Hello HotC crew, I believe adding timestamps would be something worth exploring. The main way I get into podcast is by clicking on timestamps such as the title topic and then staying around the rest of the episode. Keep it up, really been enjoying the podcast so far!
@@6210classick If someone just want to hear their ideas on how to design future trap cards, a timestamp can help them skip the part they are not interested in, especially if they are busy and want to save some time What’s the point of making timestamps by myself if I have to skim through the entire video anyway?
@@6210classick If someone just want to hear their ideas on how to design future trap cards, a timestamp can help them skip the part they are not interested in, especially if they are busy and want to save some time What’s the point of making timestamps by myself if I have to skim through the entire video anyway?
The existence of a trap card that punishes you like waking the dragon, but has a good utility effect like imperm, I think would be really interesting as it would exist in the psyche of every player before they remove a set card.
Yes. There is wayyyyy to much back row hate in the game. What’s the point of playing any traps when your opponent has a 1 in 10 chance of opening duster in their first turn or up to 50% if they are running lightning storm.
I was gonna say: make more traps that operate like Paleos. I also would not be opposed to normal traps with activation protections similar to stuff like Ultimate Slayer
I use Artifacts sometimes for this, like for Evil Eye or Unchained, since they both do a ton of destruction and like their own spells being destroyed too
If monsters have 3 effects then traps should have that many effects. One effect in hand, another effect to activate it the turn it's set, an effect to set it from the gy without being banished or an additional effect that banishes it as cost.
@@nm2358Honestly, negation is not much of an issue since you only have two omin negates that really see play, but it is good to cover if we get more s/t negation and if that new rank 10 becomes meta in the future. Just giving them more gy effects and not limiting them to one effect per turn could help, but then comes the question of how to balance the effects
The problems I see with that is if you give traps three effects especially ones in the hand or grave is 1. It would physically slow down the game asking if there is a response with every move. 2. The cost or conditions they activate would have to be specific or so finely tuned that it’s not just effect into effect into effect at basically 0 cost but get a positive gain or your opponent going negative so hard they quit. 3. It would make chains a nightmare especially if the traps activate multiple times in the chain
@@rabbidcreature9681 yeah absolutely restrictions like that should definitely be put in place if traps had 3 effects, on in hand, field, and graveyard. Something like one effect per card name would balance it if each effect was good. And the game is already slowed down with the numerous activation timings of hand traps so it shouldn't be a problem.
@@pkkiller_apathy4568instead of nerfing monsters that can do exactly what trap and spell does with being an extra tuner to summon (who needs raigeki, solemn when we can 1 card-combo into field wipe and omni-negate monsters 😅)
@@duyknguyen They can’t nerf monsters because it changes the dynamics of the game too much in a short period of time especially with breakers like lightning storm and evenly *existing*, I definitely think they should at least make a side format with a lot of bans or alot of material erratas for generic bosses like accesscode, borrel, and Baronne + and very few engine erratas. (Something more of an experimental format like certain games have before they decide to do nerfs and buffs
@@duyknguyen omni negates are overpowered in general and basically cost nothing due to how much advantage you get from them. Unfortunately there isn't a system to help going into them. The same is true about towers. But that wasn't the topic here. The question was how do you make trap cards work in modern yugioh. The answer is you don't you have to slow down everything else. The easiest place to start is nerfing/limit how many spell cards that can be played in a turn. This is already present in trap cards because they must charge for a turn so the maximum is 5.
They simply need to make traps have additional effects when removed from the field by other card effects or allow them to set themselves without banishing them under some condition so they can be re-used and keep up resource wise
Could give a few something to the effect of "If this card is targeted by an opponent's card effect, it can be activate the turn it is set." It would keep the trap cards usable in an interaction space, while keeping the spirit of laying a trap. Even just a couple would make people hesitant to target backrow again, now that Waking the Dragon's on destruction isn't as often triggered due to other methods of removal becoming more and more common.
@@ee822 that would be a great idea that coupled w giving some more traps small in hand effects like a pop or negate or smt like that and then have the set effect be wayy better Just so imperm isnt as tellegrafed But giving others on target effects would be awesome
Have more traps with these effects; - 'when negated then 'x'' - 'When destroyed then 'x' - 'When removes from the field to hand, deck, gy then x' -" If sent to the graveyard, set it on the field face up/down" Essentially just give them ways to play around it, whether thats immunities or additional effects
It’s crazy people can’t imagine strong normal trap cards being good without thinking about it being a floodgate, it’s a lack of imagination, ofc there are ways to do it. Imagine a Torrential retrain that goes something like: “if a monster is summoned, banishes all monsters, if it’s poped/banished by the op it’s reset but banished when it leaves the field.”, this would be strong, recursive, much better then what we have right now (and it could be designed even stronger yet not broken I think).
You've just solving a issue of powercreep with even more powercreep. The existence of such cards would only prompt the release of even more resilient decks and even better all around good removal, just like since nibiru we only got more decks that can easily play through it.
@@kindlingkingremove monsters with the role *searcher* *extender* / *recruiters* (from the deck, I think the worse recruiters the recyclers like junk synchron are fine) and see what happens. These are the real powercreep monsters in yugioh. Imagine yugioh without them. Would we see traps? Would we see equip spells? What are the monster roles that are left? *beaters* *walls* *tricksters* *floaters* all these with modern bosses and traps? I would love this. But hey we are stuck with turn 1 boards filled with hordes of bosses waiting for the oponent to scoop because "no out"...
@@Pkey995 again, this would only make decks inconsistent. Not to mention "remove X" isn't exactly a possible solution for a game with set rotation. Imo traps are unsalvageable. The best you can do is slightly mitigate that by playing into what vague strengths they still have left (trap monsters and quick grave effects) and changing the design philosophy from "something that you interrupt opponent with" to...honestly, no idea. Solving fundamental issues with traps would require rebooting and rebuilding the game from the group up.
@@kindlingking Why do you think consistency is a good thing? I would argue consistency is what makes modern yugioh broken and lame. Baronne for example is only "broken" because it is not difficult to make her. For example if player B has no disruptions and player A got 1 mo ye + a wyrm in hand that result into a chixiau + baronne. Thats what consistency result to. Drawing pictures. When you remove the roots of the problem the extenders/searchers, then we are playing a real game and not drawing pictures/making combos or in extreme cases playing Solitaire. Then you put traps in your decks beaters walls floaters tricksters and so on because guess what those roles are still beeing printed but *ignored* . If you see a new maindeck monster that doesnt have "special summon" or "add/mill" in the text it will be imediatly ignored by everyone. Nowadays because the game is so "consistent" you can basically watch the opponent bring out a horde of bosses thanks to the roots: searchers and extenders, just for you to break the board and win or scoop if you didnt... thats lame imo. I would rather see back and forth and bringing out bosses on turn 4/5 with protections from backrow or monster effects than seeing one sided duels every time. There is nothing special about bringing every game the same 3 kinds of boards per deck and hoping the oponent didnt draw the out. Thats predictable. What makes card games special are random events. And predicting that an oponent will end on X board because he started his combo with Y card is imo a bad thing and that s because of consistency. Thats why people are going back to old ass formats because these duels are unpredictable. Btw I meant banning with "removing".
@@kindlingking I think the problem with traps activating in the grave is yes they are still traps but they miss at this point their real role of beeing unpredictable. Just like searchable traps. If you know the oponent got X trap set because they searched it last turn then is it really a trap? It is like you re building a trap for your oponent infront of your oponent. Secondary effects in the grave like drawing or protecting monsters and so on is fine but if traps in the grave have actual trap effects like battle trap effects or trap hole effects then that would be as lame as searchable traps. But yeah I am all for set rotations at this point... ygo is a mess imo
Hear me out, make a series of trap cards like imperm, a series of traps that can be activated from your hand on your turn, that do small effects like pop a monster, pop a backrow etc, with larger effects if they'd been set the turn before
@@Ruggi21 true, but today's game is constantly power creeping imo, I feel like it'd only be a matter of time before we got something like this anyways. But I do understand the point you're making and it is very logical
"small effects like pop a monster, pop a backrow etc" Typhoon is already a card, even though it has some conditions that make it not so good vs a lot of decks. I feel like people know less and less older cards and forget that are already very interesting options for every play style. I can't believe that after all this time with Labyrinth being a relevant deck in every format and side of the world, including the virtual one, people are seriously discussing if trap cards suck, and now Traptrix is again a decent deck too.
Give them big effect like quick effect banish,quick effect mons negate,.. etc but limit user to 2 summon for the turn it is activated and the next turn.
I like how Infinite Impermanence has use going first and second. You can always use it to negate something on the field but you get a stronger effect for setting it as well.
The problem with Trap cards in Yugioh is Monster cards. Adding quick-effects to every monster created a situation in which trapcards became the slowest piece of interaction in the game, and often, no where near as good as the better monsters in the game. Mirrorjade is non-targeting quick-effect removal /banish of a monster card that moon lights as a Raigeki whenever it is sent to Graveyard. For Trap cards not to suck they would need to have effects on removal AND negation, that would make them into ACTUAL traps that play around meta cards, and even then, its an uphill for the Trap cards. You might aswell add a 3rd Graveyard effect for EVERY Trap ontop of an on field destruction effect and negation. Make fucking omni-negates have to jump through hoops, make Monsters WEAKER by virtue of lacking the utility to mindlessly handle Trap cards better than anything else does in the game. The only cards that should be beating traps should be cards like Jinzo.
It doesn't help that there's only 5 slots to set traps into and you can summon up to 6 monsters at a time. It's a war of attrition you can't win without spamming floodgates and/or timing Counter Traps to well placed board wipes. And you don't want to set all 5 slots at a time either because then you risk overextending into board wipes or losing the space to activate power spells that can be used to either refill your hand or out problem monsters that hard counter the traps you have set.
But then the game becomes a sackfest, where a single resolution of such new trap card by your opponent can lose you the game. Yugioh already has an issue of requiring you to have ways (often outside of archetype) to deal with threats that will otherwise shut down your whole play. It doesn't matter how many counter balances you introduce if they're inconsistent at their job.
@@kindlingking The game already is a sackfest of either bricking your opponent using handtraps or floodgating them from the get-go. While there is a little leeway in the mirror matches the last few formats, everyone is looking to OTK their opponent on their turn, and Konami has printed a shit-ton of cards to get you to that OTK. It's just now every effect monster, for no realistic reason, is loaded with quick-effects on massive atk stats, and games don't last long enough to even use traps outside of Labrynth (which add an assortment of rider-effects, and an instant activation... through "eye-roll" more quick effect monsters). Short of a Master Rule change that limits the field / extra-deck, traps need to start having more utility beyond being floodgates to even stand a chance of being playable outside of Lab.
Traps are a perfectly fine mechanic and past format play proves it. The rest of the game speeding up to the point that they're outclassed is what's broken. Unironically everything but traps are broken at this point.
If everything else is at a certain standard and traps are the outlier is it really correct to be like “traps are the okay one here”. Like, the rest of the game is not going to move in a direction that allows the trap mechanic as it has existed previously to flourish so regardless of whether you’re boomin’ out and mad that yugioh is too fast or whatever, traps being worked to conform to the current standard of the game is WAY more likely than the reverse. It’s kind of funny because it is legit “boomer” mentality to be like “old way good new way bad!” Sorry grandad but no one is throwing out their cell phone to go back to using rotary phones because it’s too different for you.
@@SDREHXC Yes, absolutely. Because we have 15 years and multiple popular Time Wizard formats of traps being healthy interaction points. Cascading design mistakes have led the game to where it is now and there are a ton of issues that show how it's perfectly fine to say everything else shot past the point of acceptable design. The fact that monsters and spells have been designed with how to break the game's rules as their core for the past seven years shows how far from normal we've gotten. I don't think the game will ever get better but I don't think it's wrong to point out where and how things went completely off the rails. It might be a boomer take for me personally but most of the people in my Edison locals group aren't boomers. Half of them would only be like four or five years old when SJC Edison was happening. They play Edison instead of modern because the game speed is right and it feels like the game design is functional instead of a fuzzy set of rules that sometimes gets in the way of your combo.
A Trap is a card type not a mechanic at all. The title is just false. Card mechanics are normal summoning, special summoning, flipping cards, setting cards activating cards, milling and so on. A yugioh mechanic would be switching phases. A spell card is not a yugioh mechanic. Activating a spell card is a mechanic, setting a spell card is a mechanic. Chaining a spell card is a mechanic. A spell card is a card type.
@@Pkey995 Setting a card face down to disrupt the opponent as they take actions on their turn is a game mechanic in the same way monsters having effects or banishing existing are game mechanics. This is speaking in the broader game design use of the term, not specifically Yugioh.
@@geek593 *setting* a card face down to *disrupt* the oponent as they take actions by *activating* the card on their turn are game mechanics. Yeah I agree and I marked the mechanics for you. You can do these mechanics with quick spells a card type trap another card type and ofc monster the last card type. Some monsters we call handtraps nowadays dont have to be *set* you can *activate* them from your hand... just like imperm the "real" handtrap.
I feel like the bonus effect when set (like imperm) is a great way of boosting trap cards viability, but make the bonus effect much stronger than imperm. Like a black hole when activated from hand, but a raigeki when activated via set kinda bonus. ( obviously this example is broken, but you get the point) Another solution is changing the spell speed priority of normal traps so opponents can’t respond with monster effect/quick spells
As a suggestion to Farfa to make traps "more viable": Master Rule 6 - All trap cards may be activated the same turn they are set if and only if it is in response to your opponent's effect (so chain link 2 or higher). So that way if they do some quick effect shenanigans with like I:P, superfactorial, etc, then you can respond on the same turn. That would still retain the feeling of "you activated my trap card".
Imma make this very simple. Trap cards havent gone anywhere. In fact, theyre more important than EVER before. The difference? Konami for some reason decided to start coloring them light brown and giving them atk and def stats. This is another reason why yugioh isnt onboarding players well. Modern card design does not intuit well for new players. If hand traps were actually traps sort of like impermanence, we wouldnt be up in arms like this, and noobs would have far fewer headaches learning the relevant nonengine cards in format. This is an image problem.
