The Fusion line you are looking for is "with the above materials" not "by Fusion Summon" because Instant Fusion treats the monsters as if properly Fusion Summoned. Oh we can always trust Redakai to be showcased as a bad example for something xD
One thing with ban lists that needs to be mentioned. Is that no card is truly safe. Look at Yugioh. The tyrant Neptune was a card released in the 5ds era, yet it was able to have a game breaking mechanic by interacting with an old card and new card.
There's a better example of this: Grinder Golem. This was a joke card printed to provide support for a bad strategy. It was fine for 8 years. And then Link Monsters were introduced and Golem went from joke card to one of the most overpowered cards ever printed.
It more of the fact that it can copy effects that was evevtaky going to be banned cards that do that make them overpowerd on game with the cards as the resorse
One thing to keep in mind is Garfield and co. knew how strong the Power Nine were going into release, but didn't know the game would be so popular that people were buying more than a starter and a few boosters. That thought, combined with playing for ante being a thing, made people playing like in the example less of a concern to them.
In retrospect, though, it was extremely silly to design the game around the assumptions that nobody will like it enough to want to collect full playsets of all the cards and that everyone will enjoy the weird and possibly illegal gambling mechanic.
to add to the above comment, it's not exactly that they weren't counting on the game being popular, but certainly not with how popular it will be. the power nine were meant to be exciting pieces where in your D&D playgroup you'd have maybe one or two, and woaaaah they're so good and when they come down on the table you know it'll be a tough battle. there's a (perhaps apocryphal) quote from Garfield, which to paraphrase - "If the power nine will become an issue, then we won't actually have an issue" e.g., if the power nine are running rampant, it's because the game took off and is profitable
Yugioh has been hitting this tipping point for what's felt like forever. Everytime I check in with it, it's "this new thing is dominating the meta! Oh, wait, now it's this thing! Hang on, no, now it's this!" It sounds like there is never a moment to breathe in that game anymore. And I can't believe Magic is letting A SINGLE CARD warp it's meta to just as bad a spot.
The problem is that the community in yugioh loves complaining more than playing the game. So the sky is always falling. There are times where the game is bad just like any other game, but you can’t tell them apart from the non/stop bitching about the game
There was a beautiful few months after AGOV came out where the most common complaint was "there isn't just one best deck so how am I supposed to sideboard?", then snake eye came out and it went right back to the same old same old
The problem is Nadu doesn't just limit your opponent from going off, it's just a huge combo that isn't always determined. So you gotta go through it manually
6:20 I will never not be annoyed that the cards do not slide in in WUBRG order nor that the Forest is the only Snow-Covered land. Thanks for the video.
17:39 Hysterically, Instant Fusion does count as a proper fusion summon. There are ways to exclude things from being a target for it, (higher level, requires X materials without substitution, etc.). You just have to be even more specific. Also, regarding bad banlists, at the peak of Wind-Up loops and other such unpleasantness, the banlist only massacred what dying gasps were left of Plant Synchro, a deck that was already falling off hard. I'm sure it's an oversimplification, but it's been explained to me that Yugioh nearly died at this time, as massive swathes of players migrated to the then new Cardfight Vanguard. People actually credit an Elemental Hero deck taking top 4 at tournament with steming the bleeding enough that it might have been the thing to save the game.
Think you’ll ever make an Errata Text focusing on Redakai now that you have more experience critiquing and editing? Edit: Come to think of it, it might be better suited as a Tales from the Bargain Bin episode.
My take has always been that games should be far more willing to ban/restrict and in hand with that far more willing to unban as time passes and the card pool changes. The current model is often predicated on "We don't want to be trigger happy and ban without being sure". But all that does is make players wait longer for a solution. Ban something, print an answer 6 months down the line, and cut it loose again. Banlist is a river, not a wall.
Honestly, this is a really interesting idea. There are a few variables that could make this a bit more complicated, but they don't even feel that insurmountable. The two issues that immediately come to mind are: how long does it take to design a counter card and does banning the card stop a large number of cards in the set from working optimally? 6 months seems like the minimum amount of time to design a counter card, but it may take longer if you wanted the card to be more versatile and therefore, fit more easily in people's decks. The latter question very much depends on how long the former takes to resolve because losing a key card from your archetype due to some unintentional, outside interaction feels real bad regardless of how long it lasts.
@munchrai6396 Great questions. In regards to the first I think it depends upon the game, their design cycle, and their ability to slot something in. It may not even be a situation that needs a specific counter so much as we just need a few sets to release that have tools for other decks. As a couple example, I think a card like Nadu is just bad game design and should eat a ban for overall game health. If you know One Piece, the red/purple colored leader card Trafagalar Law is their Nadu. Both are overtuned and take advantage of cards that are otherwise fine to dominate their respective formats. Format health bans are the correct choice here and designing a counter would only ever be a stopgap. The other aspect to this is just the natural churn of modern TCG cardpools. MTG, One Piece, Lorcana, et all get at least 3, but often 4+ sets per year. Usually in those you bring enough cards to empower other decks to compete, and could give banned cards a second chance. If they dominate again, you can just reban. For the second issue: If your set is designed in a majorly parasitic way where losing one or two cards ruins one or more decks, then that's a set design issue and the games problems go far beyond needing to ban a broken piece. I do think this is just cost of doing business and it's important and owed to the players to curate playable formats that don't devolve into single deck dominance. Obviously no system is perfect and you can't please everyone, but I've always thought making the banlist less of a sacred cow would only be a good thing. There's also a much larger conversation to be had about game cost and accessibility that affects banning. The threshold to ban a card(s) that kills a $800 deck is a lot higher than a game where a meta deck is $100.
Unbans always feel like a cope answer to me, cards pretty much never get banned just for power level reasons, there's almost always a strong toxic element to them getting hit. A card like dark armed dragon wasn't solely banned for power level reasons, it fundamentally just didn't have adequate counter play to it in the game, because being able to drop it without much real set up and clean up a board was an unhealthy action. With priority the way it was back then, there were even less cards that could trade with it favorable as well. It really isn't that dark armed dragon was too strong for the game, though it was, the core of the problem was it just didn't interact with the rest of the game in a healthy way. That type of interaction invalidates so many core foundations of the format that it existing means you're playing a completely different game.
@@shawnjavery I think the power level of a card should definitely be the primary reason for banning cards. Maybe if the card is generic enough to not impact decks too heavily then we can talk about how unfun it is to play against. Being floodgated, by something like Dinomorphia Rextrum doesn't feel nearly as bad as your favorite deck losing its main win condition, not because it was too strong, but just because people didn't like playing against it.
@@shawnjavery For sure. I agree with you. I likely could have clarified. I meant I want to see more looseness in regards to bans that aren't and out format defining with an understanding that some can come back as things change. I'm still firmly in the camp that the DADS of the world just need to be banned and stay banned. Nadu is a DAD. Banned forever.
i'm amazed no one is talking about the Lorcana Bucky errata here. Basically in tbat game, the meta has been dominated for a month or so by a highly linear discard deck fromted by the emperor's new groove squirrel. So, hearthstone style they've errata'd to change EVERYTHING ABOUT THE CARD so it's virtually unplayable now. the community is generally happy about this, but many (myself included) would have preferred a full-on ban.
The same dilemma that Yugioh player have, they had been errating iconic banned cards to be able to unban them, but in the process they made them unplayable, like Disk Commander, Sinister Serpent, Makyura the Destructo and even the legendary Chaos Emperor Dragon became unplayable, so a lot of players have said just let the carda banned and don't ruin their legacy as broken ass cards, and Konami has learned because previously banned card have been erratad and they didn't made them useless Firewall Dragon which is still really useful on a Cyberse deck, and Summon Sorceress which just became a generic extender for mono type decks like Heroes.
The community is happy that Bucky isn't played anymore I don't know of anybody who is happy about how the thing got errata-ed. The errata is pretty universally hated because it's both to aggressive (although with set 5 you can use him in even more toxic decks so maybe those assessments where a bit premature) and just annoying and confusing. People are gonna show up at locals with old Bucky and people will lose games to forgetting the exact way it was errata-ed.
@@Ms666slayerIt’s even worse when they errata a card that didn’t even need it. Goyo Guardian never had any business being as good as it was (quite literally stronger stats wise than the vanilla monster using the same exact summoning method while having an amazing effect on top) but many years of power creep made it perfectly fine, only for it to get an errata to make it harder to summon. But the worst offender was brain control which again, was powerful in its day but then gets an errata while the card it was supposed to be a nerfed version of gets unbanned years later, unchanged. They literally made a weaker version of Change of Heart even weaker while just letting CoH come off as is and it isn’t a big deal as it’s at best a decent board breaker.
The errata was done because set 2 is still going to be released in other languages so they wanted to make it unplayable without actually banning it. This way they can keep it in other releases of the set, but it won’t be even slightly meta relevant.
They are errating cards at FoW (Paper tcg) and it works due to the low player base and that they reprint every errated card. But still feels weird. For me it works if I have the pre-errata version in a language I don't understands like Japanese or Dutch so I can't be tricked by the old text.
Jace/stoneforge standard ban hemming & hawing has really been memory-holed. The gaslighting done by the early magic content creators downplaying playerbase concerns, the sly mentions that BIG solution cards would be coming in next set, said set being spoiled months early resulting in suspensions of the then world champ (and the runner up), only for the planeswalker answer card to be revealed as Hex Parasite...while control decks got Mental Misstep. All of this for them to end up being banned with ~6months left till they rotated. Great times for all involved🤣
Fun fact about the mox cards. They were referenced in the game inscryption. And in act 2, the cards are honestly bad. They can work, but they took up precious field space, and were slow to set up. Inscryption in the first 2 acts relies on a board that is 4 spaces wide. So losing even 1 zone, can be devastating. Which is why with MOX, the optimal strategy is to focus on 1 or 2 gem types
I would love to see a remake of your Redakai stuff. I’m very much a card game wallflower. I got into MTG in Revised and played for maybe ten years off an on. So many crazy games came out around the Magic boom and I didn’t play most of them, so it’s cool to see detailed coverage on some of them!
The one thing i'd like to add about the neptune combo (especially for those unfamiliar or who don't remember/weren't there) is it wasn't just strong, it was also incredibly fast and took minimal deck space too. Yugioh's main deck space ranges from 40-60 cards, and the Extra deck (for fusion, synchro, Xyz, and Link) has a range of 0-15, and all cards have a max playset of 3. Since NONE of the cards involved were restricted in any way at the time, this meant you could have NINE cards dedicated solely to combo. This also meant you now had 34-54 main deck cards and up to 12 Extra deck cards that could be dedicated SOLEY to preventing your opponent from stopping the combo. Not to mention that this combo didn't use your once per turn normal summon, so you could set this up before you did ANYTHING else. So yeah, unless Neptune gets erratad, idt he's coming back anytime soon lol
the crazy part is that i don't even think it is that good of a combo anymore because instant fusion is limited and tyrant neptune is way too hard to search, we also have ways to out the card in engine with accesscode beating over the tyrant neptune, and a deck that doesn't runs any handtraps is positioned really badly going second.
One of the funniest bans for me was Felledar guardian in mtg. The card formed an infinite combo with the planeswalker Saheeli Rai. By using saheelis minus 2 ability you could flicker, banish and then immideatley return a creature to the battlefield. An innocuous ability at first glance, however felledar guardian could on etb flicker another permanent, including saheeli rai. This would reset the once per turn limit on planeswalker abilities since the returned card was considered a new copy that hadn‘t used an ability this turn, creating the 2 card infinite combo. Since they cards also were 3 and 4 mana respectively you could kill your opponent on turn 4 with an army of hasty creatures. This kind of broke standard and become very prominent, so when wizard on the next bannister announced no changes people were not amused. However only three days later, an addendum was published, announcing felledars ban and clamming that they wanted to wait and see, if the newly released amonkhet set could stop the combo, and since this was not the case they decided to ban the guardian.
