Fun fact: Back in the early days of Yugioh, it was Upper Deck, not Konami, who was in charge of the English TCG. (Just want to point that out because you say "Konami" a lot in this video.)
This is a great point and an important clarification, thank you! Sometimes I forget that Yugioh used to be owned by Upper Deck and Konami at the same time
Yeah, was about to comment this myself. Upper Deck lost the rights (contract wasn’t renewed) back in late GX era, I believe. The wording on the cards is probably due to their inexperience in TCGs as they were mostly a sports trading card company up until that point. And to be fair to them, most players in early YGO were kids who never played many tabletop games before so they erred on the side of caution in a lot of cases. Also, at the time, they said they worded effects in a way that sounded natural when said aloud (I swear to god, that’s what they said and I’m aware of how weird that sounds considering what some of these effects say). PSCT was definitely one of the best things to happen to YGO as I was constantly confused as to what targeted and what missed timing and what was a cost and what wasn’t and I had been playing for almost a decade at that point. PS: You should check out the wording on early Magic cards. That shit’s wild. Experience in TCGs matters a lot in writing effects on cards. My god some of those cards were guilty of explaining too much while still being confusing as all hell.
@@WestonEvans How did that happen? If it was flipped by a monster attack you could destroy their monster. And if it was through an effect couldn't you have destroyed MEB itself?
@@claytongriffin6412 Actually Weston said his friend flipped Weston's Man Eater on his friend's turn, so kyuubinaruto is right to question it. Now there are monsters that can't be killed by flip effects, but even then, the Man Eater can destroy itself.
Pot of Greed: "Draw 2 cards from the top of your main deck. (These cards are not revealed to your opponent) (This does not count towards your draw during the draw phase) (This card may only be activated during your main phase 1 or main phase 2) (This is considerded adding cards from your deck to your hand) (Your deck is not shuffled afterwards) (This activation starts a chain) (After resolv........etc
@@jeremygott7709 Not really. The rules to yu-gi-oh were just different when it was first introduced to the manga and not yet adapted to be a proper card game. Yu-gi-oh was originally meant to be a one off thing for a manga but ended up blowing up.
This is the exact reason we have rulings. To prevent cheesy bullshit like that. And also the exact reason that only the most recent version of Necrovalley is tournament legal. It's effect is so confusing, and has changed so drastically, as well as so many times, over the years that allowing anything else would just be a rulings nightmare.
You still literally adding to your hand so I can ash it regardless that text Shaddoll Fusion also don't say it is sending cards from deck to GY but can be ashed
When I started playing, Dark Patrician Turbo Lockdown was the name of the game, and you'd run at least 6 mystic space typhoons to negate all of their trap holes, dark holes, change of hearts, and axe of despairs. Decks ran on a monster reborn, graceful charity, and ultimate offering engine, or else swapped that out for a Jar engine. Incredibly talented players recognized the raw destructive might of Penguin Soldier, the meta hadn't developed to recognizing that removing two monsters was better than destroying one, though, since the removed monsters would just come back. Axe stacks were the end all beatstick. There was always that guy trying to make Griggle and Ameoba burn a thing. Nobody figured it out, but I think if someone had figured out Cannon Soldier cheese, he probably wouldn't have made it to today.
When I played spell cards were called spells. But I got my hand on an older card that said it was a magic card. I kept telling my friends it couldn't be destroyed by MST since it was a spell card.
Old “Mask of Restrict” : “no matter what the situation, neither player can offer any monster as tribute” No matter the situation, yup I activated mask of restrict 10 years ago, you can’t offer monsters as tribute. Doesn’t matter it was 10 years ago and not in this duel, it said “no matter what the situation “
Imagine if all cards were written that way in modern Yu-Gi-Oh. Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring When your enemy casts magic or effects that pertain to the kind listed below, either via spells, traps, or monsters, you may harness the power of this monster to dispell their effect, by ending its life from your hand. • Card Scrying • Summoning • Necromancy
Medbread 『🍞』 Trap Polymerization Effect: No When yes do not have is when is no! Fuse the two monsters and marry to have is yes card extra deck. ATK 2700 DEF 3300
Penguin Knight is by far my favorite old effect. "When this card is send directly from your deck to the graveyard by an effect of a card controlled by your opponent, unite the graveyard cards and your own deck, shuffle them and form a new deck." "Well, I was playing Exodia, but now that you killed my Penguim Knight you leave me no choice but to steal the cards in your graveyard to help me build a new Blue-Eyes deck instead!"
"Modern card text is too confusing, old-school cards were so much simpler to understand!" "Mate, have you ever read the original printing of Relinquished?"
"This monster can take on the ATK and DEF of 1 opponent's monster on the field (a face-down monster results in an ATK and DEF of 0). Treat the selected monster as an Equip Magic Card and use it to equip "Relinquished". You may use this effect only once per turn and can equip "Relinquished" with only 1 monster at a time. When your opponent's monster attacks this monster with an ATK higher than "Relinquished", the equipped monster is destroyed instead of "Relinquished". Any Life Point damage you receive from the attacking monster when "Relinquished" is equipped is also inflicted on your opponent." Seems pretty simple to me
Actually it reads "neither player can tribute monsters under any circumstances." And I'm honestly glad that "under any circumstances" bit is there. It's saved my ass from being kaijued so many times. They'd be like "well restrict only stops tribute summons and blah blah blah..." And I'm like "it literally says "under any circumstances" on the card." And then we'd call a judge and the judge would basically call them an idiot and say "it's literally says it on the card."
This card does not take any Battle Damage, and cannot be destroyed by battle with an EARTH, WATER, FIRE, WIND, or DARK monster. (Battle Damage is still inflicted to players.) LUL
@@waltercardcollector Its a weird old hand-me-down from when YGO was bumming concepts off MTG, the idea that destroying a monster by battle is "battle damage", because MTG creatures actually have health
New card text: "Target 1 of your banished monsters; Special Summon it." Old card text: "During your Main Phase 1 or 2, you can activate this card by placing it face-up in an empty Magic & Trap Card Zone. When this card is activated, select one of your removed from play monsters. If you have an empty Monster Card Zone, you can place that removed from play monster in that Monster Card Zone in either face-up attack position or face-up defense position (attack position = upright, defense position = sideways). This is treated as a Special Summon."
It just so happens I saw a monster card today that said: "This card may attack directly" "May"....? Don't you mean "Can"? "May" implies that it's random or something.... "I declare an attack! Either on your monster, or directly, the monster will choose..."
My best friend was so confused about the part, where it said "regardless of its position" that he didn't play Man Eater Bug as a Flip Effect monster, but as a Regular monster, which can destroy a monster no matter in which position he summons the bug. Also he had that bold idea to Normal Summon monsters, when their effects said "Can only be Special Summoned", because back then on many of them the part with "can not be Normal Summoned/Set" was missing. So, yeah, thanks to him I was allowed to Normal Summon Gate Guardian.
Player 1: Activates rota, searches Celtic Guardian Player 2:Activates mind crush "Celtic Guardian" Player 1: "Don't have it." Normal summons Celtic Guardian
dzeef "isn't it great how the game assumes you read the rule book and know how to special summon or tribute or shuffle the deck after searching, so we don't need this text on every card" also dzeef "not everyone is going to have read the rule book and know what a fusion summon is so its great polymerization explains how and where to fusion a monster from"
@@TheGreatMishas because it's one of the fucking weirdest effects in the game. You can only activate effects if extra deck monsters are on the field, and only up to the number of different types of extra deck monsters that are on the field. And that includes negated effects. And somehow even includes negated activation. And the tally of both the monsters on field and the activated effects is constantly updating. So if your like "cool. There's a xyz and a synchro on board, so I can activate two effects this turn..." And then you bounce both of those with tiaramisu or some shit. Guess what? The xyz and synchro are gone. And now only tiaramisu is on board. So that second effect you thought you could activate is gone too. Until you get another extra deck type on board, you're fucked.
Last Will was jank as fuck, and its implementation in every game and sim has often mandated the game having a tutorial card for it in the help section pretty much saying its jank, and that its summon effect can be resolved whenever the fuck you wanted after playing the card, within the same turn
I love how RotA just declares that, by magic, your deck is shuffled as part of its resolution. It doesn't ask you to shuffle it, it just states that 'Your deck is then shuffled'.
I remember these. Monster reborn was when I first noticed the difference in typing: I got the first sets of starter decks (yugi/kaiba) and i later on got another monster reborn that the text was 1 line and a half and not 5 and a half (on my language). I remember every single one of these cards old effects lol
MrCheeze said that the difference between old and new texts is that, with the new ones, they expect you to have the rulebook at hand thanks to the internet. I think you two missunderstood what he said, am I right?
tbh ex competitive player here, we played with yujudge always opened and ready to search for the rulings on single cards (it was a site where every card was listed with its rulings and you had to be lucky and see if they matched the corner case you were facing.
