Hey guys! Sorry for the background music volume being a bit high in this video! I didn't realize it while I was recording. This and the very next video will have this issue, but then it'll be correct. Thanks to everyone who pointed it out! 😅
Isnt that just the Swordsoul archetype in a nutshell, but for synchros? They literally cheat out a tuner in a lot of cases whenever they dont have a Tenyi to throw onto the board.
They always were that, the moment i saw, it just require monsters on the field, that level didn't matter, that type didn't matter. I know this was their path, extra deck effect monster. Why? Because if you don't put conditions(Other then for a very few and even then those conditions are easy to fulfill) or make then cost more then just the monster you have on the field, then anything can go. I saw this coming, i call it out on some videos about then. But no one listen... What can you do? *shrug*
@@ultimateshadeofwar People don't want to listen objective analysis of game mechanic and why they are leading to degenerate design. Many people knew Links would end exactly how it's now. But what can you do? It's not like you could have kidnapped Konami's executives and forced them to make actual good decisions on their game.
I'd like to see Konami making more creative use of arrows too. Imagine some oddball effects like a spellcaster treating a pointed-to monster zone as an extra spell/trap zone. A new ojama that disables opponent's zones that it points to. A Left-arrow monster that does something special if it points to a field card.
From what I've seen most pendulum decks have at least one card that can return cards from the extra deck to the hand, So it's not as relevant as it initially seems.
@@chipslight738 yeah, the decks that need that have never been viable, As the non-pendulum decks aren't just gonna roll over for 4 monsters that go into 1 or 2 bosses if they don't get interrupted.
Links that actually care about their arrows is why I personally like Appliancers. They have both a colinked and a non-colinked effect, so you're incentivized to co-link. They're not a strong archetype, and definitely could use more link monsters / ones that colink to more than just celtopus, but I think the concept of how they're designed with colinking in mind is pretty cool.
Appliancers are so fun. The only link-based deck I actually enjoy playing Like yeah they spam the hell outta link-1s but it never feels oppressive or broken, plus you actually need to position them in certain ways and consider the order you make them
The only real problem with the link summoning mechanic is how many generic link monsters there are with incredible effects. There are a lot of smaller, weaker, archetypes whose link monsters could do a lot to make them more relevant. They're just overshadowed by better, more generic, options. There's only like, what, 20 or 30 link cards that are the real trouble makers.
And that’s the sad part,ignoring the horrible master rule 4 and Konami fucking legacy support up 90% of the time but making broken more universal cards at the same time,Link is an excellent and healthy mechanic
Isn't generic better for every deck in general? I see why it's bad as far as the secondary market prices go but don't you want a rogue deck to be able to compete with good generic cards?
@@bronsonluks795 we do but it can be done without having to affect high tier play,Konami just doesn’t understand that or they purposely want to piss off their player base
They brought back MR5 because they realized how hard it was to create archetypes that don’t require link monsters. Decks like Despia and sword soul would be really bad if it wasn’t for MR5. I think link monsters were a good Idea to begin with. Restricting overpowered summoning mechanics is a great idea. Then monsters like halq, Selene, accesscode could have had more of a restriction like halq for example can only be made with a synchro monster, Selene with a warrior equipped with a spell, access made with at least 2 link monsters. It would make the game more like a puzzle. They extra deck would become a toolbox and the main deck would be even more important. But generic link monsters is the equivalent of more easily accessible main deck monsters. I think spyral is a great example of that. The EMZ seems like a joke now. Especially vs a lot of top decks from todays meta and the next.
Another big problem, is that it kinda defeats the purpose of limiting the summoning of other types from the extra deck, if link monsters do the same things they do but better. Between things like accesscode, apollousa and the like what even is the point of summoning other things.
Your right The force of link mechanics means that future archetypes benefit more by being linked because they have link plays in their design and while all previous archetypes would’ve been restricted heavily But like decks that depend on link becomes really bad once link is bad because why bother making a whole link play when you can easier summon blue eyes (or w/e) and any stop to link is going to brick you
One of my favourite links is Cross-Sheep. It uses the link mechanic in an interesting way by encouraging you to use other extra deck mechanics to benefit from it.
I feel like a lot of this isn't even the fault of the cards, but the nature of no longer being in Master Rule 4. IN MR4, the arrows didn't need to matter for every card's effect because *they already mattered to the game state due to summoning restrictions*. Without that, a lot of cards just have arrows that are superfluous. Now some of it is just the natural expansion of Links like everything else (Not all Synchros have effects referencing tuners, not all Fusions have effects relating to their materials, not all Xyz have effects that detach materials, etc.). That just comes with the passage of time. Quasar is also barely relevant to the Synchro elements but is just enough cause the materials used contribute to its OTK potential; he's not so different from Accesscode Talker after all.
Yeah I think Xyz are the worst off in that regard. I can give fusion and Synchro a pass cause once they hit the field, unless they're also a tuner they don't inherently have a mechanic that they can use to limit/Enable their effects, and for the most part are brought out the way they were intended, but the same can't be said for cards like Toad where they put the material bassed cost, on the effect that only Frog decks use, and made the omni negate effect basiacly only require the discard of a water monster.
@@thekey0123 as a paleo frog player, it annoys me every time i have to face down a toad summoned by bahamut shark, because that play only exists thanks to konami making the generic effect have a generic cost, instead of inverting the costs of the negate and the summon.
So what you’re saying is if they don’t have effects that involve their link arrows, then they’re basically just tribute-summon monsters in the extra deck.
Damn... that was a sick burn... basically sums up Link summoning... though to be fair Synchros are basically Rituals with the occasional Polyerization re-train in monster form (before Albaz became a thing) from the Extra Deck, and even though I am one those people who loved Card Games On Motorcycles the anime, I will admit that is what Synchro Monsters are... Xyz Monsters at least made an attempt to be very different from the other Extra Deck summon types... before Konami realized people were still playing Synchro Staples because and made Xyz monster too generic because people wanted generic staples that they could rely on without playing a specific Type/Atrribute/Archetype in the end...
Meanwhile Rituals are just there, more or less the same as before. Fusions are a little different since you still basically fuse monsters. It is the method that changed some, if at all. Contact fusion and deck fusions were possible very early on, and many other cards that gave you a quick fusion has a huge cost of some kind.
@@theazuredemon4854 at least synchros have more coherent summoning mechanics, often requiring weird level monsters, one of wich tuners and the other not, and have the correct level to summon. Links are just you have a lot of monsters/tokens? Here you go. It says a lot that an amazing card for synchro decks like halq is used in the end only for link climb basically.
Yeah, now that you've pointed it out I have to agree. I'm happy that Konami revised the rules so Fusion, Synchro and Xyz Monsters can still be Special Summoned from the Extra Deck to a non-linked Zone like they originally could, it's probably what they should have done in the first place, but it's a shame that Links no longer have as much of their own identity by using their arrows as part of their effects. I'd love to see Konami print more Link Monsters down the line that employ the use of their Link Arrows as a relevant component of their effects.
I had a feeling that the complaint about Link monsters was going to be the fact that they power crept their point of creation out of relevance. It went from trying to slow down the OP turbo boards and forcing strategic placement and timing to going the completely opposite direction and having easier OP monsters to rush out.
the problem with the initial MR4 link monsters is that it never actually slowed down the "op turbo boards". it just made those same OP turbo boards even more OP because no other deck could play with the new stuff because they could not afford the materials required to make a link monster with the zones they needed. so you either had to play protect the castle with your original boss monster, or run the bad generic links and hope you don't get blown out because you went -4 in card advantage to have more than one of your own boss monster into a deck that straight up did not care. initial links forced people to play by the rules and even within the rules the problematic stuff remained unchallenged. now they have a new problem without the restrictions as insanely strong and generic boss monsters that any deck could turbo out if they can get the resources out to do it.
It's really frustrating to see a card game that is so complex become boiled down to one card starters and link1s that search a field spell. Negates, board breakers etc. The game is complex! Get creative Konami! Make players become mindful of arrows, and columns etc.
It makes me appreciate whenever I go up against a Mekk-Knight player, they develop their board in very specific ways and move their monsters about in the zones to get the maximum amount of utility.
One of my fav decks is Marincess because they make full advantage of link climbing into a huge link 4 marincess and giving it extra benefits from being in the extra monster zone like attack boosts and effect protection, and the traps also being able to activate from your hand if you can summon a link 3 or higher marincess rewarding you even further for committing to big link climbs, it's so fun
Well, the problem with the arrows is that they aren’t inherently helpful. Back during MR4 the arrows and their placement were basically forced upon us, so we tolerated them. Nowadays we can get around them for free, unless you are playing a link spam deck. It’s kinda like tuners in Synchros or Polymerization in fusion. You don’t ever really want to deal with them, you tolerate them because you need them for the mechanic to work and most good strategies basically ignore those issues as much as possible. In a way Konami should treat Links like they do modern Pendulum cards most of the time. Where they design the cards to have inherent interaction with the mechanic and not exist independently of them. In a way, I think Link arrows are like the card Toon World more than anything. It does nothing of value by itself and at best enables actually good cards to work. That or they must be “given effects” to actually do something of note, like with Tri-gate or “Knightmares” This is ignoring all the issues I have with many of the individual Link monsters that I consider badly designed and often ban worthy due to their effects.