There's currently a lot of talk in the Keyforge community about the latest set completely destroying the competitive scene by creating certain combos that are a) Almost impossible to play around and b) Can create almost unwinnable situations if the right cards happen to be drawn at the right time. And it's not just one lonely combo that does this; it's tons of them. Keyforge has mostly been a game about having a back and forth, figuring out sequencing, adjusting to the matchup on the fly and playing around each deck's strengths and weaknesses. Now at the top level it's all about getting your busted combos out first before your opponent can. Case in point: I have a deck where if I draw 2 specific cards in my opening hand, (one being Future is Past which swaps each player's deck with their discard pile) the optimal strategy for my opponent is to pass the turn without playing any cards, and my optimal strat if they do that (since playing any cards will flip their deck) is then to _also_ pass the turn because I'd be better off waiting for my opponent to flip their deck than doing anything else at all. Situations like this should not exist. It's at the point where the NKFL (the largest online competitive Keyforge group) decided for the first time to not only restrict the number of decks from each set that a player can use but also to run a 'legacy' league where people only run decks from older sets. Please, Ghost Galaxy. I can't be dealing with Witch Queen or WoDKA combos anymore... 😭
Still remember how my rogue yugioh deck got cards banned in 4/5 different occasions just because konami didn't want to ban firewall dragon, and it's just frustrating, especially when the card is still a problem, but other decks get to suffer to avoid the inevitable
Gem-Knights catching strays because of Adamancipator and Thunder Dragons was a similar situation that made me drop the game. I sold my collection after Ronintoadin was banned because of Sprights, effectively killing my PaleoFrogs.
@@Adrianovaz2007that said I’ll have you know that ronintoad it’s a semi-infinite loop card. Like we had frog FTK exactly for that reason. We just got lucky it stop seeing that kind of play.
@@magneto1992 I mean the problem cards for Frog loops where all banned by then, Sprights was what pushed the card over the edge again. The worst is the putting Substitoad back in to make for Ronin banned, since that is even worse from a card design pov. I hadn't been shafted so hard by a ban list since Plant Synchro being fully banned while Dino Rabbit and Wind-Up loop surviving back in 2011.
One of the best examples of a card game overhitting a combo is what Pokemon did when handloops started showing up in the Expanded Format. They weren't content with just banning the cards that shrink your hand, but they also banned Chip Chip Ice Axe, a card that does nothing more than rearrange the top 3 cards of your opponent's deck. An effect that is pretty much useless outside of exactly the situation created when your opponent has no cards in hand.
Nadu seems almost like a parody of broken magic cards. It has the same cost as Oko and Uro, it does the draw-then-ramp-if-land thing that simic cards tend to do, it has high stats for the cost, especially for a flyer, and in a game where tons of recent cards have "activate this only once each turn" restrictions pasted onto them to prevent degenerate combos, it has a TWICE PER TURN restriction that hardly even matters since it gives the ability to each of your creatures. I misread the card at first and thought the second ability just triggered when Nadu himself was targeted and I still thought it sounded ridiculously powerful, just on the merit of being an above rate flyer that generates card advantage, but this is absurd...
Funnily enough before it ever came to North America yugioh had to errata sangan for having the Rath egg problem which infamously was a factor in the time that the game was in danger because exodia was the best deck by far
Fun thing : summer 2024 MTG - NADU and blumborrow squirrel decks... Disney Lorcana - Diablo the bird and the squirrell Bucky (1st "ban" ever in disney = they errata'ed the card!)
1:30 On a related note. Players have started to call Yu-Gi-Oh the "fighting game" of card games, not because they wanna shit on Flesh and Blood, but because of how a modern game actually feels in terms of how you build your board and how you interact with an opponent.
I mean, they're wrong. FaB's entire system involves making choices in the moment, sacrificing some opportunities to take advantage of other opportunities, where the situation completely changes every single turn.
An interesting example of what can happen when you're *too* ban-happy is what happened with the Smogon banlist for Pokemon Showdown during X and Y meta. (video game not card game). It's possible the initial on-release bans of Mega Gengar and Mega Blaziken may have been justified, but as other megas started getting banned it was just kicking the can further down the road, as the megas that were kept "in check" by the banned megas suddenly rose to dominate the scene, warranting their own bans, and the cycle continuing until iirc at least HALF the mega evolutions in the game were banned? I wasn't involved in the competitive scene for very long (and Smogon itself was just the ruleset for Showdown, not official VGC tournaments which had their own issues in the opposite direction), but it's one of the few times I've seen "over-banning" lead to an unstable metagame and not just sunk cost frustration of the players who had the banned thing.
Smogon does tend to be very ban-happy in a variety of formats. The plethora of mons hit at the beginning of Gen 9 was honestly pretty ridiculous and Gen 8 has easily some of the weirdest bans I've ever seen from any game. Banning an item like King's Rock because it gave some select mons a sub 50% chance to flinch will never not be incredibly dumb to me
Great video. Being smart with bans and erratas is the living and difficult part of maintaining a game. It takes careful attention and continual learning. Learning HOW to make your game is aj ever growing challenge.
I do find it amusing that you say there's not really a way to change the rules text of cards when Yugioh is kind of infamous for some of their functional erratas. Though some have been generally considered to be fine or even positive. Firewall Dragon returning with the errata after being banned has allowed it to be pretty strong in cyberse piles without being the insanely oppressive playmaker it was back in 2018.
@@Kohdokthat is true. Yugioh I think has most successfully done errata’s when they make sure that the new version is easier to obtain for new players and those that have purchased recent sets
the errata was widely announced, it has multiple prints released over several years, and the current text is in the database and in Master Duel. The only ones who aren't aware of it are people who have been out of the game for 4+ years who are able to learn about it soon enough if it even comes up, or new players who just need to know the current text if it comes up. For all the jokes about yugioh players not reading their cards, I think they can manage well enough on this front.
@@yurisei6732 The utility of the card is also real nice. I'd also take a second copy of Called By the Grave, but being able to block handtraps, remove monsters or even field nuke with Time Wizard of Tomorrow makes the card super versatile.
This is going down as one of my favorite episodes of Errata Text. Incredibly well researched. I'd be excited at the idea of a new Redikai video. I haven't watched your old ones, and this channel is the only reason I know what that game is. I wanna see this disaster in it entirety!
Even without the infinite combo and even if you were to apply the restriction of twice per turn overall to Nadu, that card still seems way powercrept. I'm more amazed they released the card rather than that they haven't banned it yet.
"Buyer's Confidence" has nothing to do with the security of the customer's investment, it's to ensure the product doesn't remain on the shelves. Which is to say it's actually "Seller's Confidence".
20:11 I guess technically thorn scales wasn't the problem but ocg will remember, all those time Number 86: heroic champion - rhongominiad with 5 materials was summoned in a competitive tournament, it was due to phantom knight being played before it finally get banned. Literally the only deck that could summon it constantly and because of that people couldn't overlook the fact that they would instant lose to something that basically skipped their turn since unlike the tyrant neptune, something like kaiju or a very big monster couldn't even handle a 5 material rhongo and then phantom knight easily having enough ressource to just go ahead and otk next turn. Sure it was due to cards such as number 75: bamboozling gossip shadow helping, but thorn scale made the constancy of the combo skyrokket.
Really appreciated the section on The Tyrant Neptune and the justification around banning the card. I would like to add, that banning a generic card is generally preferable to banning an archetypal card as long as said archetype isn't the thing that is broken. There is no feeling worse than losing your decks win condition/consistency booster just because someone found something dumb to do with it. Similarly, a card being "unfun" to play against really shouldn't be the only factor in banning it. It should either be powerful enough that it's a detriment to the game or generic enough that its banning doesn't cause collateral damage to the decks it's meant to be played in. Mind you, I see this happen most often in fan formats where people overvalue the impact of one card on a game's general experience or put too much stock in a specific philosophy that isn't flexible enough for its own good. You should be looking to ban less not more Using a Yugioh card as a ban example for overly long combos is pretty funny. Like this game has hundreds of cards that could easily fit that bill and yet they chose a Rank 7, a card type that isn't even used by that many decks and is often the very reason why you play said decks in the first place. Mind you, it is pretty funny that Galaxy Tomahawk is still legal in Master Duel even after the introduction of Kashtira, which is probably the only deck strong enough to actually justify banning the card.
Being unfun to play against is the only important factor in a ban. People really enjoyed Nekroz mirror match format, so bans wouldn't necessarily have been appropriate even though it was tier 0. You just have to ask "why is this card unfun?" and make sure it's something inherent to the card, not something better solved by banning a different part of a combo or by telling players how to deal with it.
@@yurisei6732 "Unfun" cards can be designed as integral pieces to perfectly reasonable decks, especially when it comes to Yugioh's archetypal system. The most obvious examples of this are Necrovalley and Zombie World: floodgates that if banned would greatly impact the functionality of their corresponding decks. Even if they can be annoying to play against, its a far worse feeling to have your favorite deck destroyed, not because it was too powerful, but because people didn't like an integral card to your strategy.
@@munchrai6396 Correct, some decks as a whole are inherently unfun and bad for the game, and should be neutered. Necrovalley was designed specifically to be used by a villain in the anime, it was designed specifically to be toxic and unfun. It should never have been made paper. That's why they keep having to errata it.
@@yurisei6732 Absolutely not, no deck deserves to lose such a key component just so some people can avoid dealing with it on the off chance its played against them. A card's strength and impact on the current scene are far more important factors than how "unfun" a card is. Banning a card that sees little to no consistent play just to avoid the off chance you might have to deal with it is ridiculous, not to mention incredibly unfair for someone who actually wants to play said deck. As I said before, losing the off game to a floodgate is nothing compared to the feeling of losing a deck you love, not because it's too powerful, but because other people didn't like it.
I could be wrong given that I haven’t played all the fighting games that are referenced in the video but I love how each problem fighting game character correlates to the problem you’re talking about that’s related to tcgs
The problem with Fiendsmiths here in the TCG is the prize point, I mean, they facilitate a lot of BS, don't take me wrong, but that is mainly Beatrice's fault; having an engine so metadefining at the $350 dollar mark is beyond obnoxious for any card game, this isn't the first or the last time it happens, and it will most likely happen again.
At this point, it is becoming clear the card design are not entirely to be blamed, but how they managed to have those cards be distributed to their players. I really hope to god Konami of Japan look into the malpractice of the western Konami Side and cut the problem from the root.
@@shocknawe While Ash is a problem but it is not THE problem. Poplar and Flamberge are THE problems with Snake Eyes. considering the SE deck's core is slim enough to put another engine or more HT, cue the Fiendsmith which is the engine that can be used by NEARLY ANY DECK that does not have some sort of restrictions. Snake Eyes might get the ban hammer but i can tell you Fiendsmith is getting away with a slap in the wrist
One thing id like to point out about victory dragon, In the ocg, if tour opponent wants ro surrender, they need you to allow them to surrender, you can deny a surrender and keep playing
I'm kinda sad that you didn't talk about the Apocalymon situation in Digimon, as it kinda falls into both categories of "too late" (in the eastern release) and "soon enough" (in the western release). Would've been an amazing example.