I feel there's a point most of us are missing here; the earlier cards were being printed alongside the anime, which also didn't have the rules cemented until Battle City. It could be argued that Upper Deck, who was in charge of printing English cards, was trying to convey the rules _through_ the cards, as most people playing at the time would have been looking to the anime for rulings. The internet wasn't as prevalent nor was the game and the knowledge we have of it today. Yes, older cards have weird wording, but this was before the knowledge of Costs, Targeting and so forth was as common as it is today. Add on to the fact that most people playing at the time were young children, and things get even more confusing. Old card text was weird, and today's cards have a crap ton of text. Let's not forget about the real issues of TGO to date. What does Pot of Greed do?
"PSCT was one of the best decisions Konami has ever made about the game of Yugioh" You could just drop the "about the game of yugioh" and it wouldn't change a thing lol (Konami, I love a bunch of your franchises, but my god you are the kings of stupid choices)
Whats even weirder is how relinquisheds' text & Toon Dark Magician Girl's text actually went beyond the textbox in their older printings because it was so LONG! Day 48 of waiting for vendread support
Having played Yugioh from release, I completely understand why they wrote Gilasaurus text like that! Back then it was "common sense" that effects can only be active on the field, just because Kuriboh was the only monster with an effect on the hand and graveyard effects only triggered when being sent from the field. So from this standpoint, that it's unthinkable for a monster to activate an effect on the hand, this is a work-around. You can normal summon Gilasaurus and once it's on the field, it can have recuperation of the normal summon as its effect.
Before when Yugioh was current one kid had Polymerization he assumed you discard 2 fusion materials from the hand than search your deck for 2 another fusion materials. I tried to explain to him how you fuse 2 monsters together to summon a new monster and his answer was "It does not say that, I think I'm right". Just to say he was a nice kid I wanted to say only how the first print of Polymerization was confusing
Lmao Gilasaurus is pure gem! One of the most intriguing french text is that of Reload, which translates to "Add your *every* hand to your Deck and shuffle it. Then draw the same number of cards you added to your Deck."
That original Polymerization text. When I first started playing there was this younger kid that lived around the corner from me in my neighborhood. He'd been playing longer than me, but I guess he'd (and his friends) never seen a rulebook. Only the anime and "school rules." He knew Polymerization and it's text but never knew he could fuse with cards in his hand until I told him one day. He thought he could only use ones on the field. I gave him a rulebook so he could prove it at his school. 😂 He'd been playing that way *FOR ABOUT A YEAR* ouch
It seems like the over bloatedness of Yugioh card text comes from a lack of keywords. A lot of effects are shared among hundreds of cards (ex: you can only activate the effect of "long name" once per turn), and they could easily just replace that whole sentence with 1 keyword like UNIQUE. It's so bizarre because they already introduced a keyword a long time ago (FLIP), that did a great job of shortening a phrase into one word, and then they just stopped and didn't make any more keywords.
I agree with you that they should add more keywords, but Flip isn't the only one that's been added. Banish and piercing were two huge ones that reduced a lot of text :)
There are problems with keywords. Keywords don't make understanding cards easier at all, they only make reading them quicker if you're already an experienced player who knows what each keyword means. In the case of yugioh, keywords are also harder to come up with because so many effects are mostly similar but slightly different. Although many cards have hard once per turn clauses, there's about a dozen slight variations on once per turn clauses, so you would need to memorize just as many keywords. For example, 1 card could have any 1 or combination of the following clauses: soft once per turn, hard once per turn, soft once per chain, hard once per chain, once per duel, 1 effect per turn, 1 activation per turn, 1 effect among multiple effects per turn, 1 of each effect per turn, 1 effect for each attribute, a number of effects corresponding to it's condition/cost, etc. Keywords could make text boxes cleaner but learning the game and understanding rulings/card text harder.
Oh my, this really brings back traumatic memories, thanks for bringing that up, Doug. Reading old card texts feels like reading MtG's cards (coming from someone comepletely naive to MtG), and I feel like Konami (or Upper Deck?) in a way wanted to emulate that RPG feeling in the card text by adding unnecessary sentences and words, on top of fearing that the players don't understand how the game works. I mean, "...to form a new monster"? Not to mention the "no matter what" in Mask of Restrict? I also remember back then scratching my head on why you don't have to discard anything for Destiny Draw if you activate it using Diamond Dude's effect. But the cream of the crop of bad text writing back in the day has to be when it comes to targeting, just no consistency whatsoever. Even until now I still don't get how they determine whether a card targets or not, apart from having the word "targets" in its text. Like, you literally have to select a card to remove using Dingirsu's effect, why doesn't it have the word target then?
Targeting happens at activation (or as a cost), predetermining the selected cards that will be affected by your activated card (or effect). Non-targeting happens at resolution of your activated card (or effect). It describes an action that will happen (in dingirsu's case: "send 1 card your opp controls to the gy") and completely lacks the "lock-on specific cards" from its text.
Old cards were like "When the circumference of the Card is move by 180° while the Card itself is rotated so that the card itself is face up while in a different position to it's original position you are allowed to remove 1 card from your opponents Main Monster Zone."
If you translate some of the original normal magic cards, like Pot of Greed, they actually say “destroy this card after it is played” to teach players that normal magic and trap cards go to the graveyard after they resolve.
"You can return When this card is changed from Attack Position to Defense Position, you can place any number of cards from your hand at the bottom of your Deck in any order you desire."
I have a Cannon Soldier and it's probably the earliest version of it since it's pretty horribly translated. On it says "Whenever one monster shown present on your field is sacrificed, the basic points of the opponent will be damaged by 500". I'm not kidding, it actually says that.
I just stumbled upon this comment but I wanted to let you know that your Cannon Soldier is likely a fake card :( there is no version of it with that effect
@@Dzeeff Wait, really? I'm pretty sure it's effect is you tribute one monster and deal 500 life point damage. You sure it's not just a shit translation?
@@ZPokemonfanA The effect itself isn't too off, but those words that you quoted were never found on an actual version of Cannon Soldier. It sounds more like a fake copy with a bad translation
7:20 I mean, MtG's tutor effects all specify that you shuffle your deck; the thing this lets you do is make it so different fetch cards can do slightly different things. Take Demonic Tutor, for example; It's the most basic Search effect you can think of, and says "Search your deck for a card, put that card in your hand, then shuffle." Then, compare that with a different search card, Enlightened Tutor; Enlightened Tutor says "Search for an artifact or enchantment, shuffle, then put the card you searched for on top". You wouldn't really be able to do this if "Shuffle your deck after you search" was part of the main rules of the game.
Most YGO cards when I played specified that decks had to be shuffled. So when I got a newer card which didn't specify it I assumed I didn't have to. So I played the card just to stack my deck.
But I consider PCST can be better and also errataing wording of old cards It is still somehow confusing for some cards, say, Inspector Boarder and unnecessary world repeated like 'this card'; they should only say this card once; it would be better
But it is a game mechanic so you don't need to write unnecessary card text; it makes card text simpler Pokemon and Magic don't need to actually write it
Trivia: The original energy search card (Fossil 59) didn't have the reveal clause in the card text - your opponent wouldn't see the energy card you take from the deck.
Amount of card text is the big thing for me with card clarity. I generally feel bad whenever an opponent uses a card with a lot of text that I don't recognize, and I have to take a long time reading and rereading just to figure out what it does. Often this leads to me rushing, skimming, and not actually understanding the card.
I still have a problem with the middle polymerization at 8:50 . The text "Send fusion material monsters that are listed on a fusion monster card from your hand or your side of the field to the graveyard" can also be interpreted as sending materials monsters listed on a fusion monster, and the fusion monster in question is in your hand. Of course that is not possible because fusion monsters can never be in your hand, however, that's what the text is saying if you guys are following.
Imo japanese styling should come to the tcg as well like having numbers for effects, or non-effect things like a hard once per turn clause at the top of the card so you know it is not part of an effect etc and don't have to search for it.
I have to wonder what it might be like if YGO had adopted the 'reminder text' style that MtG uses. Rather than spelling out rules clarifications as extra lines of rules text, they instead add 'reminders' in parentheses where it seems they might be needed, with the reminder-text in italics, and have the general rules that "Text in italics is not rules text of a card." Thus they could print the same card with or without the reminder text, and it would not in any way affect the actual rules text of the card; if you are already comfortable with the rules, you can usually safely ignore reminder text, but the presence of such might say to intermediate or beginner players "We think this bit of rules is not necessarily obvious, so it's worth commenting on." Back in MtG's early days, people would try to Sacrifice a single creature to pay for multiple abilities at once, or try to sacrifice a creature that was already in the process of dying to another effect (not before that effect took place). Even into modern times, I've seen people try the 'can I sac this to both of these at once?' question. While the rules in the book are very clear about things like that, occasional reminders do help. Similarly, MtG would be more aggressive in their reminder text usage for Core Sets, since those were intended to be introductory product with more simple, game-defining cards, while the Expansion Sets were more about whatever was going on in the larger metaplot and exploring new design space. So you'd get reminder text on how a simple ability like Haste or First Strike worked in the Core sets, but not in the Expansions where it is assumed that people are already familiar with most of the main rules.
