Normal monsters have been my favorite cards since the beginning, because of the lore. I love that every single monster gets described as a galaxy-ending superthreat regardless of its stats. Adding lore to all monsters is by far the coolest thing Cross Duel has done.
Me too I’ve always liked the concept of normal monsters having something magical and special about them even though they are effect less they get cards to support them like dark magician, harpie, Ojamas etc
they'll have monster with low that days like "a creature of destruction and chaos. few have met it and returned to tell the tale" and it's a level 1 monster with 100 atk and 300 def
It feels notable that Summoned Skull was actually level 7 in the anime, and somewhere in the card game pipeline, it became 6 and briefly broke the game.
you mean the manga ? i'm pretty sure the anime just used the ocg card which had konami's 6 stars i think the konami designers overvalued the importance of def points like they must have felt dark magician and summoned skull couldnt be the same level due to summoned skulls defence being nearly halved but it turned out that scaling by atk value was kind of the right idea all along i think its possible to draw a correlation to the levels of early monsters and their COMBINED atk AND def iirc but i would have to check they did it with jinzo too which is honestly bonkers
It's because very early in the game levels were mostly assigned based on a card's total stats. Though there were some exceptions (Giant Soldier and Stone and Leo Wizard to give examples going both ways), Summoned Skull was not made an exception. Cards with 3700 total stats were standard lvl 6 and so was Summoned Skull. It's also why the 3 Zombies had such low levels (Dragon Zombie being considered on par with the likes of lvl 3 Kurama while Clown Zombie was considered to be slightly below the likes the lvl 2 Winged Cleaver due to stat totals). It's also why there's so much terrible crap like Sand Stone and LaMoon having a higher level than the likes of Battle Ox and La Jinn, because such cards were doomed by having 2 "high-ish" stats resulting in a stat total going above lvl 4 (2800 being the max a lvl 4 could have back then. Which funnily does mean we could theoretically have had a 2800/0 lvl 4 monster, imagine that).
Using TCG instead of OCG means this project is tracking coincidental release dates determined by business decisions, rather than the actual game design decisions Konami made.
yeah, this is what's always hurting me with these history of yugioh videos. The early TCG was already just a pale reflection of the original game, so much nuance is being missed
@@IronNidow This is why Chaos Magician is my favourite YGO History Channel atm. His reaction to Booster 4 powercreeping itself 3 times in the same set was priceless :D
The one thing about this that I think you should have addressed was the rarity of these cards, particularly in earlier sets. Summoned Skull was available in every starter deck Yugi, but Gemini Elf was a only available as a secret rare. For many playground Yugioh players, especially in those days, accessible beaters was a legitimate concern and so most of those players wouldn't have Gemini Elves or Mechanicalchasers, but the printing of Mad Dog of Darkness and Archfiend's Soldier at rare meant anyone could gain fairly easy access to a 1900 ATK normal monster. The first 1900 at common was Insect Knight, which you mentioned but didn't discuss the rarity of. It wouldn't be surprising to see casuals with the common 1800s like Neo Bug because they weren't going to pay for a Gemini Elf.
It was. It was LOB-EN066 and a Super Rare. It is a DARK, Dragon-type, Level-5 Normal Monster with 2000 ATK and 1500 DEF, making it far stronger than Succubus Knight as well as stronger than any Level-4 Monster without a negative effect until many years later, when a Level-4 Normal Monster with 2000 ATK and 100 DEF was finally released. Thus, the jump from LOB to SDY/SDK was nowhere near as drastic for Level-5 and -6 Normal Monsters as this video suggests. It was still fairly significant, but not anywhere near as much as jumping from 1650 to 2500 ATK.
Normal monsters would have stayed super relevant in game design if they were needed for extra deck plays. Imagine if tunner monsters were all normal monsters, if XYZ needed one normal monster material to be summoned, etc. Then we’d have “this syncro card can only be summoned with [insert tunner’s name]” or “must have at least one FIRE machine monster as material to XYZ summon this card.” Fusion monsters started off like that but Konami didn’t give any kind of effects or ways to search for the pieces leading to them being underwhelming in a competitive meta mindset. Same with rituals. Hell, rituals are still bad till today excluding a few archetypes.
I was randomly looking up your old video for some research I'm doing, and was pleasantly surprised to find a sequel video just came out! This is great stuff.
I feel like there's a certain charm to vanilla monsters. Everybody as a kid had to fill up their deck with whatever strong enough monsters we got in our tiny card collections. My go to Normal Monsters as a kid were Dark Blade and Overdrive. Overdrive in particular holds a very special place in my heart, It wasn't even the best normal monster I owned. But I seemed to enjoy playing Overdrives more than Dark Blade or Axe Raider. Guess even at age 9 I was destined to be an Earth Machine duelist for life. Tell me fellow duelists. What was your generic lv4 Vanilla beatstick as a kid?
I loved Serpent Night Dragon as a kid and I still think it’s one of the best looking Secret Rares from the GOAT era. Same with Seiyaryu. The parallel rare looks so clean. I heavily valued aesthetics over functionality until I started playing in the Books a Million tournaments and realized that kind of stuff wouldn’t cut it.
I've been PLAYING YuGiOh basically for my entire life, watching the show, playing the games, all that jazz. It wasn't until this past year that I started to LEARN about YuGiOh, both before and after my time through wonderful videos like this.