Nadu is... inexplicable by anything but systematic incompetence. First, several cards in MH3 seem to give this kind of ability to all creatures, rather than having the card in question trigger when it affects other creatures. (Call this the quote problem) If Nadu's ability triggered only once per turn (itself terrible templating, that's literally what the "tap" symbol is meant to do with 0 words and 1 icon.), then it's not problem. But inexplicably the same people who add "This ability triggers only once per turn" rather than, you know, bothering to playtest cards and cost them appropriately decided this needs to trigger twice per turn. And then some doofus reformatted it after the fact, giving 2x to each creature you control. Then some idiot decided to put the lands onto the battlefield. Then some idiot decided the lands get to come into play untapped... inexplicably. The big problem with Nadu, though, isn't that it's the backbone of the best deck in the format, it's that the winning game combo is non-deterministic, so you need to wait for them to take a 15 minute turn to PROBABLY kill you. But the non-Thassa's Oracle version of the deck can fail... IE, the 4 lands you recycle each turn can come up in the wrong order. Ironically if they banned the Channel Lands (bad card design, but not as bad as Nadu), then Nadu could go back to the Thassa's Oracle version which has a deterministic win condition - IE, you play Thassa's Oracle and win. This wouldn't solve the problem, of course, getting to the Thassa's Oracle win still takes ~5-10 minutes and can fail. But even if they fail, there's a good chance they can just... do it all again next turn. Should Nadu be banned? Yes, uncontroversially. It's the KCI/Eggs problem (unfun, non-deterministic, hard to keep track of, etc.) coupled with metagame dominance. The bigger question is whether it should be banned in Commander. I think so here, too. I've played some durdley Commander decks in the past, but Nadu seems beyond tedious.
I do think an interesting take on bans is not always outright banning ot limiting cards, but limiting certain combinations of cards. For example, Duel Links has a "Limit 1/2/3" list in addition to a standard banlist where your deck is only allowed to have a specific number of cards in combination from those list.
Of note is another category that causes bannings: Causing some kind of logistical issues with tournaments. Examples: Having an effect based off of demographic information, which means judges are in the business of checking birth certificates now (bithday pikachu.) causing a game restart/subgame, massively bloating playtime. (fiber jar, serzerade) Incentivizing extra components, which incentivizes people NOT playing the deck to bring those components, because not doing that would give information about which deck you are playing. (stickers) Incentivizing awkward physical card placements (chaos orb)
the birthday pikachu original Japanese version had text stating it couldn't be legally played in tournaments but when it got translated they forgot to put that text on there so people started trying to play it.
With the yugioh quiz thing, you said it's not a trick question, but hilariously, Instant Fusion also happens to be banned in Yugioh Master Duel, it just happened years later. Also one thing to note the reason why instant fusion is so insanely powerful is that it CAN bring out monsters which "Must be Fusion Summoned" since it treats the summon as a proper fusion summon which means you can even revive that monster from the GY later. In that respect it is different to Magical Scientist which just Special Summons the monster, so you cant revive it if its destroyed and restricts the card pool.
This is the first I'm hearing of the Nadu debacle, but it's reminding me a little of the Firewall Dragon incident in Yugioh. So Firewall Dragon was very obviously a problem. In this video's own terms, it broke a basic mechanic of the game. Every time a monster it pointed to went from field to grave, you could special summon any monster from your hand. So as long as you could keep your hand filled, you could basically just keep Linking off your monsters or sacrifice them for Cannon Soldier's burn effect and they'd just get replaced. And of course, there were a LOT of ways to replenish your hand, many of them infinite, that were supposed to be gated by your ability to put those cards back on the board, which Firewall trivialized. They tried hitting some of the cards around it, such as A-Assault Core, but there were just too many ways to abuse Firewall. It was so absurdly easy to either loop your opponent to death on your first turn or combo off into a board so oppressive they don't get to play anyways. Firewall was such a clear-cut "ban this why did you even think it was ok to print this" you'd think it would be a prime candidate for immediate banning, possibly even an emergency list. And yet, Firewall ran rampant for over a year before finally being banned. Why? Well, there was one tiny problem with Firewall. It wasn't just the cover card of Code of the Duelist and the big powerful high-rarity card used to sell the set. It was the *ace monster of the anime's main character*, a flagship monster representing that era of the franchise as a whole. Konami likely didn't have unilateral authority to ban it and probably had to negotiate with the franchise rights holders to do so. It had real-life plot armor. And the playerbase was basically in open revolt that whole time, screaming for Firewall's head, which culminated in two major incidents. The first was at YCS London on October of 2018, where, in a blatant act of protest by the tournament organizers, a feature match pit Jesse Kotton, one of the best players in the TCG, playing an FTK deck, against a literal child with a playground-tier mismash deck. Poor kid got 2-0ed on stream and hardly even got to play. The second was at YCS Pasadena in November 2018, where Konami execs, including one who flew in from the Japanese side, dueled TCG players who topped a side charity event... and of course the players all agreed to FTK the Konami employees. In December of 2018, Firewall Dragon was finally banned, and the playerbase rejoiced.
The funny thing is for the most part they didn't really try hitting around it much, firewall itself was just largely ignored until the list before it was banned, where they limited A assualt core. Other than that, they had banned other link enablers like gofu, grinder golem, and knightmare goblin, but those all pretty much had to happen sooner or later. The interesting thing is they could have very well just banned around firewall, but that would have required hitting newer cards instead. You needed like, 6 to 7 monsters to really get much out of firewall, the 4 monsters to summon it isn't that hard but its just a combo piece with minimal extension built into it, even just having monsters in hand to summon wasn't that good, most decks would run through their once per turn effects to get to fire wall and you'd have serious diminishing returns. In practice the only decks that abused it were decks that could spam near infinite amount of bodies, namely spyrals and danger darkworld, both decks that were deeply problematic without fire wall around anyways, and decks that had a bunch of link extenders that made summoning it practical, like gouki. But every single link extender they used, mermaid summon sorc isolde, have now been banned for good reason. Its not like I think firewall being around would have improved the format at all, the decks that ran it were pretty obnoxious, but people vastly underestimate just how many hoops you had to go through to get value from it.
*Sees the talk about the length to the ban, being set to the trailer for Thrones of Eldraine, which brought us Oko the elk maker.* For those that don't know, The bird isn't the only time blue green has had a format breaking card in the last decade.
Bird is the word as they say Hehe, in all seriousness I tried to think of something to say or add, but I honestly couldn't. This was one of your best episodes yet, it covered everything so perfectly, and I feel like I can show this to a non-cardgame player and they'd not only understand the message, but quite enjoy the video too. Also I gotta say, toxic yes, but seeing somebody dump their entire deck onto the field via Nadu is pretty cool.
"Nearly 200 cards that Nadu can turn to gold" BRB grabbing a third of those 200, slapping some lands in there and bringing a Commander deck to my pod that goes infinite if I cough too hard.
Keyforge is prime example of power creep and not caring about bans killing the game. Its design is brilliant but ghost galaxy didnt understand any of keyforge strenghts. Would love it if you made a video about what went wrong, i think there is a lot to learn (what not to do) from the mistakes of new keyforge developers
18:14 When lyrilusk fist came out, the fusion was already not worth playing it and when the most recent supports came out that made the deck really easier to play on a competitive level, ignore the fusion s existence was still the right thing to do. If anything, even if the fusion ended banned that would have changed absolutely nothing for lyrilusk And lorewise that s fitting as was a card that didn't actually belong to character using that deck and was literally forced on her.
The funniest part is that Beryl Canary actually conflicts with summoning Independent Nightingale because it locks you into xyz summoning. Would still be cool if they printed a fusion Trap for the archetype in the future because lore reasons or not, feels bad for a card this powerful to collect dust.
@@munchrai6396Considering how things are going, maybe they ll make cards that make use of all the cards related to fusion parasite like this lyrilusk and windwitch crystal bell
If the deck even runs Independent Nightingale, it's only ever summoned through Instant Fusion and then it pulls a Houdini and disappears as material for something else
It’s modern horizons, I know it really doesn’t matter much but “masters” sets only have reprints (and thus could never introduce a new problematic card or cause the legality of cards to change)
Reprint sets can change the legality of cards for the pauper format specifically, in fact monestary swiftspear had to be banned after becoming pauper legal this way. But for formats that aren't "every common in the history of the game" yeah they don't affect legality
11:59 alough one of the reasons is elma, there is a argument that the bamboo sword + gearfreid loop is the reson konami stoped loops in the game (they changed how loops work in yugioh turns out gearfread is a weird card lol
This is an amazing episode. Not only for the style and really valuable perspective from the fighting game genre, but also because this highlights really well why greed can kill your game in earnest despite. I also remember that Extra Credits episode, and it is incredibly poignant with huge game dev studios today, and I agree that the tipping point is not far off.
Nadu would be incredibly pushed even if the ability resolved twice overall. This card has me scratching my head. I play it on Arena, at 75% win rate in Historic (before BLB, and there are no trivial loop able abilities for it)
Honestly, if Master Duel and the TCG used the same banlist I'd be way more OK with Instant Fusion staying at one over Kitkalos because Tear is already a very problematic archetype that really doesn't deserve any wiggle room. Its crazy that they printed an archetype so strong that its still a rouge contender even when all but one of its main deck monsters are limited.
@@munchrai6396 I agree, Kit should be banne over Instantfusion to weaken Tear but Instantfusion also limits design space for any fusion monster that it can summon. So banning it makes sense, just for that reason alone.
@@Lich_V. I honestly think its perfectly fine at one. The amount of utility you can get off the one card is just way too much fun to lose in its entirety and being at one means that most decks won't even see it that often. Though I'd still take an extra Called By the Grave in exchange because that's what it's usually used for in weaker decks that don't have good handtrap matchups and don't like running too many main deck monsters
@@Lich_V. Nah Instant Fusions has always been a card thats has been on teh verge of being banned, any good level 5 or lower Fusion will be abused by it, so it actually limits desing, also if it gets banned cards like Norden can be unbanned.
I think there's one thing left out here, and that's that banlists, particularly in eternal formats, do also serve to keep the format fresh. Some strategies aren't so much oppressive as they are consistent, and getting them out of the meta without just bumping the powerlevel of the whole format around them can breathe a little interest back into the game for people who's favorite strats have a poor matchup into them, or people who've just gotten tired of seeing them over months. I think the no Broadbull Zoodiac in Yugioh that we saw during Drident's 2nd stint off the banlist are pretty good examples. Zoodiac was a top tier strat, but it was hardly unbeatable, and by the time we saw Drident's 2nd ban it had been in that top tier area for a long while and was ill poised to stop. Zoodiac can be a fundamentally boring deck/engine to play and see played with all the slapping xyz's monsters on top of one another with no combo it does, so although I wasn't super excited to get rid of it, I was relieved I didn't have to see it much anymore post Drident's 2nd ban.
@@RiderOmega I feel like some strategies might not be oppressive, but can still just have fairly limited counter play against them. Like I think the zoo strategy of running 20+ non engine and just having a bunch of one card lines that played into interaction well just didn't have a lot of counter play to it. Like I don't think good players as a whole struggle against tenpai, or runick stun, or heck even branded. They're not consistent enough strategies to be oppressive, but even if you prepare perfectly for them, they still have a high probability of just being able to cheese games. Your win rate percentage should still be comfortable over 50% for those match ups.
@@shawnjavery That's all true, but I'm speaking about something more simple than that. Seeing the same decks at the high level all the time can get boring. Powercreep is one solution to that problem. Banning out that deck's key cards can be another solution. That's all.