The problem with this is that parentheses already have a meaning within Problem-Solving Card Text. What drives me crazy is that parentheses are NOT used for reminders in Problem-Solving Card Text, but to add extra restrictions or conditions to an effect.
I'm glad Yugioh took a page out of MTG's book with naming effects like piercing battle damage, and annoyed it took them so long to do it. The old wording took up so much space on the card, and the anime characters took forever to explain it.
8:04 yeah i remember playing as a kid and thinking you could just fuse any two cards and the attack points of the new monster would be the combined attack points of the monsters fused.
Polymerization blew my mind as a kid. My brother said he was going to teach me yugioh so we went to the store and he bought me a few packs and i opened a poly but had never seen a fusion monster. Also had a guy try to argue with me that blue eyes ultimate atk was 9000 because it was 3 blue eyes.
really enjoy your channel and enjoy the information you give about cards and if they were used in a competitive sense. Always look forward to your stuff.
back in the day when this game was new, a friend of mine actually claimed I couldn't destroy his face-down monster with Maneater Bug because the card said "regardless of position". I have no idea how he managed to come to this conclusion, but it really taught me that more information which isn't needed can lead to very strange rule misunderstandings.
The old negate attack text is one of my favourite: when your opponent attacks with a monster (what else can you attack with?), negate the attack and MAKE your opponents battle phase end.
So funny seeing this. At our school we played this back 2012-14. I got my first deck from a friend and I recognize 90% of the cards in the video from my old deck, because he gave me his "bad, old" cards. For me there were only those versions.
In the GBA game Nightmare Troubadour, Different Dimension Capsule didn't say that the user had to shuffle their deck, so you could use its actual effect and look at your entire deck as a bonus.
from Dust Tornado’s first printing: “This card can only be activated if it is a Quick-Play Magic Card” and I still have no idea what they meant by this
I'm fairly certain that it's trying to refer to the card set by dust tornado's effect during the turn you activate dust tornado, letting you know that you can't set a trap with it and then immediately activate the new trap. But even that interpretation would allow you to break the normal rule for quick-play spells and activate it the turn it is set, which you can't normally do.
@@drumstep9135 i seriously have to wonder if the card was _meant_ to let you activate the card the turn it was set in some way, because it's seriously such a useless bonus effect. the sole niche it has is, like, if you're holding one of those cards with an effect that activates when it's destroyed while face-down and your opponent activates feather duster. other than that, it ... lets you activate a different trap on your next turn, in case you only got it in your hand after you ended your last one or you just didn't feel like setting it last turn for whatever reason. yay?
Gravedigger's ghoul is also pretty weirdly worded in its original printing too. It tells you to remove from play the cards for the remainder of the duel. That makes it sound as if you were not allowed to bring those specific cards back later with something like Return from the Different Dimension.
I've been watching another RUclipsr playing through GX Duel Academy on Twitch and they've been poking fun at Mask of Restrict every time they see it because of how it restricts Tributes "no matter what the situation," taking that exact text to absurd extremes of situations when you can restrict Tributing, even if the card is not on the field. yugioh.fandom.com/wiki/Card_Errata:Mask_of_Restrict
The first pack I ever bought had a polymerization. I was adding the attack and defence of 2 of my monsters to make a bigger "fusion" monster. I went on doing this until I acquired my first fusion, thousand dragon, which I then put into my main deck and used polymerization like a ritual spell that requires exact tributes.
Oof, early Yu-Gi-Oh!, the time, where we got Booster Pack series with 145 cards in it and where in every series most of the cards were worthless and the slightly useful cards were already rare or higher. I remember how happy I was, when Dark Beginning and Dark Revelation were released. Also there was a small game store, where they sold Japanese Structure Decks based on the characters, and what can I say, the cards there were way better than the crap they've sold us in our Starter/Structure Decks. Also, I've pulled a bunch of the first Skull Lairs from the Labyrinth of Nightmare Booster pack, where they have forgotten one word, so I not only could banish Monster cards, but cards from all types from my graveyard. That came in quite handy.
I still have, and sometimes use, the og poly. First time I realized how weird it was dumbfounded. And gilasaurus is probably my favorite go 1st monster just for its meer splashability
I like how the original prints of the Attribute summoners from Spell Ruler (UFO Turtle, Mystic Tomato, etc.) all said "You don't need to Tribute a monster for Level 5 or higher monsters."
6:00 speaking as someone who was in middle school when yugioh came out, I 100% would've summoned cards in face down defense mode if that wasn't there because special summoning was discussed in the anime.
Man eater bug is the bane of my existence Whenever i play the older games every fucker I duel just so happens to have 3 copies Worst part is they always kill my ace monster with it
All jokes aside, as someone trying to learn how to put together a board game of their own, it's really handy looking back at old school Yu-Gi-Oh! card text to learn how to word things to communicate the effects you want from a card.
You should do a follow up to this video showing everyone Penguin Knight because I swear it is incomprehensible "When this card is sent directly from your Deck to the Graveyard by an effect of a card controlled by your opponent, unite your Graveyard cards and your own Deck, shuffle them and form a new Deck."
Hilarious video, I remember getting in a lot of arguments pre-PSCT with my friends. Granted, most of those were just because we were being idiots...but some were due to confusing card text
Can't remember the number of times I had to call a judge because people wouldn't understand how Magical Dimension slipped throught so many rules. "No, I don't have to tribute if you negated it, because the tribute is part of the effect and not a cost" "You can't chain Stardust because the destruction effect may not happen" "No, it doesn't target" "You can't chain Bottomless now because the card is still resolving since I want to destroy your monster" "No, you still can't chain Stardust because we are in the middle of the resolution of my card" "No, you can't chain Bottomless now because the last thing to happen was not the summon but the destruction effect" "Yes, this card allows me to destroy Stardust while avoiding Bottomless, why do you think I'm playing it ?"
@@mercylessplayer the card specifically lists the effects seperately with their own numbers. This means they can easily refer to specific effects like, you cannot use this cards (1) effect more than once per turn, all at the top of the card, before they reach the effect descriptions. Summoning condition, restrictions. (1) effect 1 (2) effect 2
@@mercylessplayer Cards are written out in the OCG like "You can only use the (1) effect of this card's name once per turn. (1) Effect 1.... (2) Effect 2.... (3) Effect 3...."
@@mercylessplayer Every effect is numbered so you can just easily see how many different effects a card has. It's much easier to read compared to the wall of text we have in TCG.
Well what if the paragraph of text was so big that the text is minuscule? Relinquished actually had to remove the summoning condition because there was too much text to fit it. Besides, speaking as someone who never actually read the rulebook: I completely understand PSCT and you only need to explain a couple of things (like ‘piercing” and ‘banish’), unless they are a complete noob to the game
@@aionicthunder The current version of Relinquished does have the summoning condition though. The one without it is an example of unclear effects. This is actually a good example of how PSCT can actually *reduce* text.
Sometimes this sort of thing still happens. Like on Bujintei Susanowo it says “Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; take 1 “Bujin” monster from your Deck, and either add it to your hand or send it to the Graveyard.” I guess I’m not targeting the monster, only taking it.
That's because you can't target any card from your Deck. I don't know why, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you can only target cards that are public knowledge or something like that.
