engines needed enough monster consistency back even during 2022. Like people would play some hand traps, but it was better because you usually could play around the few that they had. The frustrating boards could be dealt with far easier, and if not, it was an annoying match and you could move on. Now, it's almost like I'm playing against a control and beatdown deck. The Runick engine was probably the point where the game shifted toward this style of play, and it is another level of power creep that is only gonna get worse if Konami tries balancing the game with an even stronger engine. Konami needs to make very specific anti-meta cards. Stuff that handles toxic strategies from happening. I would love a card that is a Swords of Revealing Light involving negates, but it would have to be balanced enough so it couldn't be used in a toxic manner, like limiting it based on not being able to summon it if you do four-five special summons that turn. Cards like that would help make sure difficult combos can be countered accordingly, since that makes for a healthy meta. Idk how this game got more power crept than it already was. 2019 is so much more fair by comparison, because even my rogue decks could win with ease.
the solution to powerful backrows were floodgates and massive MST type cards, it wouldn't suprise me that nowadays they start making some delinquent duo type effects to deal with handtraps but with heavy limitations
Yes YGO has a handtrap problem rn. Short term Solution? Called By back to 3 please. And I don’t want the but the combo players will go crazy argument because the combo decks played in the meta have too many one card starters so even if you handtrap them twice they will still establish their board. In fact for them playing called by would be redundant because they can just add consistency pieces to draw more one card starters. Called by will at least help the rogue decks play against these decks with 18+ handtraps. Also with Mulcharmies around and the paywall around it we need Called by back imo. Let’s at least try it back at 3 for a format.
You think the crazy combo decks like snake-eyes and yubel won't play called by yeah right they would absolutely use it because the best hand traps to beat them are the mulcharmmies and shifter.
i think we need more "punishment cards" like the new Magistus quick spell. "When your opponent activates a card or effect: Special Summon 1 “Magistus” or “Witchcrafter” monster from your hand or Deck.". When you op activates a HT, you have a follow or something
I think it’s a good thing. Hand traps are like having purple cards set on turn 0. They provide interaction and when everyone’s playing with half baked boards it feels like slower, older Yugioh.
Then the guy spamming hand traps plays his 1 card starter and rofl stomps your empty board that you never even got to set up. Hand traps ARE the problem.
@@connermorgan9223 there's ways to deal with that type of thing other than hand traps. You can use board breakers like dark ruler no more and Forbidden droplets. All hand traps like ash, imperm, and mulcharmys do is keep the opponent from playing at all. Granted cards like them have their caveats to, but having a board get broken by generic board breakers is better than hand trap spammers not letting you play at all. They also make players dumb. 99% of the time as soon as you play something it's going to get hand trapped. Even if it doesn't do anything on summon or only works on the opponent's turn, they will waste their hand traps on it just because they can. Even if it gets in the way of them getting more cards from mulcharmys or Maxx C they will spam hand traps because their only goal is keeping you from playing entirely.
This is a problem that I think started with Centur-ion. The symptoms are always there, but Centur-ion is the first one that brought it to the spotlight: a fully functional core engine of less than 20 cards, recycles itself, brings out-of-archetype negates as a STAPLE route of its own combo, and is fully accessible out of a single card, which is itself searchable by at least six others. Cool? Yes. But it makes for poor deck design and meta environment if every deck that came after it follows this formula.
we need something like Nefariouser Archfiend but that adds Mulcharmy directly to the hand AND special summon little knight, than we need a polymerization that activate in the deck... Mulcharmy.. Little knight fuse together to form... !! Pikachu the forbidden one !!
Man yugioh community just complain about everything. They hate Runick because it's annoying, Tenpai because it's uninterractive, Yubel because it's usually create solitaire gameplay, but then even if the deck doesn't do any unfair things people still cry about it
Name a large competitive community that doesn't complain. You have basketball players/fans complaining about 3 pointers being overpowered You have football players/fans complaining about the tuck rule. Boxers/fans complaining about clenching/defense play. It is completely natural and common in any competitive genre
Add a handtrap deck that you can draw from when the game begins. 15 hand traps allowed, deck is always shuffled, you can select 1-5 to draw when the game starts, but each one you draw reduced the number of cards from your main deck you can draw, such that when finished drawing to start the game, your hand will always be 5 cards total.
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
What do you think the real problem is? Let me know
You stole my first, so sad
Competitive prizing
Minimal engine requirements for maximum outcome (negates, recursion, resilience to handtraps).
Mathmech not having more support of course Joshua
The real problem are floodgates, that you can activate on top of your endboard😢
The 20+ handtraps are a symptom.
Yugioh has a “every card is a one card starter but also an extender” problem..
Yep. Gotta play 500 hand traps so you can Imperm the Snake Eye Ash, Veiler Diabellestar, Ash Bonfire... Then brick, watch your opponent topdeck Poplar and concede. This style of deck is what makes hand traps an auto include, and it still doesn't even guarantee a win for you. It's just whoever draws better and can push their combo through first wins.
Exactly
@@FakeHeroFang that's the most damning aspect of the format. The amount of handtraps being played STILL doesn't guarantee you the win just shows how powerful these one card starters/extenders have become
@@FakeHeroFangthe funniest part is that even in the situation you described, they can still end on a promethean princess interruption after you've handlooped yourself for 3
This. Sometimes it feels like certain decks have an absurd amount of gas even after 5+ disruptions. It’s crazy to even think that’s not enough anymore
It’s interesting that as YGO keeps its deranged evolution the more it actually resemble old formats like GOAT: you have less than half the deck actually your “deck”, the rest is actually the generic cards everyone play, difference’s there is less green/purple and more orange
yeah as a Old head (Goat to DUEA) its really funny how modern ygo is the most like old formats its been since I quit.
Honestly, yeah. I like it. Nobody ever thought it was cringe that you HAD to run trap cards if you wanted to interrupt your opponent's plays.
Very insightful and underrated comment. While I do think that the one card combo problem has gotten really bad, I enjoy the amount of utility in the game
In deck philosophy yeah, but the gameplay is way more degenerate. Games lasting 3-4 turns is insane compared to old YGO.
🤨
Hand trap overuse is a symptom not the cause
The problem is general mismanagement of power creep
Who would’ve thought 1 card into 5-8 interruption combo is problematic?
it's a self enforcing problem.
as handtraps (and breakers, non-engine in general) become more plentiful and powerful konami prints stronger engines that can play through more handtraps (like fiendsmith ) so they print more handtraps (mulcharmies, dominus traps) in a infinite loop of powercreep.
@@JackHugemantrue although that is not Infinite. The game will boil down to rock paper scissors without an actual deck archetype or theme to the deck. We kinda are already there perhaps 1 step or max 2 steps of powercreep left. The game needs a reboot sadly due to greedy powercreep management.
Yes but even negate boards are a symptom not the cause, lifepoints no longer matter, if you made both players immune to all damage for 8 turns the meta will change.
Because as tenpai has shown as in master duel, having a strong going second deck actually makes turn 1 decks more oppressive, since most decks will kill you in one turn if you dont build a hundred negates, they are the symptom of lifepoints being too small, if everyone had 100,000 life points for example, negate points will be irrelevant, same if players had 2 draws per turn, the chance of drawing a board breaker or kaiju would outweigh you using all of you gas turn 1 on a board that isnt even able to beat the opponent
There are 3 sizable problems in modern yugioh gameplay imo:
1) Tiny meta engines: Not long ago you needed some 30 cards of any archetype to be able to have your deck perform optimally. By making effects broader, longer and much more powerful, now you can do with one card what you'd need 3 or 4 some years ago. Handtraps wouldn't be such a problem if you had less than 10 spaces to put them in your deck, you'd have to think way more about matchup than just sticking every conceivable negate in your build because your full meta engine is just 15 cards.