@@Medbread there are plenty of other messes that happen with Yu-Gi-Oh, that I think flipping attack position LINK monsters face-down would cause nearly no issues at this point.
I think the way Evil Eye uses the link arrows is pretty interesting. Two of the more interesting link based archetypes in my opinion are Krawlers and Sunavalon. They actually feel like they bring their flavor and mechanics together well.
Tbf, Sunavalon is an anime deck that was made specifically for Link Climbing, co-Linking, and Extra Linking (aka "U-boards"). In the characters' final duel, Spectre even made what the anime calls the "perfect extra link", which is an 0-shaped board of his co-Linked monsters spanning both players' fields.
What I will love about Paul eternally as long as I live: his ability to surprise you. My man came out here and slapped down two Link 4s and said he had problem with them and to guess what it is. I'm sure we all said "floodgate and control is bad' then he shook his head and said "They aren't using their Link mechanics anymore!" and we suddenly just epiphany and realized we had forgotten that was the point of Links in the first place! Link to make a monster then use the stupid arrows to create grids and grid power which in turn strengthened the deck and monsters. Paul is a treasure in the Yugioh community.
Surprised you didn't mention Cross-Sheep as a good design. The link arrows matter and its a link monster that supports and ties together the other special summon mechanics
When I played Tribrigade in master duel (pre-DPE), learning where to place my monsters so I could keep summoning with the main deck monsters’ effects was part of the learning process. In that sense, I had to be aware of the zones I was summoning in and it was a legit skill check. A very small one, and something that doesn’t interact with the opponent in anyway, but one nonetheless. During MR4, using zones to get the most non-links out of the extra deck sounds like a challenging puzzle to solve. I only got back into Yugioh post MR5, so I can only imagine what it was like to work with those limitations and have no desire to downgrade. Curious to see what I’ll think of things after the link festival in master duel.
Absolutely this, along with how generic the best of them can be, (which wouldn’t be so bad if utilized correctly,) I feel like a what they could do to make Link Monsters more dynamic is to adapt what Konami was going for in Master Rule 4, but not to the extent that they did as far as I know, limiting the Extra Deck to restrict the power of the best decks that make use of their Extra Deck, but still make it so people can summon their beloved boss monsters. Perhaps they could limit each type of Extra Cards allowed to be summoned on the Main Monster Zone to one each, and make the Extra Monster Zone a +1 for the desired type. Links and Extra Deck Pendulums would still be restricted to the Extra Zone to allow their main mechanics to flourish. The exception to this would be when their revived from the graveyard, as they don’t count as being summoned using their traditional summoning mechanic. They could make Link Arrows and placements more important by bringing back the mechanic that allows the arrows to spread the Extra Zone, so both duelists can summon whatever Extra monster they want there, making the more powerful Links a give or take, all the while making the placements of cards a more prominent thing.
I guess it would be worth to mention that Numerons could still work under this, as that one card that Numeron Network proxies Special Summons, rather than XYZ.
One change I want to see in regards to the EMZ is expanding its open slots. Zones Links point to should count as extensions of the EMZ, each player should have 2 default EMZ slots of their choice out of 4 availible ones, and more Extra Deck monsters should have bonus effects when summoned to an EMZ. And Link arrows should block off main deck monsters by default unless a card specifically mentions benefits or detriments from pointing to something, much like how damage step interactions require either Atk/Def changes or a Counter Trap negating those effects(i.e. Solemn Strike can negate an Aluber or Raye coming out in response to a battle destruction, but a Barrone or Ghost Belle can't because tje activation timing is at point of destruction).
I’ve always thought that U-linking the board while cool is one of those reasons people don’t like modern yugioh. It requires you to combo extensively and then also run a floodgate which stops your opponent from special summoning via Iblee. At least with generic links you have extra deck options that can get around certain game states.
I’ve been saying this for the past year, I actually liked Link monsters when they were introduced since it slowed the game down, but it sucks how all the the link arrows mean is you can link summon in that zone it points to.
@@tickledeggz No, that wasn’t even close to what I said 😂 I like it because it did slow it down, that’s a positive, but now they threw away that ruling and extra deck monsters can summon anywhere (excluding link monsters of course), now there only purpose is “yeah you can link summon over there too”. I wish it did more with the arrows, you know, co-linking and such. Edit: to be fair, I could have clarified more.
link monsters never slowed the game down , firewall was released in the first set and introduced 4 highly consistent new FTK engines into the game , even link spider before that was an extender, & as soon as link 2 extenders started to appear the game practically broke it got so consistently fast with Spyral & later others
@@Marcusjnmc I disagree on the sense of casual play. Yeah, I’m the competitive format, we expect them to always go further beyond, but walking into a card shop and doing a pick up game when links just came out. It was way slower than what I was used to. I actually barely saw firewall dragon being used at my locals years back. Also the amount of people being salty about not being able to spam their board easily in comparison to now was a thing. We’re not going to pretend that many people weren’t complaining about how slow the start of link era was. Now mind you, it was slow because you had to play Link monsters in order to go “fast”, but it would just be ignoring reality to say the game moves way faster currently than it did even with Firewall and etc. I think we the new format, it’s way faster and just easier than the start of link era, which is just “duh”.
@@TheQuilava96 a lot of decks atm run pretty slow , especially despia , that deck could have ran in MR 4, & firewall combo wasn't meta at the start, true dracos & zoodiacs were, the ftk combo decks like dinosaurs & infernity were played way less , the more successful decks didn't change , they were slower both in MR3 & MR4 that year for most of it
I once had an idea of a link archtype based on chess. Their strategy is moving along their link-markers and occupying your opponents main monster zones(the control is still on the original owner). I hope Konami do something like this in some shape or form in the future.
That is a really good point regarding other links that don't use their arrows, but I don't think the link arrow mechanic has entirely been ditched. Beyond the Pendulum just got released and ties both the pendulum summoning mechanic with link arrows in a unique and interesting way. But yeah, it's like if xyz monsters didn't have to detach their materials at all to be used.
@@Marcusjnmc I was talking about detaching materials in general, not just for effects (i.e. Bagooska or Phantasmal Dragon). Although, now that I think about it, non-effect xyz monsters do exist.
I didn’t care for links when they first came out but now I think they’re a pretty cool idea. Makes me wonder if they’ll come out with a new summoning method
Pretty sure that Konami is turning away from making new Master Duel mechanics and are going to be focusing on Rush Duels, as the sheer complexity of regular Dueling as made the game all the more difficult to attract new players to it. Plus, Kazuki Takahashi has completely distanced himself from Konami, and the animation style for that type is gone as well. I'm not saying we have to go back to it to add new mechanics, but it's the way that they've always advertised them.
At this point, why would you invent new method when you can just break the rules of the old ones? Ritual summon lv12 using 1or2 lv1; Fusion summon from the deck; Synchro/Xyz summon using Link monster; Link summon using banished monster;...
This is one of the most fun-in-concept mechanics that could exist in this game. It is underutilized and at times the monsters that could have been using it are just a path to OTKs.
I think another deck that is fun and affordable to play in regards to link monsters is Crusadia. Link climbing is a good way to teach players the beginnings of combo extending and most of their link monsters have effects in regards to what they point to.
Crusadia is an amazing deck that can steal wins from meta decks too. Cheap. Don't even need to run expensive handtraps. All of the extra deck monsters and main deck monsters except Avramax cares about the link arrows. Would recommend as somebodies first time playing a go-second boardbreaking deck. Just add Kaiju's and some generic removal and you can probably beat a Despia deck.
@@PaladinfffLeeroy that was one of the reasons why crusadia kaiju was one of my first decks when I returned to the game last year (that and I got a bunch of the cards from the tins they were in)
@@Marcusjnmc I use Kaiju waterfront tower and like 6 kaijus, so I get to use their Kaiju counter effects quite often to deal with whatever comes up. That mixed with Mekk Knights and you get a lot of versatility to where most of the games you play aren't setting up the same board
You won't need to tune stars up, or overlay matching levels, or spell fusion or rituals, or throw 2 monsters out in the backrow. Link just beat synchro, xyz, and random spelled monsters. Which is why they are so prized to barf minions and build the same boss monster, and let us see the same blue cards over and over again.
i learned about appliancers through master duel. it was pretty confusing at first but once i got the hang of it, it was kinda fun. but i understand why they make most link monsters so generic. easier to understand for a wider audience. it would be pretty cool to see a column battle "3D chess" type of duel!
They should have used link monster to support obscure archetypes i mean does anyone here remembers the following archetypes, Piece Golem, Iron Chain, Worms,Aliens, Arcana Force, Generic Dinosaurs or the Barrel Dragons?.
Something I really wanted to see was Extra Deck Spells/Traps. The idea is that if a Link Monster has an arrow pointing towards one of your Spell/Trap Zones, you’d be able to play a new type of Spell/Trap from your Extra Deck.
The arrows also serve to make Link plays rather linear in nature, since if you run a Link-focused deck then you typically will be going into monsters in the right order to get the arrows you need. So many Link monsters that are made specifically to act as extenders is probably a part of it. Other decks tend to be more freeform with active decision making. Consider something like Synchron that gives you a ton of options based on your own play style once you get Junk Speeder out and if you run a typical 1-3-4 lineup of Synchrons - you can go into a Crystal Wing or any generic level 8, or a level 6, or if you use Stardust Illumination you can get a level 10, or if you summoned Cyberse Synchron you also have access to a Level 7, even a level 11 if you really wanted to. And Synchron is a relatively linear Synchro deck nowadays. It is true that the game as a whole has been getting progressively more and more linear but Links did not help in that regard.