Someone else mentioned the existence of Curse of Dragon in LoB, but I'll repeat it just in case ya miss it. Curse of Dragon was also a 1 tribute monster middling between Succubus Knight and Summoned Skull with 2000 ATK points, and it came in LoB. So you're wrong about Succubus Knight being the strongest 1 tribute normal monster in the first set.
Great video! I think something that also is overlooked in regards to normal monsters is their space as foils for effect monsters. At the beginning (and quite a few sets in) you had big numbers on normal monsters and effect monsters had their stats somewhat adjusted for their perceived strength of their effect. The differences were so large that you as a new player could go: "Oh big number seems good" and draw the right conclusion while also looking at a weak monster and thinking that since it has an effect it is probably good enough to make up for its weakness. I know not all of the monsters end up following that rule but looking back at the "older" card designs it seemed much more approachable on a glance regarding monster's "goodness" than modern yu-gi-oh simply due to the stats of normal monsters and effect monsters usually being so different that a Zombyra the Dark makes you think "huh, this is a bit too good to be true". And I think that's really really awesome about older yu-gi-oh looking back. Also: I really appreciate the rhyme at 16:14 it's music to my ears
I had a similar thought in the early days of the game. Of course, it helps when your older sibling hogs all the powerful vanillas and you have to just make do with Wall of Illusion, Yomi Ship and Legendary Jiujitsu Master lol. I'll never forget my brother going through an act of congress to put Black Luster Soldier on the field, and then just crashing into it with my Yomi Ship and using Monster Reborn to take it. Real good times. Yomi Ship god tier. Honestly I wish they had kept that philosophy, having the vanillas be huge bodies while giving the effect monsters lower stats to compensate. It would give normal monsters a more viable niche and a bigger cut of the pie in the overall game. To take the concept a step further and deviate from the old-school Yugioh talk, I think the generic extra deck monsters should have weaker effects and/or stats, and archetype specific monsters get the good stuff instead of printing more and more generic cards that are extremely strong that any deck can build. The archetype specific monsters should have a greater reward for playing that deck instead of being a win-more option for decks that already do well.
@@Quasartist Completly matches to my experience with playground yu-gi-oh too! Great times! I would love for extra deck cards to pay for their level of accessibility in stat points / effect strength. It'd be great fun to have to choose between ease of use and power level. I fear though that something like that could make one deck the definitively best one and the rest far worse than it.
Unexpected dai works with them. But then again you mind as well just run tuners that can ss from the hand :/ I guess they could get support effect monsters that special themselves from the hand, and a normal tuner from the deck. That’d be a good effect
No, I'd say Effect monsters absolutely do not need flavor text even if it is outside of the card. That is how you wind up with bland text that turns people away and Konami potential having to procedurally generate flavor text ideas.
You've earned a new subscriber with this video. I appreciate a TCG creator who doesn't scream power creep at every change in numbers without considering the incomparable factors like types and attributes in YGO or classes in Hearthstone.
3:39 ~ stop hating on Skull, he ain't even the most broken 6-star... Summoned Skull = 2500 + 1200 = 3700 Gyakutenno Megami = 1800 + 2000 = 3800 tldr; May 2002, aka Yugi-Kaiba Format is great fun!
I think if they retreaded old design space, they could improve a lot on old mistakes and slow the progression down by a lot. Raising the attack and defense point ceiling slowly, not printing cards like Pot of Greed or Delinquent Duo, releasing Chaos cards and DAD way later, changing specific card mechanics so that they can remain competetive long term, etc
I think I’m his partner, Koitsu fits that more. He’s Level 10, the same as Trains and the Sacred Beasts, has a stat total of 300, and doesn’t have the benefit of being searchable by Summoner’s Art or summonable with Ancient Rules like Aitsu is.
Shoutouts to Battle Ox, a format staple, and all the various types and attributes on 1600s 1550s and 1500s (Last Will is a card) that allow for interplay with equip spells and counterplay against field spells, and also to Gyakutenno Megumi for seeing some play as an 1800/2000 1 tribute (a Soul Exchange enabler among other things). Yugi Kaiba format gotta represent. (don't even get me started on retro OCG viable vanillas)
The Enraged Battle Ox still has a small niche since it deals the difference between the defense of a defending monsters and its own attack to your opponents life-points directly. This stops your opponent from just buying time by hiding behind whatever defense position monster they have.
3:39 ~ sure 1.) Summoned Skull in the context of Yugi-Kaiba Format is broken, but that's a good thing! and 2.) Judge Man is nowhere near as powerful as Skull, but that's also ok, it's a good thing too. also 3.) you forgot about that time period's ultimate 6-star utility knife: Gyakutenno Megami!
I feel like the biggest misstep the franchise has ever done was prioritize effect monsters while leaving Normal monsters out to dry. Normal Monsters should've been a resource that effect monsters revolve around, effectively making Vanillas a mana system in its own right and keeping the game more balanced.
I don't agree with that. Tell me how are you going to make normal monsters a reliable resource in the game?? I personally feel your problem is the game design which doesn't actually help normal monsters to just work as such. They're not viable on their own without heavy support
@@high_define if you geared effect monsters to supplement them (command knight etc) then normies could be the mainstay of any deck, there is a lot of normal support now but it's not competitive and that is a shame, sometimes simple flavor text is more fun then reading an essay lol
@@high_define By having their Effect Monster effects activate around Vanillas, whether it's by bringing Vanillas out, boosting them, or even discarding Vanillas from hand or recycling them from the graveyard as a cost for an unrelated effect. Rush Duels is actually pretty close to what I'm talking about, Vanillas are a staple there because the game is very carefully balanced around each deck needing a good amount of Vanillas in order to get anything done.