Hand trap is just a player-made term. The fact that they're monsters and have different activation conditions from traps has it's advantages and disadvantages. But Konami can also easily print traps like Impermanence that can be discarded instead of activated in the field to interrupt something.
If you think the problem if new player experience is the color of handtraps then you don't really understand game design whatsoever. The actual SPEED of the game is the problem. A new player has absolutely no chance to learn the game because they get destroyed in 1-2 turns regardless of what color cards they have. Back in the day in Yu-Gi-Oh even if you ultimately lost, you still played several turns during which you would learn the game's basics, and the advanced combos did not take 10 minutes to execute, putting the other player to sleep.
This is kind of my problem as a new Master duel player. I don't get a chance to really read or understand cards playing against others, nor do I really get to do anything until I'm either dead or looking at what cards are still lit up. Special summoning needs to have either a rules or mechanical limitation. I should not be staring down the barrel of a boss monster immune to card effects before I have any interaction with the field. As a new player I'm not sure how effective it would really be, but as an idea: you're locked out of the Extra deck until YOUR second turn, or you can only special summon once on your first turn. Something where passing the turn doesn't feel like passing game unless you're super screwed.
I agree completely, it's an aesthetic thing but I would prefer of Nibiru and Ash Blossom and them were actually trap cards that activate in the hand instead of monsters. I know that eliminates some gameplay depth from treating them as monsters to be searched or summoned, but I don't care.
I think a cool idea would be a new master rule where the player going second can set traps from their hand at the beginning of the draw phase of turn 1, and they can be played that turn. But limit it to normal and counter traps, so continuous (mainly floodgates) could not be set this way. This would allow for traps to be more viable without changing them drastically by giving them all hand or grave effects.
Personally I'd include all spells/traps. Floodgates are probably fine considering YuGiOh is currently very going first focused and floodgates would equalize the playing field. (not all floodgates, but for that the banlist exists)
something to explore is giving counter trap cards proactive effects instead of responsive effects, most counter traps can only be activated in response to an card or effect while in archetype counter traps are omni negates or close to omni negates, they cound try making then things like compulsory or bottomless into counter trap cards instead
This is true, sure omni negate counter traps are really op since only a continuous effect or another counter trap, usually also a negate of some type, can interact with them. And since there are even omni negate normal traps now, then there should be counter traps that do different things, even being to summon a monster like so many traps do. I think people forget a lot how specific sub-types within a card type can also help expand card type range, and I'm sad Josh is so narrowly focused on what has been the usual game experience that alternate approaches without making changes to the game were not an explored topic.
I believe what's wrong with trap cards nowadays is that they either ignore their entire mechanic altogether, or are so absurdly game-changing that they transform a game into a hopelessly one-sided affair that quite simply tends to end things on the spot. The exception to this are the in-archetype traps that act as an in-engine recursion/interaction, as those tend to be a negate or a board-wipe at most (I like those particular traps just fine). Still, I would think no one likes facing down a Dimension barrier on a fusion or -especially- a pendulum deck. Things need to change. Perhaps a master rule change stating that you get to set exactly one card from your hand on turn 0. But then a lot of traps would require an instant ban, wouldn't they?
One thing I've consdiered is like- an archetypal trap deck where they have weakish interruptions on the field and then gave grave disruptuons as well that allow them to set a new one from the deck at rhe same time. "Draw 1 card. During the mainphase or battlephase you can target one monster your opponent controls: Shuffle this card from your graveyard into your deck then destroy that monster and add a x card to hand or set it to your field. If this card would be sent to the graveyard from the deck or hand, banish this card instead." "Discard one card from your hand, then you can set a trap card from your banishment. That card is activatable this turn. You can shuffle this card back into the deck: special summon a monster from your opponents graveyard and add an x card from your deck to your hand or set it to your field If this card would be sent from the hand or deck to the graveyard, banish it instead."
A good idea for a well designed trap card theme is the Phrase "once per Turn, when this card is send to your GY, you can set this card" and then give them standard handtrap effects, like negate one monster effect (Veiler) or destroy one card (Ogre), or negate a specialsummon from deck (Ash) so you can technically go +5 with this but you have to wait a turn until you can use them after setting. and your limited to 5 becouse of your S/T colums
I think the lack of power creep of normal traps is so valid. The fact that we don't have a normal trap that says "destroy target monster" without fulfilling a condition is insane. if they released one it might se light experimentation in incredibly specific builds.
Best fix I can think of are printing Traps with good effects on activation, but also with even better effects if they're removed via an opponent's card effect. Like taking the field wipe as an example, what if on activation it non-target destroys two monsters the opponent controls, but if the opponent removes it from the field via Cosmic or a pop, it wipes the opponent's board on a SS4.
Traps are far from being a failed mechanic. The thing is that they have to either be searchable during a combo, like Swordsoul Blackout, have a Graveyard/Banished effect (again, like Swordsoul Blackout) or a condition that makes them be able to activate from the hand like Imperm and Evenly. Counter traps like the solemns are broken, but only if you know you are going first.
Yes because a trap card is not a mechanic a trap card is a card type. A mechanic would be normal summoning or activating a card or flipping a card. These are mechanics. A spell card is not a mechanic it is a card type. An xyz monster is not a mechanic it is a card type. XYZ summoning is a mechanic.
Even then for trap decks, the best Solemn is Strike because it is good for breaking boards. Daruma Cannon can get negated by a monster really easily, but Strike can make sure it goes through.
@@Pkey995 Does it matter when you know exactly what they mean? Like you know he meant card type. I get being pedantic when it’s useful for disambiguation but there is nothing you could misconstrue about the way he worded his statement if you’re familiar with the game.
@@Exisist5151 You can actually choose to banish ANY Swordsoul Trap to make a token(even that awful continuous one that only exists to banish your own cards), though doing that does require some setup like Chixiao's search effect(which can banish instead of adding to hand). The problem with doing that(the setup required) is they didn't give those cards the mechanics to do that themselves aside from a Continuous Trap you have to SET first because Trap mechanics. So you'd have to use something like Taia or Chengying to actually get the cards to a point where they can be banished if the opponent doesn't do that randomly for you with something like Cosmic Cyclone or Chaos Angel, which would almost never be at an opportune moment to take advantage of it.
As a competitive player I wanna say there is a big part of this conversation that is missing The player going first not only establishes a board but they generate so much card advantage that traps don't even matter anymore, like say I'm going second and set TT sure I may be able to hit a few monsters with it but it won't matter much since the cards I destroyed more than likely float I just don't understand the game design where going first gets to make a almost unbreakable board and generate so much advantage that if u crack the board they still have the follow up to kill you on turn 3 It almost forces you to otk or lose which traps don't help with.......what I think will be interesting is if they made a trap that functions like a normal trap (you can set it for some stun eff) but also put a effect on it that can only be activated from hand the turn its drawn so u can run traps and not have infinite bricks in deck....something similar to overloaded from mtg
The game design ended up that way because it shifted towards making pop off turns happen every game on the first turn. In old Yugioh you'd spend a few turns assembling combo to pop off and win. Konami's designers probably thought the game would be more appealing if those adrenaline rush turns could happen more often. But then they needed to escalate further and further to keep the power creep going so we ended up with a broken mess of a game that was NEVER intended to be this fast. This gameplay shift happened shortly after mobile gaming became the dominant industry in Japanese gaming. Everyone back in the early 2010s were trying to figure out how to make their games appeal to shorter attention spans to continue to appeal to shifting market trends. Nearly every Japanese TCG became a power creep burst gameplay mess back in the mid 2010s so it was clearly a trend. Shorter more bursty games were the shift.
I think having turn zero where both players (or maybe just the player going 2nd) are allowed to set trap cards could be interesting. Although that won't fix battle tricks...
Normal trap You can discard this card; each time your opponent special summons a monster(s), excavate the top card from deck and if it is a spell/ trap card , add to hand or set to field
I hope farfa reads this comment: There is indeed a card named "Gravity Behemoth" that says if it's not the first turn of the duel.. it has an awful eff but the concept is there. I liked that design aspect.
I think one idea that farfa mentioned was really great. If they made more trap cards that specifically can't be negated. They don't even have to be counter traps that can't be chained to at all, just make it so they can't be negated. Then they would be able to handle the generic extra deck boss monsters people always complain about that are just negates, like Baronne, Savage, etc. Then they don't even need to be continuous floodgates or non-chainable counter traps. You could have normal trap card that's compulse 2 that can't be negated, and suddenly it can out your opponent's Baronne and Savage easily. It's still not amazing since you have to set and wait and maybe you could just use Lava Golem or whatever else instead, but that's just the starting idea and it's a lot better than what trap cards are doing right now. I also like the idea you guys talked about of just make more traps float. They don't all have to be as strong as Waking the Dragon, but why not have them float into setting other cards from the deck or gy. It really is strange that monsters floating became really popular like 10 years ago now, but we haven't seen trap cards do the same thing. The best they get is occasionally one has a gy effect, but nothing wide spread and few float when removed from the field. I think both of these ideas can also apply to flip monsters which are another heavily outdated aspect of the game that used to be central to game play.
I'm against that idea, not allowing a card to be negated is too lopsided. Giving them the Super Poly clause is acceptable though, meaning for all intents and purposes it does what you want but can be negated still by a very minimal amount of niche cards with continuous effects.
I think there needs to be a clear distinction between making good traps and making traps good. Because it's super easy to make a good trap - just slap some OP effect on it and there you go, but making traps as a whole good is pretty much impossible due to their fundamental flaw. Game mechanics in TCG could be classified into three groups - positive, negative and neutral. Positive offer you some kind of benefit, negative serve as a trade off for higher value and neutral are a combination of both. You'd think that traps were supposed to be neutral as a sort of sidegrades or rather support to spells - you play spells on your turn and you cover opponent's turn with traps. And that's how it works in Rush Duels. But actually in normal Yugioh traps were always an afterthought. Going as far back as manga, the earliest game didn't even have traps, Takahashi came up with them later as a tool for dramatic tension (the classic "you've just triggered my trap card!" and "what could this set card be?"). The role of traps as gameplay pieces was never that thought out and they just kinda fell into "use to surprise your opponent" category aka the source of interruption during opponent's turn in the story. But even then they weren't good since spells could be activated during either turn as well and were held together by a duct tape Battle City rule that forced you to play traps by not allowing to set and activate more than 1 spell per turn. So the cracks were there from the very beginning. Then the physical game came out and solidified traps as mainly interrupt pieces. For like a the first couple of boosters, since despite many traps revolving around interrupting your opponent there were (even in the manga) a lot that were essentially just magenta/red/pink spells - traps which effects could've been easily put on spell cards with no changes. This is a second role or quality of trap mechanic - it's a drawback placed on effects that would've been too good on spells. At least that's how it was supposed to be. In reality a lot of these spell-traps actually had and to this day still have worse effects than contemporary spells. Going back to interrupt-traps, the real traps, they're even worse because who the hell designs a game piece meant to be a response to opponent's actions as requiring to sit on the field for the whole turn before it could be used? A writer who has no experience with TCG design. But surely Konami didn't make the same mistake? Nope, quick effects, but more importantly quickplay spells - literally traps, but better in actually everything, including mind games and decision making. And quickplay spells have been part of the game since the very beginning and have only grown more prevalent. And yet we still wonder why traps are a bad? In conclusion, traps were always poorly designed slightly more dramatic spells that were sometimes used as a tradeoff for powerful effects, but usually just made mediocre effects even worse. Traps are both incompetent counterspells and don't feel good or interesting as tradeoff for good effects as well as existing in the game that was not built to accommodate for them and over the years actively pushed mote competition over traps's already restricted niche. You cannot completely resolve the issue and make traps good as a game mechanic without rebooting the game itself, but as Rush shows it's a viable way to give traps the needed dominion over certain part of the game. In TCG/OCG "fixing" traps by giving them more broken effects would just breed unnecessary powercreep and coin flip/draw the out games, but also letting you completely circumvent the mechanic altogether isn't a viable solution either since you basically removing their mechanic from the game. In my opinion there needs to be a complete overhaul to how traps are designed and what roles they're supposed to cover with focus on what unique elements they bring for the gameplay (bluffing, trap monsters, quick grave effects, etc). And for the love of egyptian gods, cup of ace and blos Konami should stop printing pink spells. Just stop. If a card isn't meant to be used during opponent's turn or be reset from the graveyard, it doesn't need to be a trap. Make it a spell, make it a quickplay spell for that matter, but stop printing all those mediocre cards made even worse by the fact they're traps.
great post 1- trap cards are not a mechanic but a card type. 2- the idea of traps was not a great one. having copied mtg in so many things why not just having interaction from hand via instant/sorceries? setting trap before using them doesnt add anything. 3- evolving your game in a direction that leaves behind one ofyour 3 card types is just nonsense.
@@goncaloferreira6429 well, card type in itself is part of game's core mechanics. Often this kind of analyst goes over specific "software" mechanics (see mtg keywords or archetype gimmicks in yugioh), but I think it's also useful to examine the game's "hardware" this way. Honestly, the idea of placing interactions on board to signify or bluff your intentions isn't bad, it's just that the game is not build to accommodate such gameplay whatsoever. Even in Rush, where I'd argue traps finally got fixed, the element of bluffing and mind games is practically nonexistent, because, unless your opponent is going first, it's guaranteed cards they're setting are traps and considering how sorta homogeneous reactive traps are (do X on summon if Y, do X when Y attacks), it just makes this whole part of the gameplay feel monotonous.
@@kindlingkingmy point was to show that ygo people dont know what a game mechanic is. gamés core mechanics would be the base rules os the game. mechanics add on and change the base mechanics. trap cards are a card type. the way you design trap cards is another thing.
The game technically already has language for lingering effects: an activated effect is an effect in the cain, so they would be “non-activated effects,” and you would negate the “application,” which is the first word ai think of that yugioh uses instead of resolution.
The balancing factor behind trap trick is that by design it is impossible to search limited floodgates. Simply putting some normal traps on the banlist solves a lot of the issues with trap trick being abused. This is why metaverse going to 1 was a very good initial hit to mystic mine burn.
Funnily enough I honestly think Transaction Rollback was just created to be a gimmicky anime card that happened to turn out to be good with Lab so they finally printed it. Appeared in the anime years ago to copy Mirror Force in the opponent’s gy and then be used to copy another effect to not die later.