I personally love to run a Madolche deck, and the link monster in that deck both utilizes the arrows and compliments the theme of the deck really well (For those who don't know, Madolches revolve around keeping your graveyard empty of monsters and in doing gives your monsters and spells more powerful effects). Madolche Sistart (the Link monster) has an effect that if it points to a Madolche card then spell cards can't be targeted, and if it would be destroyed you can send a madolche from your graveyard back to the deck and it stays on the field. I wish there was more Madolche support (We only have 3 Xyz and 1 Links) but despite that I love the deck to death!
I’m dreading the day Link monsters are introduced into DuelLinks. The game is always hugely meta tilted. I guess a box a month helps water down the power trips.
It's happening either this september or next, probably this september. They've already started adding the code for link ratings and arrows and such, they added the arrow icons themselves some time ago and every character has a "I Link Summon a Monster!" line.
Apollousa's arrows matter a lot for decks that want to use the Codebreaker engine. If you can get to her on your fifth summon she ensures you can't be nibbed and also provides the arrows to turn two materials into five.
Yeah, Apollousa is one of the strongest link monster with generic materials, a good effect, and also good arrows. I play her as one of the core combo in my Gouki deck with Codebreaker and my turn 1 board (if not negated) ends in 3 materials Apollousa, Powerload Ogre, PK Rusty Bardiche, and DPE (before Verte got hit) with 2 Fog Blades. Although, I still can get the end board even if I got negated once or twice.
@@crashicle this was my use case for her too. I also used Draco Masters of the Tenyi as a generic bottom arrows link for when I could only get three link mats worth of material after Isolde.
The arrows are relevant but only in link or pendulum focused strategies, in my pendulum deck appolussa is not only a strong negate but allows me to summon 3 monsters from extra deck, also in my Evil twin deck, the knightmares discard give me a draw if I place the arrows correctly, Tl;dr the arrows and link-colink are still relevant but only in certain strategies
Orcust had the best use of arrows for the idea. Being able to "point" at the opponents monster and interact was a great idea. Small attacks but point to a monster made it to where both players had to use them zones properly.
I think the original mechanic that link monsters were based around is zone management. Not many decks care about where cards are physically on the Field. The most standout card doing so is infinite impermanence, which made the physical board your playing on something you need to consider. Your not playing in the shadow realm with no bounds. I liked how cards which require zone management (like mekk-nights) really ground the board as a battlefield your fighting on. Ever since MR5, the purpose of zone management has been lost in links, but also don't think bringing back MR5 would fix the problem with current links as they were designed with MR5 in mind. Also, I hope Konami has learned their lesson with link ones.
Honestly every meta relevant summoning mechanic has gotten to this point, where they have been streamlined so much they don't resemble their original forms anymore. Link monsters are the most notable since they've gotten to this point thanks to the links themselves, but other mechanics have also gotten insanely streamlined, only due to specific archetypes, for example branded for one card fusion, swordsoul for one card synchro, and zoodiac for one card xyz. I think it's just a reality of modern yugioh that we need to accept, that powercreep has gotten to the point where many unique mechanics need to get greatly streamlined in order to have a chance to compete, inadvertently losing a part of their identity.
U right Nowadays it's Fusion: trade 1 Spell for 1 or 3 bosses Synchro: trade 1 Tuner for 1 or 3 bosses Ritual: do something that involves ritual but ends with floodgate Ironically Xyz now kind of sucks and is the one that requires investment and resources due to the nature of needing to actually field mons to be stacked. Zeus was frowned upon but it's a necessary evil to give Xyz decks an alternative wincon considering how "weak" they are now
@@powerfulberry237 Synchro depends, because Synchro decks that arent Swordsoul need to play the right ratio of tuners and non tuners, to be able to start their combo(if they dont play halq(there are some decks, that synchro lock you)
@@lisaruhm6681 yeah thats why i like playing speedroids or resonators cause its fun to build your board around the situation where sword soul is just the same board and nothing unique
Good point. And it provides more places to errata some of them to make them less generic without necessarily modifying the summon or cost conditions directly. Verte, for example could just need to be pointing to a plant monster or co-linked to get a similar limitation to it's spell copy effect without changing it's summoning condition. Hadn't thought about it but this would work too for making Links, at least, less generic.
i think the statement is exxagerating a little, cause the link mechanic was a counter measure to the old pendulum mechanic (old master rule) and most people hate links for be the enabler and must play it for extra summons , and other summons like synchro have improve over time (not only halq , better generic synchro summons are better than initial ones in the 2008/2009 era) the game tends to power creep and change so it doesn't mean that link summon can only be for co-link mechanics that's a very narrow point of view .
i like Link-1 that searches within archetype starter/core cards you need. But when you make them too generic, like striker dragon, its not played in that archetype anymore but only used as a small engine. So either make them generic, like Striker dragon with any low level dragons, and give them a lock; or make them less generic to summon (require for example specific cards in the archetype, and not random dragons). Or, a similar concept I like from Mysterune, is that all their quick play spell can choose to do that banish from top of the deck effect, or you can summon one of their fusion monsters from the extra deck; and one of the fusion monsters is a searcher for spring of mysterune which is the core card of the deck, while others have different effects of course some decks are already too strong even without a link-1 searcher, and thats what they keep printing support for older archetypes who hasnt seen play because not consistent enough or other. But the problem is again if they do those link-1 searcher too generic
Fairly certain Appolousa's arrows were used in dragon link combo where link arrows actually do matter for guardragon setup, but I guess that can be said with every link monster incorporated in the dragon link combo. So about the arrow thing, I have several opinions to say. Most of the ones that you said do have applications for their arrows because they were released back in MR4 when link arrows mattered a lot more compared to now, and so the card design philosophy also revolved around utilizing the arrows. Also, Konami was also experimenting with arrow functions outside their intended purpose, so some link monsters have their own tricks to be done with their arrows, from decode, saryuja gaining attack and giving attack to guardragons' link arrows management, and the most recent, I wanna say, being geonator's swapping effect. And there are only this many gimmicks you can do with the arrows without making them way too, well, gimmicky. Few more things I want to point out. About powerful game-winningly link monsters' arrows being "useless" it's because, to me at least, they're endgame monsters that konami thought players would exhaust their resources to make. If you use every monsters on your field to make one of those strong link 4, you would have no monsters left for the arrows of those link 4's to matter. If anything, those arrows serve more like a power level representation than being practical. Also. Verte was originally released in Japan in 2019, before master rule revision, so its arrows do matter because you had to summon fusion monsters in the arrow-pointing zone, chances are that zone is where verte points at. Every borrel link monsers' arrows were designed based on their artwork, so I guess you could say their arrows do have purpose, aesthetic purpose at least.
Except Konami "forgets" the mess of a game they have and how big of a playerbase ygo has and as a collective can theory craft on how to just straight up turbo stuff out turn 1. Ehh there's not much way to fix stuff since players will find a way to abuse something they think it was balanced.
You could argue the same about many XYZ monsters that barely/don't at all use their XYZ material effects and instead their non-unit effects are the reason they're played But I 100% agree with your sentiments
They still have level and type requirements. And their units does something for them. Maybe they don't detach bt the unit still have a role to play. I agree with u there might be some that doesn't bt it's really a minority. And did like ur comment.
@@nathanielbacon2451 toad detach to sp a frog from deck. Only the negate doesn't involve units Kraken xyz is all I can think of. And technically plunder xyz and technically numeron.
I agree, especially since as shown by cards like Rusty Bardish, Link Spider and Relinquished Anima These mechanics can make good cards that are more interesting to use. Even cards like the Link 1s for Nordic and Superheavy Samurai use these mechanics Meanwhile a lot of Link decks don't even have considered the option.
I can kinda agree to this. It'd be really nice if each mechanic had like their own specific quirks but only XYZ, Pendulums and Links even have those and unless you're playing a Pendulum deck a lot of the Link specific mechanics aren't relevant. Another idea I'd like to throw out just because I think it'd be interesting is if all Ritual Monsters had like the Vendread/Djinn mechanic where the Ritual monsters could gain effects based on the materials you used to make them. Could be hard to balance but it'd definitely make Ritual Summoning feel strong. Though I feel like we're past the point where you could do something like that generically since a lot of Ritual Monsters have super OP effects to make up for how many resources you need to make them. If we start stacking effects on top of those I think we'd start seeing some real anime Winged Dragon of Ra type shit (which tbh I'd be down for but still)
I agree with most of the arguments, the problem is that some links are to generic. For a long time I really hated links and wanted to avoid that, but you had to play them. After I took the time to play a main link deck like code talkers or @ignister, I had a blast of a time. Link wasn't just a query generic way to summon good stuff or finishers, it was like a jigsaw puzzle, trying to figure out the best way with your materials to get the best board or answer. That's a lot of fun and in my opinion the true meaning of link. It's the generic stuff man 😁
While I definitely agree with the point behind this video, I also need to point out that Link 1 and 2s have been an incredibly useful way to give some lesser decks that bit of extra kick they need to perform at a higher level. Not necessarily competitive of course, but just the sheer ease of making a Link 1 that does exactly what the archetype needs to field another monster or two is probably one of the best ways to buff decks anymore. Provided they're specific enough.