The problem with only having 2 hard stats is that, for the same cost, if you raise one you need to drop the other to stay on the same power curve. What that means is that what looks like 2 dimensions of design space is actually 1 dimension of design space. Without creating any archetypes and while holding costs constant, you basically have one variable to play with that doesn't break the power curve, which is ATK/DEF ratio. That isn't a lot of design space.
19:14 I don’t think killer needle is the lowest atk lv 4 insect normal. But it is the lowest atk lvl 4 WIND insect normal, in order to get around barrier statue in Floo.
excellent video, I was always obsessed with normal monsters, specially the ones with less than 4 stars, hope you make an analysis of those in the future
It would be interesting to normalize the attack points of a monster over it's rarity. For example if summoned skull had a 0.1% chance to be pulled, it's normalized attack would be 0.01 * 2500 = 25, while a card with lets say 1600 attack that had a 5% chance to be pulled gets a score of 0.05 * 1600 = 80. Using these weighted score, it would be interesting to see if the overall attack increased pack-by-pack, rather than the absolute best score. If yes, then it would show that the packs are balanced for basically a draft-meta where kids only get so many packs to build their playground deck. There's no way this is true though because konami has no idea what they are doing, but looking at attack points in relation to the cards rarity would make the progression curve a little more steady I think
This reeks of undertones of a MtG player wanting to play MtG in Yugioh. Encouraging draft in yugioh just doesn't make sense. Archetypes is probably one the biggest aspects that defines and deferintiates yugioh between other TCG's. No resource system and Archetypes. So while these early sets are nostalgic, later yugioh is better and more enjoyable, wheter it's GOAT or the current format. So draft in yugioh just doesn't make sense, nor sound fun IMO. And balancing the dmg potential doesn't seem to fix that.
when you look csrd set its clear that in building different decks they, which was heavily based off of your field spell card the monsters based off the field spell card had small difference. the rock monsters did not share tribute monsters but they did share common field spell with Uraby which was runner up to skull red bird. basically giant solider of stone was not overpowered for no reason it was the best rock monster at the time like the soon after summon skull
Skull servant got a use in Wight/Skull servant decks (Wight been Skull servants OCG name) Not a point again the video, just a neat trivia , I thought should be included, You did a great job
Yeah it’s the only vanilla based deck I can think of that doesn’t get held back by the titular monster DM is a garnet and blue eyes requires specific cards to come out Skull servant can just be summoned for an xyz’s and is still run in the deck despite its name not being unique anymore
If we make semi-broken but interactive (mystic mine) support for normal monsters. Example: “Killer Swarm, a spell card, Killer Needle is unaffected by card effects this turn. You must banish 20 cards from your deck face down. A Killer needle you control gains 1000 attack for every banished card. Killer needle can attack 3 times the battle phase that this card is activated.” Making such an inconsistent OTK would be crazy but we’d for sure see longer anticipatory games with less combo solitaire at tournaments.
List of Normal Monsters I want in my Duel Monsters collection: Summoned Skull, Feral Imp, Skull Servant, 13th Grave, Headless Knight, Armored Zombie, Dragon Zombie, Vorse Raider and Archfiend Soldier
4:23 ~ gradual increase in power spike... boooorring, no thanks! 🥱 what they did with the Starter + LOB and MRD, so Yugi-Kaiba Format and Critter Format (as we say in retrospective), is just fine, those two very first Formats are a blast to play even to this day! 🔥
Kinda weird that you didn't mention Sunseed Genius Loci (aka Sunvine Seed), a normal monster with 0 ATK but is an essential piece of the Rikka Sunavalon deck due to their ability to recycle Seed for more plays.
I wish effect monsters in Yugioh were more like the appliancer cards. Individually they have weak stat totals, and their effects are alright. When they're working together with other cards from their archetype though, their effects become better and their stats are able to rise up and become more dangerous. If all effect monster effects related to / relied no monsters of their archetype, then splashing them into other decks would be very situational and uncommon. Instead it'd be the high stat totalled normal monsters you splash into a variety of decks. With effect monsters primarily staying in their own archetype, they'd be a lot easier to balance and manage too, since you'd have a lot fewer unintended interactions. Letting normal monsters be the boss monsters of archetypes would have also made combos shorter and less consistent, making duels more interactive. Personally I think yugioh would have been a lot more accessible to new players in this state too, since most monsters would be normal monsters, and the only effect monsters you really needed to learn would be the ones compatible with your archetype.
As far as I know, Kamakiriman not Killer Needle is the lowest attack level 4 normal insect monster at 1150 or at least it's the lowest I could find when making my insect deck in Master Duel.
I feel like something YGO really doesn't have that much design space for normal monsters anyway. Like, you've got attack, defense, type, attribute, level. Of those, only attack, defense, and to a limited extent level have a direct effect on gameplay. By comparison, a nothing special literacy-optional Pokemon card has: •hitpoints •one or more colors. •stage, and possibly what exactly it evolves from. •multiple attacks with different color mixes of energy cost and damage. •color weakness(es) •color resistance(s) •retreat energy cost. Don't get me wrong, the design space for no effect Pokemon cards is dead as well, but they are much more meaningfully diverse.
Kinda feel that even if a 5000 attack beatstick 4 stars normal monster wouldn't get much use, besides some sort of gimmick that uses that attack to do something crazy.