@@deproissant you can only target cards in _locations_ that are public knowledge, even if the card itself isn't - face-down cards are totally fine to target, as long as they are on the field or banished. think of it this way: targeting a card that isn't public knowledge doesn't reveal it, so targeting cards in the hand or deck would be _really_ weird because hand order isn't a thing ( which, keep in mind, targeting only happens when costs are paid - so your opponent has all the time in the world to respond with effects that do stuff with their hand ) and ... well, if you tried to target something in the deck, you'd be targeting a single card in the middle of a huge pile of other cards. meanwhile, it is incredibly obvious when you target a set backrow, because it's alone in its own zone and it's very simple to keep track of it, and banished cards _don't_ actually go into a single pile ( it's more of a state of the card than a location ), so you don't actually put anything out of order if you _do_ put them into a pile, but have to pull one out for the sake of keeping track of it due to it being targeted - that order doesn't actually exist, after all another thing is that that effect wouldn't target, anyway - it picks out a card as part of its _effect,_ not its cost, and targeting only happens a cost. in fact, targeting as an effect would be literally pointless, as the entire point of targeting is choosing a card _while both players still have the opportunity to respond._ it's why some cards just tell you to move a monster out of the graveyard without asking you to target it, because they don't let your opponent respond to which monster you're choosing - the chain's already been built and is in the middle of resolving, after all
When i was new to yugioh i had a LOB polymerization as well as the middle step poly and the most recent poly. I had absolutely no clue what it generally did after reading all 3 and i had to ask someone 'ok so these are all the same card but its effects are different wtf is going on' and since they were the only polys i had i was forced to use all 3 in one deck ( some kinda HERO mashup). Those were confusing times
Way back in the day, when Yu-Gi-Oh was first released, Exiled Force and Metamorphosis kind of did want the clarification text, because otherwise you could sit at a table and rules lawyer about it all day of if the card's effect triggered when it was tributed for a tribute summon rather than as a standalone ability. It could even be argued that, without the text clarifying the exclusion, Metamorphosis had a requirement that a monster have been tributed at some point in the turn as an activation condition, like Backup Soldier requiring five monsters in the graveyard. People have come a long way in simply understanding how things work, but how things were worded originally was loopy enough to cause that confusion back then. The logic for the search cards needing to say 'shuffle your dang deck' is likely that, if you flipped your deck over and the card you wanted was directly on the bottom, a lot of players wouldn't see a need to shuffle their decks unless they had to, especially if they had knowledge of what was on top of their deck somehow, such as cards that went there instead of to the graveyard (ie Horn of the Unicorn, Cockroach Knight.) And don't get me started on the original Polymerization. If I didn't watch the anime as a kid I'd never figure out what the hell that did, and I was the first one at my local card shop to pull one. Not that there were a great number of worthwhile fusions back in the LOB days, but hey, I had Gaia the Dragon Champion and used it often. Once Thousand-Eyes Restrict came out it was just my win condition.
I think the “regardless of postion” is there to explain that the flip effect of a face-down defense position monster doesn’t activate...(because you flip it face-up to put it in the graveyard)
To make Man-Eater Bug's reminder text to sound helpful, I always thought "regardless of position" refers to the Bug itself, so it doesn't care whether it got woken up during battle or you flip summon it.
I got a giggle out of this because as i dont purchase cards anymore but still have one of my decks from college from like 2010/11? which was a Six Sam, have the exact copy of that Exile Force so kind of a nice reflect moment.
They used to mention shuffling after searching on card text because that's the way MtG does to this day. Every single search effect just HAS to mention "then shuffle your library" because of course they have to.
I remember on a forum explaining to a person question about Dark Necrofear. They war wondering if a move an opponent was legal when they use Dark Necrofear to attack then took the monster that destroyed Dark Necrofear. I pointed out that the card stated in combat and did not specify on whose combat phase.
I really wish other card games took after Yugioh in not specifying that you need to shuffle after searching. Like, it's standard and obvious lol The only exception is for MtG placing cards on top of the library, since it's important in that game's particular way of writing card text to specify that you shuffle THEN put it on top
My favorite thing is with the search cards saying "your deck is then shuffled"... in terms of English, that means that once you search the card and place it in your hand, then your deck is considered to be shuffled by completing the card's effect. It doesn't actually tell you to shuffle the deck. So theoretically, yeah. You don't even have to shuffle with that old school text.
Fun fact: Back in the early days of Yugioh, it was Upper Deck, not Konami, who was in charge of the English TCG. (Just want to point that out because you say "Konami" a lot in this video.)
This is a great point and an important clarification, thank you! Sometimes I forget that Yugioh used to be owned by Upper Deck and Konami at the same time
@@Dzeeff Hey thanks for the reply! Love your content!
I literally paused the video when he used Konami in past tense and scrolled down to comments to see this. Literally. "Konami" "KONAMI"
@@purposespecific670 omg how dare he make a mistake. if you can even call it that...
Yeah, was about to comment this myself. Upper Deck lost the rights (contract wasn’t renewed) back in late GX era, I believe. The wording on the cards is probably due to their inexperience in TCGs as they were mostly a sports trading card company up until that point. And to be fair to them, most players in early YGO were kids who never played many tabletop games before so they erred on the side of caution in a lot of cases. Also, at the time, they said they worded effects in a way that sounded natural when said aloud (I swear to god, that’s what they said and I’m aware of how weird that sounds considering what some of these effects say). PSCT was definitely one of the best things to happen to YGO as I was constantly confused as to what targeted and what missed timing and what was a cost and what wasn’t and I had been playing for almost a decade at that point.
PS: You should check out the wording on early Magic cards. That shit’s wild. Experience in TCGs matters a lot in writing effects on cards. My god some of those cards were guilty of explaining too much while still being confusing as all hell.
"Man-eater bug is probably a card you wouldn't expect in today's video" *looks at the thumbnail* I may have suspected it.
Lmao
The first time my opponent flipped my man eater on his turn and forced me to destroy my own Gemini Elf was pure despair
@@WestonEvans How did that happen? If it was flipped by a monster attack you could destroy their monster. And if it was through an effect couldn't you have destroyed MEB itself?
@@kyuubinaruto17 he said his friend flip summoned on his turn.
@@claytongriffin6412 Actually Weston said his friend flipped Weston's Man Eater on his friend's turn, so kyuubinaruto is right to question it. Now there are monsters that can't be killed by flip effects, but even then, the Man Eater can destroy itself.
Pot of Greed: "Draw 2 cards from the top of your main deck. (These cards are not revealed to your opponent) (This does not count towards your draw during the draw phase) (This card may only be activated during your main phase 1 or main phase 2) (This is considerded adding cards from your deck to your hand) (Your deck is not shuffled afterwards) (This activation starts a chain) (After resolv........etc
No wonder nobody seems to know what it does. That's a lot to keep track of! :P
@himode "NoOoOO yOu CaNt AsH mY eXtRaV iM dRaWiNg NoT aDdInG"
MOVE 2 cards, from the top of your main deck ( not your fusion deck or side deck) to your hand.
Wait, this means that pot of greed is a good counter of cards that force reveal like crush card virus pre errata
*move two cards from the top of your deck to your hand*
After this video I kinda understand why in the anime the characters felt the need to explain every effect.
I don't know why I remembered YGOTAS Kaiba explaining negate attack to Pegasus and he replied, "are you explaining negate attack to me?"
@@unfazedo Well, they way this cards are WRITTEN.. I FEEL I HAVE TO!
They also liked to make shit up.
we still don't know what pot of greed does though.
@@jeremygott7709 Not really. The rules to yu-gi-oh were just different when it was first introduced to the manga and not yet adapted to be a proper card game. Yu-gi-oh was originally meant to be a one off thing for a manga but ended up blowing up.
Imagine using ash blossom on someone's old card text of ROTA and they say " you can't ash it. I'm moving it to my hand, not adding it." lol
Lmao that's some Duelist Kingdom level shit
Kazutino lol so true
#rulesaswritten
This is the exact reason we have rulings. To prevent cheesy bullshit like that.
And also the exact reason that only the most recent version of Necrovalley is tournament legal. It's effect is so confusing, and has changed so drastically, as well as so many times, over the years that allowing anything else would just be a rulings nightmare.
You still literally adding to your hand so I can ash it regardless that text
Shaddoll Fusion also don't say it is sending cards from deck to GY but can be ashed
what if you wanted to go to heaven but god said "your deck is then shuffled"
Hey, it was right on the bottom, can we just not and say I did?
Bruh I laughed out loud
Would have been better if it were "move to heaven"
Young YGO player: How long have you played YGO?
Me: When I started playing, spell cards were called magic cards
When I started playing, Dark Patrician Turbo Lockdown was the name of the game, and you'd run at least 6 mystic space typhoons to negate all of their trap holes, dark holes, change of hearts, and axe of despairs. Decks ran on a monster reborn, graceful charity, and ultimate offering engine, or else swapped that out for a Jar engine. Incredibly talented players recognized the raw destructive might of Penguin Soldier, the meta hadn't developed to recognizing that removing two monsters was better than destroying one, though, since the removed monsters would just come back.
Axe stacks were the end all beatstick.
There was always that guy trying to make Griggle and Ameoba burn a thing.
Nobody figured it out, but I think if someone had figured out Cannon Soldier cheese, he probably wouldn't have made it to today.
I played back when we had to use Japanese cards and no English translations haha. Live in America btw
When I played spell cards were called spells. But I got my hand on an older card that said it was a magic card.
I kept telling my friends it couldn't be destroyed by MST since it was a spell card.