2) Powerful one card combos: There were good one card combos before MR4 (like Zoodiac, for example), but the rise of links, which were supposed to slow down the game, is where Konami lost its marbles. Everything became a one card combo. People complain about pendulum summon, but that's once per turn. Link climb is infinite, to the point where Firewall had to be banned and eventually reworked to be less broken. Does anyone remember extra link? And because links were broken, anything that came afterwards had to be even more broken.Including handtraps.
3) Lack of actual cost in effects: As strong as Sky Striker is, for example, you can't have monsters in your main zone in order to activate their spells. Sure, there's lots of ways to get around that, but it is a hard limitation that prevents the deck from being all-powerful. Even at its peak in 2018, it lost worlds. The next year is the last one where cards had any actual cost, at least imo: 2019. From 2020 forwards where Eldlich's effect is specifically written to get around Skill Drain, meta decks lost any resemblance of cost, now most cards' costs being not a negative but actually a positive for their archetype or interaction with another powerful card. By the time we hit Tearlaments and Kashtira, cards can simply do everything, respond to anything, enter the field without trigger like kaijus, giving the opponent not only almost no room for his response but most of the time card disadvantage if they manage to respond (unless he plays said decks or their counters).
And that's not gonna change, Konami just wants to sell so the powercreep will continue to accelerate indefinitely. What we as a community need to do is take the rules into our own hands (remember Smogon's tier system? That's entirely community run and well accepted by the larger community), create and support more formats (time wizard formats are not enough), make our own banlists and events. Especially because Konami events, for the most part, suck.
I like it i like your idea i like you thank you
What the community needs to do is vote with their wallet, that should've happened 5+ years ago.
@@TurtleneckSweater-tw7hw Yugioh was too big to fail in 2008, when DAD decks ran away with the game at the time, it was too big to fail when dino rabbit made a large percentage of players drop the game. If that didn't work back then, it will not work now, even if it's the correct answer.
What's funny is that Pendulum, at face value, requires more than 1 card to function, you need at least 2 to perform the summon and at least one other card to pendulum summon.
Links were never meant to slow down the game can you even point to one official source from Konami where they stated that?
If there is a hand trap problem, then there are other underlying issues that need to be solved. No handtraps= watch your opponent combo for 8-12 minutes with one of three results: ftk, lose your hand, stare down an unbreakable board
this this this
Then you win if your opponent goes past the 3 minute time limit. 😂
1 card combos do too much.
They almost always have, now they require so few engine cards while being more consistent than ever
@@jaysonking4055 I'm ok with 1 card getting the ball rolling, but 1 card leading to 3+ interruptions through a hantrap seems op.
@@heykhan1420 that’s usually due to oversight in engine synergies versus a single card playing through hand traps. If you summon an Ash and get it imperm/veilered you have to have an extender to even continue playing. The problem is when Azamina, Snake Eye and Fiendsmith all share an overlap due to a generic extra deck monster bridging them together. This is something I believe Konami does intentionally not only to sell the latest set, but to keep certain decks from being 5+ year contenders in the meta. I don’t agree with konamis “solution” to the issue, but most players are just wrong objectively on why the issue exists in the first place.
@premejon8300 I agree 👍 In Josh's deck, Lacrima required 2 handtraps to stop (or shifter) because the link-1 is almost like a built in second normal summon.
Skill issue
"does ygo have a hantrap problem" proceeds to show him playing 23 handtraps in his deck. idk man you tell me...
A little bit of “self incrimination” never hurt anyone…
It's not his fault, the format made him do it!
@@cg3518 The format held a gun to his head! 😭
@@torakandwolf6786 Well yeah. Just because he identifies it as a problem doesnt mean its not the optimal way to play currently.
@@torakandwolf6786 yes? you can identify a problem (it's too easy to play 20 handtraps because engines are so compact) and still play the most competitive deck.
When Kashtira becomes the hero, oh the irony.
ariseheart-less kash was never hated i feel like
😂
@@zenbozic6184 fenrir rant counter:
Why ofc it is, at least ever since it changed its way with the ariseheart ban. I for the life of me don't understand how people can complain about fenrir in particular with the current state of the game, outside of being boomers, but even then, I AM a boomer and I love fenrir.
@@Frogleeoh tbh i think fenrir kinda punishes bad players, like sure its a strong card, but often times the people who complain about it just played like shit vs it
The problem in YGO is that every good deck is effectively an OTK. Either they actually kill you, or they set up so many interruptions that you can't play, effectively killing you. This means the turn 1 player in essence always wins. In order to combat this you need the turn 2 player to have turn 1 interactions. This is where an arms race is created. There is a battle between the turn 1 player OTKing, and the turn 2 player stopping that OTK. The more powerful the OTK, the more powerful and consistent the response needs to be. In order to meet the standard of consistence, people have to maximize stopping power, and minimize engines, so they always have enough stopping power turn 1.
YGO needs to reduce the power of end boards that decks can put up. If they do so then they can safely get rid of these hand traps that are now the absolute majority of deck building. It does not matter if someone can combo through 40 cards in their deck, if the end board they make with that is still balanced. End boards need to be taken down several pegs, so that hand traps can be safely removed from the game, or at least heavily reduced.
Agree. Adding to this, if the absurd power of Turn 1 boards gets tuned down, there needs to be something done about generic extra deck cleanup tools - you die way too fast in this game. Accesscode Talker(and before that Borrelsword Dragon)and similar trivialize OTKs in a way that is detrimental to back-and-forth gameplay. If you don't have an interruption and your opponent is able to play in any way, you are almost guaranteed to be dead.
True
Unfortunately, they've backed themselves into a corner unless they are willing to for good get rid of the notion that "it's too early to ban X." They did it ONCE...unless they show they're willing to continue doing that, then they're still stuck in "We have to print something even stronger than what we have now in order to sell this new product." Then they've got something even stronger out there that they won't ban because "it's too early and people will be pissed because they spent a ton of money."
I only partially agree with this. If I have a hand of all engine pieces and there is no interruption by the opponent, I should be able to make a strong end board. The problem is not so much the strength of the end boards, but the ability of modern decks to make those end boards with a single piece of engine. Additionally, for decks like Tenpai, these end boards are often all-or-nothing; they either full-combo, or scoop, leading to unsatisfying games.
FINALY SOME ONE WHO GETS IT, the biggest problem with this game is that the game ends in a single battle phase, they need to ad damage caps where nether player could deal damage more than 1000 per turn
Short answer: yes
Long answer: Also yes
FS having infinite grind is still a problem since it's (semi) permanent. It's just not on the level of SE/Yubel full combo. Ideally you want both of them hit in the long run.
As a side note, Unicorn ripping the ED is still one of the most frustrating things you can run into in this game.
@@Avermra Fiendsmith is fair bro. Just run bystials and the engine become suddenly worse
@@donovan7132having counters doesn't make something fair.
@@donovan7132That is objectively incorrect. Despite what people might have you thinking, it is literally the toxic, powerful, and widespread engine in the game’s history. It does more than adventure did for somehow even less, even in a post-Lacrima world this is still the case.
@@alicepbg2042agreed
@@alicepbg2042 My brother... such wise words
#BanMaxxC
As someone that recently came back to the game, I can tell you it has an everything problem, the power creep is insane.
Every card has like 6 different effects, normal monsters basically don't exist (except BE or DM), every card seems to lead to another card in the deck and don't even get me started on link monsters.
All this leads to such a bad experience where you sit around for 5 minutes waiting for someone to play 52 cards to kill you in a single turn, so hand traps basically become a necessary evil, so you at least have some engagement instead of twiddling your thumbs for 5 minutes.
I remember back in 2011 when decks played 20 traps and everyone was salty because traps were everywhere. We truly have gone full circle
I hated those formats where everyone was running D-prisons, bottomless,torrential, compuls and mirror force. Always felt like the most sacky era of the game imo.
i mean, most decks were 10-20 cards being a core set of staples.
hand traps are just modern staples.