Link monsters had to be really generic and good at the start but now that you don’t need the arrows unless you use pendulums… it’s a little more difficult to justify the gimmick if the deck doesn’t require it. But some decks weren’t playable under the old master rule 4.
I completely agree with you, I have been out of the competitive scene since Late 2018 but I’ve noticed in lurking through the yugitube parts of the internet we really have had very few strong link/colink/arrow dependent link monsters and the ones that are strong and don’t have these effects are most of the “bad” or “toxic” strategies people talk about.
If anything, the problem with link monsters comes down to the nature of MR4 and MR5. The former was intended to slow the game down and to encourage less 2-3 turn duels, but all it really accomplished was killing any archetype that didn't have a dedicated Link monster in it. The initial generic Link monsters either had no effect or in general were not good. In my case, I vividly remember running a Gem Knight Deck in MR3, but when MR4 came around my deck got dumpstered. It was already a pretty inconsistent rogue deck but the rule change killed the deck to the point where the only use of Gem Knights was in the brilliant fusion Engine. Near the end of MR4, they tried to mitigate it by giving a ton of older archetypes Link cards, but the damage had been done. MR5 tried to undo the damage, but that left Links in the arrowless, OP Extra Deck cards they are today. Links themselves aren't the problem. They just needed to Revise the MR4 format. If I were the one to decide how to alter Extra Deck mechanics in a theoretical MR6, I'd make a return to the MR4 format but not as hard. If you summoned the extra Deck monster excluding links and pendulums the proper way (Fusion summon a fusion monster, Synchro summon a Synchro, etc...) They the would function as do now and be summoned into the main zones. But if you Special Summon them in the "incorrect" way, (I.e through a card effect that does not specifically state that the summon is treated as the correct summon, like Monster Reborn.) then it can only be summoned in the Extra Zone or to Zones Link monsters point to.
I agree, and this situation is due to the rule change that said "Only Link and Pendulum monsters must play by Link rules. Fusion, Synchro, and XYZ are unleashed." There are a limited number of Link and Pendulum decks that are competitively or even casually viable, so Link monsters just "matter" much less right now, except that they're excellent combo enablers and boss monsters.
To be fair, Halq, Isolde and Verte were made during the time when XYZ, Synchro, and Fusion decks were hindered by the Link mechanic. Now they are just really good because of the new rulings and don't really function in the way they were originally made for. At least Accesscode Talker requires you to use Links in order to have it's effect live. But yeah. It ends up just becoming a game ender, rather than something that works like a link monster should.
I've not been a fan of link monsters from the start. I understood what they were kind of meant to do even they came out which was slow down the pendulum summon from extra deck spam, which could then turn into xyz and such spam. But they became nothing but free summons from the extra deck at virtually no cost to a spam deck (and why summoning limiting cards, outside niberu who is easily played around, didn't get fully main decked at this time I don't have a clue). Unlike xyz, synchro, and to a point fusions which had costs or limitations to them. And the fact we were forced to basically use them in order to use the other extra deck monsters we wanted more than 1 spot for. And they got instant protection from many used spell/trap cards and monster effects because they couldn't be put into defense was bogus. Basically slap an ax or other atk boost equip and attack away. On to of the 15 card limit for the extra deck. Thankfully they got rid of mr4 so these things can take a hike.
you know as a player that exited out right after mr4 was out i'm a glad that arrows don't matter because columns are not a thing i like to play around of, when i came back to the game i was glad that not only very few cards had arrows that matter outside penduling but most of all that the thing that i feared the most hadn't happened in the scale i thought it would and that is mosters that do stuff if they point to an apponent's monster, being aware of my zones due to my link's arrows was something i was weirded out by but i wasn't against it, if anything I thought it could be fun but i refused to have to start thinking about zones to avoid because of the other player but objectively speaking after mr(totatlly not)5 arrows lost a lot of relevance, that is bad for the mechanic and that has to suck for someone who really likes links as a mechanich BUT personally i'd take that trade all day, free that extradeck bby now in all siriousness they could make more monsters with inwards pointing links that be fun but konami would 100% take it in the direction i'd hate and release broken shit that points outwards
Honestly, I think that a way to help pull in the reigns is make it that if you Link summon, you can only summon Extra Deck monsters to link zones for the rest of the turn. Either that or go back to MR4, which could potentially help? Also, a deck aside from Codetalker that actually focuses on Link arrows and zones is Crusadia. Main deck monsters summon themselves to link zones, and the Link monsters get benefits from monsters ending up in their zones or just work with them.
I love Aromaseraphy Jasmine, she is an amazing link and is a perfect example how link monsters should be designed. She is kinda generic make with only requiring 2 plant monsters but that's not an issue it allows her to be used in plant decks like sunavalon, but really shines in an aroma deck. She also has 2 effects that focus on her arrows, 1 protects any plant monster she points to from battle destruction but the better one let's her tribute a card she points too to summon a plant from deck.
I think also with the problem with links is that if they're added to an archetype they are essentially supporting an old arc type unless they're built as a link archetype. For halqifibrax for example, it was a support to a primarily synchro base deck which is why it makes sense that someone's a tuner can sync or someone in the opponent's turn. Unfortunately because it supported a synchro heavy deck it doesn't have much for linked stuff. Doesn't mean they couldn't have done anything with it but they just chose not to.
Another one I think is a good example is Madolche French Sistart, which if it was pointing to a madolche your madolche spells/traps you control can’t be destroyed or targeted by card effects. But yeah I do miss link monsters having effects relating to their arrows
Huh, interesting. I re-joined the game when Toon Chaos was released and just learned link monster to be those easy to access extra deck toolbox monsters. While there are some of them who have those "if this card points to/co-links"-effects, I always figured that they are just.. unnecessary and cluncky. Compared to synchro and xyz, who mostly were just "do the summon, get the monster" deals, this seemed like doing that and then some extra, just to get actual value from the process. It never occured to me, that this is give the cards some extra flavour. What I do however enjoy, are those cards that interact with the other players positions. Like Relinquished Anima, Geonator Transverser or S-Force Justify, because they do not provide extra steps for me, but a danger for the other player to play around. This makes the cards feel way more rewarding on their own, while still having those link arrows relevant and adding another layer for both players to watch out for.
Knightmares were insanely strong in part because they could co-link with eachother on top of their strong effects. And it's not like Knightmares or cards like Rusty Bardish are completely obsolete for having these situational effects, So I don't see why people don't think it's odd that Halq doesn't care where the tuner goes.
for what it's worth, I think it is less of a problem with striker dragon since the one other card that would be relevant, Guardragon Elpy, is banned, but you still kinda need the arrow if you want to make pisty live in most decks that play it
My favorite part about link monster is just how splashable they are and can be used in almost every deck. I mean sure you can add link monsters that rely on it's arrows or co-links but they will always be only played casually.
link arrows don't matter anymore, pendulum scales want to be destroyed instead of kept, synchros can use non-tuners now, xyz don't care bout levels now, fusions no longer requiring only the fusion card now to fusion summon, normal summons are far more important while special summons are numerous and less special per se. the game, overall, is in a weird state
- Link Arrows doesn't matter: Yes - Pendulum Scales want to be destroyed instead of kept: Not sure...it depends on which Deck they play too - Xyz don't care about Lev--: YES... actually...Xyz don't care about anything! - Synchro can use non-Tuner: Depend...if it is not Swordsouls...Tuner is still be important for them. - Fusion no longer require Fusion card: aside from contact Fusion...any card that can perform Fusion is a Fusion Card to me...so, no. Also... - Ritual don't care just about Level anymore, thanks to Meteonis Drytron.
@@นวพลเกษเจริญคุณ Fusion only requires the Fusion card I meant... materials on hand, field or GY no longer required. Ritual I excluded because Drytron requiring ATK is just 1 example. The next best Ritual Deck the game had, Nekroz, still played on the actual game rules.
@@StigmaKRL they're not really meta defining, and also, only 1 archetype did that as a gimmick. If we get more generic rituals that did something similar to those mentioned, then we can add them :) However, what I can say is that Rituals don't use Ritual Spells anymore... they either use Field Spells, Quick Play Spells, Monster Effects, and maybe even Traps (can't recall if a Trap did Ritual Summon before, but pretty sure it exists already).
Plus Link Monsters inadvertently power crept XYZ Monsters as a whole. XYZs were the most generic extra deck cards we had at the time with the only big restriction being what level monsters you controlled. There used to be so many Rank 4 Toolbox decks in the game that have now either died out entirely or converted to using Link Monsters. The only exception I can think of is Zoodiacs but let's be honest, they are the most broken XYZ specific deck we ever had. But popular XYZ decks like Battlin Boxer, HAT, Burning Abyss, Utopia, etc. Either can't converge to using Link Monsters or just die out in obscurity. (Not being literal, just using examples) I've been playing Harpie Ladies since 2013, back when they were a Rank 4/7 Toolbox deck, in today's game; most deck builds you see of them are just as support for other engines like Tri-Brigade or run at most 5 XYZ Monsters with the rest being other Links and the Synchro. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy playing them, but there uses to be a simplicity to them that gave them charm back when they were just a Toolbox deck IMO. Also IMO, I think the only reason Link Monsters even became a thing is because of Pendulum cards, just to reel them in and not make them as broken as they were.