@@gulgaffel hahahaha savage
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 yeah, zoodiacs and mr4 is when I started. Uh, at least we have PSCT
Old “Mask of Restrict” : “no matter what the situation, neither player can offer any monster as tribute”
No matter the situation, yup I activated mask of restrict 10 years ago, you can’t offer monsters as tribute. Doesn’t matter it was 10 years ago and not in this duel, it said “no matter what the situation “
well nobody can play kaijus or monarchs against you at least
Someone: But the card text has changed, it doesn't do that anymore.
Me: "NO MATTER THE SITUATION!"
Made me lol
I use Galaxy Cyclone.
Konami's Supreme Court of Judges in shambles at this big brain move
I love how old poly was basically flavour text.
Cydra same
Imagine if all cards were written that way in modern Yu-Gi-Oh.
Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring
When your enemy casts magic or effects that pertain to the kind listed below, either via spells, traps, or monsters, you may harness the power of this monster to dispell their effect, by ending its life from your hand.
• Card Scrying
• Summoning
• Necromancy
Medbread 『🍞』 lmao that would be horrible
"This card uses the forehead to tell your opponent 'no'"
Medbread 『🍞』
Trap
Polymerization
Effect: No
When yes do not have is when is no! Fuse the two monsters and marry to have is yes card extra deck.
ATK 2700 DEF 3300
Penguin Knight is by far my favorite old effect. "When this card is send directly from your deck to the graveyard by an effect of a card controlled by your opponent, unite the graveyard cards and your own deck, shuffle them and form a new deck."
"Well, I was playing Exodia, but now that you killed my Penguim Knight you leave me no choice but to steal the cards in your graveyard to help me build a new Blue-Eyes deck instead!"
This is way funnier than it's should be
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thinks about Penguin Knight's effect
I was about to say "Hey that's not Penguin Soldier's effect" but then I re-read it and was just like "Oh. U rite''
Instructions unclear: added a bunch of cards with the word "graveyard" printed on them to my deck from my collection. They're the "graveyard cards".
Sounds like a spin-off manga!
XD
Man eater bug can even destroy monsters in face down attack position!
I prefer to destroy from their hand or graveyard.
But can it destroy a monster in a face-down, ass up position?
Can i destroy their deck??
@@unfazedo only Ass eater bug can do that.
@@monkaWGiga Underrated comment
"Modern card text is too confusing, old-school cards were so much simpler to understand!"
"Mate, have you ever read the original printing of Relinquished?"
The only reason I knew what Relinquished did was because of the anime.
"This monster can take on the ATK and DEF of 1 opponent's monster on the field (a face-down monster results in an ATK and DEF of 0). Treat the selected monster as an Equip Magic Card and use it to equip "Relinquished". You may use this effect only once per turn and can equip "Relinquished" with only 1 monster at a time. When your opponent's monster attacks this monster with an ATK higher than "Relinquished", the equipped monster is destroyed instead of "Relinquished". Any Life Point damage you receive from the attacking monster when "Relinquished" is equipped is also inflicted on your opponent."
Seems pretty simple to me
@@AMW1able Wew Relinquished but before buffed since it say "can only use'
And toon monsters you can attack them ! 🤣🤔
@@AMW1able What about its summoning condition?
Mask of Restrict: " *_No matter what the situation_* neither player can offer any monster as a Tribute."
Nice copied comment
Actually it reads "neither player can tribute monsters under any circumstances."
And I'm honestly glad that "under any circumstances" bit is there. It's saved my ass from being kaijued so many times.
They'd be like "well restrict only stops tribute summons and blah blah blah..." And I'm like "it literally says "under any circumstances" on the card."
And then we'd call a judge and the judge would basically call them an idiot and say "it's literally says it on the card."
Even if it would save your daughter from a rare disease, YOU CANNOT offer any monster as a tribute
And it got buffed and says cards instead of monster only
@@jofx4051 Yeah, screw True Draco
I also love the original text of Five-Headed Dragon: "This card does not take any Battle Damage, and..."
And then in brackets it says that Battle Damage is still inflicted
Oh yeah! Rocket Warrior and Wabuko etc. were like that too and it confused the hell out of me!
This card does not take any Battle Damage, and cannot be destroyed by battle with an EARTH, WATER, FIRE, WIND, or DARK monster. (Battle Damage is still inflicted to players.) LUL
@@waltercardcollector Its a weird old hand-me-down from when YGO was bumming concepts off MTG, the idea that destroying a monster by battle is "battle damage", because MTG creatures actually have health
@@syrelian Oh right lol
New card text: "Target 1 of your banished monsters; Special Summon it."
Old card text: "During your Main Phase 1 or 2, you can activate this card by placing it face-up in an empty Magic & Trap Card Zone. When this card is activated, select one of your removed from play monsters. If you have an empty Monster Card Zone, you can place that removed from play monster in that Monster Card Zone in either face-up attack position or face-up defense position (attack position = upright, defense position = sideways). This is treated as a Special Summon."
Put this card in the graveyard afterwards
Don't forget to shuffle the deck afterwards
Don't forget to apply spell and trap cards to keep this card alive.
Realistically it would be "Select 1 of your monsters that is removed from play. Special summon the selected monster faceup on your side of the field"
It just so happens I saw a monster card today that said:
"This card may attack directly"
"May"....? Don't you mean "Can"? "May" implies that it's random or something....
"I declare an attack! Either on your monster, or directly, the monster will choose..."
It's funny if the monster consents to attack directly. "Hit this bitch directly mothafucka."
It should say like this simple way
*Can attack directly*
"May" implies it is your choice, not that it's random. I agree it's irrelevant though.
The monster will decide your fate
Reminds me of a TvTropes article on Magic the Gathering
Apparently
A CARD WAS SUPPOSED TO DECIDE TARGET BY ITSELF
Not the player ... THE CARD
O_0
I don't play yugioh, this is the content I sub for, obscure knowledge about card games, their edge cases, and their evolution. Loved the video!
“obscure”
Man-eater Bug actually confused me as a kid, I was like "wtf other cards CANT do that? Black hole is trash?"
It’s a flip effect, attack it and it will flip face up and do as it says
My best friend was so confused about the part, where it said "regardless of its position" that he didn't play Man Eater Bug as a Flip Effect monster, but as a Regular monster, which can destroy a monster no matter in which position he summons the bug.
Also he had that bold idea to Normal Summon monsters, when their effects said "Can only be Special Summoned", because back then on many of them the part with "can not be Normal Summoned/Set" was missing. So, yeah, thanks to him I was allowed to Normal Summon Gate Guardian.
I always thought you coyld just activate Man Eater Bug's effect on summoning lol
“What do you mean Mind Crush lets you see into your opponent’s hand?”
It is old Mind Crush effect
Literally it gets nerfed within time
Player 1: Activates rota, searches Celtic Guardian
Player 2:Activates mind crush "Celtic Guardian"
Player 1: "Don't have it." Normal summons Celtic Guardian
@@truegamerking
That's legal lol
dzeef "isn't it great how the game assumes you read the rule book and know how to special summon or tribute or shuffle the deck after searching, so we don't need this text on every card"
also dzeef "not everyone is going to have read the rule book and know what a fusion summon is so its great polymerization explains how and where to fusion a monster from"
good video either way, i enjoy hearing about/looking back at silly text on older cards
"You don't want players to be confused after reading an effect"
Inspector Boarder: hello there.
I still dont know what exactly it does
@@TheGreatMishas because it's one of the fucking weirdest effects in the game.
You can only activate effects if extra deck monsters are on the field, and only up to the number of different types of extra deck monsters that are on the field.
And that includes negated effects. And somehow even includes negated activation.
And the tally of both the monsters on field and the activated effects is constantly updating. So if your like "cool. There's a xyz and a synchro on board, so I can activate two effects this turn..."
And then you bounce both of those with tiaramisu or some shit.
Guess what? The xyz and synchro are gone. And now only tiaramisu is on board. So that second effect you thought you could activate is gone too. Until you get another extra deck type on board, you're fucked.
@@GeneralNickles
It isn't exactly stricted to extra deck, rituals count too.
@@Vinicius-Bigode yeah, basically "colored monsters"
I literally could not figure out what Last Will did when I was a kid
You can only use it ONCE and ONLY DURING *THIS TURN*
SaintSentry I found this funnier than I should haveee!!
I used it to summon Relinquished from my deck.
Last Will was jank as fuck, and its implementation in every game and sim has often mandated the game having a tutorial card for it in the help section pretty much saying its jank, and that its summon effect can be resolved whenever the fuck you wanted after playing the card, within the same turn
I love how RotA just declares that, by magic, your deck is shuffled as part of its resolution. It doesn't ask you to shuffle it, it just states that 'Your deck is then shuffled'.