You can hypothetically "fix" trap cards in various ways based on all of the different trap cards that work, like imperm, and other "failed mechanics" like rituals which were also fixed. But notably every solution that fixes trap cards fixes them by altering them to such a degree the original dynamic that defines them is lost. "If my mother had wheels she'd be a bike but she doesn't so she's not".
We just need a turn 0 trap seting phase for whoever goes second, like before the actual first turn the player going second gets a single phase where they can strictly set trap cards
Make trap cards that can respond to being targeted or destroy. Ex. If a set card you control is targeted you can activate this card. If one or more cards you control would be destroyed you can activate this set card. Things like that that don't let you go off turn 0 but let you go off going second if your opponent does some. So an eff could say for each trap that would be destroyed the rest of this turn you can set a trap from your deck.
i really hoped theyd mention swordsoul blackout. it is an archetype trap BUT it isnt some sort of counter trap and it has multiple uses going first and second.
@@Ruggi21 you can use the token effect going first or second. if you've drawn it you can pitch it for longyuan and banish with taia. you can banish it straight from deck to get another token with chixiao. having the extra token can be used for making another synchro with a 7 tenyi for PEP or with Shthana to make another 8. you can also pop the token with Baxia to get a revive on an unused mo ye or taia.
@@Ruggi21 PEP is usually in the flex spot and I only really saw it when the card came out. but it is still technically something you can do and it is a really nice option when you're going second. so I figured I should include it.
@@Block360mc sorry to disturb man but I’ve heard people say that it’s possible to make more than 1 lvl10 consistently but I don’t see the line and you seem knowledgeable on swordsoul
Magic has a series of cards, the leylines, that all have an extra effect that if they are in your opening hand you can start the game with them on the field as a pregame action after it is chosen who goes first and any mulligan decisions have been made. What about a series of trap cards that say if they are in your opening hand and you are going second, before the game starts you can reveal them and start with them face down in your spell or trap zone? For example: Leyline Trap Hole Trap If this card is in your opening hand and you are going second: You can reveal this card and if you do start the game with this card face down in your spell/trap zone. When your opponent summons a monster(s): Banish that monster. Your opponent can't activate cards or effects in response to this card's activation. I don't know where this falls in the power spectrum, but it's not meant to be a tested proof of concept but a basic idea of what the mechanic would look like.
I also think a really often overlooked support card for normal traps is arias. Arias isn't really a labrynth card at all, he can be played in any trap deck as just an exceptional hand trap.
At the 55 minute mark. Man I'd kill for something like that. Maybe something like: If this card is activated on the field: Destroy all cards on the field. If this set card would leave the field or return to the deck: Activate it instead." One complaint I have about trap decks is actually that any generically strong traps WILL be abused by labyrinth so now Konami has to design around the fact that every normal trap is searchable so making this a nuke stops lab from using it but then no deck except Traptrix and any other decks that are immune to or want self nukes would play it. Until we gets to the point where we look at lab the same way we do as decks from 10 years ago traps can't be made too good but then at the same time the fact that Lab plays any copies of cards like Compulse is ridiculous.
At around the 50 minute mark, Josh basically floated the Cycling mechanic from MTG, which I think just as a general inclusion might be a neat inclusion in the game just to lower the chance of bricking.
The problem with Trap cards could be solved with a Master Rule change. They need a mechanical change. One that I would favor would be saying that Trap cards can be activated as long as they were set by the beginning if this phase. So going second, you could set in Main 1, and then activate in Battle or Main 2.
Please, what a basic idea. There's a ton of stuff that can be elaborated on using only the mechanics that already exist but are not fully explored. Thinking you need to change the rules when design can solve most of the issues is jumping the gun.
I'd be down for seeing some 'from-the-hand' battle traps. Architype specific at first. Give Battlin' Boxers some traps, something like 'can be activated from the hand, gain 800 ATK, and if card was set, cannot be destroyed by battle'. The issue with interacting with lingering effects is they'd then have to live somewhere. I'd definitely appreciate if there were a widget in Master Duel that let me know what lingering restriction I just placed on myself (locked into fiends), and could let me check what lingering effects are in... er, effect. I'd love it if the Problem-solving card-text would update to format more like OCG cards, where different effects are bullet-pointed, and lingering restrictions shoutld be at the bottom of the card in a different type-face. Lastly, I know that 'Once per turns' and junk started as a band-aid solution to keep certain powerful effects from being repeated, but how about designing cards that you'd only WANT to activate once, or can only physically activate once. The Galaxy-Eyes architype has a few of these, like Accelight (which also has a once per turn, for some reason). Give architypes starters that aren't once per turn, so it's just a normal starter going first, but if you draw two going second, it's easier to play into an established board (have a starter negated? Good thing we drew the second copy). The Live★Twins ALMOST function like this: Lil-la to search Kisik-il, and if opponent destroys Lil-la in the same chain, Kisik-il will search for Lil-la in a new chain.
Yes! A Status Window like Pokémon TGGLive has is ABSOLUTELY NECCESARY IN master duel. (Global effects ) Can only special summon 1 time per turn Cannot add cards from deck to hand All damage is decreased by half. [for example if you got drolled after using pot of prosperity with Winda on the field] They kiiiinda attempt to do this by creating an extremely tiny Icon on a card which has lost the ability to declare an attack on the field. But it’s not clear There should be a way to highlight a card or a player and see a status menu with all Xenolocks, restrictions, buffs and lingering effects written out in bullet points
#ReviveTheBattleTraps After the TrapTrix Deck with iconic Trap Hole Theme, I'm just hoping Konami is bring this Mirror Force Deck back with Modern updates as a Battle Trap Staples!!!! 😢 Missing the old days yelling "You activated my trap- Mirror Force" Maybe a Modern "Counter-Trap (Quaking) Mirror Force" (With cost like Solemn Warning) that does thing when being destroyed while maintaing not too broken would be lovely to slow down the game and good playing against omni-negates mons, Shifting Meta back to MST, destroy spell/trap meta to would diverse deck building 🎉 P.S: Some great cards Design from the Infinite Imperm can open ideas like a " Counter Trap that can activate the turn it set IF your opponent activate monster in the Same Column it set (Going second You set it in the column of their Baronne, then does negate things or destroy with its Speed-3) We should also nerf monsters that can do exactly what trap and spell does with being an extra tuner to summon (who needs raigeki, solemn when we can 1 card-combo into field wipe and omni-negate monsters, and we also pay half LP for a slow counter trap 😅)
My take on Trap Cards: I don't think that they're a failed mechanic. If anything, Traps do have a lot of potential that monsters simply don't have, but they have to be designed in a way that feels worth using compared to Spells and Monsters. Trap Cards are at their best when they enable you to play on your opponent's turn as well as putting up meaningful interactions. I know that Labrynth is the go-to example for a Trap Deck done right, but I think that Dinomorphia is up there in that category too; the existence of Dinomorphia Frenzy and Dinomorphia Intact not only allow for the player to play on their opponent's turn and put pressure on them, but they're also meaningful boardbreakers since there are very few ways for almost all current-day Decks to interact with Counter Trap cards, and Rexterm breaks boards by itself and your opponent is forced to respect it. For a good bit, Konami has been doing a very good job at making Trap Cards playable with the release of Decks like Dinomorphia and Labrynth, but Thrust also boosts the viability of Normal Traps in general by making any key traps searchable on T1 because your opponent uses a Hand Trap. It can be expanded further, but it's a good start
@@zerochill4096 It'll just get brushed away regardless by those two even if Pkey is right. It's not even policing, you don't even know what that word means. The amount of people who don't even know or realize that Trap cards inherently aren't mechanics and are in fact a card "type" is more worrying than anything else so thus far. We're in worse trouble than Konami destroying the game even more.
A big takeaway for me is that trap cards need to either offer card advantage over time or instant playability to be good. Cards need to be designed with a resource grind in mind. I think a fantastic solution is making more trap cards have continuous effects on the field so that they can gain advantage over time without being floodgates - sulliek is a great example of a trap card that is strong, but also provides advantage over time AND has utility in the GY.
Trap Cards need to have effects in hand and on field, just like Imperm. Effects on field and gy it's turn 2 and 3, if they slow the game a little bit that would be good too. Something like this: If your opponent controls 2 or more monsters of the same type you can banish 1 of those monsters. (if you don't control cards on the field you can activate this card from your hand). If the the effect of this card his negated you can draw 1 card. You can only this effect of "card name" once per turn. This would be cool, I think isn't too much It would be amazing to get Tom from MSTV discussing about weird rullinhs and specifics rules and interactions with him, would be firee
I think trap cards should have an inherant mechanic to the card where hard once per turn you can mulligan 1 trap card in your draw phase after you draw a card, this helps avoid bricking on them in trap heavy decks while still not removing them entirely, I think we have to accept the fact that in this day and age of yugioh where if the card isn't useable on your turn it's going to be pretty bad then while not completely removing what makes it a trap card mechanically like good trap cards now such as imperm and red reboot, this gives them some more universal utility without konami having to print such polarizing trap cards that have insane effects to "mitigate" the fact it mechanically is a trap card , because this approach honestly just isn't enjoyable for either player and doesn't address the underlying problem. With plenty of ways to search traps being able to put one back in the deck/ printing trap cards with hand effects that aren't just "You can activate this card from the hand". konami could even go so far as to make a specific achetype of trap card have utility hand effects that are like searchers and board trap effect that is also some form of appropriately impactful board disruption would also let trap cards have a more general application in decks rather than being so specific 90% of them are win more cards or bricks
Changing the rules for all traps allowing them to be activated on your opponents turn while you control no cards. Making it a unique mechanic different to quick play spells
@@Ruggi21 it's almost like people just come up with dumb ideas that create more problems than they solve. And what this guy said was technically possible at one point when Makyura was legal and without an errata.
One thing about trap cards that hasn’t been mentioned is the lack of gy effects. Nowadays, every normal and quick play spell card has a gy effect. That isn’t the norm for traps.
Edit: match up was the incorrect phrase because I was thinking of the first effect of labrynth. This is definitely not true if we are speaking in general. It is the norm for normal and quick play spells in archetypes to have gy effects, and this applies to traps as well. I cannot think of any recenrlt powerful spells with gy that can be played in any deck for general use, but this makes perfect sense due to how they can be used immediately on your turn in order to gain value. Recent powerful side deck worthy traps with gy effects, like the black goat laughs and rollback, still have the issue of being slow but just provide a powerful effect in the gy if removed from the fiel or even sent to gy via something like goods. Even then, a card like rollback can still fail to provide any really benefit in the gy depending on the match up.
@@chewdoom8415 "Even then, a card like rollback can still fail to provide any really benefit in the gy depending on the match up." a statement that can apply equally to any type of card conceivable and therefore kind of superfluous for this discussion.
@@admontblanc Match-up was the wrong way to put it. I was mistaking the on field effect for the gy when I said that because the former's value relies on the opponent's card. Even with the gy effect, it totally depends on how your deck is built in order to take advantage of it, which is why most people use it labrynth and for cheesy mills that floodgate. Goat is different because you only really lose value when facing a deck that has little interaction with the extra deck, which is most decks in the majority of decks in the meta use. And some cards are just very limited in their usage. You want traps that are very versatile, so while that statement could apply to any card, if we were to look at kn terms of versatility, you can really narrow down things, especially when taking into account what function we are discussing. I would say designing traps like this would be comparable to handtraps.
Q: What's the difference between a floodgate deck and a combo deck that ends on 4+ negates? A: One takes a couple minutes to set some traps and maybe play some monsters (usually), the second takes 5 minutes but feels like 50.
I don't know how others feel but I think it would be cool to see pendulum monsters that had their pen effects act like trap cards (so like instead of the green orange border it would be red and orange) and just off the top of my head have them be able to support traps in some way like low scales help normal traps and high scales help counter traps. The idea being that you set them into spell and trap zones, they would have activation requirements like traps, but if they are activated in the pen zones they can stay there and act as a scale / continuous trap and if used in a different zone they would just go to the grave. I don't like pendulums, don't play them so I can't tell if this is busted or bad, but when thinking about how to make traps better things that came to mind were Paleos, Artifacts, and Pendulums. Just a way to scramble up backrow so that already existing traps can lurk among them and maybe shine.
There are already pendulum monsters with effects that benefit trap decks, such as Guiding Ariadne. Konami can also easily print pendulum cards that specifically support trap-based decks without needing to go into generic pendulum plays for advantage, like extremely low or extremely high level pendulum monster with a set of scale 0 and 13 monsters with pendulum and field effects that boost a trap archetype's trap card effects and that one monster is a boss card for the deck that is hard to out or boosts/protects those effects too.
Hello! While I was watching this video I thought of a master rule that could be implemented that makes traps faster but still keeps the spirit of old school traps alive: The trap step. So at the beginning of a MtG game there is a mulligan step where people can decide whether they want to mulligan or not, in yugioh there could be a “Trap step” before the game where both players can set as many traps as they want, those traps could then be activated on turn 1. To balance this step maybe it could only be 1 or 2 traps that could be set, or you have to show your opponent which traps were set.
the first idea of a trap card that Josh is looking for would be Ultimate Torrential Tribute banish all spell/traps OR monsters your opponent controls ,you must control no other (face-up) cards to activate this card. (when you activate this card on the second turn of the game you change the OR to an AND)
And then you created another broken card that can win on the spot. I think that it is a bad designed card. The problem is not that trap cards are weak the problem is that monsters are broken especially searchers and extenders enableing "unbreakable turn 1" boards. Your/joshs suggestion is not much different than konamis by bringing out "1 card win conditions" like nibiru but I think that is the wrong path. The problem is the first turn board and the roots are the searchers and extenders. Get rid of them and we will see old monster roles like *beaters* *tricksters* *walls* *floaters* . If these roles are relevant again traps are relevant again. Handtraps are automatically not that relevant again and boardbreakers can be limited again. Boss monsters would be difficult to bring out so it would be hype to see them. Nowadays most of the time you face of a horde of bosses when going second and you can either deal with them with a card like you suggested and you win or you lose on the spot... thats no hype imo. Hype is when your oponent or you are afraid to atk because you are afraid of a battle trap.