I’m actually going to agree, The link mechanic is the most overpowered Mechanic. For example Xyz: Has level requirements Synchro: has tuner/nontuner requirements Fusion: requires monsters/ Some sort of fusion Pendulums: needs scale While Link requires just monsters and depends on text but usually now and days it’s generic. The problem is that link monsters can be spam. And there is no consequences to link monsters.
I feel like another good use of the Arrows for links is the crusadia archetype. It promotes utilizing the placement of both your opponent’s and your monsters to maximize the attack points on your big link monster.
One issue with needing to co-link is either means using Link1 in EMZ that points down so you can co-link, or it means you will basically need 4 monsters to get it to work. It still encourages these really long combos that plagues modern yugioh. what I wouldn't mind in terms of design are drawbacks or restrictions that require it point to a specific Type or archetype to use certain effects, like Knightmare's draw or Transcode Talker. Cost is something modern cards don't really have in mind as much as it should; powerful effects should not simply have a HOPT because otherwise the only out is to "bait it".
I agree with the comments. I do play glad beast as an example as well where their link monster just became a better toolbox or engine instead of using link mechanics. Test panther is just a super good monster that could have also been a generic contact fusion and wouldn't change anything for glad beats. I think the arrows where originally needed in master rule 4 but now given it does not matter anymore maybe a few changes is needed.
I agree with this opinion 100%. I suggest two things to improve link cards. 1. No more generic materials 2. Arrow effects with more diversity 3. Support/counter cards to help with the non effect link cards
You kinda touched on it but it’s that a lot of the links you mentioned were made to bring old decks up to speed in mr4 now that we aren’t in mr4 the power level of the links are instantly higher then they were designed to be because cards are necessarily bound by the mechanic
in terms of halquifibrax the card was made to be the syncro link during master rule 4 when you couldnt summon from the extra deck unless it was to where a link monster would point to so it was a way to get out your syncro summon to one of the zones it points to. Because of this mechanic a lot of link monsters needed to be generic in order for them to be able to function in the decks people used to run otherwise all of yugioh would have become unplayable at the time so now the link mechnic doesnt make as much sense
My problem with Link Monsters is that now I can't used Level Eater anymore. I swear I wish Konami would errata the card so it can't be used for Link Material. I miss that little bastard in my Synchro Deck.
I feel like this is also kind of a leftover from the transition to the new master rules. Links were initially supposed to be used to open zones for your other extra deck monsters to be played. Since that's no longer the case, Konami would have to focus more on making it beneficial to co-link or have linked monsters. Funny enough, I think Splight Elf is the first one in a while that actually uses link arrows the way they were intended lol
It is not a deck that is played (by anyone) but I think that the appliancer archetype has a very nice way of utilizing link arrows. So maybe you could take a look at them.
bet if firewall was made later than it was, itd have an effect where it doesnt need a co link or anything near it to summon anything else fresh release not an errata, point is, return links back to the extra monster zones(co link to make them stronger, they have an effect that maximizes the link zones, guardragon was bad but it still adhered to link zones)
crusadia was the first deck i made when i came back to yugioh and it introduced me to link summons since i hadn't played the game since GX era. Really cool archetype that uses link zones and mechanics
I think having the arrows matter a lot would probably be worse for new players since you have to plan ahead on monster placement more. Making it easier to misplay 3 moves before you realize it is probably not the best thing to attract and keep new players. It would be interesting to see the arrows get used more however.
It sucks they don't even use the link arrows as a resource mechanic like xyz materials. We also rarely got any column mechanics with just Mekk-knights,Appliancer, and a little bit of Magical Musket, but those are mostly just handtrap based. Co-link was mainly just utilized for tacked on effects. And most of the time links are just used to cheat out other extra deck types. Makes me wonder if the game could be better if you were locked into an extra deck type for the turn based on what you 1st summon like if you summoned synchro, you could only summon synchro for the turn. I think if they allowed main zone link arrows pointing to your opponent's valid for effects, it would free up how restrictive the design currently is. Also imagine if you could summon on spell/trap zones that your link arrows pointed to. Then they could introduce a frontline/backline mechanic
I appreciate the discussion being brought up here. Some of the more prevalent Link cards aren't necessarily being used because they're Link cards, but rather, because of the utility they provide. Them being Link cards has less to do with them taking advantage of the mechanics of Link monsters (arrows) and is more so a convenience to get them on the field. It's almost as if some of these cards, let's use Halqifibrax as an example, need a category of card all their own. Their arrows can be useful, but that is entirely secondary to why the card is normally played.
I will say Link Arrows matter plenty for Tri-Brigade. They are a strategy that needs you to think about how you position yours cards or else you lock yourself out. I and many others have made the mistake of locking up Extra monster zones preventing the activation of Tri-Brigade Revolt. It's true that the Link mechanic kinda lost its meaning outside of preventing Pendulum from popping off too much, but some decks still make use of the Link mechanic.
Crusadia themselves have a pretty good use of link arrows, save Avramax. The links 1-3 all gain attack from monsters that they point to and ensure they can only attack. The main deck monsters could also summon themselves to arrows and stack buffs like double battle damage and piercing. T.G. Trident Launcher summons a whole host of T.G. monsters and protects T.G. Synchro monsters it points to from being targeted by effects which isn't much but it's cute. Unfortunately, the pandora's box has been opened in terms of how Link monsters work now that they have all these generic high powered Link monsters that have no real interaction with their arrows and co-linking. Can't really do a new big wave of Link monsters who make tons of use with their link arrows without attempting to power creep the effects to provide significant value.
Problem with link monsters is they were designed to be necessary for every deck, since you needed links to summon multiple extradeck monsters at a time. Because of this they had to make them generic and spashable in every deck, because every deck had to play them (except stuff like monarchs that didn't play any extradeck). Cards like Crystron Halq and Verte were designed with the intent of being generic support for other extradeck summoning mechanics, because if they had to play links they might as well play ones that support their main summoning mechanic.
Arguably link climbing which a lot of these cards enable or require to summon is inherently part of the link mechanic just as much as using the arrows for effects
Remember when you plays red eyes deck and set black metal dragon facedown,hope opponent hit it and get to search something...now just link it and VOLA!. Anything that needs to be sent to graveyard from field just speed up one turn with doing link summon.
if the materials, or summoning conditions are all over the place right now (rituals doesn't even need levels anymore) at least links could go back in using his arrows for something outside from opening rooms for more links and pendulums. By the way: Even beyond the pendulum cares more about its link arrows than the majority of links
After giving it some thought, I feel like the reason why underutilizing the unique mechanic only seems so bothersome for Xyz and Link is because, for all the other Extra Deck monsters, the unique mechanic is /the summoning method/, not the effect of the monster that gets summoned. Synchro in particular completely changed how people built decks; before, levels only mattered for Tribute Summons and floodgates -- after, people suddenly had to keep very close track of what they can go into with this or that combination of very specific levels on the field. (... at least until Lv4 tuners with no negative effect started to drop, so people just went back to playing Lv4s all around in order to go into Lv8 synchro). Contrast with Xyz, which kind of requires the most braindead sort of board state -- not to mention that every second card printed in the early run of Xyz was like "normal summon this to special summon a second thing and make the two things become the same nigh-on arbitrary level" -- and Link, which doesn't even inherently /require/, you can go into them just off a horde of tokens if you can work with the prequisites on the Link Monster itself. Although, naturally, none of this is to say that only Xyz and Link have an implementation problem right now. Synchros, for one thing, really lose a ton of the spark when most decks are running generic engines to form generic Synchro Monsters instead of at least having to keep theme on the choice of Tuners. And Pendulum damn nearly came out of the box broken, considering all the restraint Konami didn't have about printing archetypes that revolve around immediately stacking the Extra Deck without any major loss of card advantage, which drops them down from a quirky interesting mechanic and right into solitaire territory. At least Fusion is still pretty interesting these days, actually -- it's kind of crazy thinking about how one of the preeminent uses of it now is to use your opponent's monsters as material!
Super Polymerization was a mistake that should have never left the GX anime, because it also spawned Fallen of Albaz which is basically Super Polymerization in monster form...
I don't think a card that let you fusion from deck and then have the monster fusion more through banishing or shuffling gy is interesting at all. Maybe 1 day we can link/synchro from deck. Or pendulum summon from deck with jst 2 scales or maybe not need scales.
I do wish a lot more of the meta Links actually did use their own mechanics, because it does add more strategy to them. One archetype I feel did it well was the Topologics, as they made both you and your opponent have to think about where their monsters were summoned, and Gumblar, though quite broken, rewarded you for creating an Extra Link, a mechanic I've never actually seen some pull off outside of the Vrains anime.
The issue with this is that cards like halq (synchro), isolde(warriors), verte(fusions), Electrumite(pendulums) were designed to support the types/mechanics shafted by MR4, but wound up being generic'd for the sake of selling the link mechanic.