2900 DEF on a 2900 ATK is almost a useless benefit. Like, you summon a 2 tribute normal monster with 2900 ATK, but you're worried something is gonna tear through it and go for your LP so instead of putting it in attack mode you keep it in defense so it can still die but you save the LP. Like ... It's just as good of a wall in attack mode and your also get to attack with it. Why would you want it in defense?
I wish every archetype still got a Normal Monster for the lore. That's a better collectible than whatever Despian Quaeritis or Crystal Clear Wing Synchro Dragon is out there that I can't use and have limited interest in.
I've never understood why Dark Magician was a 7⭐ monster. Summoned Skull had as much attack at a 6⭐ and generally speaking it would have made the most sense of Dark Magician was a 1 tribute, and Dark Magician Girl was a no tribute with about 1700 atk, that gained 500 atk per Dark Magician in the grave. (Making it so it still beats Arcana in that duel) As such, I would actually say they should be a 5⭐ & 4⭐ Monster respectively. That would probably be the most fitting for the strength of the time they were introduced for their rarity.
I think of affect monsters stayed under say 1500 attack I think affect monsters wouldn't have the attack power to get over normal monsters yes they might have the effects to get over a normal monsters but because the game is all about doing damage. You want to have some good strong normal monsters in your deck that are just purely for doing damaged. So if affect monsters had an attack tap I think normal monsters would be played in some decks but not in every deck.
For me, 5D is when YGO started being uninteresting to me, games on average started ending too quickly. The who went first typically wins thing really became more truthful in that era, and is still so somewhat to this day but it depends on instead of going first, it's is your deck designed to go first or second and do you have the exact hand trap your need to survive if you're going the turn your deck isn't made for. Games ending on turn two was Konami's big mistake with YGO, makes the game feel more like a coin flip, not a battle to wits and strategy.
Great vid so far just had to say that Archfiend Soldier was significantly better than Opticlops. Those 100 points mattered big time and being 15 defense meant it was searchable by Witch Opticlops was still a G tho i ran it don't get it twisted but Archfiend Soldier held it down for me back in the day
Wrong, the pronounciation in the video is the correct one. Here's a scene from the Anime where Neos is called by his name many times: ruclips.net/video/epybGqcAS-s/видео.html
@@alejandrojimenez108 So what? Neos isn't an english or japanese word. It's a name and an official source (check the japanese YGO Database for the katakana spelling ) tells you how to pronounce it.
@@Brolaub I feel you and I respect the point, but it sounds weird af. And this is coming from a guy who’s name is Alejandro and HATES when people mispronounce it, still though neos just sounds better as knee-os.
i think normal monsters were best for casual to new players who didn't really now how meta worked backed then like good old fashion school yard duals the essence of yugis regualer deck vs kaibas meta deck
Summoned Skull was a mistake. Completely invalitated so many cards I can't understand what they were thinking. Like why would you make a card that is better than Yugi's Ace Dark Magician there was zero reason to use it.
Tyrant Dragon is a superior card to Blue Eyes White Dragon since it can attack twice. The 100 attack difference does not matter much since beat down decks ran equipment cards to increase statistics.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
Normal monsters have been my favorite cards since the beginning, because of the lore. I love that every single monster gets described as a galaxy-ending superthreat regardless of its stats. Adding lore to all monsters is by far the coolest thing Cross Duel has done.
Me too I’ve always liked the concept of normal monsters having something magical and special about them even though they are effect less they get cards to support them like dark magician, harpie, Ojamas etc
they'll have monster with low that days like "a creature of destruction and chaos. few have met it and returned to tell the tale" and it's a level 1 monster with 100 atk and 300 def
@@j0j0dartiste21 "This formidable wizard can't be bested in combat" 700 ATK
check THIS out!
It feels notable that Summoned Skull was actually level 7 in the anime, and somewhere in the card game pipeline, it became 6 and briefly broke the game.
briefly broke the game you mean become the first meta deck?
you mean the manga ? i'm pretty sure the anime just used the ocg card which had konami's 6 stars
i think the konami designers overvalued the importance of def points like they must have felt dark magician and summoned skull couldnt be the same level due to summoned skulls defence being nearly halved but it turned out that scaling by atk value was kind of the right idea all along
i think its possible to draw a correlation to the levels of early monsters and their COMBINED atk AND def iirc but i would have to check
they did it with jinzo too which is honestly bonkers
It's because very early in the game levels were mostly assigned based on a card's total stats. Though there were some exceptions (Giant Soldier and Stone and Leo Wizard to give examples going both ways), Summoned Skull was not made an exception. Cards with 3700 total stats were standard lvl 6 and so was Summoned Skull. It's also why the 3 Zombies had such low levels (Dragon Zombie being considered on par with the likes of lvl 3 Kurama while Clown Zombie was considered to be slightly below the likes the lvl 2 Winged Cleaver due to stat totals). It's also why there's so much terrible crap like Sand Stone and LaMoon having a higher level than the likes of Battle Ox and La Jinn, because such cards were doomed by having 2 "high-ish" stats resulting in a stat total going above lvl 4 (2800 being the max a lvl 4 could have back then. Which funnily does mean we could theoretically have had a 2800/0 lvl 4 monster, imagine that).
Using TCG instead of OCG means this project is tracking coincidental release dates determined by business decisions, rather than the actual game design decisions Konami made.