@@Pkey995 I would be cool with a card like that if it also had clause that made it so that you can only activate 1 more card or effect until the end of your next turn after using such a card.
I think GY effects are the way to go, as well as having several in-archetype ways to discard the trap. That way the trap can still do something going second. Just look at Tear traps, they're obviously great going first, but still fine going second because you can still use their GY effect.
I think the main issue is monsters have become "engine" whereas trapcards haven't: theyre almost all purely reactive and dont advance your game state. Exceptions: Lab traps, Exo Vadis. If you break your opponents board then set these you are quite toasty, but if you set torrential, you HAVE to draw engine the next turn, or youve spent 2 turns not actually advancing your game plan. Consider: Handtraps are quick, but they dont actually win you the game. Draw 5 handtraps and you might survive till turn 3 but if you dont draw engine you lose.
Yeess I would love to see Rarran here in a "yugioh for new players episode" he has really good chemistry with Farfa and I'm sure he would like Josh too.
You have to give trap cards graveyard effects and on field effect just in case they get destroyed also let them use both effects the same turn not just 1. If lab could use both big welocme effects that would have been goated
The only way they can fix *generic* trap cards without printing a crapload of support that just makes Labrynth OP is to change the rules of the game. For example, allow for something like a once-per-turn "normal spell/trap set" just like your normal summon, but it can be performed in any phase. That would still lose to things like Twin Twisters, but no longer lose to things like Masquerena into a Knightmare or whatever, because you could do it in your End Phase. And even then, it wouldn't make them *good*, just "kinda playable." Enough to make control decks play unsearchable counter traps, basically. Alternatively, add an actual "turn 0" where each player is allowed to only set cards and not activate anything. Incidentally, this would also help flip monsters. But, on the other hand, it would probably make Labrynth OP, since they wouldn't need the clock to get their traps live on turn 1. Either way, you'd need some banlist hits for the generic floodgates so that the game doesn't become just totally unplayable, and you'd also need to basically ban all of Runick and Purrely, plus a bunch of other meta decks' quick play spells, since both of these changes would also buff quick plays, which are *not* in a bad spot at the moment. But I get the feeling Konami is just going to mostly keep printing in-archetype traps that are only sometimes worth playing, a new Thrust target every other year, and occasionally, once in a blue moon, an archetype like Tearlament where all of its trap cards float, or a staple that can be played from the hand like Evenly Matched or Imperm or Red Reboot. Why fix the game when you could just sell more product?
I always wonder how things would be if instead of going the hand trap route, they gave the player going second the ability to set a few traps from their hand before turn 1. This would, of course, need to exclude continuous traps because of flood gates.
This might be a completely idiotic idea, but let me cook. What if there was a new type of trap cards that utilize zones as activation triggers (when a monster is summoned in the same column, it activates). It would be more telegraphed, but with that you could give super powerful generic effects to them, plus effects if they are removed, like your opponent has to pay a price to disarm the trap. A really crazy (and probably excessive) effect you could have is: when a monster is summoned in this column, and your opponent has two monster in this column, you draw 2 and set a card from the deck. Maybe then having a down arrow is not the same as a diagonal one. I don't know, I think it could be cool.
Talking about a card that destroys all your opponents cards is You’re Finished. And it’s kinda mid unless you have lots of effects to activate on your opponents turn
I wouldn't say it failed as though it was a bad mechanic to begin with. It failed because Konami made the other mechanics faster, and Traps never caught up.
I would want more generic trap archetypes (like the forbidden quickplays/solemn trap cards) and also under each effect it just reads something like "--and if this card resolves, draw 1 card for every turn this card has been set/ if this card has been set for x turns, this cards effect cannot be negated/effects on field/in graveyard cannot be activated in response to this card's effect." At least then, you're reimbursed for playing a slower effect.
I remember traps started to get power creeped in pendulum era EXCEPT for the generic traps that were super busted. Like D barrier, solemn strike/warning. Almost all architype based traps on paper sounded good but in practice were not good enough for meta relevance. Look at eternal soul for DM. Sure DM was maybe rogue tier when ES and Circle came out at the time but it quickly fell out of the fringes of competitiveness and just sits in "fun deck" status. Torrential tribute still is relevant today because it can deal with the whole board, if it's set and your opponent is getting greedy comboing off it can be a huge punish to clear the board. Ultimately traps can't be viable today unless they have a super impactful effect that is generically good, and/or in the case of evenly matched/imperm it breaks the trap mechanic rules by being able to be activated from hand.
Instead of making it "except the second turn of the game", I would want it to be a bit more thematically worded. Here's what I've come up with: Destroy 1 card on your opponents field, if your opponent started this turn with 3 or more cards on the field, destroy all cards on your opponents field instead. This would be a powerful trap going first (not targeting removal) but also be thematically worded to be especially powerful going second.
the one thing that hasn't really been power creeped about trap cards are counter traps simply because of the response window stuff. other card types rarely have that kinda stuff (excluding super poly and calamities and stuff but those are Broken.)
What if they started releasing traps with "this card can't leave the field the turn it was set", the opponent tries to destroy the trap but as it is turned faceup, it's not destroyed instead it goes back face down? Cause I think the most vulnerable moment for traps is against an established board at the end phase when the opponent can simply destroy them and make them just dead irrelevant cause they couldn't even try to activate. Or it could also be "unaffected by card effects the turn it was set". If monsters can have protection, why can't traps? The value going second being a strong possible disruption on the next turn (with no set up unlike an ED monster). But the ideal solution for me would be a master rule where quick effects and quick plays are spell speed 2, but traps are spell speed 3 and counter traps spell speed 4, so monsters and spells can't answer to traps.
Honestly they should just make a new masterrule that says u can activate traps from ur hand during ur own turn by discarding 1 card. Cards like get out would be decent going first or ok boardbreakers going second
How you feel about trap cards with decent effects that become waya stronger when something happens. Something like a compulsory that when you special summon a monster can't be responded, but can be activated even if there is not a special summon, so in case it would be destroyed you can chain and bait (or do something) but if you get to the stronger activation its just way better. Also loving the podcast!!
I think all the Ghost Girls/monster hand traps should have been made actual trap cards instead. They lose the advantage of being bodies but would gain small additional effects if set. Basically make all hand traps like imperm. Had this been the case, the viability of trap cards would never have been questioned. The identity of how trap cards used to work would have changed, but at least you would be seeing purple cards in every deck.
More traps should float. Infinite Impermenance and other cards like it should be very limited in the card pool. Playing trap cards from hand means the mechanic is being changed fundamentally. To keep traps and their mechanic unique simply addding floating effects can go a long way to making them viable again. Makes the opponent think twice about nuking back row
One way I would say you could improve traps is by being able to activate them when the trigger condition is met. For example, one really interesting trap that saw a ton of play and I always would’ve loved to play in Labrynth was Dimension Slice. That card is spicy because if you Xyz summon you can activate it the same turn is set. Also we need more traps that have GY effects like Big Welcome Labrynth love the fact it’s a Labrynth trap but also compulse if it’s in the GY. Yugioh has done effects like this in the past I’m just not really sure why they don’t keep making traps that can be activated in the turn they are set if they meet they’re trigger condition or give them like a floating effect, or a GY effect. Also I’ll keep saying this revealing trap cards is counter intuitive. It defeats the whole point of it being a “trap” lol the fact people don’t respect trap cards anymore is because they can see them coming when you set a card from deck you gotta reveal it. I understand it’s to keep from cheating, but if you have a card that says set a trap from deck and you set Mirror Force it’s not very good because you are announcing your opponent about the trap, your opponent simply will not attack.
some problems with trap cards nowadays are most modern monsters have trigger effect when they destroyed or leave battle field, even it trigger when they're summoned its just feel wrong and seems like doesnt have equal value to remove/destroy the monsters for stopping opponent combos and do note with the traps speed slow. instead the effective ways to stop opp from combos are by restricting opponents play using floodgates
The issue is that one deck has to be dealt with by bouncing monsters while another by destroying them and yet another by banishing them. Therefore traps need extra clauses for the same situations that expand what they can do for you, so more traps with floating effects that are not too broken, but can have powerful effects when set. Kind of like Unchained traps with better effects.
evenly shouldve said: if you control no cards, you can activate this card from your hand at the end of the battle phase. so if you set if you can activate it whenever you want to during your op turn.
Im wondering if you can take the idea of imperm-type traps further. Maybe not mecessarily activating everything from the hand, but having cards that you could either activate immediately after setting by performing a certain action, or if you wait to activate it other than the turn it was set youd get a stronger effect. Something like, this card can be activated the turn it was set by discarding 1 card, destroy one card on the field. If this card was activated on any turn other than one it was set, you can banish the card instead. Problem solving card text aside to prevent fuckery, i could see this speeding up trap cards to be more immediately viable compared to the general "wait one turn to use massively impactful effect"
Traps need to give card advantage, and be hard to stop. Super symchro fusion has a clause that is relevant here. If a trap has "draw a card if this is destroyed by an opponents effect" Or hell, "draw a card when this is sent from the field to the graveyard" that way, if it is destroyed you draw, and if you activate you are getting advantage.
Commentating while watching: -Battle of Legends is ABSOLUTELY HUGE for retro formats, beats me it hasn't been pointed out. Gaia and Absolute Zero reprints made heroes way more affordable for both Edison and Tengu. Exciton knight is a mandatory staple in most of HAT decks, but also Big Eye is huge for Dragons and Sylvans. -History of Traps: now, I've not being playing Goat for 2 years now, and when I was I recall it being so hard enough to make Reasoning Gate stick together to even dream of including traps, but generally good point from Farfa. Especially in Edison traps provide so much value that you should take them into consideration in basically every deck. For example traps are really good in Frogs even if you run treeborn to keep your opponent under pressure or solidify your position. Vayu instead of maximizing on good mills, it runs plenty of traps etc. I believe after Edison traps entered a period of "archetype specificity". In Tengu for example you always play your solemn package + torrential+ dustshoot, but having 3 MST, 3 decrees and heavy storm being legal makes it more questionable to play more of them. Also they start to compete against handtraps. After that we saw some instances of almost complete traps unplayability (Rulers, Dracopal/PePe) and some spot where they shined (HAT, ABC/Paleos, Trickstar/Altergeist). But the complete downfall, and I checked the statistics, happened from the end of 2018 onwards. Now, idk when Patrick was writing for ARG, but to foresee a complete downfall we had to get quite late. -Modern traps: the main issue, as it was pointed out is that, monsters are doing what traps did before but better. Handtraps are the first example, but the Fire end board feels just like: "pick your 7 best traps from your deck and set them 100% of the times as long as you are not interrupted". How do you compete with that? Archetypical traps are not real traps. Lab is not a trap deck. Their archetypical traps are combo pieces. If sending Stovie plus Clock would have ended on a monster quick play tributing itself to get into a bigger one while having a good GY effect, you wouldnt feel any difference. Im with Farfa when he says Imperm is good trap design. Sure, it is primarily an handtrap, but it gets some additional value being set. Probably the way to go is giving traps some decent going second value and a way higher one while they are set. Also, I don't entirely dislike Evenly as a trap. It is basically just an handtrap, but it's the only trap feeling somehow as a torrential tribute in modern yugioh.
Late to the party, but i would love to hear a discussion about the turn 1.5/2 where my opponent goes 1st sets up a board and then passes. Then on my standby phase the opponent gets to do 30+ moves or so before i even get to do anything
They took trap card's place and gave it to the hand traps. There's no more place for them in modern decks with how fast the game is now. Konami broke Yugioh. Back in the day, we all had decent balance of spells, traps, and monsters, and they had their roles - spells did things, monsters fought, and traps protected you. Traps had the clear role - defense, blocks, counters, and restrictions. Konami don't know how to power balance and can't avoid powercreep.
I hate Skill Drain as much as the next dude but it isn't like there's not Book of Moon/Eclipse, Forbidden Lance, etc. (even chain Torrential) to play around.
Hello HotC crew, I believe adding timestamps would be something worth exploring. The main way I get into podcast is by clicking on timestamps such as the title topic and then staying around the rest of the episode. Keep it up, really been enjoying the podcast so far!
If ya want timestamps then why not do it yourself 🤔?
@@6210classick because he needs to watch the whole thing and he doesnt' care about watching the whole thing? 🤔
The video title is the topic my guy
@@6210classick If someone just want to hear their ideas on how to design future trap cards, a timestamp can help them skip the part they are not interested in, especially if they are busy and want to save some time
What’s the point of making timestamps by myself if I have to skim through the entire video anyway?
@@6210classick If someone just want to hear their ideas on how to design future trap cards, a timestamp can help them skip the part they are not interested in, especially if they are busy and want to save some time
What’s the point of making timestamps by myself if I have to skim through the entire video anyway?
Omg its my favorite podcast! Featuring a pro player and Josh!
The existence of a trap card that punishes you like waking the dragon, but has a good utility effect like imperm, I think would be really interesting as it would exist in the psyche of every player before they remove a set card.
Yes. There is wayyyyy to much back row hate in the game.
What’s the point of playing any traps when your opponent has a 1 in 10 chance of opening duster in their first turn or up to 50% if they are running lightning storm.
I was gonna say: make more traps that operate like Paleos. I also would not be opposed to normal traps with activation protections similar to stuff like Ultimate Slayer
Literally every Tear trap. I loved how that deck temporarily made HFD a bad card
I use Artifacts sometimes for this, like for Evil Eye or Unchained, since they both do a ton of destruction and like their own spells being destroyed too
@@drewbabe they would be perfect if they were in another archetype and actually had downsides
If monsters have 3 effects then traps should have that many effects. One effect in hand, another effect to activate it the turn it's set, an effect to set it from the gy without being banished or an additional effect that banishes it as cost.
Hell, just making it punishing to use monsters to negate or destroy Trap cards would work WONDERS for their style of play and slow down the game.
@@nm2358Honestly, negation is not much of an issue since you only have two omin negates that really see play, but it is good to cover if we get more s/t negation and if that new rank 10 becomes meta in the future.
Just giving them more gy effects and not limiting them to one effect per turn could help, but then comes the question of how to balance the effects
i like the idea of making every trap card have a waking the dragon effect if its destroyed by your opponent moving forward.