I would have loved to see these cards with the restrictions that you have to use two monsters and at least one of them must be from the archetype that it belongs to. Crystron for Halq Noble Knight for Isolde Predaplant for Verte Heavymetalfoes for Electrumite
The hero archtype does make good use of the link mechanics into there own archtype and not just generic 'oh just be pointing to another link card' so like more archtype specific link effects could be good. Same with how alot of the links could benefit more from less 'generic' summoning costs
There is a subgroup of link monsters I call “Sorry for MR4”: Predaplant Verte Anaconda, Crystron Halqifibrax, Heavymetalfoes Electrumite and… uh… Bujinki Ahashima. They were cards meant to boost greatly (albeit the clear exception) the mechanics slaughtered during the link introduction. They were no meant to be part of any link strategy, but enablers for the rest of them.
arrows not mattering was a ange caused by improvements. by allowing non link and pends to do what they want with out needing links they lost the they must be played even if your deck does not want to play them. for link arrows to matter more genericly more linked protetnion or buff effects which are more than 300atk and more archetypes which have reasons to point to sutff
Hey guys! Sorry for the background music volume being a bit high in this video! I didn't realize it while I was recording. This and the very next video will have this issue, but then it'll be correct. Thanks to everyone who pointed it out! 😅
ayo what's the music tho? Kinda fire
Not a problem men. It makes the video more interesrting
@@EnderBroadcast yugioh lofi from tgs anime
I was literally scrolling down to type about it lol. definitely made the video seem epic tho lol
@@EnderBroadcast gods anger
I understand what you mean, link monsters aren't even LINK monsters anymore, just easy to summon extra deck effect monsters
Isnt that just the Swordsoul archetype in a nutshell, but for synchros? They literally cheat out a tuner in a lot of cases whenever they dont have a Tenyi to throw onto the board.
@@four-en-tee all summing mechanics have this like zoo and despises but link monsters do this too genericly instead of being archetype specific
They always were that, the moment i saw, it just require monsters on the field, that level didn't matter, that type didn't matter. I know this was their path, extra deck effect monster. Why? Because if you don't put conditions(Other then for a very few and even then those conditions are easy to fulfill) or make then cost more then just the monster you have on the field, then anything can go. I saw this coming, i call it out on some videos about then. But no one listen... What can you do? *shrug*
So if they don’t have effects that involve their link arrows, they’re basically just tribute-summon monsters in the extra deck.
@@ultimateshadeofwar People don't want to listen objective analysis of game mechanic and why they are leading to degenerate design. Many people knew Links would end exactly how it's now. But what can you do? It's not like you could have kidnapped Konami's executives and forced them to make actual good decisions on their game.
I'd like to see Konami making more creative use of arrows too. Imagine some oddball effects like a spellcaster treating a pointed-to monster zone as an extra spell/trap zone. A new ojama that disables opponent's zones that it points to. A Left-arrow monster that does something special if it points to a field card.
Konami hire this man
I hope they're taking notes right now cause these are great ideas
Also, it's a tragedy that we don't have a card that gives you 40LP if you get the Konami Code on board.
"Rotate one link monster on the field 180° so its link arrows point in the opposite directions. It is still considered to be in attack position"
@@Bashamo257 konami code OTK archetype would be kinda nutty. Assemble the cheat, get unbeatable extra deck boss
I definately prefer Link Monsters that are less generic and actually use their arrows.
Same...
Paul: "Arrows don't matter"
PEND Players: "Now hold on there"
From what I've seen most pendulum decks have at least one card that can return cards from the extra deck to the hand,
So it's not as relevant as it initially seems.
@@BramLastname That and it doesn't need 20 monsters out of the extra deck to usually functions. 2 arrows is usually enough for them.
@@chipslight738 yeah, the decks that need that have never been viable,
As the non-pendulum decks aren't just gonna roll over for 4 monsters that go into 1 or 2 bosses if they don't get interrupted.
Nah because literally the only link monster that pendulum cares about at all is selene
@@weneurysm Electromite... Come back...
Links that actually care about their arrows is why I personally like Appliancers. They have both a colinked and a non-colinked effect, so you're incentivized to co-link. They're not a strong archetype, and definitely could use more link monsters / ones that colink to more than just celtopus, but I think the concept of how they're designed with colinking in mind is pretty cool.
hell yea, appliancers are such a cool archetype. The link morphtronics
laundydragon best link monster
Appliancers are so fun. The only link-based deck I actually enjoy playing
Like yeah they spam the hell outta link-1s but it never feels oppressive or broken, plus you actually need to position them in certain ways and consider the order you make them
As a person who hate link monsters I agree that there just extenders for summons and negates
Glad I’m not the only one who feels that way about Link Monsters…
Can you summon 2 monsters? Well then here's 3 free negates: The summon mechanic
The only real problem with the link summoning mechanic is how many generic link monsters there are with incredible effects. There are a lot of smaller, weaker, archetypes whose link monsters could do a lot to make them more relevant. They're just overshadowed by better, more generic, options.
There's only like, what, 20 or 30 link cards that are the real trouble makers.
And that’s the sad part,ignoring the horrible master rule 4 and Konami fucking legacy support up 90% of the time but making broken more universal cards at the same time,Link is an excellent and healthy mechanic
But the generic link monsters also give the lower tier strategies actual viability.
@@kimjung-un8204 at the cost of being a threat at higher tier play,sadly that’s how Konami designs their cards
Isn't generic better for every deck in general? I see why it's bad as far as the secondary market prices go but don't you want a rogue deck to be able to compete with good generic cards?
@@bronsonluks795 we do but it can be done without having to affect high tier play,Konami just doesn’t understand that or they purposely want to piss off their player base
They brought back MR5 because they realized how hard it was to create archetypes that don’t require link monsters. Decks like Despia and sword soul would be really bad if it wasn’t for MR5. I think link monsters were a good Idea to begin with. Restricting overpowered summoning mechanics is a great idea. Then monsters like halq, Selene, accesscode could have had more of a restriction like halq for example can only be made with a synchro monster, Selene with a warrior equipped with a spell, access made with at least 2 link monsters. It would make the game more like a puzzle. They extra deck would become a toolbox and the main deck would be even more important. But generic link monsters is the equivalent of more easily accessible main deck monsters. I think spyral is a great example of that. The EMZ seems like a joke now. Especially vs a lot of top decks from todays meta and the next.
Another big problem, is that it kinda defeats the purpose of limiting the summoning of other types from the extra deck, if link monsters do the same things they do but better. Between things like accesscode, apollousa and the like what even is the point of summoning other things.
despia could play well under mr4 but swordsoul not
Your right
The force of link mechanics means that future archetypes benefit more by being linked because they have link plays in their design and while all previous archetypes would’ve been restricted heavily
But like decks that depend on link becomes really bad once link is bad because why bother making a whole link play when you can easier summon blue eyes (or w/e) and any stop to link is going to brick you
One of my favourite links is Cross-Sheep. It uses the link mechanic in an interesting way by encouraging you to use other extra deck mechanics to benefit from it.
I feel like a lot of this isn't even the fault of the cards, but the nature of no longer being in Master Rule 4. IN MR4, the arrows didn't need to matter for every card's effect because *they already mattered to the game state due to summoning restrictions*. Without that, a lot of cards just have arrows that are superfluous. Now some of it is just the natural expansion of Links like everything else (Not all Synchros have effects referencing tuners, not all Fusions have effects relating to their materials, not all Xyz have effects that detach materials, etc.). That just comes with the passage of time. Quasar is also barely relevant to the Synchro elements but is just enough cause the materials used contribute to its OTK potential; he's not so different from Accesscode Talker after all.
Yeah I think Xyz are the worst off in that regard. I can give fusion and Synchro a pass cause once they hit the field, unless they're also a tuner they don't inherently have a mechanic that they can use to limit/Enable their effects, and for the most part are brought out the way they were intended, but the same can't be said for cards like Toad where they put the material bassed cost, on the effect that only Frog decks use, and made the omni negate effect basiacly only require the discard of a water monster.
@@thekey0123 as a paleo frog player, it annoys me every time i have to face down a toad summoned by bahamut shark, because that play only exists thanks to konami making the generic effect have a generic cost, instead of inverting the costs of the negate and the summon.
So what you’re saying is if they don’t have effects that involve their link arrows, then they’re basically just tribute-summon monsters in the extra deck.
Damn... that was a sick burn... basically sums up Link summoning... though to be fair Synchros are basically Rituals with the occasional Polyerization re-train in monster form (before Albaz became a thing) from the Extra Deck, and even though I am one those people who loved Card Games On Motorcycles the anime, I will admit that is what Synchro Monsters are...
Xyz Monsters at least made an attempt to be very different from the other Extra Deck summon types... before Konami realized people were still playing Synchro Staples because and made Xyz monster too generic because people wanted generic staples that they could rely on without playing a specific Type/Atrribute/Archetype in the end...
Oof really awesome statement you have there
I’ve always explained Link summoning to others as advanced Tribute summoning.
Meanwhile Rituals are just there, more or less the same as before. Fusions are a little different since you still basically fuse monsters. It is the method that changed some, if at all. Contact fusion and deck fusions were possible very early on, and many other cards that gave you a quick fusion has a huge cost of some kind.
@@theazuredemon4854 at least synchros have more coherent summoning mechanics, often requiring weird level monsters, one of wich tuners and the other not, and have the correct level to summon. Links are just you have a lot of monsters/tokens? Here you go. It says a lot that an amazing card for synchro decks like halq is used in the end only for link climb basically.