Yes, this video would be a lot better if it was tracking the OCG instead of TCG...
yeah, this is what's always hurting me with these history of yugioh videos. The early TCG was already just a pale reflection of the original game, so much nuance is being missed
@@IronNidow This is why Chaos Magician is my favourite YGO History Channel atm. His reaction to Booster 4 powercreeping itself 3 times in the same set was priceless :D
Bring back the 1200 ATK ceiling, Konami!
He brought it up in the video 👀
The one thing about this that I think you should have addressed was the rarity of these cards, particularly in earlier sets. Summoned Skull was available in every starter deck Yugi, but Gemini Elf was a only available as a secret rare. For many playground Yugioh players, especially in those days, accessible beaters was a legitimate concern and so most of those players wouldn't have Gemini Elves or Mechanicalchasers, but the printing of Mad Dog of Darkness and Archfiend's Soldier at rare meant anyone could gain fairly easy access to a 1900 ATK normal monster. The first 1900 at common was Insect Knight, which you mentioned but didn't discuss the rarity of. It wouldn't be surprising to see casuals with the common 1800s like Neo Bug because they weren't going to pay for a Gemini Elf.
Wasn't Curse of Dragon in LOB? It has 2000 ATK so I don't understand how Succubus Knight could be the strongest 1-Tribute Monster.
True
The only floodgate in the game was dragon capture jar
I think he made a mistake and picked the highest attack level 5 and not the highest attack one tribute
@@shiroshnurCurse of Dragon is level 5 too though
It was. It was LOB-EN066 and a Super Rare. It is a DARK, Dragon-type, Level-5 Normal Monster with 2000 ATK and 1500 DEF, making it far stronger than Succubus Knight as well as stronger than any Level-4 Monster without a negative effect until many years later, when a Level-4 Normal Monster with 2000 ATK and 100 DEF was finally released. Thus, the jump from LOB to SDY/SDK was nowhere near as drastic for Level-5 and -6 Normal Monsters as this video suggests. It was still fairly significant, but not anywhere near as much as jumping from 1650 to 2500 ATK.
The flavor text of effect monsters is the artwork. However, we do need like a 100 page novel to explain Albaz lore. And. It's. Still. Not. Done. Yet.
Normal monsters would have stayed super relevant in game design if they were needed for extra deck plays. Imagine if tunner monsters were all normal monsters, if XYZ needed one normal monster material to be summoned, etc. Then we’d have “this syncro card can only be summoned with [insert tunner’s name]” or “must have at least one FIRE machine monster as material to XYZ summon this card.” Fusion monsters started off like that but Konami didn’t give any kind of effects or ways to search for the pieces leading to them being underwhelming in a competitive meta mindset. Same with rituals. Hell, rituals are still bad till today excluding a few archetypes.
Yu gi oh would be different for sure
Without synergy, the only relevant normal monsters are the one with either highest attack or highest defense for it summoning cost.
Or to get cheated out with something like unexpected day
I was randomly looking up your old video for some research I'm doing, and was pleasantly surprised to find a sequel video just came out! This is great stuff.
This is why I like the Rush Duel format. It gives Normal Monsters relevance again.
I feel like there's a certain charm to vanilla monsters.
Everybody as a kid had to fill up their deck with whatever strong enough monsters we got in our tiny card collections.
My go to Normal Monsters as a kid were Dark Blade and Overdrive.
Overdrive in particular holds a very special place in my heart, It wasn't even the best normal monster I owned. But I seemed to enjoy playing Overdrives more than Dark Blade or Axe Raider. Guess even at age 9 I was destined to be an Earth Machine duelist for life.
Tell me fellow duelists. What was your generic lv4 Vanilla beatstick as a kid?
I loved Serpent Night Dragon as a kid and I still think it’s one of the best looking Secret Rares from the GOAT era. Same with Seiyaryu. The parallel rare looks so clean. I heavily valued aesthetics over functionality until I started playing in the Books a Million tournaments and realized that kind of stuff wouldn’t cut it.
I've been PLAYING YuGiOh basically for my entire life, watching the show, playing the games, all that jazz.
It wasn't until this past year that I started to LEARN about YuGiOh, both before and after my time through wonderful videos like this.
Someone else mentioned the existence of Curse of Dragon in LoB, but I'll repeat it just in case ya miss it.
Curse of Dragon was also a 1 tribute monster middling between Succubus Knight and Summoned Skull with 2000 ATK points, and it came in LoB. So you're wrong about Succubus Knight being the strongest 1 tribute normal monster in the first set.
Great video!
I think something that also is overlooked in regards to normal monsters is their space as foils for effect monsters. At the beginning (and quite a few sets in) you had big numbers on normal monsters and effect monsters had their stats somewhat adjusted for their perceived strength of their effect.
The differences were so large that you as a new player could go:
"Oh big number seems good" and draw the right conclusion while also looking at a weak monster and thinking that since it has an effect it is probably good enough to make up for its weakness.
I know not all of the monsters end up following that rule but looking back at the "older" card designs it seemed much more approachable on a glance regarding monster's "goodness" than modern yu-gi-oh simply due to the stats of normal monsters and effect monsters usually being so different that a Zombyra the Dark makes you think "huh, this is a bit too good to be true".
And I think that's really really awesome about older yu-gi-oh looking back.
Also:
I really appreciate the rhyme at 16:14 it's music to my ears
I had a similar thought in the early days of the game. Of course, it helps when your older sibling hogs all the powerful vanillas and you have to just make do with Wall of Illusion, Yomi Ship and Legendary Jiujitsu Master lol.
I'll never forget my brother going through an act of congress to put Black Luster Soldier on the field, and then just crashing into it with my Yomi Ship and using Monster Reborn to take it. Real good times. Yomi Ship god tier.