That’s the thing… 20 traps actually allowed you to play the game. 20 handtraps don’t allow you to play anything.
20 traps in 2011 or 20 other kind of staples in older formats are still something that allows some back and forth, the explosiveness and resilience of snake eyes and yubel combos is unbearable
@@Kukuklock321I feel like people don't seem to realize getting hit by a torrential or bottomless back then was just as bad if not worse than getting hit by ash in modern day
Just because you feel like you're playing the game doesn't mean you are, if you getting mirror forced you accomplished nothing except losing your board and your opponent is still gaining advantage
> Is there a handtrap problem? absolutely.
> Is the deck you're talking about here "the problem" or merely a symptom of current format? The latter.
These two statements are not in contradiction.
I just hate being hand trapped 4 times then passing into a 1 card full combo
Play a deck that is resilent against handtraps like the rest of the meta then.
This is called power creep my friend@@haydenz0
Then every deck ends up being an almost exact copy of eachother.@@haydenz0
The problem is the fact that we embraced the handtrap future a decade ago. Their existence allows Konami to ignore solitaire boards and even literal FTKs under the excuse of “it dies to ash”. Instead of fixing the game and managing the power level carefully, they're free to print any bullshit they want including 1-card combo that ends on more interruptions than you have cards in hand.
And now we're suffering the full symptom: the cycle of “turn 1 too strong > more handtraps > decks need to play through interruptions > turn 1 too strong > even more handtraps”
This is the essence of power creep. The next group of decks don't just have more powerful end boards than their predecessors, they're able to play through the prevailing counters of the meta.
Three things I expect relatively soon:
1. A handtrap that specifically prevents your opponent/both players from looking through the Main Deck for a turn. This would "ash" any effects that set/activate directly from Deck as well as what Ash already does.
2. Cards that allow your other effects to go unimpeded. Basically like Called/Crossout except instead of generic, they are archetype-specific. Konami has tested the waters with these types of effects like with the new Arcana Force Hierophant, but soon the meta decks will have those effects too.
3. Effects that negate without using the chain. Kinda like how some cards will allow you to banish from GY to prevent destruction (Toon Bookmark), but for effect negation or negation negation. Ryzeal Cross is an example of this.
Except solitary boards and ftks haven't been the meta at all for 4 years
Yes, the game does have a hand trap problem. That problem though is the necessity of them. Decks are way too powerful and without them, you'd literally lose on the spot going second in most decks. Board breakers are getting less and less effective even after banning things like Baronne, Appo and Savage to the point where a deck has to be stopped in its tracks or you just aren't breaking them. Decks have gotten to the point where you can hand trap them twice and they can still play like nothing happened to them. This isn't healthy. The meta itself may be more diverse, but deck building is becoming a lot more constrained.
Agree with the rest but saying FS is a fair Engine is kind of a joke. If you don't see a problem with a generic engine that you can get into with any 2 monsters that always provides value, has minimal main deck investment and recycles itself indefinitely I don't know what to tell you. Generic engines that don't lock you into anything and that are also the most powerful in the game are the biggest pain point of the game for years.
When your splashable engine can dish out the best D/D/D boss monster from a one card combo without even wasting your normal summon, and it's way easier to summon than within its own archetype, you know there is a design mistake somewhere.
I can't believe Fiendsmith got actually printed into the game. Even the Verte DPE engine had downsides to it, with two garnets which effectively turned into two more after summoning DPE (the extra Fusion Destiny copies).
Fiendsmith has none of that, I've never seen a more degenerate engine in the history of yugioh to be honest.
If the idea is to shut down your opponent to play yugioh might as well do the same with floodgates, how can we say "oh this is such a diverse meta" when all of the decks run 50% of the same 15-22 hand traps to prevent the 7-9 starters from searching their 3-4 extenders.
Floodgates only work going first, and they don't cause grind game
@@guillermoandresramirezvera2899I'd consider Mulcharmy, Droll, Shifter to be floodgates. They simply last a turn or two and take effect on resolution.
That's the issue, shifter doesn't work really well in a lot of decks and some meta decks can play through shifter.
And if you run shifter, you can't run droll. So you have to choose one or the other
Even if you do run droll, alot of decks set s/t cards from deck to activate on field.
And lastly, running back row is a gamble cos Tenpai shits on it
Yes, handtraps with continuous effect are literally floodgates. If real floodgates are banned and at 1, Shifter, Droll and the stupid jellyfish need to be the same.
@@arthuryupendragon9725 The jellyfish is the reason why snake-eye and yubel are not tier 0
Unpopular opinion. I like handtraps. Yeah it sucks to be handtrapped. But its even worse to sit across your opponent and watch them build a ridiculous board and not be able to do anything. Now more than half your deck being handtraps is to much but Id say 12-15 in 40 is a good ratio. I always want to open something that I can interact with my opponent when I lose the dice role. So whats the real issue? Konami making small powerful engines. Simple as that. Archtypes need to require more cards to function at full power. OR make the small engines significantly weaker.
BTW Josh. There simply is no satisfying yugioh players and this community. Last format we were complaining about tier0 and that the banlist didnt do enough. But now that we have a diverse format and it would seem the banlist did in fact do its job POST ROTA, we now complain that there are to many handtraps
The problem is definitely the build-a-board card design philosophy that has plagued this game for 5+ years now. And then band-aid fixing it by creating even more problematic cards like hand traps. I don't know how faster the game can get
Nah any more than 9 handtraps is just scummy in any deck regardless of reason. Should be limited to absolutely maximum of 10 hand traps, board wipes etc. Oh and only be allowed to banish face down 3 cards maximum a game. That playstyle and mechanic is just wack.
One problem at a time. Solve one another surfaces. We got 3 big problems in yugioh one got fixed. Two to go. Weaker end boards that need more engine (basically older yugioh) when that gets solved we can remove handtraps. Konami needs to recognize these fixes to these problems and bank on the idea that a slower more fairer yugioh will result in more money instead of the powercreep model. That is the reboot this game needs. At a given point they can probably powercreep again to get people excited again that way. Or not perhaps they find themselves satisfied at a different money earning model.
Making small engines weaker or harder to set it then negating it won't fix it. I agree we have a degenerate op engines, but handtraps are an issue as well.
Handtraps should be limited or banned. Archetypes should require more cards to set its board. Archetypes should disqualify of special summoning monsters other their than their archetype/type.
If Knoami won't make this happen, then at least they should have different ranking systems based on your archetype or the cards you're using. It should be formed like this
META ranking (all degenerate crap is allowed with its ban list)
Rogue ranking (band hand traps or limit them, ban extra deck staple and powerful archetypes are banned)
Mediocre ranking
OG ranking. (oldest format for boomers)
This is the only way to make most players satisfied. They won't complain about limiting power creep or facing a power creep.
They did something similar with yugioh duel master events and it was healthy and more fun.
Long turns and ridiculous boards are undeniably the biggest issues in yugioh. And I don't mind a lot of handtraps if they are played in a deck like Marincess.
I wish all decks were like Marincess and Branded.
Weak engine, more spots for non-engine. Strong engine, very limited spots for non-engine
The goal of modern Yugioh has always been to make sure your opponent doesn't get to play. Previously this has been done through wombo combo decks like Adamancipator and Spyral, and handtraps were a tool for the player going second to prevent an unbreakable board.
The Mulcharmys heavily punish these decks, and they lost the main three extra deck negates.
However, now we have decks filled with 1-card-combos that make very strong boards very efficiently. This allows players to load up on handtraps, which are interruptions, mainly negates, that are unaffected by the Mulcharmys, Nibiru, and many other handtraps. And multiple 1-card-combos allow you to play through more handtraps.
23 handtrap decks are a symptom of the rise of 1-card-combos, but 1-card-combos are a symptom of handtraps, which were a symptom of the wombo combo decks. But the wombo combos are dead, and the handtraps remain.