I've asked for an episode on this topic before, but considering this video talked at length about Ancestral Recall and Timetwister, I think an episode on card flow as part of trading card game design would be interesting. Ancestral is one of the most powerful cards in Magic. Pot of Creed is the same thing but seemingly worse, drawing only two instead of three cards and seems just as powerful if not more powerful in YGO. Yet due to different card flow the card Diesel in Netrunner, which has the same effect as Ancestral and costing no other resources beside the card itself, is just a borderline playable.
If Giant Growth was going to be made as broken as Ancestral Recall, would make 3x 3/3 Elephants be enough text? We are talking about making vanilla creatures without trample. Or would it have to be 3x 1/2 Armadillos?
@@autobotstarscream765 You are making 3 token so lightning bolt doesnt kill 50% or 100% of your spell. Its ok if bolt reduces the effectiveness by 2/3. Like you will still brainstorm, even if you cannot shuffle away the cards you don’t need.
@@autobotstarscream765 You have up to 4 lightning bolts vs 12x 3/3s. Just casting two of these supped up version of Giant Growth, that means you have out passed the red player’s ability to fairly answer your OP spell. Regardless of keywords, 3x 3/3s would be OP but is it fair looking at other parts of the power nine?
Great video but I feel Kohdok glosses over what I think is a very important bit a bit too fast. Which is the cost of banning in your game. There was a period of time in Magic, I think post Return to Zednikar where Wizards was very ban happy. But that totally killed a lot of peoples motivation cause if you bought into the deck, there was a good chance it would get banned. HOWEVER it was later revealed that this period was a result fo Wizards lack of any real playtesting team. Bans can happen for many reasons but the fact that this was caused by the developer actively neglectic any form of proper playtesting is wild and stupid. Its not always just sins from early card desig or like actively malice. Sometimes its just the dev being stupid and careless.
whats crazy is it took this long for nadu to get banned, and they revealed the version of nadu that they actually playtested and its a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CARD Nadu, Winged Wisdom 1GU Legendary Creature - Bird Wizard 3/4 Flying You may cast permanent spells as though they had flash. Whenever a permanent you control becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, put it onto the battlefield. Otherwise, put it into your hand.
kinda surprised to see BT8 Tommy Himi from Digimon show up here, considering he was only restricted to 1 for a year or so and not too long ago came off the the Restricted list alongside BT6 SaviourHuckmon. Still waiting for BT11 Greymon (X Antibody) to get off the Restricted list....
Honestly surprised you didn't cover the dbs cardgame. They literally release sets made in large part of cards that got an errata and their banlist basically often consist of doing errata on cards that were too strong rather than just limit/ban them
I really wish the Bird gets banned in commander but its not gonna hehe. I really love all the comparisson in múltiple games (YGO always being the trash game of course, and MTG making mistakes every once in a while) and siting múltiple scenarios/examples. Great content as Always 👍🏻 PS: I really love all the Analogies that card game players try to make to fighting games (and your relations were really spot on 😂)... But I'll never put them on the same league because FG are skill heavy based with RNG removed from the core mechanics, while cardgames (and even other games like pkm) even if the player aims to remove the RNG factor, RNG its at its Very Core and sometimes No amount of skill can overcome it
The floodgate example reminds me of what happened to Kaijudo (the Duel Masters reboot). There came about a deck so obscenely powerful it absolutely killed the game, 5 color Dragons. The main idea of the deck was to play cheap dragons that reduced the cost of your main dragons, allowing you to power into a dragon that kills everything costing 3 or less the opponent controls, and says they can't play anything 3 or less as long as it's in play, as well as dealing heavier damage than most cards. It absolutely broke the game.
This is why I tend to like Bushiroad's way of doing bans. They'll do bans or restrictions more rarely, but most of the time they do choice restrictions. It helps prevent broken combos while allowing the cards to be used the "legitimate" way.
Releasing cards in a set to counteract broken cards is acceptable in exactly one scenario: rather than introduce specific cards to counter, there needs to be a population change in the frequency of cards that "can" counter. Specifically in Yugioh, the existence of Effect Veiler, had it released a little sooner, may very well have prevented teleDAD from being so prominent, something people in the community have been saying for years in hindsight. I know that it's just one card, but considering every deck would run it anyway and how quickly Yugioh decks get to the cards they want, it would have been enough of a demographic change to the card pool to not feel like selling the cure to a problem you created
I got banned for playing Hilde in my SC playgroup, but not because of her combo nonsense, everyone else just hated how good I was with variable timing in a game that otherwise doesn't have it. XD
yugioh back in the old days was looser with effect restrictions because they were usually single effects such as cannon soldier or catapult turtle however meta decks did prove the potential they had when last will had a lingering effect like maxx-c. the latter was edited instead and it took nearly 2 decades for cannon soldier to get banned. catapult turtle was given a once per turn to nerf it, but its effect scaled allowing it to perform a potential ftk where it was recently banned in the OCG.
one thing to keep in mind when it comes to card design is how these can interact in the future. snake rain is a painful choice for reptiles and for that reason could be why a meta defining reptile deck has not yet been printed. instant fusion was not very good when it was printed back in 2006 but the introduction of synchros and more fusion targets that could combo into them and xyz monsters made it more powerful. magical scientist was a problem back in 2002 and now it is a contender for most broken monster in the game.
In my opinion, when a card is truly broken, cardgame companies should just just do a product recall and replace them with a repaired (=nerfed) version. Just like car companies. Or maybe just have someone with a sharpie put those quotation marks on the bird at the correct location, ffs.
I expect a follow-up on soft-banning systems where the game limits the number of cards usable to keep them from being worthless. It can go 1 or 2 of a card period, a limit on certain cards that you can only use 1 copy of, certain cards that cannot be used in the same deck, etc. These are things I've come across in several games and make sense as a follow up video
You run into a big problem when you inevitable get generic cards on the list, and it ends up disproportionately punishing old decks at the expense of new ones.
I am just talking about Kohdok discussing this in card games as an alternative to outright banning cards. In case of some players with a smaller resume: It exists. I’ve played card games with these systems. I just want to open up the topic not advocate
This something I wish TCGs did more often. More flexible options to limit a cards impact on the game is a perfect way to weaken a deck, while still keeping it cohesive. Unfortunately, the recent proliferation of one card combos in Yugioh makes this idea pretty ineffective with the newer meta decks. Even worse with something like Snake-eyes because its really hard to pick a ban target without either making the deck unplayable or impacting the versatility of the Sinful Spoils engine for other decks. Flamberge is about the only card I'd be comfortable being entirely banned, so you'd probably have to keep the deck about as limited as Tear if you want it to retain any functionality at all
My favorite reason for a banning to happen is meta warp. Sure you could argue most banned cards warped a format but occasionally a deck by itself is completely benign but the ripples it makes lead to problems. For example, Splinter Twin as a deck didn't have a huge win percentage or unfun play patterns. The only problem it had was it could threaten a win on an opponent's turn 3. Sure lots of decks could stop it with a lightning bolt or some other instant speed response, but others couldn't. This meant some decks now just had a 5% chance of randomly losing games so they weren't playable any more compared to the decks that COULD handle it. The end result was the meta diversity shrinking for seemingly no reason and no obvious culprit. It was so subtle the ban is still controversial to this day because people just don't remember the deck being "that bad".
What I don't understand about Nadu from a balancing standpoint is there are so many knobs Wizards could have tweaked on it's effect to make sure it wouldn't be broken, and they just ignore them! They've printed so many cards recently with restrictions that make the card unplayable, and then used *none* of those restrictions for him: It applies to *all* your creatures, not just Nadu It applies if *any* player targets it, not just you or just your opponents It applies to *both* spells *and* abilities, not just one or the other It doesn't actually draw a card, bypassing floodgates It puts lands directly onto the battlefield instead of your hand It put those land on the field *untapped* Even the *ONE* restriction they put on it, activating up to "Twice per turn," isn't even *really* a restriction because why not only *ONCE* per turn??? If they added literally *any* of these restrictions, Nadu wouldn't be as oppressive as it currently is.
The Fusion line you are looking for is "with the above materials" not "by Fusion Summon" because Instant Fusion treats the monsters as if properly Fusion Summoned.
Oh we can always trust Redakai to be showcased as a bad example for something xD
@@monkeykingwfollowed by the parentheses of “this is treated as a fusion summon).
Redakai is a game entirely made out of gimmicks and bad decisions.
One thing with ban lists that needs to be mentioned. Is that no card is truly safe. Look at Yugioh. The tyrant Neptune was a card released in the 5ds era, yet it was able to have a game breaking mechanic by interacting with an old card and new card.
There's a better example of this: Grinder Golem. This was a joke card printed to provide support for a bad strategy. It was fine for 8 years. And then Link Monsters were introduced and Golem went from joke card to one of the most overpowered cards ever printed.
It more of the fact that it can copy effects that was evevtaky going to be banned cards that do that make them overpowerd on game with the cards as the resorse
was not released in GX era. was released in 5D's era. It is a GX manga card
@@popo237 thank you for the correction I’ll make the edit. I thought it was from GX era because of the manga
Healing salve is safe
One thing to keep in mind is Garfield and co. knew how strong the Power Nine were going into release, but didn't know the game would be so popular that people were buying more than a starter and a few boosters. That thought, combined with playing for ante being a thing, made people playing like in the example less of a concern to them.
Spikes do not care about intent.
In retrospect, though, it was extremely silly to design the game around the assumptions that nobody will like it enough to want to collect full playsets of all the cards and that everyone will enjoy the weird and possibly illegal gambling mechanic.
@@AlteredNova04 There weren't playsets back then. If you had 20 Mox Ruby and 20 Lightning Bolt, you could play them.
to add to the above comment, it's not exactly that they weren't counting on the game being popular, but certainly not with how popular it will be. the power nine were meant to be exciting pieces where in your D&D playgroup you'd have maybe one or two, and woaaaah they're so good and when they come down on the table you know it'll be a tough battle.
there's a (perhaps apocryphal) quote from Garfield, which to paraphrase - "If the power nine will become an issue, then we won't actually have an issue" e.g., if the power nine are running rampant, it's because the game took off and is profitable
I heard somewhere that they thought that rarity would balance out strong cards since in theory most people would have less rare cards.
Yugioh has been hitting this tipping point for what's felt like forever. Everytime I check in with it, it's "this new thing is dominating the meta! Oh, wait, now it's this thing! Hang on, no, now it's this!" It sounds like there is never a moment to breathe in that game anymore. And I can't believe Magic is letting A SINGLE CARD warp it's meta to just as bad a spot.
The problem is that the community in yugioh loves complaining more than playing the game. So the sky is always falling.
There are times where the game is bad just like any other game, but you can’t tell them apart from the non/stop bitching about the game
There was a beautiful few months after AGOV came out where the most common complaint was "there isn't just one best deck so how am I supposed to sideboard?", then snake eye came out and it went right back to the same old same old
Nadu is literally Maxx C.
I understand why we're having this discussion.
The problem is Nadu doesn't just limit your opponent from going off, it's just a huge combo that isn't always determined. So you gotta go through it manually
Nadu is like maxx c but on yourself its even crazier
@@Cassapphic yeah it’s more like if pot of greed was a continuous spell card
@@KGKSkull or if Royal Magical Library only needed one spell counter to trigger
@@insertcolorherehawk3761 or if effect veiler only had to be revealed in the hand to use its effect
6:20 I will never not be annoyed that the cards do not slide in in WUBRG order nor that the Forest is the only Snow-Covered land.