Yeah, now that you've pointed it out I have to agree. I'm happy that Konami revised the rules so Fusion, Synchro and Xyz Monsters can still be Special Summoned from the Extra Deck to a non-linked Zone like they originally could, it's probably what they should have done in the first place, but it's a shame that Links no longer have as much of their own identity by using their arrows as part of their effects. I'd love to see Konami print more Link Monsters down the line that employ the use of their Link Arrows as a relevant component of their effects.
I had a feeling that the complaint about Link monsters was going to be the fact that they power crept their point of creation out of relevance. It went from trying to slow down the OP turbo boards and forcing strategic placement and timing to going the completely opposite direction and having easier OP monsters to rush out.
the problem with the initial MR4 link monsters is that it never actually slowed down the "op turbo boards". it just made those same OP turbo boards even more OP because no other deck could play with the new stuff because they could not afford the materials required to make a link monster with the zones they needed. so you either had to play protect the castle with your original boss monster, or run the bad generic links and hope you don't get blown out because you went -4 in card advantage to have more than one of your own boss monster into a deck that straight up did not care.
initial links forced people to play by the rules and even within the rules the problematic stuff remained unchallenged. now they have a new problem without the restrictions as insanely strong and generic boss monsters that any deck could turbo out if they can get the resources out to do it.
Yep, had to follow the tradition trends, protagonist has a 2500 ATK summoned with two monsters and a rival of 3000 ATK.
There are a few decks where taking care of link arrows is still very important but I agree
It's really frustrating to see a card game that is so complex become boiled down to one card starters and link1s that search a field spell. Negates, board breakers etc. The game is complex! Get creative Konami! Make players become mindful of arrows, and columns etc.
It makes me appreciate whenever I go up against a Mekk-Knight player, they develop their board in very specific ways and move their monsters about in the zones to get the maximum amount of utility.
One of my fav decks is Marincess because they make full advantage of link climbing into a huge link 4 marincess and giving it extra benefits from being in the extra monster zone like attack boosts and effect protection, and the traps also being able to activate from your hand if you can summon a link 3 or higher marincess rewarding you even further for committing to big link climbs, it's so fun
I like Evil twins since one twin brings the second one to climb into Sunny and the knigtmares become card neutral instead of minus 1.
Well, the problem with the arrows is that they aren’t inherently helpful.
Back during MR4 the arrows and their placement were basically forced upon us, so we tolerated them.
Nowadays we can get around them for free, unless you are playing a link spam deck.
It’s kinda like tuners in Synchros or Polymerization in fusion.
You don’t ever really want to deal with them, you tolerate them because you need them for the mechanic to work and most good strategies basically ignore those issues as much as possible.
In a way Konami should treat Links like they do modern Pendulum cards most of the time.
Where they design the cards to have inherent interaction with the mechanic and not exist independently of them.
In a way, I think Link arrows are like the card Toon World more than anything.
It does nothing of value by itself and at best enables actually good cards to work.
That or they must be “given effects” to actually do something of note, like with Tri-gate or “Knightmares”
This is ignoring all the issues I have with many of the individual Link monsters that I consider badly designed and often ban worthy due to their effects.
I'd like if they could let these cards go face-down in attack mode. It would help older mechanics/cards be more viable and help buff flip mechanics.
Wasnt there a reason they steered away from that mechanic in the early says of yugioh?
Face up atk position is just a whole mess and there's a reason why Konami errata'd darkness approaches
@@Medbread there are plenty of other messes that happen with Yu-Gi-Oh, that I think flipping attack position LINK monsters face-down would cause nearly no issues at this point.
@@Medbread What were the issues from face down attack position cards?
@@RazielTheUnborn None that I know of. It seems like a rather simple and straightforward thing. It’s just another way to debt activated effects.
I think the way Evil Eye uses the link arrows is pretty interesting.
Two of the more interesting link based archetypes in my opinion are Krawlers and Sunavalon. They actually feel like they bring their flavor and mechanics together well.
Tbf, Sunavalon is an anime deck that was made specifically for Link Climbing, co-Linking, and Extra Linking (aka "U-boards").
In the characters' final duel, Spectre even made what the anime calls the "perfect extra link", which is an 0-shaped board of his co-Linked monsters spanning both players' fields.
Literally link summoning is THE MOST broken mechanic in this game, theyte too easily spammable, not even synchros and fusions were this spammable
What I will love about Paul eternally as long as I live: his ability to surprise you. My man came out here and slapped down two Link 4s and said he had problem with them and to guess what it is. I'm sure we all said "floodgate and control is bad' then he shook his head and said "They aren't using their Link mechanics anymore!" and we suddenly just epiphany and realized we had forgotten that was the point of Links in the first place! Link to make a monster then use the stupid arrows to create grids and grid power which in turn strengthened the deck and monsters. Paul is a treasure in the Yugioh community.
Surprised you didn't mention Cross-Sheep as a good design. The link arrows matter and its a link monster that supports and ties together the other special summon mechanics
And even then he didn't talk about the coolest secondary effects of knightmares
When I played Tribrigade in master duel (pre-DPE), learning where to place my monsters so I could keep summoning with the main deck monsters’ effects was part of the learning process. In that sense, I had to be aware of the zones I was summoning in and it was a legit skill check. A very small one, and something that doesn’t interact with the opponent in anyway, but one nonetheless.
During MR4, using zones to get the most non-links out of the extra deck sounds like a challenging puzzle to solve. I only got back into Yugioh post MR5, so I can only imagine what it was like to work with those limitations and have no desire to downgrade.
Curious to see what I’ll think of things after the link festival in master duel.
Absolutely this, along with how generic the best of them can be, (which wouldn’t be so bad if utilized correctly,) I feel like a what they could do to make Link Monsters more dynamic is to adapt what Konami was going for in Master Rule 4, but not to the extent that they did as far as I know, limiting the Extra Deck to restrict the power of the best decks that make use of their Extra Deck, but still make it so people can summon their beloved boss monsters.
Perhaps they could limit each type of Extra Cards allowed to be summoned on the Main Monster Zone to one each, and make the Extra Monster Zone a +1 for the desired type. Links and Extra Deck Pendulums would still be restricted to the Extra Zone to allow their main mechanics to flourish.
The exception to this would be when their revived from the graveyard, as they don’t count as being summoned using their traditional summoning mechanic.
They could make Link Arrows and placements more important by bringing back the mechanic that allows the arrows to spread the Extra Zone, so both duelists can summon whatever Extra monster they want there, making the more powerful Links a give or take, all the while making the placements of cards a more prominent thing.
I guess it would be worth to mention that Numerons could still work under this, as that one card that Numeron Network proxies Special Summons, rather than XYZ.
One change I want to see in regards to the EMZ is expanding its open slots. Zones Links point to should count as extensions of the EMZ, each player should have 2 default EMZ slots of their choice out of 4 availible ones, and more Extra Deck monsters should have bonus effects when summoned to an EMZ. And Link arrows should block off main deck monsters by default unless a card specifically mentions benefits or detriments from pointing to something, much like how damage step interactions require either Atk/Def changes or a Counter Trap negating those effects(i.e. Solemn Strike can negate an Aluber or Raye coming out in response to a battle destruction, but a Barrone or Ghost Belle can't because tje activation timing is at point of destruction).
I’ve always thought that U-linking the board while cool is one of those reasons people don’t like modern yugioh.
It requires you to combo extensively and then also run a floodgate which stops your opponent from special summoning via Iblee.
At least with generic links you have extra deck options that can get around certain game states.
Yeah that is exactly why people don't like modern yugioh. It's just absurd that you can legally do something like that.
I’ve been saying this for the past year, I actually liked Link monsters when they were introduced since it slowed the game down, but it sucks how all the the link arrows mean is you can link summon in that zone it points to.
So you like the link mechanic for the same reason you dont like it?
@@tickledeggz No, that wasn’t even close to what I said 😂 I like it because it did slow it down, that’s a positive, but now they threw away that ruling and extra deck monsters can summon anywhere (excluding link monsters of course), now there only purpose is “yeah you can link summon over there too”. I wish it did more with the arrows, you know, co-linking and such.
Edit: to be fair, I could have clarified more.
link monsters never slowed the game down , firewall was released in the first set and introduced 4 highly consistent new FTK engines into the game , even link spider before that was an extender, & as soon as link 2 extenders started to appear the game practically broke it got so consistently fast with Spyral & later others
@@Marcusjnmc I disagree on the sense of casual play. Yeah, I’m the competitive format, we expect them to always go further beyond, but walking into a card shop and doing a pick up game when links just came out. It was way slower than what I was used to. I actually barely saw firewall dragon being used at my locals years back. Also the amount of people being salty about not being able to spam their board easily in comparison to now was a thing. We’re not going to pretend that many people weren’t complaining about how slow the start of link era was. Now mind you, it was slow because you had to play Link monsters in order to go “fast”, but it would just be ignoring reality to say the game moves way faster currently than it did even with Firewall and etc. I think we the new format, it’s way faster and just easier than the start of link era, which is just “duh”.