The problems I see with that is if you give traps three effects especially ones in the hand or grave is 1. It would physically slow down the game asking if there is a response with every move. 2. The cost or conditions they activate would have to be specific or so finely tuned that it’s not just effect into effect into effect at basically 0 cost but get a positive gain or your opponent going negative so hard they quit. 3. It would make chains a nightmare especially if the traps activate multiple times in the chain
@@rabbidcreature9681 yeah absolutely restrictions like that should definitely be put in place if traps had 3 effects, on in hand, field, and graveyard. Something like one effect per card name would balance it if each effect was good. And the game is already slowed down with the numerous activation timings of hand traps so it shouldn't be a problem.
I love how the solutions to this failure in game design is: "just make trap cards NOT trap cards."
Yes instead of nerfing spell cards.
@@pkkiller_apathy4568instead of nerfing monsters that can do exactly what trap and spell does with being an extra tuner to summon (who needs raigeki, solemn when we can 1 card-combo into field wipe and omni-negate monsters 😅)
@@duyknguyen They can’t nerf monsters because it changes the dynamics of the game too much in a short period of time especially with breakers like lightning storm and evenly *existing*, I definitely think they should at least make a side format with a lot of bans or alot of material erratas for generic bosses like accesscode, borrel, and Baronne + and very few engine erratas. (Something more of an experimental format like certain games have before they decide to do nerfs and buffs
@@duyknguyen omni negates are overpowered in general and basically cost nothing due to how much advantage you get from them. Unfortunately there isn't a system to help going into them. The same is true about towers. But that wasn't the topic here. The question was how do you make trap cards work in modern yugioh. The answer is you don't you have to slow down everything else. The easiest place to start is nerfing/limit how many spell cards that can be played in a turn. This is already present in trap cards because they must charge for a turn so the maximum is 5.
i mean this is basically what modern ritual decks are
They simply need to make traps have additional effects when removed from the field by other card effects or allow them to set themselves without banishing them under some condition so they can be re-used and keep up resource wise
Could give a few something to the effect of "If this card is targeted by an opponent's card effect, it can be activate the turn it is set." It would keep the trap cards usable in an interaction space, while keeping the spirit of laying a trap. Even just a couple would make people hesitant to target backrow again, now that Waking the Dragon's on destruction isn't as often triggered due to other methods of removal becoming more and more common.
@@ee822 that would be a great idea that coupled w giving some more traps small in hand effects like a pop or negate or smt like that and then have the set effect be wayy better
Just so imperm isnt as tellegrafed
But giving others on target effects would be awesome
The Unchained backrow and that new Lightsworn Trap from LEDE
@@ee822 there are many such effects they could add to new trap cards if this is really so much of an issue.
Have more traps with these effects;
- 'when negated then 'x''
- 'When destroyed then 'x'
- 'When removes from the field to hand, deck, gy then x'
-" If sent to the graveyard, set it on the field face up/down"
Essentially just give them ways to play around it, whether thats immunities or additional effects
It’s crazy people can’t imagine strong normal trap cards being good without thinking about it being a floodgate, it’s a lack of imagination, ofc there are ways to do it. Imagine a Torrential retrain that goes something like: “if a monster is summoned, banishes all monsters, if it’s poped/banished by the op it’s reset but banished when it leaves the field.”, this would be strong, recursive, much better then what we have right now (and it could be designed even stronger yet not broken I think).
You've just solving a issue of powercreep with even more powercreep. The existence of such cards would only prompt the release of even more resilient decks and even better all around good removal, just like since nibiru we only got more decks that can easily play through it.
@@kindlingkingremove monsters with the role *searcher* *extender* / *recruiters* (from the deck, I think the worse recruiters the recyclers like junk synchron are fine) and see what happens. These are the real powercreep monsters in yugioh. Imagine yugioh without them. Would we see traps? Would we see equip spells? What are the monster roles that are left? *beaters* *walls* *tricksters* *floaters* all these with modern bosses and traps? I would love this. But hey we are stuck with turn 1 boards filled with hordes of bosses waiting for the oponent to scoop because "no out"...
@@Pkey995 again, this would only make decks inconsistent. Not to mention "remove X" isn't exactly a possible solution for a game with set rotation.
Imo traps are unsalvageable. The best you can do is slightly mitigate that by playing into what vague strengths they still have left (trap monsters and quick grave effects) and changing the design philosophy from "something that you interrupt opponent with" to...honestly, no idea. Solving fundamental issues with traps would require rebooting and rebuilding the game from the group up.
@@kindlingking Why do you think consistency is a good thing? I would argue consistency is what makes modern yugioh broken and lame. Baronne for example is only "broken" because it is not difficult to make her. For example if player B has no disruptions and player A got 1 mo ye + a wyrm in hand that result into a chixiau + baronne. Thats what consistency result to. Drawing pictures. When you remove the roots of the problem the extenders/searchers, then we are playing a real game and not drawing pictures/making combos or in extreme cases playing Solitaire. Then you put traps in your decks beaters walls floaters tricksters and so on because guess what those roles are still beeing printed but *ignored* . If you see a new maindeck monster that doesnt have "special summon" or "add/mill" in the text it will be imediatly ignored by everyone. Nowadays because the game is so "consistent" you can basically watch the opponent bring out a horde of bosses thanks to the roots: searchers and extenders, just for you to break the board and win or scoop if you didnt... thats lame imo. I would rather see back and forth and bringing out bosses on turn 4/5 with protections from backrow or monster effects than seeing one sided duels every time. There is nothing special about bringing every game the same 3 kinds of boards per deck and hoping the oponent didnt draw the out. Thats predictable. What makes card games special are random events. And predicting that an oponent will end on X board because he started his combo with Y card is imo a bad thing and that s because of consistency. Thats why people are going back to old ass formats because these duels are unpredictable.
Btw I meant banning with "removing".
@@kindlingking I think the problem with traps activating in the grave is yes they are still traps but they miss at this point their real role of beeing unpredictable. Just like searchable traps. If you know the oponent got X trap set because they searched it last turn then is it really a trap? It is like you re building a trap for your oponent infront of your oponent. Secondary effects in the grave like drawing or protecting monsters and so on is fine but if traps in the grave have actual trap effects like battle trap effects or trap hole effects then that would be as lame as searchable traps. But yeah I am all for set rotations at this point... ygo is a mess imo
Hear me out, make a series of trap cards like imperm, a series of traps that can be activated from your hand on your turn, that do small effects like pop a monster, pop a backrow etc, with larger effects if they'd been set the turn before
Ok idea but then powercreep problem just increases, why play idk cosmic cyclone why you have this or even ghost ogre
@@Ruggi21 true, but today's game is constantly power creeping imo, I feel like it'd only be a matter of time before we got something like this anyways.
But I do understand the point you're making and it is very logical
"small effects like pop a monster, pop a backrow etc"
Typhoon is already a card, even though it has some conditions that make it not so good vs a lot of decks. I feel like people know less and less older cards and forget that are already very interesting options for every play style. I can't believe that after all this time with Labyrinth being a relevant deck in every format and side of the world, including the virtual one, people are seriously discussing if trap cards suck, and now Traptrix is again a decent deck too.
Isn't that basically runick? Just without the set bonus?
Give them big effect like quick effect banish,quick effect mons negate,.. etc but limit user to 2 summon for the turn it is activated and the next turn.
I like how Infinite Impermanence has use going first and second. You can always use it to negate something on the field but you get a stronger effect for setting it as well.
new master rule: every purple card can now be shown to the opponent, then reshuffled into the deck to draw 1 card
Exodia + 35 traps
@@MagnusvonYoshi hard once per turn madge
1:10:35 "Trap Trick, Trap Track, Rollback, Back Jack"
Bars?????
The problem with Trap cards in Yugioh is Monster cards. Adding quick-effects to every monster created a situation in which trapcards became the slowest piece of interaction in the game, and often, no where near as good as the better monsters in the game.
Mirrorjade is non-targeting quick-effect removal /banish of a monster card that moon lights as a Raigeki whenever it is sent to Graveyard.
For Trap cards not to suck they would need to have effects on removal AND negation, that would make them into ACTUAL traps that play around meta cards, and even then, its an uphill for the Trap cards.
You might aswell add a 3rd Graveyard effect for EVERY Trap ontop of an on field destruction effect and negation.
Make fucking omni-negates have to jump through hoops, make Monsters WEAKER by virtue of lacking the utility to mindlessly handle Trap cards better than anything else does in the game.
The only cards that should be beating traps should be cards like Jinzo.
It doesn't help that there's only 5 slots to set traps into and you can summon up to 6 monsters at a time. It's a war of attrition you can't win without spamming floodgates and/or timing Counter Traps to well placed board wipes.
And you don't want to set all 5 slots at a time either because then you risk overextending into board wipes or losing the space to activate power spells that can be used to either refill your hand or out problem monsters that hard counter the traps you have set.
But then the game becomes a sackfest, where a single resolution of such new trap card by your opponent can lose you the game. Yugioh already has an issue of requiring you to have ways (often outside of archetype) to deal with threats that will otherwise shut down your whole play. It doesn't matter how many counter balances you introduce if they're inconsistent at their job.
@@kindlingking The game already is a sackfest of either bricking your opponent using handtraps or floodgating them from the get-go.
While there is a little leeway in the mirror matches the last few formats, everyone is looking to OTK their opponent on their turn, and Konami has printed a shit-ton of cards to get you to that OTK. It's just now every effect monster, for no realistic reason, is loaded with quick-effects on massive atk stats, and games don't last long enough to even use traps outside of Labrynth (which add an assortment of rider-effects, and an instant activation... through "eye-roll" more quick effect monsters).
Short of a Master Rule change that limits the field / extra-deck, traps need to start having more utility beyond being floodgates to even stand a chance of being playable outside of Lab.
Traps are a perfectly fine mechanic and past format play proves it. The rest of the game speeding up to the point that they're outclassed is what's broken. Unironically everything but traps are broken at this point.
If everything else is at a certain standard and traps are the outlier is it really correct to be like “traps are the okay one here”.
Like, the rest of the game is not going to move in a direction that allows the trap mechanic as it has existed previously to flourish so regardless of whether you’re boomin’ out and mad that yugioh is too fast or whatever, traps being worked to conform to the current standard of the game is WAY more likely than the reverse.
It’s kind of funny because it is legit “boomer” mentality to be like “old way good new way bad!” Sorry grandad but no one is throwing out their cell phone to go back to using rotary phones because it’s too different for you.
@@SDREHXC Yes, absolutely. Because we have 15 years and multiple popular Time Wizard formats of traps being healthy interaction points. Cascading design mistakes have led the game to where it is now and there are a ton of issues that show how it's perfectly fine to say everything else shot past the point of acceptable design. The fact that monsters and spells have been designed with how to break the game's rules as their core for the past seven years shows how far from normal we've gotten. I don't think the game will ever get better but I don't think it's wrong to point out where and how things went completely off the rails.
It might be a boomer take for me personally but most of the people in my Edison locals group aren't boomers. Half of them would only be like four or five years old when SJC Edison was happening. They play Edison instead of modern because the game speed is right and it feels like the game design is functional instead of a fuzzy set of rules that sometimes gets in the way of your combo.
A Trap is a card type not a mechanic at all. The title is just false. Card mechanics are normal summoning, special summoning, flipping cards, setting cards activating cards, milling and so on. A yugioh mechanic would be switching phases. A spell card is not a yugioh mechanic. Activating a spell card is a mechanic, setting a spell card is a mechanic. Chaining a spell card is a mechanic. A spell card is a card type.
@@Pkey995 Setting a card face down to disrupt the opponent as they take actions on their turn is a game mechanic in the same way monsters having effects or banishing existing are game mechanics. This is speaking in the broader game design use of the term, not specifically Yugioh.
@@geek593 *setting* a card face down to *disrupt* the oponent as they take actions by *activating* the card on their turn are game mechanics. Yeah I agree and I marked the mechanics for you. You can do these mechanics with quick spells a card type trap another card type and ofc monster the last card type. Some monsters we call handtraps nowadays dont have to be *set* you can *activate* them from your hand... just like imperm the "real" handtrap.
Remember back in the day we had traps that were counters to specific named cards like "anti raigeki" imagine how dead that would be on the field
I meant they weren't even good back then so that alone should tell you how dead they are lol
I feel like the bonus effect when set (like imperm) is a great way of boosting trap cards viability, but make the bonus effect much stronger than imperm.
Like a black hole when activated from hand, but a raigeki when activated via set kinda bonus. ( obviously this example is broken, but you get the point)
Another solution is changing the spell speed priority of normal traps so opponents can’t respond with monster effect/quick spells
Would make traps maybe too strong going first
As a suggestion to Farfa to make traps "more viable":
Master Rule 6 - All trap cards may be activated the same turn they are set if and only if it is in response to your opponent's effect (so chain link 2 or higher). So that way if they do some quick effect shenanigans with like I:P, superfactorial, etc, then you can respond on the same turn. That would still retain the feeling of "you activated my trap card".
Imma make this very simple. Trap cards havent gone anywhere. In fact, theyre more important than EVER before. The difference? Konami for some reason decided to start coloring them light brown and giving them atk and def stats. This is another reason why yugioh isnt onboarding players well. Modern card design does not intuit well for new players. If hand traps were actually traps sort of like impermanence, we wouldnt be up in arms like this, and noobs would have far fewer headaches learning the relevant nonengine cards in format. This is an image problem.
Hand trap is just a player-made term. The fact that they're monsters and have different activation conditions from traps has it's advantages and disadvantages. But Konami can also easily print traps like Impermanence that can be discarded instead of activated in the field to interrupt something.
If you think the problem if new player experience is the color of handtraps then you don't really understand game design whatsoever. The actual SPEED of the game is the problem. A new player has absolutely no chance to learn the game because they get destroyed in 1-2 turns regardless of what color cards they have. Back in the day in Yu-Gi-Oh even if you ultimately lost, you still played several turns during which you would learn the game's basics, and the advanced combos did not take 10 minutes to execute, putting the other player to sleep.
This is kind of my problem as a new Master duel player. I don't get a chance to really read or understand cards playing against others, nor do I really get to do anything until I'm either dead or looking at what cards are still lit up.