*>Says you wouldn't expect to find Man Eater Bug on this list*
*>Chose Man Eater Bug as the thumbnail*
I've been catfished
Sacrifice Exiled Force: Destroy target creature.
Heh, the more i learn about yugioh, the more I appreciate how much effort Wizards puts into making cards readable.
I remember these. Monster reborn was when I first noticed the difference in typing: I got the first sets of starter decks (yugi/kaiba) and i later on got another monster reborn that the text was 1 line and a half and not 5 and a half (on my language). I remember every single one of these cards old effects lol
Old Yu-Gi-Oh writing: "My goals lies beyond that you can comprehend (your deck is then shuffled)"
Well, back in the day, someone special summon monster in face down defense position using monster reborn.
Basically the difference between before and after it was safe to assume players could easily just look up rulings online.
What? Do you know what the internet was like prior to like 2008 or so
Yeah I remember when smartphones always existed. Fucking zoomers.
MrCheeze said that the difference between old and new texts is that, with the new ones, they expect you to have the rulebook at hand thanks to the internet. I think you two missunderstood what he said, am I right?
tbh ex competitive player here, we played with yujudge always opened and ready to search for the rulings on single cards (it was a site where every card was listed with its rulings and you had to be lucky and see if they matched the corner case you were facing.
I feel there's a point most of us are missing here; the earlier cards were being printed alongside the anime, which also didn't have the rules cemented until Battle City. It could be argued that Upper Deck, who was in charge of printing English cards, was trying to convey the rules _through_ the cards, as most people playing at the time would have been looking to the anime for rulings. The internet wasn't as prevalent nor was the game and the knowledge we have of it today. Yes, older cards have weird wording, but this was before the knowledge of Costs, Targeting and so forth was as common as it is today.
Add on to the fact that most people playing at the time were young children, and things get even more confusing. Old card text was weird, and today's cards have a crap ton of text. Let's not forget about the real issues of TGO to date.
What does Pot of Greed do?
"PSCT was one of the best decisions Konami has ever made about the game of Yugioh"
You could just drop the "about the game of yugioh" and it wouldn't change a thing lol
(Konami, I love a bunch of your franchises, but my god you are the kings of stupid choices)
This man is about to create some problem-solving Dzeef scripts
i don't know if blatantly obvious decisions should count as 'good' decisions, even when we're talking about konami...
Regardless of its position 💖
This tells a lot about our society
Thank you eater bug. I was worried you wouldn't work on attack position monsters.
Whats even weirder is how relinquisheds' text & Toon Dark Magician Girl's text actually went beyond the textbox in their older printings because it was so LONG!
Day 48 of waiting for vendread support
Keep dreaming man
@Lini it just didn't fit, that's why it wasn't included
Me too , man, me too.
And that's the only reason Toon DMG is the only Toon that can attack the turn it's summoned. They removed the attack restriction to shorten the text.
Having played Yugioh from release, I completely understand why they wrote Gilasaurus text like that!
Back then it was "common sense" that effects can only be active on the field, just because Kuriboh was the only monster with an effect on the hand and graveyard effects only triggered when being sent from the field.
So from this standpoint, that it's unthinkable for a monster to activate an effect on the hand, this is a work-around. You can normal summon Gilasaurus and once it's on the field, it can have recuperation of the normal summon as its effect.
So basically it was just a weird way of saying "You get an additional Normal Summon, but your opponent can Special Summon a monster from their GY"?
Before when Yugioh was current one kid had Polymerization he assumed you discard 2 fusion materials from the hand than search your deck for 2 another fusion materials.
I tried to explain to him how you fuse 2 monsters together to summon a new monster and his answer was "It does not say that, I think I'm right".
Just to say he was a nice kid I wanted to say only how the first print of Polymerization was confusing
Well actually, the rules for fusion summoning were in the rulebook that came with every starter deck!
When card effect is confusing for child
Thats the dumbest take a person could ever make
Damn takes me back playing yugioh under the stairs of the apartment building with all the neighborhood kids
Lmao Gilasaurus is pure gem!
One of the most intriguing french text is that of Reload, which translates to "Add your *every* hand to your Deck and shuffle it. Then draw the same number of cards you added to your Deck."
That original Polymerization text.
When I first started playing there was this younger kid that lived around the corner from me in my neighborhood. He'd been playing longer than me, but I guess he'd (and his friends) never seen a rulebook. Only the anime and "school rules." He knew Polymerization and it's text but never knew he could fuse with cards in his hand until I told him one day. He thought he could only use ones on the field. I gave him a rulebook so he could prove it at his school. 😂
He'd been playing that way *FOR ABOUT A YEAR* ouch
Same! I did that too!
I only just learnt it now! Bahaha
to be fair I thought you had to get all pieces of exodia out on the field to get the effect
It seems like the over bloatedness of Yugioh card text comes from a lack of keywords. A lot of effects are shared among hundreds of cards (ex: you can only activate the effect of "long name" once per turn), and they could easily just replace that whole sentence with 1 keyword like UNIQUE. It's so bizarre because they already introduced a keyword a long time ago (FLIP), that did a great job of shortening a phrase into one word, and then they just stopped and didn't make any more keywords.
This is by far the biggest design problem of the game
I agree with you that they should add more keywords, but Flip isn't the only one that's been added. Banish and piercing were two huge ones that reduced a lot of text :)
There are problems with keywords. Keywords don't make understanding cards easier at all, they only make reading them quicker if you're already an experienced player who knows what each keyword means. In the case of yugioh, keywords are also harder to come up with because so many effects are mostly similar but slightly different. Although many cards have hard once per turn clauses, there's about a dozen slight variations on once per turn clauses, so you would need to memorize just as many keywords. For example, 1 card could have any 1 or combination of the following clauses: soft once per turn, hard once per turn, soft once per chain, hard once per chain, once per duel, 1 effect per turn, 1 activation per turn, 1 effect among multiple effects per turn, 1 of each effect per turn, 1 effect for each attribute, a number of effects corresponding to it's condition/cost, etc. Keywords could make text boxes cleaner but learning the game and understanding rulings/card text harder.
@@Dzeeff I thought it was interesting that they introduced the term piercing, got rid of it, then brought it back later.
They can actually replace it like OCG by saying *this card's name* instead of full card name
Oh my, this really brings back traumatic memories, thanks for bringing that up, Doug. Reading old card texts feels like reading MtG's cards (coming from someone comepletely naive to MtG), and I feel like Konami (or Upper Deck?) in a way wanted to emulate that RPG feeling in the card text by adding unnecessary sentences and words, on top of fearing that the players don't understand how the game works. I mean, "...to form a new monster"? Not to mention the "no matter what" in Mask of Restrict? I also remember back then scratching my head on why you don't have to discard anything for Destiny Draw if you activate it using Diamond Dude's effect.
But the cream of the crop of bad text writing back in the day has to be when it comes to targeting, just no consistency whatsoever. Even until now I still don't get how they determine whether a card targets or not, apart from having the word "targets" in its text. Like, you literally have to select a card to remove using Dingirsu's effect, why doesn't it have the word target then?
Targeting happens at activation (or as a cost), predetermining the selected cards that will be affected by your activated card (or effect).
Non-targeting happens at resolution of your activated card (or effect). It describes an action that will happen (in dingirsu's case: "send 1 card your opp controls to the gy") and completely lacks the "lock-on specific cards" from its text.
Card targets if it is specifically says target or select in its text; otherwise it is non-targetting effect
I've never noticed the face inside man-eater bug's mouth
The 2003 Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring
"Stops your opponent from viewing their deck, but only once."
Old cards were like
"When the circumference of the Card is move by 180° while the Card itself is rotated so that the card itself is face up while in a different position to it's original position you are allowed to remove 1 card from your opponents Main Monster Zone."
If you translate some of the original normal magic cards, like Pot of Greed, they actually say “destroy this card after it is played” to teach players that normal magic and trap cards go to the graveyard after they resolve.
"You can return When this card is changed from Attack Position to Defense Position, you can place any number of cards from your hand at the bottom of your Deck in any order you desire."
I have a Cannon Soldier and it's probably the earliest version of it since it's pretty horribly translated. On it says "Whenever one monster shown present on your field is sacrificed, the basic points of the opponent will be damaged by 500". I'm not kidding, it actually says that.
B A S I C
I just stumbled upon this comment but I wanted to let you know that your Cannon Soldier is likely a fake card :( there is no version of it with that effect
@@Dzeeff Wait, really? I'm pretty sure it's effect is you tribute one monster and deal 500 life point damage. You sure it's not just a shit translation?