Thanks for the video.
17:45 Instant Fusion treats its Special Summons as Fusion Summons.
17:39 Hysterically, Instant Fusion does count as a proper fusion summon. There are ways to exclude things from being a target for it, (higher level, requires X materials without substitution, etc.). You just have to be even more specific.
Also, regarding bad banlists, at the peak of Wind-Up loops and other such unpleasantness, the banlist only massacred what dying gasps were left of Plant Synchro, a deck that was already falling off hard.
I'm sure it's an oversimplification, but it's been explained to me that Yugioh nearly died at this time, as massive swathes of players migrated to the then new Cardfight Vanguard. People actually credit an Elemental Hero deck taking top 4 at tournament with steming the bleeding enough that it might have been the thing to save the game.
Think you’ll ever make an Errata Text focusing on Redakai now that you have more experience critiquing and editing?
Edit: Come to think of it, it might be better suited as a Tales from the Bargain Bin episode.
My take has always been that games should be far more willing to ban/restrict and in hand with that far more willing to unban as time passes and the card pool changes.
The current model is often predicated on "We don't want to be trigger happy and ban without being sure". But all that does is make players wait longer for a solution. Ban something, print an answer 6 months down the line, and cut it loose again.
Banlist is a river, not a wall.
Honestly, this is a really interesting idea. There are a few variables that could make this a bit more complicated, but they don't even feel that insurmountable. The two issues that immediately come to mind are: how long does it take to design a counter card and does banning the card stop a large number of cards in the set from working optimally? 6 months seems like the minimum amount of time to design a counter card, but it may take longer if you wanted the card to be more versatile and therefore, fit more easily in people's decks. The latter question very much depends on how long the former takes to resolve because losing a key card from your archetype due to some unintentional, outside interaction feels real bad regardless of how long it lasts.
@munchrai6396 Great questions. In regards to the first I think it depends upon the game, their design cycle, and their ability to slot something in. It may not even be a situation that needs a specific counter so much as we just need a few sets to release that have tools for other decks.
As a couple example, I think a card like Nadu is just bad game design and should eat a ban for overall game health. If you know One Piece, the red/purple colored leader card Trafagalar Law is their Nadu. Both are overtuned and take advantage of cards that are otherwise fine to dominate their respective formats. Format health bans are the correct choice here and designing a counter would only ever be a stopgap.
The other aspect to this is just the natural churn of modern TCG cardpools. MTG, One Piece, Lorcana, et all get at least 3, but often 4+ sets per year. Usually in those you bring enough cards to empower other decks to compete, and could give banned cards a second chance. If they dominate again, you can just reban.
For the second issue: If your set is designed in a majorly parasitic way where losing one or two cards ruins one or more decks, then that's a set design issue and the games problems go far beyond needing to ban a broken piece. I do think this is just cost of doing business and it's important and owed to the players to curate playable formats that don't devolve into single deck dominance.
Obviously no system is perfect and you can't please everyone, but I've always thought making the banlist less of a sacred cow would only be a good thing.
There's also a much larger conversation to be had about game cost and accessibility that affects banning. The threshold to ban a card(s) that kills a $800 deck is a lot higher than a game where a meta deck is $100.
Unbans always feel like a cope answer to me, cards pretty much never get banned just for power level reasons, there's almost always a strong toxic element to them getting hit. A card like dark armed dragon wasn't solely banned for power level reasons, it fundamentally just didn't have adequate counter play to it in the game, because being able to drop it without much real set up and clean up a board was an unhealthy action. With priority the way it was back then, there were even less cards that could trade with it favorable as well. It really isn't that dark armed dragon was too strong for the game, though it was, the core of the problem was it just didn't interact with the rest of the game in a healthy way. That type of interaction invalidates so many core foundations of the format that it existing means you're playing a completely different game.
@@shawnjavery I think the power level of a card should definitely be the primary reason for banning cards. Maybe if the card is generic enough to not impact decks too heavily then we can talk about how unfun it is to play against. Being floodgated, by something like Dinomorphia Rextrum doesn't feel nearly as bad as your favorite deck losing its main win condition, not because it was too strong, but just because people didn't like playing against it.
@@shawnjavery For sure. I agree with you. I likely could have clarified. I meant I want to see more looseness in regards to bans that aren't and out format defining with an understanding that some can come back as things change.
I'm still firmly in the camp that the DADS of the world just need to be banned and stay banned. Nadu is a DAD. Banned forever.
4:38 Pokémon has expanded, and when they still cared about expanded, they also banned a lot of cards.
I kinda expected to talk about limiting being enough some times (The main example been the Dark Armed Dragon deck from YuGiOh , Great video though .
i'm amazed no one is talking about the Lorcana Bucky errata here. Basically in tbat game, the meta has been dominated for a month or so by a highly linear discard deck fromted by the emperor's new groove squirrel. So, hearthstone style they've errata'd to change EVERYTHING ABOUT THE CARD so it's virtually unplayable now. the community is generally happy about this, but many (myself included) would have preferred a full-on ban.
The same dilemma that Yugioh player have, they had been errating iconic banned cards to be able to unban them, but in the process they made them unplayable, like Disk Commander, Sinister Serpent, Makyura the Destructo and even the legendary Chaos Emperor Dragon became unplayable, so a lot of players have said just let the carda banned and don't ruin their legacy as broken ass cards, and Konami has learned because previously banned card have been erratad and they didn't made them useless Firewall Dragon which is still really useful on a Cyberse deck, and Summon Sorceress which just became a generic extender for mono type decks like Heroes.
The community is happy that Bucky isn't played anymore I don't know of anybody who is happy about how the thing got errata-ed.
The errata is pretty universally hated because it's both to aggressive (although with set 5 you can use him in even more toxic decks so maybe those assessments where a bit premature) and just annoying and confusing.
People are gonna show up at locals with old Bucky and people will lose games to forgetting the exact way it was errata-ed.
@@Ms666slayerIt’s even worse when they errata a card that didn’t even need it. Goyo Guardian never had any business being as good as it was (quite literally stronger stats wise than the vanilla monster using the same exact summoning method while having an amazing effect on top) but many years of power creep made it perfectly fine, only for it to get an errata to make it harder to summon. But the worst offender was brain control which again, was powerful in its day but then gets an errata while the card it was supposed to be a nerfed version of gets unbanned years later, unchanged. They literally made a weaker version of Change of Heart even weaker while just letting CoH come off as is and it isn’t a big deal as it’s at best a decent board breaker.
The errata was done because set 2 is still going to be released in other languages so they wanted to make it unplayable without actually banning it. This way they can keep it in other releases of the set, but it won’t be even slightly meta relevant.
Why not just vast cast counter spell when Bucky is cast?
The random Extra Credit slander😂
29:56 for anyone wondering
To be fair before the main guy retire and RUclips drop dislike video count, he make 1 video that got most dislike
@@hyoroemongaming569 Yes. If you compare the dislikes of any set of videos, one of them will have the greatest number of dislikes.
@@hyoroemongaming569 Why did you even comment this
They are errating cards at FoW (Paper tcg) and it works due to the low player base and that they reprint every errated card. But still feels weird. For me it works if I have the pre-errata version in a language I don't understands like Japanese or Dutch so I can't be tricked by the old text.
Jace/stoneforge standard ban hemming & hawing has really been memory-holed. The gaslighting done by the early magic content creators downplaying playerbase concerns, the sly mentions that BIG solution cards would be coming in next set, said set being spoiled months early resulting in suspensions of the then world champ (and the runner up), only for the planeswalker answer card to be revealed as Hex Parasite...while control decks got Mental Misstep. All of this for them to end up being banned with ~6months left till they rotated. Great times for all involved🤣
Fun fact about the mox cards. They were referenced in the game inscryption. And in act 2, the cards are honestly bad. They can work, but they took up precious field space, and were slow to set up. Inscryption in the first 2 acts relies on a board that is 4 spaces wide. So losing even 1 zone, can be devastating. Which is why with MOX, the optimal strategy is to focus on 1 or 2 gem types
I would love to see a remake of your Redakai stuff. I’m very much a card game wallflower. I got into MTG in Revised and played for maybe ten years off an on. So many crazy games came out around the Magic boom and I didn’t play most of them, so it’s cool to see detailed coverage on some of them!
The one thing i'd like to add about the neptune combo (especially for those unfamiliar or who don't remember/weren't there) is it wasn't just strong, it was also incredibly fast and took minimal deck space too.
Yugioh's main deck space ranges from 40-60 cards, and the Extra deck (for fusion, synchro, Xyz, and Link) has a range of 0-15, and all cards have a max playset of 3.
Since NONE of the cards involved were restricted in any way at the time, this meant you could have NINE cards dedicated solely to combo.
This also meant you now had 34-54 main deck cards and up to 12 Extra deck cards that could be dedicated SOLEY to preventing your opponent from stopping the combo.
Not to mention that this combo didn't use your once per turn normal summon, so you could set this up before you did ANYTHING else.
So yeah, unless Neptune gets erratad, idt he's coming back anytime soon lol
the crazy part is that i don't even think it is that good of a combo anymore because instant fusion is limited and tyrant neptune is way too hard to search, we also have ways to out the card in engine with accesscode beating over the tyrant neptune, and a deck that doesn't runs any handtraps is positioned really badly going second.
One of the funniest bans for me was Felledar guardian in mtg. The card formed an infinite combo with the planeswalker Saheeli Rai. By using saheelis minus 2 ability you could flicker, banish and then immideatley return a creature to the battlefield. An innocuous ability at first glance, however felledar guardian could on etb flicker another permanent, including saheeli rai. This would reset the once per turn limit on planeswalker abilities since the returned card was considered a new copy that hadn‘t used an ability this turn, creating the 2 card infinite combo. Since they cards also were 3 and 4 mana respectively you could kill your opponent on turn 4 with an army of hasty creatures.
This kind of broke standard and become very prominent, so when wizard on the next bannister announced no changes people were not amused. However only three days later, an addendum was published, announcing felledars ban and clamming that they wanted to wait and see, if the newly released amonkhet set could stop the combo, and since this was not the case they decided to ban the guardian.
There's currently a lot of talk in the Keyforge community about the latest set completely destroying the competitive scene by creating certain combos that are a) Almost impossible to play around and b) Can create almost unwinnable situations if the right cards happen to be drawn at the right time. And it's not just one lonely combo that does this; it's tons of them.
Keyforge has mostly been a game about having a back and forth, figuring out sequencing, adjusting to the matchup on the fly and playing around each deck's strengths and weaknesses. Now at the top level it's all about getting your busted combos out first before your opponent can.
Case in point: I have a deck where if I draw 2 specific cards in my opening hand, (one being Future is Past which swaps each player's deck with their discard pile) the optimal strategy for my opponent is to pass the turn without playing any cards, and my optimal strat if they do that (since playing any cards will flip their deck) is then to _also_ pass the turn because I'd be better off waiting for my opponent to flip their deck than doing anything else at all. Situations like this should not exist.
It's at the point where the NKFL (the largest online competitive Keyforge group) decided for the first time to not only restrict the number of decks from each set that a player can use but also to run a 'legacy' league where people only run decks from older sets.
Please, Ghost Galaxy. I can't be dealing with Witch Queen or WoDKA combos anymore... 😭
I would love to see a new Redekai video. Every time you talk about it I’m intrigued
Still remember how my rogue yugioh deck got cards banned in 4/5 different occasions just because konami didn't want to ban firewall dragon, and it's just frustrating, especially when the card is still a problem, but other decks get to suffer to avoid the inevitable
Gem-Knights catching strays because of Adamancipator and Thunder Dragons was a similar situation that made me drop the game. I sold my collection after Ronintoadin was banned because of Sprights, effectively killing my PaleoFrogs.