Special summoning needs to have either a rules or mechanical limitation. I should not be staring down the barrel of a boss monster immune to card effects before I have any interaction with the field.
As a new player I'm not sure how effective it would really be, but as an idea: you're locked out of the Extra deck until YOUR second turn, or you can only special summon once on your first turn. Something where passing the turn doesn't feel like passing game unless you're super screwed.
@@LocrianDorian both points are true imo.
I agree completely, it's an aesthetic thing but I would prefer of Nibiru and Ash Blossom and them were actually trap cards that activate in the hand instead of monsters. I know that eliminates some gameplay depth from treating them as monsters to be searched or summoned, but I don't care.
I think a cool idea would be a new master rule where the player going second can set traps from their hand at the beginning of the draw phase of turn 1, and they can be played that turn. But limit it to normal and counter traps, so continuous (mainly floodgates) could not be set this way. This would allow for traps to be more viable without changing them drastically by giving them all hand or grave effects.
Personally I'd include all spells/traps. Floodgates are probably fine considering YuGiOh is currently very going first focused and floodgates would equalize the playing field. (not all floodgates, but for that the banlist exists)
something to explore is giving counter trap cards proactive effects instead of responsive effects, most counter traps can only be activated in response to an card or effect while in archetype counter traps are omni negates or close to omni negates, they cound try making then things like compulsory or bottomless into counter trap cards instead
This is true, sure omni negate counter traps are really op since only a continuous effect or another counter trap, usually also a negate of some type, can interact with them. And since there are even omni negate normal traps now, then there should be counter traps that do different things, even being to summon a monster like so many traps do. I think people forget a lot how specific sub-types within a card type can also help expand card type range, and I'm sad Josh is so narrowly focused on what has been the usual game experience that alternate approaches without making changes to the game were not an explored topic.
I believe what's wrong with trap cards nowadays is that they either ignore their entire mechanic altogether, or are so absurdly game-changing that they transform a game into a hopelessly one-sided affair that quite simply tends to end things on the spot. The exception to this are the in-archetype traps that act as an in-engine recursion/interaction, as those tend to be a negate or a board-wipe at most (I like those particular traps just fine).
Still, I would think no one likes facing down a Dimension barrier on a fusion or -especially- a pendulum deck. Things need to change. Perhaps a master rule change stating that you get to set exactly one card from your hand on turn 0. But then a lot of traps would require an instant ban, wouldn't they?
floodgates in shambles 😂😂
One thing I've consdiered is like- an archetypal trap deck where they have weakish interruptions on the field and then gave grave disruptuons as well that allow them to set a new one from the deck at rhe same time.
"Draw 1 card.
During the mainphase or battlephase you can target one monster your opponent controls: Shuffle this card from your graveyard into your deck then destroy that monster and add a x card to hand or set it to your field.
If this card would be sent to the graveyard from the deck or hand, banish this card instead."
"Discard one card from your hand, then you can set a trap card from your banishment. That card is activatable this turn.
You can shuffle this card back into the deck: special summon a monster from your opponents graveyard and add an x card from your deck to your hand or set it to your field
If this card would be sent from the hand or deck to the graveyard, banish it instead."
A good idea for a well designed trap card theme is the Phrase "once per Turn, when this card is send to your GY, you can set this card" and then give them standard handtrap effects, like negate one monster effect (Veiler) or destroy one card (Ogre), or negate a specialsummon from deck (Ash) so you can technically go +5 with this but you have to wait a turn until you can use them after setting. and your limited to 5 becouse of your S/T colums
I think the lack of power creep of normal traps is so valid.
The fact that we don't have a normal trap that says "destroy target monster" without fulfilling a condition is insane. if they released one it might se light experimentation in incredibly specific builds.
having rarran for a new player experience episode sounds great
Almost every trapcard needs bonus eff if they get targetet or removed somehow + an grave eff
Best fix I can think of are printing Traps with good effects on activation, but also with even better effects if they're removed via an opponent's card effect. Like taking the field wipe as an example, what if on activation it non-target destroys two monsters the opponent controls, but if the opponent removes it from the field via Cosmic or a pop, it wipes the opponent's board on a SS4.
Traps are far from being a failed mechanic. The thing is that they have to either be searchable during a combo, like Swordsoul Blackout, have a Graveyard/Banished effect (again, like Swordsoul Blackout) or a condition that makes them be able to activate from the hand like Imperm and Evenly. Counter traps like the solemns are broken, but only if you know you are going first.
Being searchable still doesn’t change the issue that blackout does nothing for you going second.
Yes because a trap card is not a mechanic a trap card is a card type. A mechanic would be normal summoning or activating a card or flipping a card. These are mechanics. A spell card is not a mechanic it is a card type. An xyz monster is not a mechanic it is a card type. XYZ summoning is a mechanic.
Even then for trap decks, the best Solemn is Strike because it is good for breaking boards. Daruma Cannon can get negated by a monster really easily, but Strike can make sure it goes through.
@@Pkey995 Does it matter when you know exactly what they mean? Like you know he meant card type. I get being pedantic when it’s useful for disambiguation but there is nothing you could misconstrue about the way he worded his statement if you’re familiar with the game.
@@Exisist5151 You can actually choose to banish ANY Swordsoul Trap to make a token(even that awful continuous one that only exists to banish your own cards), though doing that does require some setup like Chixiao's search effect(which can banish instead of adding to hand). The problem with doing that(the setup required) is they didn't give those cards the mechanics to do that themselves aside from a Continuous Trap you have to SET first because Trap mechanics. So you'd have to use something like Taia or Chengying to actually get the cards to a point where they can be banished if the opponent doesn't do that randomly for you with something like Cosmic Cyclone or Chaos Angel, which would almost never be at an opportune moment to take advantage of it.
As a competitive player I wanna say there is a big part of this conversation that is missing
The player going first not only establishes a board but they generate so much card advantage that traps don't even matter anymore, like say I'm going second and set TT sure I may be able to hit a few monsters with it but it won't matter much since the cards I destroyed more than likely float
I just don't understand the game design where going first gets to make a almost unbreakable board and generate so much advantage that if u crack the board they still have the follow up to kill you on turn 3
It almost forces you to otk or lose which traps don't help with.......what I think will be interesting is if they made a trap that functions like a normal trap (you can set it for some stun eff) but also put a effect on it that can only be activated from hand the turn its drawn so u can run traps and not have infinite bricks in deck....something similar to overloaded from mtg
The game design ended up that way because it shifted towards making pop off turns happen every game on the first turn. In old Yugioh you'd spend a few turns assembling combo to pop off and win. Konami's designers probably thought the game would be more appealing if those adrenaline rush turns could happen more often. But then they needed to escalate further and further to keep the power creep going so we ended up with a broken mess of a game that was NEVER intended to be this fast.
This gameplay shift happened shortly after mobile gaming became the dominant industry in Japanese gaming. Everyone back in the early 2010s were trying to figure out how to make their games appeal to shorter attention spans to continue to appeal to shifting market trends. Nearly every Japanese TCG became a power creep burst gameplay mess back in the mid 2010s so it was clearly a trend. Shorter more bursty games were the shift.
I think having turn zero where both players (or maybe just the player going 2nd) are allowed to set trap cards could be interesting.
Although that won't fix battle tricks...
Normal trap
You can discard this card; each time your opponent special summons a monster(s), excavate the top card from deck and if it is a spell/ trap card , add to hand or set to field
I hope farfa reads this comment: There is indeed a card named "Gravity Behemoth" that says if it's not the first turn of the duel.. it has an awful eff but the concept is there. I liked that design aspect.
I think one idea that farfa mentioned was really great. If they made more trap cards that specifically can't be negated. They don't even have to be counter traps that can't be chained to at all, just make it so they can't be negated. Then they would be able to handle the generic extra deck boss monsters people always complain about that are just negates, like Baronne, Savage, etc. Then they don't even need to be continuous floodgates or non-chainable counter traps. You could have normal trap card that's compulse 2 that can't be negated, and suddenly it can out your opponent's Baronne and Savage easily. It's still not amazing since you have to set and wait and maybe you could just use Lava Golem or whatever else instead, but that's just the starting idea and it's a lot better than what trap cards are doing right now.
I also like the idea you guys talked about of just make more traps float. They don't all have to be as strong as Waking the Dragon, but why not have them float into setting other cards from the deck or gy. It really is strange that monsters floating became really popular like 10 years ago now, but we haven't seen trap cards do the same thing. The best they get is occasionally one has a gy effect, but nothing wide spread and few float when removed from the field.
I think both of these ideas can also apply to flip monsters which are another heavily outdated aspect of the game that used to be central to game play.
I'm against that idea, not allowing a card to be negated is too lopsided. Giving them the Super Poly clause is acceptable though, meaning for all intents and purposes it does what you want but can be negated still by a very minimal amount of niche cards with continuous effects.
I think there needs to be a clear distinction between making good traps and making traps good. Because it's super easy to make a good trap - just slap some OP effect on it and there you go, but making traps as a whole good is pretty much impossible due to their fundamental flaw.
Game mechanics in TCG could be classified into three groups - positive, negative and neutral. Positive offer you some kind of benefit, negative serve as a trade off for higher value and neutral are a combination of both. You'd think that traps were supposed to be neutral as a sort of sidegrades or rather support to spells - you play spells on your turn and you cover opponent's turn with traps. And that's how it works in Rush Duels.
But actually in normal Yugioh traps were always an afterthought. Going as far back as manga, the earliest game didn't even have traps, Takahashi came up with them later as a tool for dramatic tension (the classic "you've just triggered my trap card!" and "what could this set card be?"). The role of traps as gameplay pieces was never that thought out and they just kinda fell into "use to surprise your opponent" category aka the source of interruption during opponent's turn in the story. But even then they weren't good since spells could be activated during either turn as well and were held together by a duct tape Battle City rule that forced you to play traps by not allowing to set and activate more than 1 spell per turn. So the cracks were there from the very beginning.
Then the physical game came out and solidified traps as mainly interrupt pieces. For like a the first couple of boosters, since despite many traps revolving around interrupting your opponent there were (even in the manga) a lot that were essentially just magenta/red/pink spells - traps which effects could've been easily put on spell cards with no changes. This is a second role or quality of trap mechanic - it's a drawback placed on effects that would've been too good on spells. At least that's how it was supposed to be. In reality a lot of these spell-traps actually had and to this day still have worse effects than contemporary spells. Going back to interrupt-traps, the real traps, they're even worse because who the hell designs a game piece meant to be a response to opponent's actions as requiring to sit on the field for the whole turn before it could be used? A writer who has no experience with TCG design. But surely Konami didn't make the same mistake? Nope, quick effects, but more importantly quickplay spells - literally traps, but better in actually everything, including mind games and decision making. And quickplay spells have been part of the game since the very beginning and have only grown more prevalent. And yet we still wonder why traps are a bad?
In conclusion, traps were always poorly designed slightly more dramatic spells that were sometimes used as a tradeoff for powerful effects, but usually just made mediocre effects even worse. Traps are both incompetent counterspells and don't feel good or interesting as tradeoff for good effects as well as existing in the game that was not built to accommodate for them and over the years actively pushed mote competition over traps's already restricted niche.
You cannot completely resolve the issue and make traps good as a game mechanic without rebooting the game itself, but as Rush shows it's a viable way to give traps the needed dominion over certain part of the game.
In TCG/OCG "fixing" traps by giving them more broken effects would just breed unnecessary powercreep and coin flip/draw the out games, but also letting you completely circumvent the mechanic altogether isn't a viable solution either since you basically removing their mechanic from the game. In my opinion there needs to be a complete overhaul to how traps are designed and what roles they're supposed to cover with focus on what unique elements they bring for the gameplay (bluffing, trap monsters, quick grave effects, etc). And for the love of egyptian gods, cup of ace and blos Konami should stop printing pink spells. Just stop. If a card isn't meant to be used during opponent's turn or be reset from the graveyard, it doesn't need to be a trap. Make it a spell, make it a quickplay spell for that matter, but stop printing all those mediocre cards made even worse by the fact they're traps.
great post
1- trap cards are not a mechanic but a card type.
2- the idea of traps was not a great one. having copied mtg in so many things why not just having interaction from hand via instant/sorceries? setting trap before using them doesnt add anything.
3- evolving your game in a direction that leaves behind one ofyour 3 card types is just nonsense.
@@goncaloferreira6429 well, card type in itself is part of game's core mechanics. Often this kind of analyst goes over specific "software" mechanics (see mtg keywords or archetype gimmicks in yugioh), but I think it's also useful to examine the game's "hardware" this way.
Honestly, the idea of placing interactions on board to signify or bluff your intentions isn't bad, it's just that the game is not build to accommodate such gameplay whatsoever. Even in Rush, where I'd argue traps finally got fixed, the element of bluffing and mind games is practically nonexistent, because, unless your opponent is going first, it's guaranteed cards they're setting are traps and considering how sorta homogeneous reactive traps are (do X on summon if Y, do X when Y attacks), it just makes this whole part of the gameplay feel monotonous.
@@kindlingkingmy point was to show that ygo people dont know what a game mechanic is.
gamés core mechanics would be the base rules os the game.
mechanics add on and change the base mechanics.
trap cards are a card type. the way you design trap cards is another thing.
The game technically already has language for lingering effects: an activated effect is an effect in the cain, so they would be “non-activated effects,” and you would negate the “application,” which is the first word ai think of that yugioh uses instead of resolution.
Nice podcast! A talk about which banned cards could come off would be cool
The balancing factor behind trap trick is that by design it is impossible to search limited floodgates.
Simply putting some normal traps on the banlist solves a lot of the issues with trap trick being abused. This is why metaverse going to 1 was a very good initial hit to mystic mine burn.
I like the inperm idea, like if you control no monster or face up cards you can use this from hand
Funnily enough I honestly think Transaction Rollback was just created to be a gimmicky anime card that happened to turn out to be good with Lab so they finally printed it. Appeared in the anime years ago to copy Mirror Force in the opponent’s gy and then be used to copy another effect to not die later.