Full disclosure: I am *very* anti-handtrap. They come from and go to zones that are very difficult to interact with. They stop people from playing Yugioh. There's barely any risk. Any card in hand can be one. Most can still be played going first. They warp the format. They're simply bad game design.
They were always going to lead to 1-card-combo decks because they punish 2+ card combos.
Yup, they are a fantastic example for the cobra effect
They were made to combat the worst uninteractive decks, but they had such strong effects agains any other deck too that those uninteractive decks were the only ones which managed to survive making the problems even worse
And now we have reached a point where the actual cards you play dont matter anymore, just the ratio of cards in your starting hand
Also, if you reach a point where a mulligan would completely break your game, you know that something is severely wrong with it
I don;t want to wait 10minutes before I can play. Modern ygo need hand traps, or it won;t be a game.
No one want to play a game that onbe should watch another playing 10 minutes combos before their turn
Well yea, it might be bad. But it's band aid fix to modern YGO. Game will be unplayable without handtraps nowdays.
I mean it’s been a consistent problem for over 5 years lol
It’s just at a fever pitch and don’t think the game can turn back.
Imo handtraps overuse is something I started to see since 2023 and now standardized in 2024. I wouldn’t say last 5 years. Most decks ran 9 at most. 3 Ash, 3 Imperm and 3 of wtv. Now decks are trying to fit in 15-20.
@ I promise you during 2019-2021 it starting get really bad.
Ash, imperm, Nib,Gamma, Phantazamay effect veiler could all be in the main
then Ghost belle or crow in side for graveyard , Winter cherries for mirrors , etc.
Plus cards like shifter were printed like 2 years before the card would be frequently used/ a meta option if your deck could play it.
Plus you can argue cards like evenly match (which has been around since 2018 and basically never stopped being good) is quite literally a hand trap lol
It’s been a problem long before 2023 !
Edit: The fact you can find multiple videos from those dates of content creators having the same convo is nuts! Let alone the power creep , bad generic extra deck monsters , etc .
Time wizard is Goated for a reason (no pun intended 🙂)
@@samanderson1188 I mean, Ryzeal played like 25 non engine? So nope, its not getting better any timne soon
@@619ver1at least ryzeal designed to be more midrange deck, 1 card combo they have isn't as powerful as snake eyes or yubel.
They just play good into handtrap war and good vs maxx C and charmies.
You could still play non-meta and not feel steamrolled 5 years ago every game.
Now, every format's got a deck playing during your turn and can reconstitute its full board from nothing.
The worst part of it is how we still have cards like the Bystials floating in the background waiting to just ruin the game again when the age of fire is over.
To be playable a deck needs to break a game mechanic these days in the meta, and its massacred the legacy of the game in the process.
Like, Monarchs are never going to be a thing again after Floo. Fusion is never going to be anything like its been for 10 years after Albaz / despia / bystials.
They took the Zodiac concept with XYZ, and that EVERY meta deck, with a litany of ways to do fusion, tribute summon, synchro, exceed, or so on, without actually running decks do it rules as written. Tuners? Chaos Angel. Same level stacking? Nah man, we can cheat exceeds in every possible way. Fusions? We can use our extra deck, our banishment zone, our deck, or whatever, to fuel the effect. Am I missing anything? Oh, links are just broken by design.
And the funny thing is, you still get balanced or slightly ridiculous cards being released in these metas that never see play because the Meta is just broken mechanics on steroids.
The hand trap problem is the result of cascading effects from design decisions. I'm gonna start with Ash Blossom, even though it isn't the first hand trap, just because it's where I see this problem really starting. Ash is a fairly healthy card, and it solved a pretty big issue with a lot of decks at the time feeling like they're playing solitaire and having fairly rigid and linear game plans. Ash allowed the game to feel a lot more interesting on the first turn, and changed the way decks were built going forward in fundamental ways. If your deck can't play through an Ash, it can't perform.
Ok, so in order for our new archetypes to be exciting and powerful, they need to be able to play through an Ash Blossom. So you just play a deck that isn't trying to, say, normal summon a starter to go search for an extender and risk your normal summon getting ashed leaving you with nothing. But now Imperm is out, and it's better than Effect Veiler ever was, so you've gotta worry about that. Now good decks can play through Ash, but the best decks can play through Ash _and_ Imperm. This effect starts to stack on top of itself a couple times throughout the years until you get decks like Tear and Snake-Eye that can sometimes play through 4+ hand traps and still do alright.
And now that you wanna run so many hand traps, decks have to work around that. And how is a game with a 5 card starting hand gonna work around wanting to draw 3 hand traps on the first turn? With one card starters. The link-1 that searches the field spell that searches the etc.. My girl and Mo Ye drowning together. The hand trap problem is a classic Yu-Gi-Oh type avoidable issue that they designed into a corner. I don't really know what Konami can do to change this, but I've thought that before and they've somehow managed to stay afloat this long so who knows. To me, nothing short of a fundamental change in design philosophy will fix this problem, and I don't think Konami is interested in doing that kind of introspection.
Aside from a fundamental change in design philosophy, they ALSO need a fundamental change in banning philosophy - namely, the idea that "we can't ban X because it's too new and we have to wait until we sell reprints." As long as that remains their guiding ethos, this can NEVER change.
i disagree, it all started because of fucking substitoad, substitoad was why effect veiler was printed
13:35 It would seem to me that Konami doesn't really consider 'balance' when designing decks currently. The aspects that make up a good deck, like consistency, required cards to start a combo, recovery, resiliency to interruption, resource expenditure, and end board ceiling should all be balanced so that no deck is optimal in most categories.
For example, Virtual World on its own could put up a pretty okay board with varied interaction and a floodgate along with recoverability in Shenshen, and you couldn't stop the main deck monsters through targeting which gave the combo resilience. However, you did require 2 of the right combo pieces in hand and your hand would look pretty sparse by the end, limiting follow-up if your board was broken.
Contrast with SE which had a ton of 1 card starters, extenders, plenty of room for non engine, strong recovery, varied interruptions and I'm pretty sure you could still end up with more cards in hand by the time you finish comboing. Similar with Yubel, SEFK, and even Centurion to an extent.
Then you have the sort of other end where some decks can FTK or get pretty close to it if uninterrupted so the only metric by which your deck is judged is how many hand traps you can open with, which isn't very fun.
I'm not a competitive player, only really got in with MD, but it feels like Konami has been releasing all around strong decks to shape the meta, anti-meta decks for counterplay, and decks that either don't stand a chance on release or have a significant uphill battle. Financially it makes sense to increase FOMO/demand but it pushes the limits of game balance to these fracture points.
One card combos does to much nowadays...
Remember Meltdown? One card lead to mechaba and an Aleister in hand
Now one Card lead to 3 negations, 2 destructions, 2 banish and still 5 cards in hand
And then they activate Maxx C to put more salt on the wound
1 card combos helped push out the all-out combo decks of the firewall dragon era. Yes, they cause the handtrap problem, but that is the lesser of two evils.
The way to solve the handtrap problem, in turn, is to create decks that are both very resilient to handtraps and weak to boardbreaker (similar to Ryzeal, and the opposite of Fiend Link)
Explain ?
Cut to the future: Does Modern Yu-Gi-Oh! have a board breaker problem?
I don't think being weak to board breakers is a good solution. Getting sacked by cards like raigeki feels just as bad as getting overwhelmed by handtraps imo. We just experience that less because we rarely get good going 2nd decks like Tenpai.
I think decks should be resilient to handtraps and board brakers, but the pout up weak boards. If more decks ended on boards like pure Melodious, I think the game would be a lot better.
I don't think games should be decided by how much non engine you drew, whether it's handtraps or board breakers.