@@Adrianovaz2007that said I’ll have you know that ronintoad it’s a semi-infinite loop card. Like we had frog FTK exactly for that reason. We just got lucky it stop seeing that kind of play.
@@magneto1992 I mean the problem cards for Frog loops where all banned by then, Sprights was what pushed the card over the edge again. The worst is the putting Substitoad back in to make for Ronin banned, since that is even worse from a card design pov. I hadn't been shafted so hard by a ban list since Plant Synchro being fully banned while Dino Rabbit and Wind-Up loop surviving back in 2011.
Hello, could you elaborate. What was in the deck??
@@farrukhazhar3565 I used ABC for a machine xyz deck. It was an okay deck, rogue at best, but ABC went nuts with links
One of the best examples of a card game overhitting a combo is what Pokemon did when handloops started showing up in the Expanded Format. They weren't content with just banning the cards that shrink your hand, but they also banned Chip Chip Ice Axe, a card that does nothing more than rearrange the top 3 cards of your opponent's deck. An effect that is pretty much useless outside of exactly the situation created when your opponent has no cards in hand.
or when you know what cards are in your opponent's hand
Nadu made several people I know straight up drop out from some big tournaments recently. "Summer of Gaak 2" is definitely the right way to put it.
Damnation, those storming NArDUwells at wizards of the coast
Nadu seems almost like a parody of broken magic cards. It has the same cost as Oko and Uro, it does the draw-then-ramp-if-land thing that simic cards tend to do, it has high stats for the cost, especially for a flyer, and in a game where tons of recent cards have "activate this only once each turn" restrictions pasted onto them to prevent degenerate combos, it has a TWICE PER TURN restriction that hardly even matters since it gives the ability to each of your creatures. I misread the card at first and thought the second ability just triggered when Nadu himself was targeted and I still thought it sounded ridiculously powerful, just on the merit of being an above rate flyer that generates card advantage, but this is absurd...
Funnily enough before it ever came to North America yugioh had to errata sangan for having the Rath egg problem which infamously was a factor in the time that the game was in danger because exodia was the best deck by far
Sangan *and* Witch of the Black Forest
Yeah. We missed out on Tier 1/0 Exodia.
I Saw comment about how this game survive after having tier0 just 4 month into Its life baffled them
@@hyoroemongaming569 The anime/manga. Kept the game popular, with an abundance of casual players, allowing the game to survive it's meta sucking ass.
Fun thing : summer 2024
MTG - NADU and blumborrow squirrel decks...
Disney Lorcana - Diablo the bird and the squirrell Bucky (1st "ban" ever in disney = they errata'ed the card!)
That birb is so strong YGO would emergency ban it. If YGO would emergency ban but you won't, then it's really really bad
1:30
On a related note. Players have started to call Yu-Gi-Oh the "fighting game" of card games, not because they wanna shit on Flesh and Blood, but because of how a modern game actually feels in terms of how you build your board and how you interact with an opponent.
I mean, they're wrong. FaB's entire system involves making choices in the moment, sacrificing some opportunities to take advantage of other opportunities, where the situation completely changes every single turn.
@@Kohdok And they are wrong in what way? I was talking about Yu-Gi-Oh's mechanics, not FoBs. I don't understand.
@Kohdok Yu-Gi-Oh!'s a fighting game because it has 20-minute, 30-plus-hit (cards burned through in one turn) *ULTRA COMBOOOOOOOOOOOOS!!!* 😂
An interesting example of what can happen when you're *too* ban-happy is what happened with the Smogon banlist for Pokemon Showdown during X and Y meta. (video game not card game). It's possible the initial on-release bans of Mega Gengar and Mega Blaziken may have been justified, but as other megas started getting banned it was just kicking the can further down the road, as the megas that were kept "in check" by the banned megas suddenly rose to dominate the scene, warranting their own bans, and the cycle continuing until iirc at least HALF the mega evolutions in the game were banned? I wasn't involved in the competitive scene for very long (and Smogon itself was just the ruleset for Showdown, not official VGC tournaments which had their own issues in the opposite direction), but it's one of the few times I've seen "over-banning" lead to an unstable metagame and not just sunk cost frustration of the players who had the banned thing.
Smogon does tend to be very ban-happy in a variety of formats. The plethora of mons hit at the beginning of Gen 9 was honestly pretty ridiculous and Gen 8 has easily some of the weirdest bans I've ever seen from any game. Banning an item like King's Rock because it gave some select mons a sub 50% chance to flinch will never not be incredibly dumb to me
Great video. Being smart with bans and erratas is the living and difficult part of maintaining a game. It takes careful attention and continual learning.
Learning HOW to make your game is aj ever growing challenge.
I do find it amusing that you say there's not really a way to change the rules text of cards when Yugioh is kind of infamous for some of their functional erratas. Though some have been generally considered to be fine or even positive. Firewall Dragon returning with the errata after being banned has allowed it to be pretty strong in cyberse piles without being the insanely oppressive playmaker it was back in 2018.
You have to know the errata exists.
@@Kohdokthat is true. Yugioh I think has most successfully done errata’s when they make sure that the new version is easier to obtain for new players and those that have purchased recent sets
the errata was widely announced, it has multiple prints released over several years, and the current text is in the database and in Master Duel. The only ones who aren't aware of it are people who have been out of the game for 4+ years who are able to learn about it soon enough if it even comes up, or new players who just need to know the current text if it comes up. For all the jokes about yugioh players not reading their cards, I think they can manage well enough on this front.
I dont remember anyone using firewall dragon after the errata
@@Buzterer before circular was banned it was used in cyberse good stuff a maybe tier 2 deck.
Its rather debatable whether or not Instant Fusion should even be legal, but yes, cards that copy effects are absolutely cursed in Yugioh.
I mean it’s outright banned in MD and it’s only a matter of time before another crazy low level fusion deck becomes big.
We're past peak instant fusion problems now, things are so fast that Instant Fusion more often than not is just an extra body in a combo.
@@yurisei6732 The utility of the card is also real nice. I'd also take a second copy of Called By the Grave, but being able to block handtraps, remove monsters or even field nuke with Time Wizard of Tomorrow makes the card super versatile.
This is going down as one of my favorite episodes of Errata Text. Incredibly well researched. I'd be excited at the idea of a new Redikai video. I haven't watched your old ones, and this channel is the only reason I know what that game is. I wanna see this disaster in it entirety!
Even without the infinite combo and even if you were to apply the restriction of twice per turn overall to Nadu, that card still seems way powercrept.
I'm more amazed they released the card rather than that they haven't banned it yet.
"Buyer's Confidence" has nothing to do with the security of the customer's investment, it's to ensure the product doesn't remain on the shelves.
Which is to say it's actually "Seller's Confidence".
20:11
I guess technically thorn scales wasn't the problem but ocg will remember, all those time Number 86: heroic champion - rhongominiad with 5 materials was summoned in a competitive tournament, it was due to phantom knight being played before it finally get banned.
Literally the only deck that could summon it constantly and because of that people couldn't overlook the fact that they would instant lose to something that basically skipped their turn since unlike the tyrant neptune, something like kaiju or a very big monster couldn't even handle a 5 material rhongo and then phantom knight easily having enough ressource to just go ahead and otk next turn.
Sure it was due to cards such as number 75: bamboozling gossip shadow helping, but thorn scale made the constancy of the combo skyrokket.
The bird is gone, thankfully
Really appreciated the section on The Tyrant Neptune and the justification around banning the card. I would like to add, that banning a generic card is generally preferable to banning an archetypal card as long as said archetype isn't the thing that is broken. There is no feeling worse than losing your decks win condition/consistency booster just because someone found something dumb to do with it. Similarly, a card being "unfun" to play against really shouldn't be the only factor in banning it. It should either be powerful enough that it's a detriment to the game or generic enough that its banning doesn't cause collateral damage to the decks it's meant to be played in. Mind you, I see this happen most often in fan formats where people overvalue the impact of one card on a game's general experience or put too much stock in a specific philosophy that isn't flexible enough for its own good. You should be looking to ban less not more
Using a Yugioh card as a ban example for overly long combos is pretty funny. Like this game has hundreds of cards that could easily fit that bill and yet they chose a Rank 7, a card type that isn't even used by that many decks and is often the very reason why you play said decks in the first place. Mind you, it is pretty funny that Galaxy Tomahawk is still legal in Master Duel even after the introduction of Kashtira, which is probably the only deck strong enough to actually justify banning the card.
Being unfun to play against is the only important factor in a ban. People really enjoyed Nekroz mirror match format, so bans wouldn't necessarily have been appropriate even though it was tier 0. You just have to ask "why is this card unfun?" and make sure it's something inherent to the card, not something better solved by banning a different part of a combo or by telling players how to deal with it.
@@yurisei6732 "Unfun" cards can be designed as integral pieces to perfectly reasonable decks, especially when it comes to Yugioh's archetypal system. The most obvious examples of this are Necrovalley and Zombie World: floodgates that if banned would greatly impact the functionality of their corresponding decks. Even if they can be annoying to play against, its a far worse feeling to have your favorite deck destroyed, not because it was too powerful, but because people didn't like an integral card to your strategy.
@@munchrai6396 Correct, some decks as a whole are inherently unfun and bad for the game, and should be neutered. Necrovalley was designed specifically to be used by a villain in the anime, it was designed specifically to be toxic and unfun. It should never have been made paper. That's why they keep having to errata it.
@@yurisei6732 Absolutely not, no deck deserves to lose such a key component just so some people can avoid dealing with it on the off chance its played against them. A card's strength and impact on the current scene are far more important factors than how "unfun" a card is. Banning a card that sees little to no consistent play just to avoid the off chance you might have to deal with it is ridiculous, not to mention incredibly unfair for someone who actually wants to play said deck. As I said before, losing the off game to a floodgate is nothing compared to the feeling of losing a deck you love, not because it's too powerful, but because other people didn't like it.
I could be wrong given that I haven’t played all the fighting games that are referenced in the video but I love how each problem fighting game character correlates to the problem you’re talking about that’s related to tcgs
4:44 I appreciate the Force of Will TCG nod you did there
Very informative and interesting. Especially the end, that the bird is a combination of some of the most broken cards from several card games.
The problem with Fiendsmiths here in the TCG is the prize point, I mean, they facilitate a lot of BS, don't take me wrong, but that is mainly Beatrice's fault; having an engine so metadefining at the $350 dollar mark is beyond obnoxious for any card game, this isn't the first or the last time it happens, and it will most likely happen again.
At this point, it is becoming clear the card design are not entirely to be blamed, but how they managed to have those cards be distributed to their players. I really hope to god Konami of Japan look into the malpractice of the western Konami Side and cut the problem from the root.
Isn’t Snake Eyes Ash the problem tho?
@@shocknawe While Ash is a problem but it is not THE problem. Poplar and Flamberge are THE problems with Snake Eyes. considering the SE deck's core is slim enough to put another engine or more HT, cue the Fiendsmith which is the engine that can be used by NEARLY ANY DECK that does not have some sort of restrictions.
Snake Eyes might get the ban hammer but i can tell you Fiendsmith is getting away with a slap in the wrist
One thing id like to point out about victory dragon,
In the ocg, if tour opponent wants ro surrender, they need you to allow them to surrender, you can deny a surrender and keep playing
old extra credits jumpscare
edit: old extra credits specifically
I'm kinda sad that you didn't talk about the Apocalymon situation in Digimon, as it kinda falls into both categories of "too late" (in the eastern release) and "soon enough" (in the western release). Would've been an amazing example.