@@ZPokemonfanA The effect itself isn't too off, but those words that you quoted were never found on an actual version of Cannon Soldier. It sounds more like a fake copy with a bad translation
7:20 I mean, MtG's tutor effects all specify that you shuffle your deck; the thing this lets you do is make it so different fetch cards can do slightly different things. Take Demonic Tutor, for example; It's the most basic Search effect you can think of, and says "Search your deck for a card, put that card in your hand, then shuffle." Then, compare that with a different search card, Enlightened Tutor; Enlightened Tutor says "Search for an artifact or enchantment, shuffle, then put the card you searched for on top". You wouldn't really be able to do this if "Shuffle your deck after you search" was part of the main rules of the game.
Most YGO cards when I played specified that decks had to be shuffled. So when I got a newer card which didn't specify it I assumed I didn't have to. So I played the card just to stack my deck.
Ironically enough, I lost a game because the person that I was playing against used Exiled Force's effect after using it for a tribute summon.
I'm so thankful for problem solving card text. I could not understand pot of greed before then, that effect is too confusing
But I consider PCST can be better and also errataing wording of old cards
It is still somehow confusing for some cards, say, Inspector Boarder and unnecessary world repeated like 'this card'; they should only say this card once; it would be better
In pokemon, the search cards write out that you have to show the searched card to your opponent
But it is a game mechanic so you don't need to write unnecessary card text; it makes card text simpler
Pokemon and Magic don't need to actually write it
Trivia: The original energy search card (Fossil 59) didn't have the reveal clause in the card text - your opponent wouldn't see the energy card you take from the deck.
I still have a soft spot for Mask of Restrict's original "No matter what the situation" text. It's just so silly and memeable
"no matter the situation"
"Regardless of Position"
"In any order you desire"
YGO old card text is a meme goldmine.
Amount of card text is the big thing for me with card clarity. I generally feel bad whenever an opponent uses a card with a lot of text that I don't recognize, and I have to take a long time reading and rereading just to figure out what it does. Often this leads to me rushing, skimming, and not actually understanding the card.
i remember original Waboku raising eyebrows for me and my friends
I still have a problem with the middle polymerization at 8:50 . The text "Send fusion material monsters that are listed on a fusion monster card from your hand or your side of the field to the graveyard" can also be interpreted as sending materials monsters listed on a fusion monster, and the fusion monster in question is in your hand. Of course that is not possible because fusion monsters can never be in your hand, however, that's what the text is saying if you guys are following.
YEAH GILASAURUS! I remember way, way back when Synchros came out, I thought that card was gonna be an all-star.
it did see play tho
Imo japanese styling should come to the tcg as well like having numbers for effects, or non-effect things like a hard once per turn clause at the top of the card so you know it is not part of an effect etc and don't have to search for it.
I’d take super long card texts over old wording any day. Imagine needing to be limited because of wording that doesn’t make sense.
I have to wonder what it might be like if YGO had adopted the 'reminder text' style that MtG uses. Rather than spelling out rules clarifications as extra lines of rules text, they instead add 'reminders' in parentheses where it seems they might be needed, with the reminder-text in italics, and have the general rules that "Text in italics is not rules text of a card." Thus they could print the same card with or without the reminder text, and it would not in any way affect the actual rules text of the card; if you are already comfortable with the rules, you can usually safely ignore reminder text, but the presence of such might say to intermediate or beginner players "We think this bit of rules is not necessarily obvious, so it's worth commenting on."
Back in MtG's early days, people would try to Sacrifice a single creature to pay for multiple abilities at once, or try to sacrifice a creature that was already in the process of dying to another effect (not before that effect took place). Even into modern times, I've seen people try the 'can I sac this to both of these at once?' question. While the rules in the book are very clear about things like that, occasional reminders do help. Similarly, MtG would be more aggressive in their reminder text usage for Core Sets, since those were intended to be introductory product with more simple, game-defining cards, while the Expansion Sets were more about whatever was going on in the larger metaplot and exploring new design space. So you'd get reminder text on how a simple ability like Haste or First Strike worked in the Core sets, but not in the Expansions where it is assumed that people are already familiar with most of the main rules.
I think your text needs Problem Solving Card Text
The problem with this is that parentheses already have a meaning within Problem-Solving Card Text. What drives me crazy is that parentheses are NOT used for reminders in Problem-Solving Card Text, but to add extra restrictions or conditions to an effect.
“If I pay 3000 lp with solemn strike, can I negate 2 summons?”
I'm glad Yugioh took a page out of MTG's book with naming effects like piercing battle damage, and annoyed it took them so long to do it. The old wording took up so much space on the card, and the anime characters took forever to explain it.
MTG should have PSCT and any card games should implement it for simpler card text and also simpler terminology if possible
8:04 yeah i remember playing as a kid and thinking you could just fuse any two cards and the attack points of the new monster would be the combined attack points of the monsters fused.
Polymerization blew my mind as a kid. My brother said he was going to teach me yugioh so we went to the store and he bought me a few packs and i opened a poly but had never seen a fusion monster. Also had a guy try to argue with me that blue eyes ultimate atk was 9000 because it was 3 blue eyes.
really enjoy your channel and enjoy the information you give about cards and if they were used in a competitive sense. Always look forward to your stuff.
back in the day when this game was new, a friend of mine actually claimed I couldn't destroy his face-down monster with Maneater Bug because the card said "regardless of position".
I have no idea how he managed to come to this conclusion, but it really taught me that more information which isn't needed can lead to very strange rule misunderstandings.
The old negate attack text is one of my favourite: when your opponent attacks with a monster (what else can you attack with?), negate the attack and MAKE your opponents battle phase end.
I had no idea monster reborn was added to the game to explain what a special summon is.
So funny seeing this. At our school we played this back 2012-14. I got my first deck from a friend and I recognize 90% of the cards in the video from my old deck, because he gave me his "bad, old" cards. For me there were only those versions.
Funny thing you say about Reinforcement of the Army. Every single tutoring effect in Magic has ''shuffle your deck'' added on the card. XD
In the GBA game Nightmare Troubadour, Different Dimension Capsule didn't say that the user had to shuffle their deck, so you could use its actual effect and look at your entire deck as a bonus.
from Dust Tornado’s first printing:
“This card can only be activated if it is a Quick-Play Magic Card”
and I still have no idea what they meant by this
I'm fairly certain that it's trying to refer to the card set by dust tornado's effect during the turn you activate dust tornado, letting you know that you can't set a trap with it and then immediately activate the new trap. But even that interpretation would allow you to break the normal rule for quick-play spells and activate it the turn it is set, which you can't normally do.
@@drumstep9135 i seriously have to wonder if the card was _meant_ to let you activate the card the turn it was set in some way, because it's seriously such a useless bonus effect. the sole niche it has is, like, if you're holding one of those cards with an effect that activates when it's destroyed while face-down and your opponent activates feather duster. other than that, it ... lets you activate a different trap on your next turn, in case you only got it in your hand after you ended your last one or you just didn't feel like setting it last turn for whatever reason. yay?
Gravedigger's ghoul is also pretty weirdly worded in its original printing too. It tells you to remove from play the cards for the remainder of the duel. That makes it sound as if you were not allowed to bring those specific cards back later with something like Return from the Different Dimension.
I've been watching another RUclipsr playing through GX Duel Academy on Twitch and they've been poking fun at Mask of Restrict every time they see it because of how it restricts Tributes "no matter what the situation," taking that exact text to absurd extremes of situations when you can restrict Tributing, even if the card is not on the field.
yugioh.fandom.com/wiki/Card_Errata:Mask_of_Restrict
Is it Pikasprey
The first pack I ever bought had a polymerization. I was adding the attack and defence of 2 of my monsters to make a bigger "fusion" monster. I went on doing this until I acquired my first fusion, thousand dragon, which I then put into my main deck and used polymerization like a ritual spell that requires exact tributes.
Oof, early Yu-Gi-Oh!, the time, where we got Booster Pack series with 145 cards in it and where in every series most of the cards were worthless and the slightly useful cards were already rare or higher. I remember how happy I was, when Dark Beginning and Dark Revelation were released. Also there was a small game store, where they sold Japanese Structure Decks based on the characters, and what can I say, the cards there were way better than the crap they've sold us in our Starter/Structure Decks.
Also, I've pulled a bunch of the first Skull Lairs from the Labyrinth of Nightmare Booster pack, where they have forgotten one word, so I not only could banish Monster cards, but cards from all types from my graveyard. That came in quite handy.
To be fair, tutors in MTG also have the "...then shuffle your deck/library." text on them still.
Because sometimes you shuffle first, then place the tutored card on top of the deck.
I still have, and sometimes use, the og poly. First time I realized how weird it was dumbfounded. And gilasaurus is probably my favorite go 1st monster just for its meer splashability
I like how the original prints of the Attribute summoners from Spell Ruler (UFO Turtle, Mystic Tomato, etc.) all said "You don't need to Tribute a monster for Level 5 or higher monsters."