Honestly I wish they had kept that philosophy, having the vanillas be huge bodies while giving the effect monsters lower stats to compensate. It would give normal monsters a more viable niche and a bigger cut of the pie in the overall game. To take the concept a step further and deviate from the old-school Yugioh talk, I think the generic extra deck monsters should have weaker effects and/or stats, and archetype specific monsters get the good stuff instead of printing more and more generic cards that are extremely strong that any deck can build. The archetype specific monsters should have a greater reward for playing that deck instead of being a win-more option for decks that already do well.
@@Quasartist Completly matches to my experience with playground yu-gi-oh too! Great times!
I would love for extra deck cards to pay for their level of accessibility in stat points / effect strength. It'd be great fun to have to choose between ease of use and power level.
I fear though that something like that could make one deck the definitively best one and the rest far worse than it.
i would love to see Konami give more purpose to normal tuners, it feels like thats an ideal way to give them a lot more utility
Unexpected dai works with them. But then again you mind as well just run tuners that can ss from the hand :/ I guess they could get support effect monsters that special themselves from the hand, and a normal tuner from the deck. That’d be a good effect
@@BlackRose-rp7kv Magikey approves
No, I'd say Effect monsters absolutely do not need flavor text even if it is outside of the card. That is how you wind up with bland text that turns people away and Konami potential having to procedurally generate flavor text ideas.
You've earned a new subscriber with this video. I appreciate a TCG creator who doesn't scream power creep at every change in numbers without considering the incomparable factors like types and attributes in YGO or classes in Hearthstone.
3:39 ~ stop hating on Skull, he ain't even the most broken 6-star...
Summoned Skull = 2500 + 1200 = 3700
Gyakutenno Megami = 1800 + 2000 = 3800
tldr; May 2002, aka Yugi-Kaiba Format is great fun!
i love these videos so much
just tingles that nostalgia when my grandma used to vuy cards for me an my brother after a walk on a cold autumn day
I think if they retreaded old design space, they could improve a lot on old mistakes and slow the progression down by a lot. Raising the attack and defense point ceiling slowly, not printing cards like Pot of Greed or Delinquent Duo, releasing Chaos cards and DAD way later, changing specific card mechanics so that they can remain competetive long term, etc
One more oddball to point out is Aitsu, the weakest tribute monster at the time.
I think I’m his partner, Koitsu fits that more. He’s Level 10, the same as Trains and the Sacred Beasts, has a stat total of 300, and doesn’t have the benefit of being searchable by Summoner’s Art or summonable with Ancient Rules like Aitsu is.
@@joshuahadams That's true, but Koitsu isn't a normal monster.
He didn't go that far into the history, but then Hieratic Seal could also fit this.
Shoutouts to Battle Ox, a format staple, and all the various types and attributes on 1600s 1550s and 1500s (Last Will is a card) that allow for interplay with equip spells and counterplay against field spells, and also to Gyakutenno Megumi for seeing some play as an 1800/2000 1 tribute (a Soul Exchange enabler among other things). Yugi Kaiba format gotta represent. (don't even get me started on retro OCG viable vanillas)
The Enraged Battle Ox still has a small niche since it deals the difference between the defense of a defending monsters and its own attack to your opponents life-points directly. This stops your opponent from just buying time by hiding behind whatever defense position monster they have.
@@lanceknightmare interesting. in what format do you mean?
This channel is still so underrated.
Absolutely brilliant video, was exactly the discussion on Normal monsters that I wanted to watch! Subscribed bro!
3:39 ~ sure 1.) Summoned Skull in the context of Yugi-Kaiba Format is broken, but that's a good thing!
and 2.) Judge Man is nowhere near as powerful as Skull, but that's also ok, it's a good thing too.
also 3.) you forgot about that time period's ultimate 6-star utility knife: Gyakutenno Megami!
The Inpachi cards are so cool.
I feel like the biggest misstep the franchise has ever done was prioritize effect monsters while leaving Normal monsters out to dry. Normal Monsters should've been a resource that effect monsters revolve around, effectively making Vanillas a mana system in its own right and keeping the game more balanced.
agree, fewer effect mons to supplement normals would have been more balanced long term
I don't agree with that. Tell me how are you going to make normal monsters a reliable resource in the game??
I personally feel your problem is the game design which doesn't actually help normal monsters to just work as such. They're not viable on their own without heavy support
@@high_define if you geared effect monsters to supplement them (command knight etc) then normies could be the mainstay of any deck, there is a lot of normal support now but it's not competitive and that is a shame, sometimes simple flavor text is more fun then reading an essay lol
@@high_define
By having their Effect Monster effects activate around Vanillas, whether it's by bringing Vanillas out, boosting them, or even discarding Vanillas from hand or recycling them from the graveyard as a cost for an unrelated effect. Rush Duels is actually pretty close to what I'm talking about, Vanillas are a staple there because the game is very carefully balanced around each deck needing a good amount of Vanillas in order to get anything done.
I appreciate that you didn’t ignore Insect Knight’s battle prowess.
Loved this video! Would love to see more about the Normal Monsters in the modern era, such as in Skill Drain decks or stuff like Sunavalon.
The problem with only having 2 hard stats is that, for the same cost, if you raise one you need to drop the other to stay on the same power curve. What that means is that what looks like 2 dimensions of design space is actually 1 dimension of design space. Without creating any archetypes and while holding costs constant, you basically have one variable to play with that doesn't break the power curve, which is ATK/DEF ratio. That isn't a lot of design space.