@@flamewizard9022there're ways to buffer against something like Raigeki, Forbidden Lance, multilayered interaction (mix of monster, spell, and trap interaction).
Or stop printing any card that is just a wall of text and go back to one or two simple effects on cards. 2-3 lines max. Go back and limit cards that are just text dumps. An engine should be a suite of 25-30+ cards leaving with with only a few slots for spells and traps as it should be. Bring back cost to activate on just about all cards that let you add cards, summon cards and above all banish cards either face up and most definitely face down. They need to to stop printing so many cards with negates and make it so every boss monster in extra deck is only summonable by its named archetype
I think it's a dull way to play. This format has some variety, but the word I've landed on is "Volatile". It only takes one card resolving to establish so much advantage you can easily lose to it. I know there's been more and more of that over the last few years, and I'm kind of used to it, but it's just exasperating when the game is just "do I have enough handtraps to stop them entirely".
I don't think Fiendsmith is the problem with the current meta, but I'm also not a fan of how generally applicable it is. I know there has to be some generic stuff in the game, but I'm never that happy when you can chuck a small engine into quite literally any deck with zero drawbacks, and it just 1-cards into Wave King or Desirae. I'd always be happier if there were multiple small engines that had their own restrictions that meant there were lots of options that were suited for certain kinds of decks, rather than just one option that suits every deck.
Fiendsmith is also still expensive. I mean, the entire game is expensive, but you get me lol
I think Handtraps can be really good for the game. The problem is when you have too much room in your deck to run 20 of them. I definitely agree with what other comments are saying when handtrap overuse is more of a "symptom" rather than their fault.
I don't even know why we're having this discussion right now, everyone identified that this was a symptom of 1 card combos last format. Why are we acting like we forgot?
@@DarkAuraLord It's important to keep having the discussion until the problem improves
@@quijassajiuq900 That much I agree with, I'm just wondering why everyone is acting like they have dementia and are saying "no, handtraps are the problem!" when we already figured out that the handtraps are a symptom of tiny engines with 1 card starters last damn format.
It's like I've how I've watched Branded players literally spend 9 months flip-flopping on whether or not Sanctifire is the problem, or Gimmick Puppet is when we already identified the problem and are just bored and revisiting old questions we know the answer to.
@@DarkAuraLord Because people DO have dementia, don't agree or just can't accept it. There's actual people in this very comment section in earlier "discussion" comments that blatantly say that hand traps ARE the problem.
@@DarkAuraLord last format, more like fucking 2017
"Diverse Meta"
Just for reference, currently in Pokemon TCG there are over 20 viable decks in Standard. A more LIMITED format. Same for MtG. upwards of 20 decks in standard is the norm. Meanwhile in Yugioh, you have around 3 meta defining decks and the rest is antimeta. If there ever was a case for standard rotation, it's this. I'm sick and tired of cards being designed to power creep what came before and artificially rotate the format.
Handtraps being numerous is absolutely a problem, but it’s more of a symptom of the underlying issue of cards doing too much in modern Yugioh.
It’s an issue that has snowballed for years. Decks progressive get more powerful over time, with cards being able to do more. Konami tries to bandaid this issue by printing new interactions that slow down the pace. New cards get printed to push through the out. Next thing you know, you get 1 card starters that become extenders and and build a board all by themselves, leaving ample room to load in the most efficient ways to prevent your opponent from going off before you do, or insulate your combo.
Hitting the 8K damage threshold has never been easier, and decks have become so efficient, that the most common win cons have become
•Flood the board with enough damage to OTK
•Build an imposing board strong enough to shrug off any way your opponent can break it
•Cripple your opponent with enough disruption that they cannot surmount any sort of comeback or build any defense for your combos.
As the game gets faster & more efficient, we’re going to continue to have this problem, until Konami finally decides to adapt a new design philosophy & overhaul the fundamentals of this game.
Yeah I love playing Modern Yugioh....
I normal summon...
Imperm
Ok I play my Spell
ASH!
OK i discard from my hand...
Called by!
Sigh....ok...I
Fuwalos and Shifter!
Ok I end my turn
Watches as they play solitare for 20 minutes and end me....
Agreed. The real problem is one card combos. I've played against enough Rikka & Snake Eyes to realize that hand traps are the only way you can possibly have fun with the game. I've basically turned all of my favorite decks into hand trap slop.
But why is running a lot of handtraps a bad thing for the game? Isn't it a good thing that decks are made to interact with the opponent? And those interactions don't completely bone the opponent into passing turn.
@@haydenz0 Because it slowly kills any form of deck building creativity and choice, and overall just contributes more to power creep. Any deck that does not have enough free space to cram the suite of 20+ handtraps into a deck is now behind the newer decks. And there are still some old rogue decks running around, who are getting pushed out due to not having the space for this suite of hand traps that are becoming mandatory at this point. Hell, I'm surprised we haven't hit the point of a deck trap. Opponent activates a thing? Activate an interruption from your deck. Which at that point the game would be beyond repair.
hand traps are a major part of the problem tho. they make it so cards need to do more things so decks dont just end their turn on 1 hand trap. its a spiral that has reached a abysmal point.
The problem is a little bit the amount of hand traps and the flexibility, but mostly I think the issue is the 1 card combos with fiend smith and other engines. If your deck doesn’t have a card that lets you go full combo then it can’t compete because of the sheer amount of interruptions they’re likely going to draw. I said before they came out the Bystials were too strong and they got limited. If they’re going to allow this many hand traps then we need 3 called by back. 3 called by plus 3 cross out would deal with this deck like no one’s business.
Yugioh doesnt have a handtrap problem, it has a powercreep problem where Konami keeps making every new deck better at playing through disruptions, including ht's. This powercreep has impacted ht's such as dshifter, nib & mulcharmy's where they usually end turns if resolved.
It doesnt help that Konami knows they can sell sets by making these new ht's mandatory 3 ofs + secret rares.
Solution 1: No more 1 card combo decks. That should be reserved for control decks like striker or lab where that 1 card doesnt make them go +10
Solution 2: ht's need more restrictions. "After this card resolves, you cannot activate card effects from the hand for the rest of the turn"
Solution 3: ht's need to be hit on the banlist, and we need to shift away to archetypal-handtraps like havnis or r-ace impulse. *they dont need to print quick effect: negate, disruption like a BoM is fine*
2004 cookie cutter looking lists. 24 of the exact same staples and a core of whatever flavor you like
14:51 Josh hitting his opponent's cutscene with 22 Quick Time Events
1 card combos and hand traps.
Reduce hand traps to Limited and that solves that problem.
I can't comment on what the root problem is nor what a solution would be. But as a Master Duel only gamer, I can already say that the problem with these hand trap wars stemming from modern YGO deckbuilding principles are unfun for one simple reason: NEITHER player gets to play their deck.
There's broadly 3 scenarios on MD ladder right now.
1) Duelist A tries to play, duelist B throws like 3~4 hand traps at them, shutting them down completely. Because OTKs in modern YGO are incredibly easy, Duelist A realizes there's no point to stick around for an inevitable loss the moment they click to Pass, and scoops.
2) Duelist A tries to play and pushes through Duelist B's hand traps - maybe B didn't open enough/any, maybe A opened double Called By, whatever. Because modern YGO decks either end on full setup or end on nothing, no in-betweens, Duelist B realizes they just minused their hand for no real purpose since A ended up doing full combo anyway, and now A has more disruptions on the field than B has cards in hand, rendering the game unwinnable. Duelist B scoops.
3) One or both duelists hard brick on hand traps and spend the next 5~6 turns passing back and forth, negating any topdeck that attempts to play the game. Eventually, one starter resolves for either player, and the other player immediately scoops because this implies an unavoidable OTK.
Notice that even the winning player doesn't get to actually combo in any of these situations. The only cards actually seeing the light of day and resolving are non-engine.