I would genuinely love to see you do an H-Bomberguy-esk multi-hour re-reveiw of Redakai
I remember laughing when Flesh and Blood said they'd never ban a card because they play tested it so well
how is the state of this game's banlist now?
I mean the reaosn why once per turns were introduced to yu-gi-oh was because of the Infernty Loops
Oh thank fuck he explained what a fighting game was. I had no idea.
Interesting to see you talking about MTG again. Glad to see it.
4:47 Wheel of Sun and Moon has never broken the game. I am curious what card you were thinking of here.
When combined with a mandatory endless mill combo, the game Blue Screens.
@@Kohdok Thanks for clarification.
Nadu is... inexplicable by anything but systematic incompetence. First, several cards in MH3 seem to give this kind of ability to all creatures, rather than having the card in question trigger when it affects other creatures. (Call this the quote problem) If Nadu's ability triggered only once per turn (itself terrible templating, that's literally what the "tap" symbol is meant to do with 0 words and 1 icon.), then it's not problem. But inexplicably the same people who add "This ability triggers only once per turn" rather than, you know, bothering to playtest cards and cost them appropriately decided this needs to trigger twice per turn. And then some doofus reformatted it after the fact, giving 2x to each creature you control. Then some idiot decided to put the lands onto the battlefield. Then some idiot decided the lands get to come into play untapped... inexplicably.
The big problem with Nadu, though, isn't that it's the backbone of the best deck in the format, it's that the winning game combo is non-deterministic, so you need to wait for them to take a 15 minute turn to PROBABLY kill you. But the non-Thassa's Oracle version of the deck can fail... IE, the 4 lands you recycle each turn can come up in the wrong order. Ironically if they banned the Channel Lands (bad card design, but not as bad as Nadu), then Nadu could go back to the Thassa's Oracle version which has a deterministic win condition - IE, you play Thassa's Oracle and win. This wouldn't solve the problem, of course, getting to the Thassa's Oracle win still takes ~5-10 minutes and can fail. But even if they fail, there's a good chance they can just... do it all again next turn.
Should Nadu be banned? Yes, uncontroversially. It's the KCI/Eggs problem (unfun, non-deterministic, hard to keep track of, etc.) coupled with metagame dominance.
The bigger question is whether it should be banned in Commander. I think so here, too. I've played some durdley Commander decks in the past, but Nadu seems beyond tedious.
I do think an interesting take on bans is not always outright banning ot limiting cards, but limiting certain combinations of cards. For example, Duel Links has a "Limit 1/2/3" list in addition to a standard banlist where your deck is only allowed to have a specific number of cards in combination from those list.
Some other games like Weiss Schwarz have literal pairs of cards banned. You can run one or the other in any quantity, but not both in the same deck.
@@fernandobanda5734Duel Masters originated the banned pairs mechanic I think with Duo Hall of Fame
Of note is another category that causes bannings: Causing some kind of logistical issues with tournaments. Examples:
Having an effect based off of demographic information, which means judges are in the business of checking birth certificates now (bithday pikachu.)
causing a game restart/subgame, massively bloating playtime. (fiber jar, serzerade)
Incentivizing extra components, which incentivizes people NOT playing the deck to bring those components, because not doing that would give information about which deck you are playing. (stickers)
Incentivizing awkward physical card placements (chaos orb)
the birthday pikachu original Japanese version had text stating it couldn't be legally played in tournaments but when it got translated they forgot to put that text on there so people started trying to play it.
With the yugioh quiz thing, you said it's not a trick question, but hilariously, Instant Fusion also happens to be banned in Yugioh Master Duel, it just happened years later. Also one thing to note the reason why instant fusion is so insanely powerful is that it CAN bring out monsters which "Must be Fusion Summoned" since it treats the summon as a proper fusion summon which means you can even revive that monster from the GY later. In that respect it is different to Magical Scientist which just Special Summons the monster, so you cant revive it if its destroyed and restricts the card pool.
This is the first I'm hearing of the Nadu debacle, but it's reminding me a little of the Firewall Dragon incident in Yugioh. So Firewall Dragon was very obviously a problem. In this video's own terms, it broke a basic mechanic of the game. Every time a monster it pointed to went from field to grave, you could special summon any monster from your hand. So as long as you could keep your hand filled, you could basically just keep Linking off your monsters or sacrifice them for Cannon Soldier's burn effect and they'd just get replaced. And of course, there were a LOT of ways to replenish your hand, many of them infinite, that were supposed to be gated by your ability to put those cards back on the board, which Firewall trivialized. They tried hitting some of the cards around it, such as A-Assault Core, but there were just too many ways to abuse Firewall. It was so absurdly easy to either loop your opponent to death on your first turn or combo off into a board so oppressive they don't get to play anyways. Firewall was such a clear-cut "ban this why did you even think it was ok to print this" you'd think it would be a prime candidate for immediate banning, possibly even an emergency list.
And yet, Firewall ran rampant for over a year before finally being banned. Why? Well, there was one tiny problem with Firewall. It wasn't just the cover card of Code of the Duelist and the big powerful high-rarity card used to sell the set. It was the *ace monster of the anime's main character*, a flagship monster representing that era of the franchise as a whole. Konami likely didn't have unilateral authority to ban it and probably had to negotiate with the franchise rights holders to do so. It had real-life plot armor. And the playerbase was basically in open revolt that whole time, screaming for Firewall's head, which culminated in two major incidents. The first was at YCS London on October of 2018, where, in a blatant act of protest by the tournament organizers, a feature match pit Jesse Kotton, one of the best players in the TCG, playing an FTK deck, against a literal child with a playground-tier mismash deck. Poor kid got 2-0ed on stream and hardly even got to play. The second was at YCS Pasadena in November 2018, where Konami execs, including one who flew in from the Japanese side, dueled TCG players who topped a side charity event... and of course the players all agreed to FTK the Konami employees. In December of 2018, Firewall Dragon was finally banned, and the playerbase rejoiced.
The funny thing is for the most part they didn't really try hitting around it much, firewall itself was just largely ignored until the list before it was banned, where they limited A assualt core. Other than that, they had banned other link enablers like gofu, grinder golem, and knightmare goblin, but those all pretty much had to happen sooner or later.
The interesting thing is they could have very well just banned around firewall, but that would have required hitting newer cards instead. You needed like, 6 to 7 monsters to really get much out of firewall, the 4 monsters to summon it isn't that hard but its just a combo piece with minimal extension built into it, even just having monsters in hand to summon wasn't that good, most decks would run through their once per turn effects to get to fire wall and you'd have serious diminishing returns.
In practice the only decks that abused it were decks that could spam near infinite amount of bodies, namely spyrals and danger darkworld, both decks that were deeply problematic without fire wall around anyways, and decks that had a bunch of link extenders that made summoning it practical, like gouki. But every single link extender they used, mermaid summon sorc isolde, have now been banned for good reason.
Its not like I think firewall being around would have improved the format at all, the decks that ran it were pretty obnoxious, but people vastly underestimate just how many hoops you had to go through to get value from it.
11:55 The reason for HOPT is more commonly attributed to Infernity.
*Sees the talk about the length to the ban, being set to the trailer for Thrones of Eldraine, which brought us Oko the elk maker.* For those that don't know, The bird isn't the only time blue green has had a format breaking card in the last decade.
Don’t forget Uro, WotC needs to just stop making 1UG cards full stop
"Thunder bringer" playing at 24:27 once you start talking about Sparkit is very, very classy.
Great video! I love the fighting game comparisons. it's always fun to see two of my random interests in the same video.
Bird is the word as they say
Hehe, in all seriousness I tried to think of something to say or add, but I honestly couldn't. This was one of your best episodes yet, it covered everything so perfectly, and I feel like I can show this to a non-cardgame player and they'd not only understand the message, but quite enjoy the video too.
Also I gotta say, toxic yes, but seeing somebody dump their entire deck onto the field via Nadu is pretty cool.
"Nearly 200 cards that Nadu can turn to gold" BRB grabbing a third of those 200, slapping some lands in there and bringing a Commander deck to my pod that goes infinite if I cough too hard.
Love the shot at Extra Credits, used to love that channel so much.
HERITAGE MENTIONED
It, too, has a Banned Bird.
Petshop in the thumbnail? That's a banned bird.
would love to see a video on alternate forms of card bans. like choice restrict in Cardfight Vanguard
Keyforge is prime example of power creep and not caring about bans killing the game. Its design is brilliant but ghost galaxy didnt understand any of keyforge strenghts. Would love it if you made a video about what went wrong, i think there is a lot to learn (what not to do) from the mistakes of new keyforge developers
18:14
When lyrilusk fist came out, the fusion was already not worth playing it and when the most recent supports came out that made the deck really easier to play on a competitive level, ignore the fusion s existence was still the right thing to do.
If anything, even if the fusion ended banned that would have changed absolutely nothing for lyrilusk
And lorewise that s fitting as was a card that didn't actually belong to character using that deck and was literally forced on her.
The funniest part is that Beryl Canary actually conflicts with summoning Independent Nightingale because it locks you into xyz summoning. Would still be cool if they printed a fusion Trap for the archetype in the future because lore reasons or not, feels bad for a card this powerful to collect dust.
@@munchrai6396Considering how things are going, maybe they ll make cards that make use of all the cards related to fusion parasite like this lyrilusk and windwitch crystal bell
If the deck even runs Independent Nightingale, it's only ever summoned through Instant Fusion and then it pulls a Houdini and disappears as material for something else
It’s modern horizons, I know it really doesn’t matter much but “masters” sets only have reprints (and thus could never introduce a new problematic card or cause the legality of cards to change)
Reprint sets can change the legality of cards for the pauper format specifically, in fact monestary swiftspear had to be banned after becoming pauper legal this way. But for formats that aren't "every common in the history of the game" yeah they don't affect legality
@@winter945trueee
11:59 alough one of the reasons is elma, there is a argument that the bamboo sword + gearfreid loop is the reson konami stoped loops in the game (they changed how loops work in yugioh turns out gearfread is a weird card lol
This is an amazing episode. Not only for the style and really valuable perspective from the fighting game genre, but also because this highlights really well why greed can kill your game in earnest despite. I also remember that Extra Credits episode, and it is incredibly poignant with huge game dev studios today, and I agree that the tipping point is not far off.
Nadu would be incredibly pushed even if the ability resolved twice overall.
This card has me scratching my head. I play it on Arena, at 75% win rate in Historic (before BLB, and there are no trivial loop able abilities for it)
I love that for the Elestrals segment with Sparkit, you can hear Thunder Bringer from Epic in the background. Good choice, Kohdok. 👍
17:20 it does in Tear, which is why it's banned in MD and limited everywhere else
Honestly, if Master Duel and the TCG used the same banlist I'd be way more OK with Instant Fusion staying at one over Kitkalos because Tear is already a very problematic archetype that really doesn't deserve any wiggle room. Its crazy that they printed an archetype so strong that its still a rouge contender even when all but one of its main deck monsters are limited.
@@munchrai6396 I agree, Kit should be banne over Instantfusion to weaken Tear but Instantfusion also limits design space for any fusion monster that it can summon. So banning it makes sense, just for that reason alone.