I dont know if I am the only one but I find it a lot better running 2 VS snow devil instead of just 1
You can hypothetically "fix" trap cards in various ways based on all of the different trap cards that work, like imperm, and other "failed mechanics" like rituals which were also fixed. But notably every solution that fixes trap cards fixes them by altering them to such a degree the original dynamic that defines them is lost. "If my mother had wheels she'd be a bike but she doesn't so she's not".
We just need a turn 0 trap seting phase for whoever goes second, like before the actual first turn the player going second gets a single phase where they can strictly set trap cards
Solution is simple: make more cards like Imperm with two effects depending where you activate from.
Make trap cards that can respond to being targeted or destroy. Ex. If a set card you control is targeted you can activate this card. If one or more cards you control would be destroyed you can activate this set card. Things like that that don't let you go off turn 0 but let you go off going second if your opponent does some. So an eff could say for each trap that would be destroyed the rest of this turn you can set a trap from your deck.
Great episode! Interesting and nuanced discussion with valuable alternatives offered.
Love the casts guys, really look forward to them!
Maybe they can add something like “if your opponent controls cards you can activate the card at the start of your main phase 1”
i really hoped theyd mention swordsoul blackout. it is an archetype trap BUT it isnt some sort of counter trap and it has multiple uses going first and second.
Bit unfamiliar with its applications , going second would be the token? If so how would you make advantage of it
@@Ruggi21 you can use the token effect going first or second. if you've drawn it you can pitch it for longyuan and banish with taia. you can banish it straight from deck to get another token with chixiao. having the extra token can be used for making another synchro with a 7 tenyi for PEP or with Shthana to make another 8. you can also pop the token with Baxia to get a revive on an unused mo ye or taia.
@@Block360mc yeah I had a doubt with a 7 tenyi cause I don’t see often a 11 synchro in swordsoul decklist
@@Ruggi21 PEP is usually in the flex spot and I only really saw it when the card came out. but it is still technically something you can do and it is a really nice option when you're going second. so I figured I should include it.
@@Block360mc sorry to disturb man but I’ve heard people say that it’s possible to make more than 1 lvl10 consistently but I don’t see the line and you seem knowledgeable on swordsoul
One iconic thing in VRAINS for me was that Yusakus Spell/Traps always had effects in grave to give him more advantage
Which is now almost a default feature in traps that you can banish them in the gy to recover some advantage.
they should make a master rule where if you go second you can set traps and use it on the opponent's first turn
Magic has a series of cards, the leylines, that all have an extra effect that if they are in your opening hand you can start the game with them on the field as a pregame action after it is chosen who goes first and any mulligan decisions have been made. What about a series of trap cards that say if they are in your opening hand and you are going second, before the game starts you can reveal them and start with them face down in your spell or trap zone?
For example:
Leyline Trap Hole
Trap
If this card is in your opening hand and you are going second: You can reveal this card and if you do start the game with this card face down in your spell/trap zone.
When your opponent summons a monster(s): Banish that monster. Your opponent can't activate cards or effects in response to this card's activation.
I don't know where this falls in the power spectrum, but it's not meant to be a tested proof of concept but a basic idea of what the mechanic would look like.
I also think a really often overlooked support card for normal traps is arias. Arias isn't really a labrynth card at all, he can be played in any trap deck as just an exceptional hand trap.
At the 55 minute mark.
Man I'd kill for something like that.
Maybe something like:
If this card is activated on the field: Destroy all cards on the field. If this set card would leave the field or return to the deck: Activate it instead."
One complaint I have about trap decks is actually that any generically strong traps WILL be abused by labyrinth so now Konami has to design around the fact that every normal trap is searchable so making this a nuke stops lab from using it but then no deck except Traptrix and any other decks that are immune to or want self nukes would play it.
Until we gets to the point where we look at lab the same way we do as decks from 10 years ago traps can't be made too good but then at the same time the fact that Lab plays any copies of cards like Compulse is ridiculous.
At around the 50 minute mark, Josh basically floated the Cycling mechanic from MTG, which I think just as a general inclusion might be a neat inclusion in the game just to lower the chance of bricking.
One thing that's nice about Rush Duels is that traps are a lot more relevant again.
The problem with Trap cards could be solved with a Master Rule change. They need a mechanical change. One that I would favor would be saying that Trap cards can be activated as long as they were set by the beginning if this phase. So going second, you could set in Main 1, and then activate in Battle or Main 2.
Please, what a basic idea. There's a ton of stuff that can be elaborated on using only the mechanics that already exist but are not fully explored. Thinking you need to change the rules when design can solve most of the issues is jumping the gun.
I'd be down for seeing some 'from-the-hand' battle traps. Architype specific at first. Give Battlin' Boxers some traps, something like 'can be activated from the hand, gain 800 ATK, and if card was set, cannot be destroyed by battle'.
The issue with interacting with lingering effects is they'd then have to live somewhere. I'd definitely appreciate if there were a widget in Master Duel that let me know what lingering restriction I just placed on myself (locked into fiends), and could let me check what lingering effects are in... er, effect.
I'd love it if the Problem-solving card-text would update to format more like OCG cards, where different effects are bullet-pointed, and lingering restrictions shoutld be at the bottom of the card in a different type-face.
Lastly, I know that 'Once per turns' and junk started as a band-aid solution to keep certain powerful effects from being repeated, but how about designing cards that you'd only WANT to activate once, or can only physically activate once. The Galaxy-Eyes architype has a few of these, like Accelight (which also has a once per turn, for some reason). Give architypes starters that aren't once per turn, so it's just a normal starter going first, but if you draw two going second, it's easier to play into an established board (have a starter negated? Good thing we drew the second copy). The Live★Twins ALMOST function like this: Lil-la to search Kisik-il, and if opponent destroys Lil-la in the same chain, Kisik-il will search for Lil-la in a new chain.
Yes! A Status Window like Pokémon TGGLive has is ABSOLUTELY NECCESARY IN master duel.
(Global effects )
Can only special summon 1 time per turn
Cannot add cards from deck to hand
All damage is decreased by half.
[for example if you got drolled after using pot of prosperity with Winda on the field]
They kiiiinda attempt to do this by creating an extremely tiny Icon on a card which has lost the ability to declare an attack on the field.
But it’s not clear
There should be a way to highlight a card or a player and see a status menu with all Xenolocks, restrictions, buffs and lingering effects written out in bullet points
#ReviveTheBattleTraps
After the TrapTrix Deck with iconic Trap Hole Theme, I'm just hoping Konami is bring this Mirror Force Deck back with Modern updates as a Battle Trap Staples!!!! 😢 Missing the old days yelling "You activated my trap- Mirror Force"
Maybe a Modern "Counter-Trap (Quaking) Mirror Force" (With cost like Solemn Warning) that does thing when being destroyed while maintaing not too broken would be lovely to slow down the game and good playing against omni-negates mons, Shifting Meta back to MST, destroy spell/trap meta to would diverse deck building 🎉
P.S: Some great cards Design from the Infinite Imperm can open ideas like a " Counter Trap that can activate the turn it set IF your opponent activate monster in the Same Column it set (Going second You set it in the column of their Baronne, then does negate things or destroy with its Speed-3)
We should also nerf monsters that can do exactly what trap and spell does with being an extra tuner to summon (who needs raigeki, solemn when we can 1 card-combo into field wipe and omni-negate monsters, and we also pay half LP for a slow counter trap 😅)
Trap Idea counter trap Banish up to 5 cards from either players graveyard and/or field.
My take on Trap Cards: I don't think that they're a failed mechanic. If anything, Traps do have a lot of potential that monsters simply don't have, but they have to be designed in a way that feels worth using compared to Spells and Monsters.
Trap Cards are at their best when they enable you to play on your opponent's turn as well as putting up meaningful interactions. I know that Labrynth is the go-to example for a Trap Deck done right, but I think that Dinomorphia is up there in that category too; the existence of Dinomorphia Frenzy and Dinomorphia Intact not only allow for the player to play on their opponent's turn and put pressure on them, but they're also meaningful boardbreakers since there are very few ways for almost all current-day Decks to interact with Counter Trap cards, and Rexterm breaks boards by itself and your opponent is forced to respect it.
For a good bit, Konami has been doing a very good job at making Trap Cards playable with the release of Decks like Dinomorphia and Labrynth, but Thrust also boosts the viability of Normal Traps in general by making any key traps searchable on T1 because your opponent uses a Hand Trap. It can be expanded further, but it's a good start
Not a mechanic at all. Traps are a card *type* . Activating a card is a mechanic, flipping is a mechanic, special summoning is a mechanic and so on.
@@Pkey995
Tell that to Farfa and Josh if you're going to be policing like that
@@zerochill4096 I dont think josh needs to hear that mby farfa. I already made a comment but I dont think they will read it.
@@zerochill4096 It'll just get brushed away regardless by those two even if Pkey is right. It's not even policing, you don't even know what that word means.
The amount of people who don't even know or realize that Trap cards inherently aren't mechanics and are in fact a card "type" is more worrying than anything else so thus far. We're in worse trouble than Konami destroying the game even more.
A big takeaway for me is that trap cards need to either offer card advantage over time or instant playability to be good. Cards need to be designed with a resource grind in mind.
I think a fantastic solution is making more trap cards have continuous effects on the field so that they can gain advantage over time without being floodgates - sulliek is a great example of a trap card that is strong, but also provides advantage over time AND has utility in the GY.
Trap Cards need to have effects in hand and on field, just like Imperm.
Effects on field and gy it's turn 2 and 3, if they slow the game a little bit that would be good too.
Something like this:
If your opponent controls 2 or more monsters of the same type you can banish 1 of those monsters. (if you don't control cards on the field you can activate this card from your hand). If the the effect of this card his negated you can draw 1 card.
You can only this effect of "card name" once per turn.
This would be cool, I think isn't too much
It would be amazing to get Tom from MSTV discussing about weird rullinhs and specifics rules and interactions with him, would be firee
I think trap cards should have an inherant mechanic to the card where hard once per turn you can mulligan 1 trap card in your draw phase after you draw a card, this helps avoid bricking on them in trap heavy decks while still not removing them entirely, I think we have to accept the fact that in this day and age of yugioh where if the card isn't useable on your turn it's going to be pretty bad then while not completely removing what makes it a trap card mechanically like good trap cards now such as imperm and red reboot, this gives them some more universal utility without konami having to print such polarizing trap cards that have insane effects to "mitigate" the fact it mechanically is a trap card , because this approach honestly just isn't enjoyable for either player and doesn't address the underlying problem.
With plenty of ways to search traps being able to put one back in the deck/ printing trap cards with hand effects that aren't just "You can activate this card from the hand". konami could even go so far as to make a specific achetype of trap card have utility hand effects that are like searchers and board trap effect that is also some form of appropriately impactful board disruption would also let trap cards have a more general application in decks rather than being so specific 90% of them are win more cards or bricks
Changing the rules for all traps allowing them to be activated on your opponents turn while you control no cards. Making it a unique mechanic different to quick play spells
Then you have to make them in rainbow color
Quick effect torrential on 0 turns played is a bit overpowered
@@Ruggi21 it's almost like people just come up with dumb ideas that create more problems than they solve. And what this guy said was technically possible at one point when Makyura was legal and without an errata.
@@admontblanc its not that dumb, but you would have to ban more than half the traps
What is a 2nd turn?
It annoys me how this series of 1hr+ videos still doesn’t have time stamps😢
One thing about trap cards that hasn’t been mentioned is the lack of gy effects. Nowadays, every normal and quick play spell card has a gy effect. That isn’t the norm for traps.
Edit: match up was the incorrect phrase because I was thinking of the first effect of labrynth.
This is definitely not true if we are speaking in general. It is the norm for normal and quick play spells in archetypes to have gy effects, and this applies to traps as well.
I cannot think of any recenrlt powerful spells with gy that can be played in any deck for general use, but this makes perfect sense due to how they can be used immediately on your turn in order to gain value.
Recent powerful side deck worthy traps with gy effects, like the black goat laughs and rollback, still have the issue of being slow but just provide a powerful effect in the gy if removed from the fiel or even sent to gy via something like goods. Even then, a card like rollback can still fail to provide any really benefit in the gy depending on the match up.
@@chewdoom8415 "Even then, a card like rollback can still fail to provide any really benefit in the gy depending on the match up." a statement that can apply equally to any type of card conceivable and therefore kind of superfluous for this discussion.
@@admontblanc Match-up was the wrong way to put it. I was mistaking the on field effect for the gy when I said that because the former's value relies on the opponent's card. Even with the gy effect, it totally depends on how your deck is built in order to take advantage of it, which is why most people use it labrynth and for cheesy mills that floodgate.
Goat is different because you only really lose value when facing a deck that has little interaction with the extra deck, which is most decks in the majority of decks in the meta use.
And some cards are just very limited in their usage. You want traps that are very versatile, so while that statement could apply to any card, if we were to look at kn terms of versatility, you can really narrow down things, especially when taking into account what function we are discussing.
I would say designing traps like this would be comparable to handtraps.
Q: What's the difference between a floodgate deck and a combo deck that ends on 4+ negates?
A: One takes a couple minutes to set some traps and maybe play some monsters (usually), the second takes 5 minutes but feels like 50.
I don't know how others feel but I think it would be cool to see pendulum monsters that had their pen effects act like trap cards (so like instead of the green orange border it would be red and orange) and just off the top of my head have them be able to support traps in some way like low scales help normal traps and high scales help counter traps. The idea being that you set them into spell and trap zones, they would have activation requirements like traps, but if they are activated in the pen zones they can stay there and act as a scale / continuous trap and if used in a different zone they would just go to the grave. I don't like pendulums, don't play them so I can't tell if this is busted or bad, but when thinking about how to make traps better things that came to mind were Paleos, Artifacts, and Pendulums. Just a way to scramble up backrow so that already existing traps can lurk among them and maybe shine.
There are already pendulum monsters with effects that benefit trap decks, such as Guiding Ariadne. Konami can also easily print pendulum cards that specifically support trap-based decks without needing to go into generic pendulum plays for advantage, like extremely low or extremely high level pendulum monster with a set of scale 0 and 13 monsters with pendulum and field effects that boost a trap archetype's trap card effects and that one monster is a boss card for the deck that is hard to out or boosts/protects those effects too.