19:14
I don’t think killer needle is the lowest atk lv 4 insect normal.
But it is the lowest atk lvl 4 WIND insect normal, in order to get around barrier statue in Floo.
excellent video, I was always obsessed with normal monsters, specially the ones with less than 4 stars, hope you make an analysis of those in the future
It would be interesting to normalize the attack points of a monster over it's rarity. For example if summoned skull had a 0.1% chance to be pulled, it's normalized attack would be 0.01 * 2500 = 25, while a card with lets say 1600 attack that had a 5% chance to be pulled gets a score of 0.05 * 1600 = 80. Using these weighted score, it would be interesting to see if the overall attack increased pack-by-pack, rather than the absolute best score. If yes, then it would show that the packs are balanced for basically a draft-meta where kids only get so many packs to build their playground deck.
There's no way this is true though because konami has no idea what they are doing, but looking at attack points in relation to the cards rarity would make the progression curve a little more steady I think
Does that make Ra or appilosa easy to pull in packs?
This reeks of undertones of a MtG player wanting to play MtG in Yugioh.
Encouraging draft in yugioh just doesn't make sense. Archetypes is probably one the biggest aspects that defines and deferintiates yugioh between other TCG's. No resource system and Archetypes. So while these early sets are nostalgic, later yugioh is better and more enjoyable, wheter it's GOAT or the current format. So draft in yugioh just doesn't make sense, nor sound fun IMO. And balancing the dmg potential doesn't seem to fix that.
when you look csrd set its clear that in building different decks they, which was heavily based off of your field spell card the monsters based off the field spell card had small difference. the rock monsters did not share tribute monsters but they did share common field spell with Uraby which was runner up to skull red bird. basically giant solider of stone was not overpowered for no reason it was the best rock monster at the time like the soon after summon skull
I love your indepth analysis videos! Keep 'em coming :)
Skull servant got a use in Wight/Skull servant decks (Wight been Skull servants OCG name)
Not a point again the video, just a neat trivia , I thought should be included,
You did a great job
Yeah it’s the only vanilla based deck I can think of that doesn’t get held back by the titular monster DM is a garnet and blue eyes requires specific cards to come out
Skull servant can just be summoned for an xyz’s and is still run in the deck despite its name not being unique anymore
If we make semi-broken but interactive (mystic mine) support for normal monsters. Example: “Killer Swarm, a spell card, Killer Needle is unaffected by card effects this turn. You must banish 20 cards from your deck face down. A Killer needle you control gains 1000 attack for every banished card. Killer needle can attack 3 times the battle phase that this card is activated.”
Making such an inconsistent OTK would be crazy but we’d for sure see longer anticipatory games with less combo solitaire at tournaments.
-unaffected by card effects
- +20.000 ATK
- Can attack 3 times
i'm glad you're not working at konami :D
List of Normal Monsters I want in my Duel Monsters collection:
Summoned Skull, Feral Imp, Skull Servant, 13th Grave, Headless Knight, Armored Zombie, Dragon Zombie, Vorse Raider and Archfiend Soldier
4:23 ~ gradual increase in power spike... boooorring, no thanks! 🥱
what they did with the Starter + LOB and MRD, so Yugi-Kaiba Format and Critter Format (as we say in retrospective), is just fine, those two very first Formats are a blast to play even to this day! 🔥
What are your thoughts If Normal Monsters no longer needed tributes to Summon?
Kinda weird that you didn't mention Sunseed Genius Loci (aka Sunvine Seed), a normal monster with 0 ATK but is an essential piece of the Rikka Sunavalon deck due to their ability to recycle Seed for more plays.
It wouldve been cool if the normal monster where stronger than effect monsters state wise
Effect Monsters have flavor text in Cross Duels
…Vanilla Stardust & Utopia is slightly cursed ngl
Worlds 2008 winner had Andal in his main deck, so it's not a card that's seen 0 play.
I wish effect monsters in Yugioh were more like the appliancer cards. Individually they have weak stat totals, and their effects are alright. When they're working together with other cards from their archetype though, their effects become better and their stats are able to rise up and become more dangerous. If all effect monster effects related to / relied no monsters of their archetype, then splashing them into other decks would be very situational and uncommon. Instead it'd be the high stat totalled normal monsters you splash into a variety of decks. With effect monsters primarily staying in their own archetype, they'd be a lot easier to balance and manage too, since you'd have a lot fewer unintended interactions. Letting normal monsters be the boss monsters of archetypes would have also made combos shorter and less consistent, making duels more interactive.
Personally I think yugioh would have been a lot more accessible to new players in this state too, since most monsters would be normal monsters, and the only effect monsters you really needed to learn would be the ones compatible with your archetype.
As far as I know, Kamakiriman not Killer Needle is the lowest attack level 4 normal insect monster at 1150 or at least it's the lowest I could find when making my insect deck in Master Duel.
I’m sure I’ve gotten this a hundred times, but Curse of Dragon was in LOB. A 2000 atk 1 tribute monster
The conclusion of this video is funny, because in the TCG in OTS 19, Kuwagata A was released, which is a level 4 Insect Normal monster with 1250 ATK.
I feel like something YGO really doesn't have that much design space for normal monsters anyway.
Like, you've got attack, defense, type, attribute, level. Of those, only attack, defense, and to a limited extent level have a direct effect on gameplay.