I remember when cards that added but didn’t state to shuffle were coming out and we used it to our advantage to not shuffle after searching
Same, I also had an old spell card that said magic card.
We ruled it immune to MST and heavy storm since it wasn't a spell nor a trap card.
6:00 speaking as someone who was in middle school when yugioh came out, I 100% would've summoned cards in face down defense mode if that wasn't there because special summoning was discussed in the anime.
Man eater bug is the bane of my existence
Whenever i play the older games every fucker I duel just so happens to have 3 copies
Worst part is they always kill my ace monster with it
All jokes aside, as someone trying to learn how to put together a board game of their own, it's really handy looking back at old school Yu-Gi-Oh! card text to learn how to word things to communicate the effects you want from a card.
You should do a follow up to this video showing everyone Penguin Knight because I swear it is incomprehensible
"When this card is sent directly from your Deck to the Graveyard by an effect of a card controlled by your opponent, unite your Graveyard cards and your own Deck, shuffle them and form a new Deck."
"When this card is sent from your deck to the GY by an opponent's card or effect; Shuffle your GY into your deck."
@@joshuahadams I can't believe Penguin Knight isn't reprinted yet
Hilarious video, I remember getting in a lot of arguments pre-PSCT with my friends. Granted, most of those were just because we were being idiots...but some were due to confusing card text
Can't remember the number of times I had to call a judge because people wouldn't understand how Magical Dimension slipped throught so many rules.
"No, I don't have to tribute if you negated it, because the tribute is part of the effect and not a cost"
"You can't chain Stardust because the destruction effect may not happen"
"No, it doesn't target"
"You can't chain Bottomless now because the card is still resolving since I want to destroy your monster"
"No, you still can't chain Stardust because we are in the middle of the resolution of my card"
"No, you can't chain Bottomless now because the last thing to happen was not the summon but the destruction effect"
"Yes, this card allows me to destroy Stardust while avoiding Bottomless, why do you think I'm playing it ?"
When will we get the numbered effects from the OCG in the TCG?
How does that work? Like keywords in magic?
@@mercylessplayer the card specifically lists the effects seperately with their own numbers. This means they can easily refer to specific effects like, you cannot use this cards (1) effect more than once per turn, all at the top of the card, before they reach the effect descriptions.
Summoning condition, restrictions.
(1) effect 1
(2) effect 2
@@mercylessplayer Cards are written out in the OCG like "You can only use the (1) effect of this card's name once per turn. (1) Effect 1.... (2) Effect 2.... (3) Effect 3...."
@@mercylessplayer Every effect is numbered so you can just easily see how many different effects a card has.
It's much easier to read compared to the wall of text we have in TCG.
I'd rather have a card with paragraphs of text with clear, well-defined, and structured effects than a card with one sentence that is totally unclear.
Well what if the paragraph of text was so big that the text is minuscule? Relinquished actually had to remove the summoning condition because there was too much text to fit it. Besides, speaking as someone who never actually read the rulebook: I completely understand PSCT and you only need to explain a couple of things (like ‘piercing” and ‘banish’), unless they are a complete noob to the game
@@aionicthunder They stopped caring about small text at Endymions.
Bruh Moment Although imagine how bad it would’ve been without PSCT for endymions XD
@@aionicthunder The current version of Relinquished does have the summoning condition though. The one without it is an example of unclear effects. This is actually a good example of how PSCT can actually *reduce* text.
Sometimes this sort of thing still happens. Like on Bujintei Susanowo it says “Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; take 1 “Bujin” monster from your Deck, and either add it to your hand or send it to the Graveyard.” I guess I’m not targeting the monster, only taking it.
Well in this case, you aren't targeting it. And I could be mistaken, but I think there may still be cards printed in this manner.
That's because you can't target any card from your Deck. I don't know why, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you can only target cards that are public knowledge or something like that.
@@deproissant you can only target cards in _locations_ that are public knowledge, even if the card itself isn't - face-down cards are totally fine to target, as long as they are on the field or banished. think of it this way: targeting a card that isn't public knowledge doesn't reveal it, so targeting cards in the hand or deck would be _really_ weird because hand order isn't a thing ( which, keep in mind, targeting only happens when costs are paid - so your opponent has all the time in the world to respond with effects that do stuff with their hand ) and ... well, if you tried to target something in the deck, you'd be targeting a single card in the middle of a huge pile of other cards. meanwhile, it is incredibly obvious when you target a set backrow, because it's alone in its own zone and it's very simple to keep track of it, and banished cards _don't_ actually go into a single pile ( it's more of a state of the card than a location ), so you don't actually put anything out of order if you _do_ put them into a pile, but have to pull one out for the sake of keeping track of it due to it being targeted - that order doesn't actually exist, after all
another thing is that that effect wouldn't target, anyway - it picks out a card as part of its _effect,_ not its cost, and targeting only happens a cost. in fact, targeting as an effect would be literally pointless, as the entire point of targeting is choosing a card _while both players still have the opportunity to respond._ it's why some cards just tell you to move a monster out of the graveyard without asking you to target it, because they don't let your opponent respond to which monster you're choosing - the chain's already been built and is in the middle of resolving, after all
When i was new to yugioh i had a LOB polymerization as well as the middle step poly and the most recent poly. I had absolutely no clue what it generally did after reading all 3 and i had to ask someone 'ok so these are all the same card but its effects are different wtf is going on' and since they were the only polys i had i was forced to use all 3 in one deck ( some kinda HERO mashup). Those were confusing times
Also, effect monsters were very rare in those days, so not being meticulous about how they were worded was a recipe for confusion.
Way back in the day, when Yu-Gi-Oh was first released, Exiled Force and Metamorphosis kind of did want the clarification text, because otherwise you could sit at a table and rules lawyer about it all day of if the card's effect triggered when it was tributed for a tribute summon rather than as a standalone ability. It could even be argued that, without the text clarifying the exclusion, Metamorphosis had a requirement that a monster have been tributed at some point in the turn as an activation condition, like Backup Soldier requiring five monsters in the graveyard. People have come a long way in simply understanding how things work, but how things were worded originally was loopy enough to cause that confusion back then.
The logic for the search cards needing to say 'shuffle your dang deck' is likely that, if you flipped your deck over and the card you wanted was directly on the bottom, a lot of players wouldn't see a need to shuffle their decks unless they had to, especially if they had knowledge of what was on top of their deck somehow, such as cards that went there instead of to the graveyard (ie Horn of the Unicorn, Cockroach Knight.)
And don't get me started on the original Polymerization. If I didn't watch the anime as a kid I'd never figure out what the hell that did, and I was the first one at my local card shop to pull one. Not that there were a great number of worthwhile fusions back in the LOB days, but hey, I had Gaia the Dragon Champion and used it often. Once Thousand-Eyes Restrict came out it was just my win condition.
I think the “regardless of postion” is there to explain that the flip effect of a face-down defense position monster doesn’t activate...(because you flip it face-up to put it in the graveyard)
To make Man-Eater Bug's reminder text to sound helpful, I always thought "regardless of position" refers to the Bug itself, so it doesn't care whether it got woken up during battle or you flip summon it.
Imagine what today's long effects cards will be written using old style wording
I was hoping to see Yado Karu's ability to put cards on the bottom of your deck "in any order you desire."
New YGO cards are masterclasses in how to use semicolons correctly
i really really miss these cards lol
like.. if everything is terrible, nothing is
Oh man, I still have one of those Man Eater Bugs, it's awesome
I got a giggle out of this because as i dont purchase cards anymore but still have one of my decks from college from like 2010/11? which was a Six Sam, have the exact copy of that Exile Force so kind of a nice reflect moment.
They used to mention shuffling after searching on card text because that's the way MtG does to this day. Every single search effect just HAS to mention "then shuffle your library" because of course they have to.
I just sleep when I see those huge blocks of text.
residentsleeper
Guessing you haven't made it through The Hobbit then lol
I remember on a forum explaining to a person question about Dark Necrofear. They war wondering if a move an opponent was legal when they use Dark Necrofear to attack then took the monster that destroyed Dark Necrofear. I pointed out that the card stated in combat and did not specify on whose combat phase.
I really wish other card games took after Yugioh in not specifying that you need to shuffle after searching. Like, it's standard and obvious lol
The only exception is for MtG placing cards on top of the library, since it's important in that game's particular way of writing card text to specify that you shuffle THEN put it on top
also a hilarious card called doomsday. it’s like those cards but you don’t have to shuffle your library because you don’t have one
My favorite thing is with the search cards saying "your deck is then shuffled"... in terms of English, that means that once you search the card and place it in your hand, then your deck is considered to be shuffled by completing the card's effect. It doesn't actually tell you to shuffle the deck. So theoretically, yeah. You don't even have to shuffle with that old school text.