Modern Yugioh needs a rotation system. That’s the only way you save it
I think that cards nowadays have too many effects. Like they have an effect on hand then on summon then on graveyard that just reduces the amount of engine that a deck needs to function
Handtraps are the new trap cards. It's just like old formats like the belived GOAT not to mention even older formats. I don't see why this is suddenly a problem.
can we just like... erase everything after AGOV? I swear, since then it's just been downhill... the only archetype I found genuine interest in past AGOV was White Forest and even that gets more played like all the other solitaire decks in the format (only from what I've seen searching for lists and stuff tho)
Yeah, card design after agov plummeted, only white forest and voiceless really attempt to play a back and forth game of yugioh since, which means they're just not competitively relevant in a format like this. Glad to see a more interactive deck did well, but how many handtraps you need and how ineffective breakers are have become major problems post-agov
@@Lobster44oh fuck true I completely forgot about Voiceless tbh… kinda sad, it just like vanished completely 😭
Snake eyes came out in AGOV man. Snake eyes is the primary example of all the issues we are talking about, insane small engine which leaves room for way too many handtraps.
@@baraakatsheh1547 Snake-Eye wasn't viable until Poplar was out, which released the set AFTER AGOV...
We should erase everything from Lord of Tachyon galaxy onwards
We need more engine "handtrap" like Havnis
Agreed
Been saying this for last 2 weeks. Meta has become 75% about not allowing the other person play & 25% about gambling that you get what you need to crush em after you do not let them play.
It's been like this since before thunder dragon colossus release btw.
The meta is literally more interactive as decks have ways to play through handtraps and players have more handtraps to use against opponents.
@@haydenz0 not at all. Did you missed the part where josh said "the deck was made to not let Yubel and SE combo? This deck is borderline a stun deck.
handtraps is just playable stun to an extent if i open 4 handtraps plus one card combo you lose lol
Interacting with the opponent isn’t about “not letting the opponent play” if that’s your definition then your definition is laughably warped. You can’t compare something like idk Unchained to something like TDK, Calamity, or Sanctifire who literally locks the opponent out of the game. Yes, endboards have gotten a bit too strong for decks to realistically break through post POTE but the answer is pretty easy to address just stop printing decks under post POTE card design and limit decks that have released after which is already mostly done just 1 decent size banlist would do
It is the meta.
Edit
It's not the player. It's the game.
The solution at this point is an overhaul in the banlist, blanket hitting hand traps to 1 or 2 and hitting currently relevant one card starters and searchers down to one or two. Hand traps were meant to stop starters that were going too far with their combo lines, hitting down both would open up some space while being vigilant for stun strategies that went unnoticed and stamp them out. They already stamped out most floodgates, for the toxic lines of play they enabled, attacking hand traps and starters would be the next step.
It won't fix anything as Konami keep making more and more powerful cards anyway.
U mean overhaul in game design that banlist maybe, or both.
@invertbrid it would indeed also require a change in card design. That step would have to follow a mass banning of cards, cards that would have to be acknowledged as too efficient and look to design cards with those failings in mind.
A solution is either a Master rule change around Extra-deck summon mechanics and / or special summon mechanics and / or how monsters interact with effects.
Like the Flip summon mechanic being as dead as they are is atrocious; a normal monster is usually forced on a deck as part of a bad engine; tributes are dead.
Hitting Link summon mechanics into the ground is probably where you need to change the game, but even then, the extra deck is just too versatile and powerful in modern Yugioh. It does EVERYTHING better than actual spells / traps
@@nm2358 Links already have a lot of restrictions as is, you still have to be mindful of zone placement for multiple links, link climbing still forces the card into a specific zone which can be utilized in some limited capacity.
The issue isn't so much the Links or extra deck, it's the consistency of decks nowadays paired with the speed to build a powerful board and lingering hand traps and effects that warp the game to many degrees. Consistency should come at a cost for something like what cards you can use for the rest of the turn. Machina Unclaspare and Snake Eye Poplar have a similar effect to self summon when added to the hand, except Unclaspare restricts your summons to just Machine types for the turn.
hand traps are fine, people that hate on it either dont know shit about the game or are people that just wanna throw combos at each other till someone dies. Most of the chat in the video has no idea wtf they are talking about
The solution to this problem is Deck Traps. Traps that activate directly from the deck so you don’t need to draw them. We need to go full speed ahead on Power Creep
💀
I mean, setting trap face up was quite common nowadays. Virtual world and bystial are some example that can do it.
He’s onto something🗣️🗣️
ass traps
I don't understand why people complain about hand traps when without them the game is a mess of building an unstoppable board state turn one then they pass and you lose. Handtraps are the ONLY form of interaction you have against omni-negate.
Which in my opinion, omni-negates are why the entire game is screwed up, its too easy to build a win state not a board state.
At this point that's what those board states should be called.
You are not taking into account that your opponent also has access to handtraps, meaning he can build an unbreakable board while interrupt everything you will do with handtraps.
If they had given handtraps costs, the powercrept wouldn't have evolved into this mess, or at least it would have a few years later.
No it has a general power creep problem. Without handtraps, so many decks can just win turn 1 if not interrupted. They are the answer to the real issue, not the issue itself.
Yugioh has a handtrap and 1 card full combo problem. Any deck pre-2019 can’t even function anymore.
A big problem is also that being the player that hand traps, you can still be on the losing end, if you spend 3 cards to try to stop your opponent and they can still put up some sort of board, you are stuck with just 2 cards to attempt to come back
Not a problem if most meta decks have 1 card starters that’ll end with you with a full board+5 cards in your hand even with an interruption or two.
2024 is the first year in 25 years that I have decided to stop playing. I just stopped having fun when Snake-Eyes came out.
Don’t get me wrong, Tearlaments was not fun to play against at all, but a couple cards could shut that down. It ALMOST felt like a 50/50 game against Tearlaments. However, once SE hit the scene, if you didn’t have three pieces of interaction at a given time, the game was over.
I gave Magic The Gathering a try and have been having SO much more fun.
I'll tell you what, I can't even enjoy playing my non-meta decks in Master Duel ranked without getting Ash Blossomed or Impermed every first turn I play. It's almost like the game spawns the Ash in the opponents hand every game. For casual decks handtraps is HUGE problem, but for competitive meta 1 card combo decks, it's really not too bad for those decks, I guess.
I feel like 2011 Yugioh is where it was actually still fun and interactive for ALL decks and not just meta. Right now, at least on the competitive level, modern Yugioh is just insane where lots of games end in turn 1 or 2 which is not good.
I think the issue needs to be addressed not just on the YCS level, but the game in general.
@11:30 I think saying one talents beats “the entire deck” is a bit disingenuous here. One talents beats the entire end board, not the entire deck. If you use two cards to make fenrir plus caesar, then you still have to contend with 3-4 potential hand traps. Considering you probably lose a card to the caesar before you can talents, a lot of decks will still lose to that.
Fiendsmith is certainly not healthy. As long as any two monsters in the game represent a full fiendsmith combo, that is far too strong for most decks to deal with. I think requiem needs to be banned, or at the very least moon needs to get banned and they can never print a generic light fiend again.
Knightmare mermaid 2 is not okay, stop coping. Even if it’s less unhealthy than snake eyes or yubel, that does not equate to a good format with a good dynamic of interactions in an average yugioh game.
Pure fiendsmith would be fine if it couldn’t play 30 hand traps, and I don’t think that deck ever exists as long as requiem does.
Imo they should be treated like stun cards. Either limited to 1, or banned.
How many interruptions should be enough to stop a turn? Think carefully about this.
3
No handraps, no breaks. Just gas baby.. LIGHTSWORNS
Long story short, ygo is now the literal "Just Draw The Out Bro" and the only play to not turbo lose is play half of deck handtraps.