By comparison, a nothing special literacy-optional Pokemon card has:
•hitpoints
•one or more colors.
•stage, and possibly what exactly it evolves from.
•multiple attacks with different color mixes of energy cost and damage.
•color weakness(es)
•color resistance(s)
•retreat energy cost.
Don't get me wrong, the design space for no effect Pokemon cards is dead as well, but they are much more meaningfully diverse.
Everyone forgets about gokiborre which fills the same field as killer needle
I wonder if they will ever be able to make normal monsters meta.
3:35 I mean there was in the ocg but the tcg had to speed up the localization process
At least the pendulum gimmick did give normal monsters effects. Sometimes.
Kinda feel that even if a 5000 attack beatstick 4 stars normal monster wouldn't get much use, besides some sort of gimmick that uses that attack to do something crazy.
is there a discord channel?
2900 DEF on a 2900 ATK is almost a useless benefit. Like, you summon a 2 tribute normal monster with 2900 ATK, but you're worried something is gonna tear through it and go for your LP so instead of putting it in attack mode you keep it in defense so it can still die but you save the LP.
Like ... It's just as good of a wall in attack mode and your also get to attack with it. Why would you want it in defense?
I wish every archetype still got a Normal Monster for the lore. That's a better collectible than whatever Despian Quaeritis or Crystal Clear Wing Synchro Dragon is out there that I can't use and have limited interest in.
I've never understood why Dark Magician was a 7⭐ monster. Summoned Skull had as much attack at a 6⭐ and generally speaking it would have made the most sense of Dark Magician was a 1 tribute, and Dark Magician Girl was a no tribute with about 1700 atk, that gained 500 atk per Dark Magician in the grave. (Making it so it still beats Arcana in that duel)
As such, I would actually say they should be a 5⭐ & 4⭐ Monster respectively. That would probably be the most fitting for the strength of the time they were introduced for their rarity.
I think of affect monsters stayed under say 1500 attack I think affect monsters wouldn't have the attack power to get over normal monsters yes they might have the effects to get over a normal monsters but because the game is all about doing damage. You want to have some good strong normal monsters in your deck that are just purely for doing damaged. So if affect monsters had an attack tap I think normal monsters would be played in some decks but not in every deck.
Yugioh needs keywords to shorten their text and then scatter flavor text in there
Magic has done that for so long and it works!
Normal tuners are pretty useful too
are you considering making video on Normal Monster support cards? Or even Non-Effect Monster support.
I like cards like Zure and Andal, and even like Anu Pirahna. I honestly wish more archetypes had random vanillas in them!
Access to normal support is great in a lot of decks, even just being able to use Rescue Rabbit or Unexpected Dai is nice.
no love for Vorse Raider? :(
What is that ending lol
Your videos are very informative 😃❤ Keep that good stuff
You forgot Cyber Tech Alligator lol
Great video, bro. Thank you.
Aitsu never got enough support.
Fuck Curse of Dragon, right?
For me, 5D is when YGO started being uninteresting to me, games on average started ending too quickly. The who went first typically wins thing really became more truthful in that era, and is still so somewhat to this day but it depends on instead of going first, it's is your deck designed to go first or second and do you have the exact hand trap your need to survive if you're going the turn your deck isn't made for. Games ending on turn two was Konami's big mistake with YGO, makes the game feel more like a coin flip, not a battle to wits and strategy.
If you make a sequel you need to check out mekk knight avram.
I wonder how fun the game would be if they banned all effect creatures with modern cards.
12:40 No
Just memes, really just memes.
Fantastic video, thanks
Great vid so far just had to say that Archfiend Soldier was significantly better than Opticlops. Those 100 points mattered big time and being 15 defense meant it was searchable by Witch
Opticlops was still a G tho i ran it don't get it twisted but Archfiend Soldier held it down for me back in the day
Neos is pronounced “knee-ose” where “ose” sounds like the “ose” in “close”.
Wrong, the pronounciation in the video is the correct one. Here's a scene from the Anime where Neos is called by his name many times: ruclips.net/video/epybGqcAS-s/видео.html
@@Brolaub Literally in Japanese
@@alejandrojimenez108 So what? Neos isn't an english or japanese word. It's a name and an official source (check the japanese YGO Database for the katakana spelling ) tells you how to pronounce it.
@@Brolaub I feel you and I respect the point, but it sounds weird af. And this is coming from a guy who’s name is Alejandro and HATES when people mispronounce it, still though neos just sounds better as knee-os.
The giant soldier of Strong
19:07 Foolishness Dante
i think normal monsters were best for casual to new players who didn't really now how meta worked backed then like good old fashion school yard duals the essence of yugis regualer deck vs kaibas meta deck
Summoned Skull was a mistake. Completely invalitated so many cards I can't understand what they were thinking. Like why would you make a card that is better than Yugi's Ace Dark Magician there was zero reason to use it.
Bruh the effect of effect monsters is already too much. We dont need any flavour text.
That sequel joke 🤣
imo 1800-1900 atk effect monsters with no drawback is the worst powercrept to normal monsters
They wouldn’t be normal otherwise 😏
k konami give us vanilla obelisk
Dude never read Genius Loci, the strongest starter in the game.
Tyrant Dragon is a superior card to Blue Eyes White Dragon since it can attack twice. The 100 attack difference does not matter much since beat down decks ran equipment cards to increase statistics.
Nobody beats WATTAILDRAGON
I swear this RUclipsr says "Generalist" monsters as "Genderless" monsters
First lol
elemental hero nayos?