Hello! While I was watching this video I thought of a master rule that could be implemented that makes traps faster but still keeps the spirit of old school traps alive: The trap step. So at the beginning of a MtG game there is a mulligan step where people can decide whether they want to mulligan or not, in yugioh there could be a “Trap step” before the game where both players can set as many traps as they want, those traps could then be activated on turn 1. To balance this step maybe it could only be 1 or 2 traps that could be set, or you have to show your opponent which traps were set.
Dimensional barrier lmao
@@jimzh7669 yea traps with lingering effects like that would have to be banned or limited
the first idea of a trap card that Josh is looking for would be
Ultimate Torrential Tribute
banish all spell/traps OR monsters your opponent controls ,you must control no other (face-up) cards to activate this card.
(when you activate this card on the second turn of the game you change the OR to an AND)
And then you created another broken card that can win on the spot. I think that it is a bad designed card. The problem is not that trap cards are weak the problem is that monsters are broken especially searchers and extenders enableing "unbreakable turn 1" boards. Your/joshs suggestion is not much different than konamis by bringing out "1 card win conditions" like nibiru but I think that is the wrong path. The problem is the first turn board and the roots are the searchers and extenders. Get rid of them and we will see old monster roles like *beaters* *tricksters* *walls* *floaters* . If these roles are relevant again traps are relevant again. Handtraps are automatically not that relevant again and boardbreakers can be limited again. Boss monsters would be difficult to bring out so it would be hype to see them. Nowadays most of the time you face of a horde of bosses when going second and you can either deal with them with a card like you suggested and you win or you lose on the spot... thats no hype imo. Hype is when your oponent or you are afraid to atk because you are afraid of a battle trap.
@@Pkey995 I would be cool with a card like that if it also had clause that made it so that you can only activate 1 more card or effect until the end of your next turn after using such a card.
I think GY effects are the way to go, as well as having several in-archetype ways to discard the trap. That way the trap can still do something going second. Just look at Tear traps, they're obviously great going first, but still fine going second because you can still use their GY effect.
I think the main issue is monsters have become "engine" whereas trapcards haven't: theyre almost all purely reactive and dont advance your game state. Exceptions: Lab traps, Exo Vadis. If you break your opponents board then set these you are quite toasty, but if you set torrential, you HAVE to draw engine the next turn, or youve spent 2 turns not actually advancing your game plan.
Consider: Handtraps are quick, but they dont actually win you the game. Draw 5 handtraps and you might survive till turn 3 but if you dont draw engine you lose.
Yeess I would love to see Rarran here in a "yugioh for new players episode" he has really good chemistry with Farfa and I'm sure he would like Josh too.
You have to give trap cards graveyard effects and on field effect just in case they get destroyed also let them use both effects the same turn not just 1. If lab could use both big welocme effects that would have been goated
Floodgates are part of the game. Going back from duelist kingdom to battle city. They should all be at 3
The only way they can fix *generic* trap cards without printing a crapload of support that just makes Labrynth OP is to change the rules of the game. For example, allow for something like a once-per-turn "normal spell/trap set" just like your normal summon, but it can be performed in any phase. That would still lose to things like Twin Twisters, but no longer lose to things like Masquerena into a Knightmare or whatever, because you could do it in your End Phase. And even then, it wouldn't make them *good*, just "kinda playable." Enough to make control decks play unsearchable counter traps, basically. Alternatively, add an actual "turn 0" where each player is allowed to only set cards and not activate anything. Incidentally, this would also help flip monsters. But, on the other hand, it would probably make Labrynth OP, since they wouldn't need the clock to get their traps live on turn 1. Either way, you'd need some banlist hits for the generic floodgates so that the game doesn't become just totally unplayable, and you'd also need to basically ban all of Runick and Purrely, plus a bunch of other meta decks' quick play spells, since both of these changes would also buff quick plays, which are *not* in a bad spot at the moment.
But I get the feeling Konami is just going to mostly keep printing in-archetype traps that are only sometimes worth playing, a new Thrust target every other year, and occasionally, once in a blue moon, an archetype like Tearlament where all of its trap cards float, or a staple that can be played from the hand like Evenly Matched or Imperm or Red Reboot. Why fix the game when you could just sell more product?
I always wonder how things would be if instead of going the hand trap route, they gave the player going second the ability to set a few traps from their hand before turn 1. This would, of course, need to exclude continuous traps because of flood gates.
This might be a completely idiotic idea, but let me cook. What if there was a new type of trap cards that utilize zones as activation triggers (when a monster is summoned in the same column, it activates). It would be more telegraphed, but with that you could give super powerful generic effects to them, plus effects if they are removed, like your opponent has to pay a price to disarm the trap. A really crazy (and probably excessive) effect you could have is: when a monster is summoned in this column, and your opponent has two monster in this column, you draw 2 and set a card from the deck. Maybe then having a down arrow is not the same as a diagonal one. I don't know, I think it could be cool.
Talking about a card that destroys all your opponents cards is You’re Finished. And it’s kinda mid unless you have lots of effects to activate on your opponents turn
I wouldn't say it failed as though it was a bad mechanic to begin with. It failed because Konami made the other mechanics faster, and Traps never caught up.
I would want more generic trap archetypes (like the forbidden quickplays/solemn trap cards) and also under each effect it just reads something like "--and if this card resolves, draw 1 card for every turn this card has been set/ if this card has been set for x turns, this cards effect cannot be negated/effects on field/in graveyard cannot be activated in response to this card's effect." At least then, you're reimbursed for playing a slower effect.
I remember traps started to get power creeped in pendulum era EXCEPT for the generic traps that were super busted. Like D barrier, solemn strike/warning. Almost all architype based traps on paper sounded good but in practice were not good enough for meta relevance. Look at eternal soul for DM. Sure DM was maybe rogue tier when ES and Circle came out at the time but it quickly fell out of the fringes of competitiveness and just sits in "fun deck" status. Torrential tribute still is relevant today because it can deal with the whole board, if it's set and your opponent is getting greedy comboing off it can be a huge punish to clear the board. Ultimately traps can't be viable today unless they have a super impactful effect that is generically good, and/or in the case of evenly matched/imperm it breaks the trap mechanic rules by being able to be activated from hand.
Instead of making it "except the second turn of the game", I would want it to be a bit more thematically worded. Here's what I've come up with:
Destroy 1 card on your opponents field, if your opponent started this turn with 3 or more cards on the field, destroy all cards on your opponents field instead.
This would be a powerful trap going first (not targeting removal) but also be thematically worded to be especially powerful going second.
the one thing that hasn't really been power creeped about trap cards are counter traps simply because of the response window stuff. other card types rarely have that kinda stuff (excluding super poly and calamities and stuff but those are Broken.)
Just print counter traps with gy effects and you have made trap cards stronger overall.
What if they started releasing traps with "this card can't leave the field the turn it was set", the opponent tries to destroy the trap but as it is turned faceup, it's not destroyed instead it goes back face down? Cause I think the most vulnerable moment for traps is against an established board at the end phase when the opponent can simply destroy them and make them just dead irrelevant cause they couldn't even try to activate. Or it could also be "unaffected by card effects the turn it was set". If monsters can have protection, why can't traps? The value going second being a strong possible disruption on the next turn (with no set up unlike an ED monster).
But the ideal solution for me would be a master rule where quick effects and quick plays are spell speed 2, but traps are spell speed 3 and counter traps spell speed 4, so monsters and spells can't answer to traps.
Honestly they should just make a new masterrule that says u can activate traps from ur hand during ur own turn by discarding 1 card. Cards like get out would be decent going first or ok boardbreakers going second
How you feel about trap cards with decent effects that become waya stronger when something happens.
Something like a compulsory that when you special summon a monster can't be responded, but can be activated even if there is not a special summon, so in case it would be destroyed you can chain and bait (or do something) but if you get to the stronger activation its just way better.
Also loving the podcast!!
the problem of boosting normal traps is equivalent to boosting labyrinth 😤😤😤
I think all the Ghost Girls/monster hand traps should have been made actual trap cards instead. They lose the advantage of being bodies but would gain small additional effects if set. Basically make all hand traps like imperm.
Had this been the case, the viability of trap cards would never have been questioned. The identity of how trap cards used to work would have changed, but at least you would be seeing purple cards in every deck.
More traps should float. Infinite Impermenance and other cards like it should be very limited in the card pool. Playing trap cards from hand means the mechanic is being changed fundamentally.
To keep traps and their mechanic unique simply addding floating effects can go a long way to making them viable again. Makes the opponent think twice about nuking back row
One way I would say you could improve traps is by being able to activate them when the trigger condition is met. For example, one really interesting trap that saw a ton of play and I always would’ve loved to play in Labrynth was Dimension Slice. That card is spicy because if you Xyz summon you can activate it the same turn is set. Also we need more traps that have GY effects like Big Welcome Labrynth love the fact it’s a Labrynth trap but also compulse if it’s in the GY. Yugioh has done effects like this in the past I’m just not really sure why they don’t keep making traps that can be activated in the turn they are set if they meet they’re trigger condition or give them like a floating effect, or a GY effect. Also I’ll keep saying this revealing trap cards is counter intuitive. It defeats the whole point of it being a “trap” lol the fact people don’t respect trap cards anymore is because they can see them coming when you set a card from deck you gotta reveal it. I understand it’s to keep from cheating, but if you have a card that says set a trap from deck and you set Mirror Force it’s not very good because you are announcing your opponent about the trap, your opponent simply will not attack.
some problems with trap cards nowadays are most modern monsters have trigger effect when they destroyed or leave battle field, even it trigger when they're summoned its just feel wrong and seems like doesnt have equal value to remove/destroy the monsters for stopping opponent combos and do note with the traps speed slow. instead the effective ways to stop opp from combos are by restricting opponents play using floodgates
The issue is that one deck has to be dealt with by bouncing monsters while another by destroying them and yet another by banishing them. Therefore traps need extra clauses for the same situations that expand what they can do for you, so more traps with floating effects that are not too broken, but can have powerful effects when set. Kind of like Unchained traps with better effects.
evenly shouldve said: if you control no cards, you can activate this card from your hand at the end of the battle phase. so if you set if you can activate it whenever you want to during your op turn.
Thinking on it it would need some other balancing text for that case only, while maintaining the same text for the from hand effect.
Im wondering if you can take the idea of imperm-type traps further. Maybe not mecessarily activating everything from the hand, but having cards that you could either activate immediately after setting by performing a certain action, or if you wait to activate it other than the turn it was set youd get a stronger effect. Something like, this card can be activated the turn it was set by discarding 1 card, destroy one card on the field. If this card was activated on any turn other than one it was set, you can banish the card instead. Problem solving card text aside to prevent fuckery, i could see this speeding up trap cards to be more immediately viable compared to the general "wait one turn to use massively impactful effect"
Dimension Slice lol.
@@Exisist5151 that's a great example
Traps need to give card advantage, and be hard to stop. Super symchro fusion has a clause that is relevant here. If a trap has "draw a card if this is destroyed by an opponents effect"
Or hell, "draw a card when this is sent from the field to the graveyard" that way, if it is destroyed you draw, and if you activate you are getting advantage.
Commentating while watching:
-Battle of Legends is ABSOLUTELY HUGE for retro formats, beats me it hasn't been pointed out.
Gaia and Absolute Zero reprints made heroes way more affordable for both Edison and Tengu.
Exciton knight is a mandatory staple in most of HAT decks, but also Big Eye is huge for Dragons and Sylvans.
-History of Traps: now, I've not being playing Goat for 2 years now, and when I was I recall it being so hard enough to make Reasoning Gate stick together to even dream of including traps, but generally good point from Farfa.
Especially in Edison traps provide so much value that you should take them into consideration in basically every deck. For example traps are really good in Frogs even if you run treeborn to keep your opponent under pressure or solidify your position. Vayu instead of maximizing on good mills, it runs plenty of traps etc.
I believe after Edison traps entered a period of "archetype specificity". In Tengu for example you always play your solemn package + torrential+ dustshoot, but having 3 MST, 3 decrees and heavy storm being legal makes it more questionable to play more of them. Also they start to compete against handtraps.
After that we saw some instances of almost complete traps unplayability (Rulers, Dracopal/PePe) and some spot where they shined (HAT, ABC/Paleos, Trickstar/Altergeist). But the complete downfall, and I checked the statistics, happened from the end of 2018 onwards.
Now, idk when Patrick was writing for ARG, but to foresee a complete downfall we had to get quite late.
-Modern traps: the main issue, as it was pointed out is that, monsters are doing what traps did before but better. Handtraps are the first example, but the Fire end board feels just like: "pick your 7 best traps from your deck and set them 100% of the times as long as you are not interrupted". How do you compete with that?
Archetypical traps are not real traps. Lab is not a trap deck. Their archetypical traps are combo pieces. If sending Stovie plus Clock would have ended on a monster quick play tributing itself to get into a bigger one while having a good GY effect, you wouldnt feel any difference.
Im with Farfa when he says Imperm is good trap design.
Sure, it is primarily an handtrap, but it gets some additional value being set.
Probably the way to go is giving traps some decent going second value and a way higher one while they are set.
Also, I don't entirely dislike Evenly as a trap.
It is basically just an handtrap, but it's the only trap feeling somehow as a torrential tribute in modern yugioh.
Battles of Legend is an unironic banger Time Wizard set. One of the best of all time in that regard.
@@geek593we always dreamt about this kind of set. Now we just miss a couple of staples such as Dustshoot, Oppression and Substitoad.
Late to the party, but i would love to hear a discussion about the turn 1.5/2 where my opponent goes 1st sets up a board and then passes. Then on my standby phase the opponent gets to do 30+ moves or so before i even get to do anything
They took trap card's place and gave it to the hand traps. There's no more place for them in modern decks with how fast the game is now.
Konami broke Yugioh. Back in the day, we all had decent balance of spells, traps, and monsters, and they had their roles - spells did things, monsters fought, and traps protected you. Traps had the clear role - defense, blocks, counters, and restrictions.
Konami don't know how to power balance and can't avoid powercreep.
I hate Skill Drain as much as the next dude but it isn't like there's not Book of Moon/Eclipse, Forbidden Lance, etc. (even chain Torrential) to play around.