@@Lich_V. I honestly think its perfectly fine at one. The amount of utility you can get off the one card is just way too much fun to lose in its entirety and being at one means that most decks won't even see it that often. Though I'd still take an extra Called By the Grave in exchange because that's what it's usually used for in weaker decks that don't have good handtrap matchups and don't like running too many main deck monsters
@@Lich_V. Nah Instant Fusions has always been a card thats has been on teh verge of being banned, any good level 5 or lower Fusion will be abused by it, so it actually limits desing, also if it gets banned cards like Norden can be unbanned.
@@Ms666slayer ??? I am not disagreeing???
I think there's one thing left out here, and that's that banlists, particularly in eternal formats, do also serve to keep the format fresh. Some strategies aren't so much oppressive as they are consistent, and getting them out of the meta without just bumping the powerlevel of the whole format around them can breathe a little interest back into the game for people who's favorite strats have a poor matchup into them, or people who've just gotten tired of seeing them over months. I think the no Broadbull Zoodiac in Yugioh that we saw during Drident's 2nd stint off the banlist are pretty good examples. Zoodiac was a top tier strat, but it was hardly unbeatable, and by the time we saw Drident's 2nd ban it had been in that top tier area for a long while and was ill poised to stop. Zoodiac can be a fundamentally boring deck/engine to play and see played with all the slapping xyz's monsters on top of one another with no combo it does, so although I wasn't super excited to get rid of it, I was relieved I didn't have to see it much anymore post Drident's 2nd ban.
@@RiderOmega I feel like some strategies might not be oppressive, but can still just have fairly limited counter play against them. Like I think the zoo strategy of running 20+ non engine and just having a bunch of one card lines that played into interaction well just didn't have a lot of counter play to it.
Like I don't think good players as a whole struggle against tenpai, or runick stun, or heck even branded. They're not consistent enough strategies to be oppressive, but even if you prepare perfectly for them, they still have a high probability of just being able to cheese games. Your win rate percentage should still be comfortable over 50% for those match ups.
@@shawnjavery That's all true, but I'm speaking about something more simple than that. Seeing the same decks at the high level all the time can get boring. Powercreep is one solution to that problem. Banning out that deck's key cards can be another solution. That's all.
I've asked for an episode on this topic before, but considering this video talked at length about Ancestral Recall and Timetwister, I think an episode on card flow as part of trading card game design would be interesting. Ancestral is one of the most powerful cards in Magic. Pot of Creed is the same thing but seemingly worse, drawing only two instead of three cards and seems just as powerful if not more powerful in YGO. Yet due to different card flow the card Diesel in Netrunner, which has the same effect as Ancestral and costing no other resources beside the card itself, is just a borderline playable.
If Giant Growth was going to be made as broken as Ancestral Recall, would make 3x 3/3 Elephants be enough text? We are talking about making vanilla creatures without trample. Or would it have to be 3x 1/2 Armadillos?
It's competing with Lightning Bolt and Dark Ritual, they'd better be 3/3 Flying Elephants with Vigilance.
@@autobotstarscream765 You are making 3 token so lightning bolt doesnt kill 50% or 100% of your spell. Its ok if bolt reduces the effectiveness by 2/3. Like you will still brainstorm, even if you cannot shuffle away the cards you don’t need.
@@dragade101 Pretty sure Flying + Vigilance doesn't do anything to stop a Bolt. 😂
@@autobotstarscream765
You have up to 4 lightning bolts vs 12x 3/3s.
Just casting two of these supped up version of Giant Growth, that means you have out passed the red player’s ability to fairly answer your OP spell. Regardless of keywords, 3x 3/3s would be OP but is it fair looking at other parts of the power nine?
@@dragade101 No, which is why I suggested piling on even more ridiculous nonsense. It was tongue-in-cheek, but I presume this whole conversation is. 😛
29:23 That just sounds like YGO's default
Great video but I feel Kohdok glosses over what I think is a very important bit a bit too fast. Which is the cost of banning in your game.
There was a period of time in Magic, I think post Return to Zednikar where Wizards was very ban happy. But that totally killed a lot of peoples motivation cause if you bought into the deck, there was a good chance it would get banned.
HOWEVER it was later revealed that this period was a result fo Wizards lack of any real playtesting team. Bans can happen for many reasons but the fact that this was caused by the developer actively neglectic any form of proper playtesting is wild and stupid. Its not always just sins from early card desig or like actively malice. Sometimes its just the dev being stupid and careless.
you released this right on time to hit the yugioh banlist cycle at its juiciest point, when we know its this month but we dont know when.
whats crazy is it took this long for nadu to get banned, and they revealed the version of nadu that they actually playtested and its a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CARD
Nadu, Winged Wisdom
1GU
Legendary Creature - Bird Wizard
3/4
Flying
You may cast permanent spells as though they had flash.
Whenever a permanent you control becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, put it onto the battlefield. Otherwise, put it into your hand.
Im sure someone has already said this, but in the opening you say "modern masters" but the set is called "Modern horizons".
kinda surprised to see BT8 Tommy Himi from Digimon show up here, considering he was only restricted to 1 for a year or so and not too long ago came off the the Restricted list alongside BT6 SaviourHuckmon.
Still waiting for BT11 Greymon (X Antibody) to get off the Restricted list....
"only for a year" when the game had a little over two years seems like an understatement.
Honestly surprised you didn't cover the dbs cardgame.
They literally release sets made in large part of cards that got an errata and their banlist basically often consist of doing errata on cards that were too strong rather than just limit/ban them
Is that game even still alive?
@@autobotstarscream765 Very much, they already confirmed 2025 championship
Was that Thunderbringer in the background while you talked about Sparkitt? Clever!
I really wish the Bird gets banned in commander but its not gonna hehe. I really love all the comparisson in múltiple games (YGO always being the trash game of course, and MTG making mistakes every once in a while) and siting múltiple scenarios/examples. Great content as Always 👍🏻
PS: I really love all the Analogies that card game players try to make to fighting games (and your relations were really spot on 😂)...
But I'll never put them on the same league because FG are skill heavy based with RNG removed from the core mechanics, while cardgames (and even other games like pkm) even if the player aims to remove the RNG factor, RNG its at its Very Core and sometimes No amount of skill can overcome it
tolarian academy jumpscare, he looks like a lycan. the outside reflects how monstrous he is inside.
The floodgate example reminds me of what happened to Kaijudo (the Duel Masters reboot). There came about a deck so obscenely powerful it absolutely killed the game, 5 color Dragons. The main idea of the deck was to play cheap dragons that reduced the cost of your main dragons, allowing you to power into a dragon that kills everything costing 3 or less the opponent controls, and says they can't play anything 3 or less as long as it's in play, as well as dealing heavier damage than most cards. It absolutely broke the game.
Ban them. Ban them all. Please talk about magi nation! :D
This is why I tend to like Bushiroad's way of doing bans. They'll do bans or restrictions more rarely, but most of the time they do choice restrictions. It helps prevent broken combos while allowing the cards to be used the "legitimate" way.
You mean the "pick A or B" ban?
Yeah, it's a good idea, but in the birdo case it would be pointless (unless B is all the card that it can combo off)
@@17blaziken Of course, it doesn't work in all cases, which is why they have banned 2 cards in EN and 2 cards in JP (one is the same in both).
Releasing cards in a set to counteract broken cards is acceptable in exactly one scenario: rather than introduce specific cards to counter, there needs to be a population change in the frequency of cards that "can" counter.
Specifically in Yugioh, the existence of Effect Veiler, had it released a little sooner, may very well have prevented teleDAD from being so prominent, something people in the community have been saying for years in hindsight. I know that it's just one card, but considering every deck would run it anyway and how quickly Yugioh decks get to the cards they want, it would have been enough of a demographic change to the card pool to not feel like selling the cure to a problem you created
I got banned for playing Hilde in my SC playgroup, but not because of her combo nonsense, everyone else just hated how good I was with variable timing in a game that otherwise doesn't have it. XD
yugioh back in the old days was looser with effect restrictions because they were usually single effects such as cannon soldier or catapult turtle however meta decks did prove the potential they had when last will had a lingering effect like maxx-c. the latter was edited instead and it took nearly 2 decades for cannon soldier to get banned. catapult turtle was given a once per turn to nerf it, but its effect scaled allowing it to perform a potential ftk where it was recently banned in the OCG.
one thing to keep in mind when it comes to card design is how these can interact in the future. snake rain is a painful choice for reptiles and for that reason could be why a meta defining reptile deck has not yet been printed. instant fusion was not very good when it was printed back in 2006 but the introduction of synchros and more fusion targets that could combo into them and xyz monsters made it more powerful. magical scientist was a problem back in 2002 and now it is a contender for most broken monster in the game.
In my opinion, when a card is truly broken, cardgame companies should just just do a product recall and replace them with a repaired (=nerfed) version. Just like car companies.
Or maybe just have someone with a sharpie put those quotation marks on the bird at the correct location, ffs.
I expect a follow-up on soft-banning systems where the game limits the number of cards usable to keep them from being worthless. It can go 1 or 2 of a card period, a limit on certain cards that you can only use 1 copy of, certain cards that cannot be used in the same deck, etc. These are things I've come across in several games and make sense as a follow up video
You run into a big problem when you inevitable get generic cards on the list, and it ends up disproportionately punishing old decks at the expense of new ones.
This doesn't solve the issue, it just increases the variance. Sometimes it doesn't solve anything at all.
I am just talking about Kohdok discussing this in card games as an alternative to outright banning cards. In case of some players with a smaller resume: It exists. I’ve played card games with these systems. I just want to open up the topic not advocate
This something I wish TCGs did more often. More flexible options to limit a cards impact on the game is a perfect way to weaken a deck, while still keeping it cohesive. Unfortunately, the recent proliferation of one card combos in Yugioh makes this idea pretty ineffective with the newer meta decks. Even worse with something like Snake-eyes because its really hard to pick a ban target without either making the deck unplayable or impacting the versatility of the Sinful Spoils engine for other decks. Flamberge is about the only card I'd be comfortable being entirely banned, so you'd probably have to keep the deck about as limited as Tear if you want it to retain any functionality at all
My favorite reason for a banning to happen is meta warp. Sure you could argue most banned cards warped a format but occasionally a deck by itself is completely benign but the ripples it makes lead to problems.
For example, Splinter Twin as a deck didn't have a huge win percentage or unfun play patterns. The only problem it had was it could threaten a win on an opponent's turn 3. Sure lots of decks could stop it with a lightning bolt or some other instant speed response, but others couldn't. This meant some decks now just had a 5% chance of randomly losing games so they weren't playable any more compared to the decks that COULD handle it.
The end result was the meta diversity shrinking for seemingly no reason and no obvious culprit. It was so subtle the ban is still controversial to this day because people just don't remember the deck being "that bad".
What I don't understand about Nadu from a balancing standpoint is there are so many knobs Wizards could have tweaked on it's effect to make sure it wouldn't be broken, and they just ignore them! They've printed so many cards recently with restrictions that make the card unplayable, and then used *none* of those restrictions for him:
It applies to *all* your creatures, not just Nadu
It applies if *any* player targets it, not just you or just your opponents
It applies to *both* spells *and* abilities, not just one or the other
It doesn't actually draw a card, bypassing floodgates
It puts lands directly onto the battlefield instead of your hand
It put those land on the field *untapped*
Even the *ONE* restriction they put on it, activating up to "Twice per turn," isn't even *really* a restriction because why not only *ONCE* per turn???
If they added literally *any* of these restrictions, Nadu wouldn't be as oppressive as it currently is.
I'm glad I found this channel.
I feel like pointing out that floodgate is actually a yugioh specific piece of slang Probably the only TCG slang term to not originate from magic.