Fantastic not a toxic format what so ever :), Also you should call this deck "The Out"
"healthiest engine" that has 0 requirements thanks to link 2 goddess and turns any 2 cards into two negates. Sure, maybe if they ban goddess it would be healthy since it would actually have deck building requirements lol
🎯🎯🎯
Can't agree more tbh
Just ban requiem man
Let goddess became janky tech to summon its link5 counterpart (like its supposed to be)
@@abdurachmanromzy4778 Banning requiem would be an hot take, something Konami is known for not taking. Ban the shitty common link 2 so this engine can't go in 99% of the decks and it's already somewhat reasonable. Still 0 reqs for 2 negates in Yubel but oh well
If you look at other similar engines. Either ban goddess or the link 1 of fiendsmith.
Same as verte anaconda
Or knighmare mermaid etc
"The only reason we play over 50% handtraps is because snake-eyes dose so much" look they designed ash blossom ages ago, its been clear pretty much since it was printed that EVERY deck runs 3 ash blossom. As a result of ash blossom warping the game new power creep cards had to be THAT much stronger. Its clear some hand traps mere existance have crippled yugioh, they do too much; ash blossom should only do 1 of the 3 things it dose do but because it is what it is here we are in a meta game where you need half your deck to be hand traps otherwise your opponent will combo of a single card into a 5x omni negate board with a target removal and a board wipe interrupt that reccurs half the cards you lost. The 25th aniversary was an opportunity to run a second yugioh product that went back to old yugioh, pulled some punches on iconic card power levels and then moved forward on a new design philosophy, theyd have had a much more balanced game if theu accounted for synchros and xyz from the start by making fusion monsters either so much stronger or way more generic in materials. Simple design rulea like; each hand trap only has 1 handy effect to play around. Quick effects are a premium on monsters so either that monster stats suck, it's difficult to summon, or both.
Any spell card that draws needs a hard once per turn attached to it but also more spells need OPT text anyway: if a trap and a spell functionally have the same trxt, the spell should probably say OPT.
As someone that's been playing MD on and off since it's release, the most fun I've always had was when the gameplan of whatever the Meta was got interrupted enough that we can now have a back and forth.
I honestly wish something like Edison Format would be introduced as a more fair YGO back and forth variant in MD, but I guess Konami rather wants us to play some "Oops all handtraps" 🤷
Konami is evil. We all know that. They could give us HAT formayt in MD2014 but they choose a bad format instead
Facts, MD should've have ladder for time wizard event that rotates every few weeks or so.
They can rotates the format also, 2 weeks of Edison, 2 weeks of tengu, HAT, GOAT, etc.
Hand traps are fine, as long as the amount is low. Always hated when modern ygo decks go to double digits in ht they can cram in without sacrificing consistency
In an ideal world those decks’ sacrifice would be on the power ceiling of the end board so their follow up is stronger, but frequently the best 1 card combos don’t have those. Ask yourself this, were you ever as angry in 2021-22 playing against prank kids/evil twins/marincess vs playing against snake eye/yubel/tenpai in 2024
I love these in-depth discussions! It's always fun and informative to hear your opinion about competitive topics
Hand traps are fine and the people that complain about them are the people who haven’t been playing for very long. Effect Veiler came out in 2010. The thing has been seeing pretty steady play for longer than Skyrim or Dark Souls have been around. Affect Veiler came out a few months before COD BO1 too. Way back in the day we were using DD Crow to mess with dark counts to play around DAD and set up your own DAD. Hand traps have been around for forever and have been an integral part of the game well before we even hit the fledgling stages of modern Yugioh during Duelist Alliance. Even cards like Ash and Imperm are pretty old at this point. We’ve just substituted older staples for hand traps instead. The only way I see hand trap use slowing down is if we get a Havnis for every new relevant archetype. Tear didn’t really play hand traps because they could reliably play on your turn with Havnis.
I will say I enjoy the game far far less when the pile of cards you bring does not matter and the winner is determined by the handtrap war.
Strong going first→Hand trap
Strong hand trap→Stronger starter
Strong starter→Board breaker cuz hand trap isn't enough
Even stronger starter+built in extender+grind game→More hand trap cuz board breaker isn't enough so not letting people play at all (not even have something left in GY for follow-up) is the only option.
Joshtira Fiendschmidt
There's an alternate universe out there where Ash Blossom and Maxx C were banned in the OCG years ago instead of moving back from 2 to 3. Maybe in that universe they actually stopped designing this escalations of combos with the premise that it's fine cuz it loses to whatever hand trap. Now we would need so many things banned to fix this. Can't wait for Konami's next solution be combo starters and pieces that are also unaffected by card effects.
I'd rather see them go back to the Nekroz school of design and print engine monsters that just have two functions including a discard function and have themes require a lot of those multipurpose engine cards. each applicable interaction then forces a decision to use a themed card to advance your gamestate or to use it as disruption.
Full power Tear with Ishizuku package was peak toxicity smh
True but Tear vs. Tear you never played more yugioh in a single game in your life.
ishizu mirror is cool. the best player wins
@@wardy4903 You mean autoplayed.
There is actually only 1 ultimate problem in all of Yu-Gi-Oh: Unlimited Special Summons. What is now required in order for YGO to be fixed is a "Summon Cap" per turn (ie. only allowed to summon a total of 15 times per turn) and this could easily be accomplished via a new Master Rule.
Players can simply do too much on their turn which requires the usage of so many handtraps and toxic gameplay in order to counter it. Imagine not a "Midrange Format" that everyone enjoys, but rather a Midrange game altogether where gassy combo decks can no longer summon a billion times and build these insane and unbreakable boards requiring us to play billions of handtraps to stop them. Instead with a Summon Cap players can expect less actions being performed per turn and dont have to worry as much about having to play 20+ handtraps to stop an unbreakable board from being made because it can no longer be made in the first place!
I have a similar take on this, it could also be something like if you special summon more than X times (I'd go as low as 5) Maxx C activates (as a game rule) against you
The engine-requirement for a deck to actually work should be way higher. One card combos are not a problem, but they shouldn’t end on more than 1-2 interruption. If you want more, you should have to invest more cards .
I just wish Called by the Grave was at a 2, handtraps that act like floodgates were banned and meta decks actually got hit on the banlist.
Is heart of the cast done? Or just postponed hopefully?
They were just busy the past few weeks. It’s coming back
The game is just poorly designed at this point. Power creep got to the point where decks just need 1 card to make crazy boards so the only real interaction that could stop them are equally unbalanced like handtraps and floodgates.
Yugioh became a constant loop of making broken cards, broken answers for those, then broken cards than can play around those answers, repeat
when I confirm my opponents deck and it's consistently 60% - 70%+ hand traps, yes I'd say it's too fucking much 😂😂
Hand traps ain't a problem when most cards nowadays do a lot when not stopped
Things like GOAT, Tengu Plants, Geargia and the current thing makes the most annoying periods in yugioh. Whenever staples get out of control and start dominating deck building it is a symptom the game needs a design renovation.
I see hand traps like counterspells in magic some decks like to play some to keep tempo and come decks and really load up on them and be a real control deck… knowing how to play around and into them is a skill that some people don’t have and rather then learning to acquire the skill it’s easier to complain about them… and like in every game ever there is variance and you can get blown out by them or ur opponent and brick on them
Hot take: the problem with handtraps is that there's too few of them. No one would care if it was like back 10 years ago and some decks were running 20+ traps, but handtraps (for most decks) have taken the niche of generic traps. The weird thing about handtraps compared to regular traps is that there's only about a dozen that do anything, so decks end up all looking the same.
Unlike older traps, where you had loads of options based on synergies and matchups, modern handtraps lists look very similar with some slight changes based on the format. So for an older deck, it didn't look like 25 cards of actual deck and 15 mandatory traps, it all looked like one deck.
Tru! Give us more decks like RACE and tear with their own built in handtraps too. It really looked like they were headed that direction but then tear spooked em away.
I'll just say this, Tenpai Dragon would be a much worse deck if we had a spell/trap Imperm. Yubel and Snake-Eyes would also get much weaker with the existence of it as well. The best part is that it doesn't hurt older decks nearly as much which is unusual for handtraps.
Although honestly, I kinda wish we had more cards that would help you set up turn 0 without necessarily being disruption. Bystial Magnamhut is the perfect example while also being a handtrap but it doesn't have to be hard disruption like this. Something like if your opponent summons 4 times, special summon this and add a spell/trap to your hand during the End Phase. Stuff like that.
Archetype handtraps being more of the norm would make the game feel like you're actually playing your own deck going second. I honestly wouldn't mind if every archetype had their own version of Havnis that lets them turn 0 and get some stuff on the board that had the power to stay there until turn 2.
If you hard lock all ED monsters to their archetypes, people will still complain that not archetypes are created equal & that their fav tier 3 deck is still trash against more modern archetypes. We know that only modern archetypes or busted legacy support will keep a archetype relevant long past its expiration date
The problem that very few of these meta decks lock you, or if they do its a generic lock, thats easy to overcome.
For example i play hero's and its key cards lock you to Heros either for the rest of the turn or for the entire turn.
So without these archetype locks you can just throw any and all small engines together and everything still be fine
9:58 the difference is the deck that won works together they aren’t two separate engines but an engine that makes a previously mid deck consistent
This has been a problem in Yu Gi oh for years. It’s not about back and forth or anything it’s about making absolutely sure your opponent cannot play because if they resolve one card it’s likely the access their entire deck and go full combo.
Plays more than 50% handtraps calls it innovation LMFAO
Honestly, when I hear him and other "pros" use the words "we invented-" I reel so hard at how cringe that sounds. Literally anybody can make this deck. People have. For a long time now. They just want to take the credit because they are "pros" and act like they are the only people playing YGO and build decks.
These people aren't special. They just built a deck others have used for awhile now and the only reason why it won as well as it has was because of Yubel and Snake Eyes match-ups and whatever "team" format non-sense YGO has been doing. If it was any other deck at play, that deck would not win. (Josh even said it himself, it was built only to combat SE and Yubel.)
This is just natural evolution of a shit game getting worse. People adapted. They didn't innovate anything.
@ for me it’s simpler than that…. What exactly is innovative about adding more hand traps?????
And not even unique ones… the same ones everyone else is using lol that’s literally not innovation
Even in Master Duel gold, so many are playing these handtrap heavy decks where they always will want to go first, and setup a board where they are +2 with 3-4 hand traps to counter in hand, with additional handtrap effects on the field, plus graveyards hand traps if they run Purrely.
It makes sense to use it against someone who is trying to pop to a near unbreakable board, because toxic players that pop to an unbreakable board deserve to be hand trapped. What often happens, is that the most toxic players will create a handtrap spammy deck and make it near impossible for you to play, while they easily pop their own board. Most engines needed enough monster consistency back even during 2022. Like people would play some hand traps, but it was better because you usually could play around the few that they had. The frustrating boards could be dealt with far easier, and if not, it was an annoying match and you could move on.
Now, it's almost like I'm playing against a control and beatdown deck. The Runick engine was probably the point where the game shifted toward this style of play, and it is another level of power creep that is only gonna get worse if Konami tries balancing the game with an even stronger engine.
Konami needs to make very specific anti-meta cards. Stuff that handles toxic strategies from happening. I would love a card that is a Swords of Revealing Light involving negates, but it would have to be balanced enough so it couldn't be used in a toxic manner, like limiting it based on not being able to summon it if you do four-five special summons that turn. Cards like that would help make sure difficult combos can be countered accordingly, since that makes for a healthy meta.
Idk how this game got more power crept than it already was. 2019 is so much more fair by comparison, because even my rogue decks could win with ease.
Game needs a reset. All hand traps, board breakers and generic boss monsters need to be reconsidered.
They need to make Yugioh 2
Yep, reset it back to around 2006 powerlvl at least but with better design
the solution to powerful backrows were floodgates and massive MST type cards, it wouldn't suprise me that nowadays they start making some delinquent duo type effects to deal with handtraps but with heavy limitations
Yes YGO has a handtrap problem rn. Short term Solution? Called By back to 3 please. And I don’t want the but the combo players will go crazy argument because the combo decks played in the meta have too many one card starters so even if you handtrap them twice they will still establish their board. In fact for them playing called by would be redundant because they can just add consistency pieces to draw more one card starters. Called by will at least help the rogue decks play against these decks with 18+ handtraps. Also with Mulcharmies around and the paywall around it we need Called by back imo. Let’s at least try it back at 3 for a format.
You think the crazy combo decks like snake-eyes and yubel won't play called by yeah right they would absolutely use it because the best hand traps to beat them are the mulcharmmies and shifter.
Yubel is the most tedious. They should hard ban the most toxic out of it.
Josh is always on the right side of the problem if you ask him. Lol. Plausible deniability at its best.
i think we need more "punishment cards" like the new Magistus quick spell.
"When your opponent activates a card or effect: Special Summon 1 “Magistus” or “Witchcrafter” monster from your hand or Deck.".
When you op activates a HT, you have a follow or something
I think it’s a good thing. Hand traps are like having purple cards set on turn 0. They provide interaction and when everyone’s playing with half baked boards it feels like slower, older Yugioh.
Except with multiple in-archtype searchable Jinzos lol
Then the guy spamming hand traps plays his 1 card starter and rofl stomps your empty board that you never even got to set up. Hand traps ARE the problem.
@@dustinvance243 So you think decks should just go uninterrupted and set up 5 negates and there’s nothing the second player can do about it?
@@dustinvance243 so if you go second your cooked right ?
@@connermorgan9223 there's ways to deal with that type of thing other than hand traps. You can use board breakers like dark ruler no more and Forbidden droplets. All hand traps like ash, imperm, and mulcharmys do is keep the opponent from playing at all. Granted cards like them have their caveats to, but having a board get broken by generic board breakers is better than hand trap spammers not letting you play at all. They also make players dumb. 99% of the time as soon as you play something it's going to get hand trapped. Even if it doesn't do anything on summon or only works on the opponent's turn, they will waste their hand traps on it just because they can. Even if it gets in the way of them getting more cards from mulcharmys or Maxx C they will spam hand traps because their only goal is keeping you from playing entirely.
This is a problem that I think started with Centur-ion. The symptoms are always there, but Centur-ion is the first one that brought it to the spotlight: a fully functional core engine of less than 20 cards, recycles itself, brings out-of-archetype negates as a STAPLE route of its own combo, and is fully accessible out of a single card, which is itself searchable by at least six others.
Cool? Yes. But it makes for poor deck design and meta environment if every deck that came after it follows this formula.
we need something like Nefariouser Archfiend but that adds Mulcharmy directly to the hand AND special summon little knight, than we need a polymerization that activate in the deck... Mulcharmy.. Little knight fuse together to form... !! Pikachu the forbidden one !!
Man yugioh community just complain about everything. They hate Runick because it's annoying, Tenpai because it's uninterractive, Yubel because it's usually create solitaire gameplay, but then even if the deck doesn't do any unfair things people still cry about it
Name a large competitive community that doesn't complain.
You have basketball players/fans complaining about 3 pointers being overpowered
You have football players/fans complaining about the tuck rule.
Boxers/fans complaining about clenching/defense play.
It is completely natural and common in any competitive genre
Add a handtrap deck that you can draw from when the game begins. 15 hand traps allowed, deck is always shuffled, you can select 1-5 to draw when the game starts, but each one you draw reduced the number of cards from your main deck you can draw, such that when finished drawing to start the game, your hand will always be 5 cards total.
People would just play rock-paper-scissors if handtraps were banned. Oh wait, rock-paper-scissors is free and only takes 3 seconds.