@@TheQuilava96 a lot of decks atm run pretty slow , especially despia , that deck could have ran in MR 4, & firewall combo wasn't meta at the start, true dracos & zoodiacs were, the ftk combo decks like dinosaurs & infernity were played way less , the more successful decks didn't change , they were slower both in MR3 & MR4 that year for most of it
I once had an idea of a link archtype based on chess. Their strategy is moving along their link-markers and occupying your opponents main monster zones(the control is still on the original owner). I hope Konami do something like this in some shape or form in the future.
I had a similar idea but they were dancers rather than chess pieces
That is a really good point regarding other links that don't use their arrows, but I don't think the link arrow mechanic has entirely been ditched. Beyond the Pendulum just got released and ties both the pendulum summoning mechanic with link arrows in a unique and interesting way.
But yeah, it's like if xyz monsters didn't have to detach their materials at all to be used.
some xyz monsters don't detach to use effects
@@Marcusjnmc I was talking about detaching materials in general, not just for effects (i.e. Bagooska or Phantasmal Dragon). Although, now that I think about it, non-effect xyz monsters do exist.
@@solobugg5087 there are also xyz monsters with effects that just don't detach , at all
Suship would like to have a word with you.
I didn’t care for links when they first came out but now I think they’re a pretty cool idea. Makes me wonder if they’ll come out with a new summoning method
I hope not. I can't really imagine what else we could do to special summon from the extra deck
Pretty sure that Konami is turning away from making new Master Duel mechanics and are going to be focusing on Rush Duels, as the sheer complexity of regular Dueling as made the game all the more difficult to attract new players to it. Plus, Kazuki Takahashi has completely distanced himself from Konami, and the animation style for that type is gone as well. I'm not saying we have to go back to it to add new mechanics, but it's the way that they've always advertised them.
At this point, why would you invent new method when you can just break the rules of the old ones? Ritual summon lv12 using 1or2 lv1; Fusion summon from the deck; Synchro/Xyz summon using Link monster; Link summon using banished monster;...
Hell no. The game is already complex and broken as it is.
@@JuwanBuchanan yeah I’m not saying I hope they do, but I could see it in the future
This is one of the most fun-in-concept mechanics that could exist in this game. It is underutilized and at times the monsters that could have been using it are just a path to OTKs.
I think another deck that is fun and affordable to play in regards to link monsters is Crusadia. Link climbing is a good way to teach players the beginnings of combo extending and most of their link monsters have effects in regards to what they point to.
Crusadia is an amazing deck that can steal wins from meta decks too. Cheap. Don't even need to run expensive handtraps.
All of the extra deck monsters and main deck monsters except Avramax cares about the link arrows.
Would recommend as somebodies first time playing a go-second boardbreaking deck. Just add Kaiju's and some generic removal and you can probably beat a Despia deck.
Crusadia + Mekk-Knight + Kaijus is honestly one of the most fun interactive decks out there, and it can compete with Meta more often than you'd think
@@PaladinfffLeeroy that was one of the reasons why crusadia kaiju was one of my first decks when I returned to the game last year (that and I got a bunch of the cards from the tins they were in)
@@Jdb63 ??? crusadia when it works at it's best only interacts at point of contact
@@Marcusjnmc I use Kaiju waterfront tower and like 6 kaijus, so I get to use their Kaiju counter effects quite often to deal with whatever comes up. That mixed with Mekk Knights and you get a lot of versatility to where most of the games you play aren't setting up the same board
You won't need to tune stars up, or overlay matching levels, or spell fusion or rituals, or throw 2 monsters out in the backrow. Link just beat synchro, xyz, and random spelled monsters. Which is why they are so prized to barf minions and build the same boss monster, and let us see the same blue cards over and over again.
i learned about appliancers through master duel. it was pretty confusing at first but once i got the hang of it, it was kinda fun. but i understand why they make most link monsters so generic. easier to understand for a wider audience. it would be pretty cool to see a column battle "3D chess" type of duel!
They should have used link monster to support obscure archetypes i mean does anyone here remembers the following archetypes, Piece Golem, Iron Chain, Worms,Aliens, Arcana Force, Generic Dinosaurs or the Barrel Dragons?.
Something I really wanted to see was Extra Deck Spells/Traps.
The idea is that if a Link Monster has an arrow pointing towards one of your Spell/Trap Zones, you’d be able to play a new type of Spell/Trap from your Extra Deck.
that could be interesting
The arrows also serve to make Link plays rather linear in nature, since if you run a Link-focused deck then you typically will be going into monsters in the right order to get the arrows you need. So many Link monsters that are made specifically to act as extenders is probably a part of it. Other decks tend to be more freeform with active decision making.
Consider something like Synchron that gives you a ton of options based on your own play style once you get Junk Speeder out and if you run a typical 1-3-4 lineup of Synchrons - you can go into a Crystal Wing or any generic level 8, or a level 6, or if you use Stardust Illumination you can get a level 10, or if you summoned Cyberse Synchron you also have access to a Level 7, even a level 11 if you really wanted to. And Synchron is a relatively linear Synchro deck nowadays.
It is true that the game as a whole has been getting progressively more and more linear but Links did not help in that regard.
I personally love to run a Madolche deck, and the link monster in that deck both utilizes the arrows and compliments the theme of the deck really well (For those who don't know, Madolches revolve around keeping your graveyard empty of monsters and in doing gives your monsters and spells more powerful effects). Madolche Sistart (the Link monster) has an effect that if it points to a Madolche card then spell cards can't be targeted, and if it would be destroyed you can send a madolche from your graveyard back to the deck and it stays on the field. I wish there was more Madolche support (We only have 3 Xyz and 1 Links) but despite that I love the deck to death!
I’m dreading the day Link monsters are introduced into DuelLinks. The game is always hugely meta tilted. I guess a box a month helps water down the power trips.
It's happening either this september or next, probably this september. They've already started adding the code for link ratings and arrows and such, they added the arrow icons themselves some time ago and every character has a "I Link Summon a Monster!" line.
I believe verte would be there in the 1st link box
Apollousa's arrows matter a lot for decks that want to use the Codebreaker engine. If you can get to her on your fifth summon she ensures you can't be nibbed and also provides the arrows to turn two materials into five.
I might be the only person who's only ever used Apollousa in Solfachords, but mostly for the good pendulum arrows and kinda fitting the theme.
Yeah, Apollousa is one of the strongest link monster with generic materials, a good effect, and also good arrows. I play her as one of the core combo in my Gouki deck with Codebreaker and my turn 1 board (if not negated) ends in 3 materials Apollousa, Powerload Ogre, PK Rusty Bardiche, and DPE (before Verte got hit) with 2 Fog Blades. Although, I still can get the end board even if I got negated once or twice.
@@crashicle this was my use case for her too. I also used Draco Masters of the Tenyi as a generic bottom arrows link for when I could only get three link mats worth of material after Isolde.
The arrows are relevant but only in link or pendulum focused strategies, in my pendulum deck appolussa is not only a strong negate but allows me to summon 3 monsters from extra deck, also in my Evil twin deck, the knightmares discard give me a draw if I place the arrows correctly, Tl;dr the arrows and link-colink are still relevant but only in certain strategies
Thanks for this video! I didn’t know the arrows were even supposed to do something… I thought they were just stylistic choices 🙈
Orcust had the best use of arrows for the idea. Being able to "point" at the opponents monster and interact was a great idea. Small attacks but point to a monster made it to where both players had to use them zones properly.
I think the original mechanic that link monsters were based around is zone management. Not many decks care about where cards are physically on the Field. The most standout card doing so is infinite impermanence, which made the physical board your playing on something you need to consider. Your not playing in the shadow realm with no bounds. I liked how cards which require zone management (like mekk-nights) really ground the board as a battlefield your fighting on. Ever since MR5, the purpose of zone management has been lost in links, but also don't think bringing back MR5 would fix the problem with current links as they were designed with MR5 in mind. Also, I hope Konami has learned their lesson with link ones.
Honestly every meta relevant summoning mechanic has gotten to this point, where they have been streamlined so much they don't resemble their original forms anymore.
Link monsters are the most notable since they've gotten to this point thanks to the links themselves, but other mechanics have also gotten insanely streamlined, only due to specific archetypes, for example branded for one card fusion, swordsoul for one card synchro, and zoodiac for one card xyz.
I think it's just a reality of modern yugioh that we need to accept, that powercreep has gotten to the point where many unique mechanics need to get greatly streamlined in order to have a chance to compete, inadvertently losing a part of their identity.
U right
Nowadays it's
Fusion: trade 1 Spell for 1 or 3 bosses
Synchro: trade 1 Tuner for 1 or 3 bosses
Ritual: do something that involves ritual but ends with floodgate
Ironically Xyz now kind of sucks and is the one that requires investment and resources due to the nature of needing to actually field mons to be stacked. Zeus was frowned upon but it's a necessary evil to give Xyz decks an alternative wincon considering how "weak" they are now
@@powerfulberry237 Synchro depends, because Synchro decks that arent Swordsoul need to play the right ratio of tuners and non tuners, to be able to start their combo(if they dont play halq(there are some decks, that synchro lock you)
@@lisaruhm6681 yeah thats why i like playing speedroids or resonators cause its fun to build your board around the situation where sword soul is just the same board and nothing unique
@@randomsamurai3855 yeah, I play a simmilar deck in Synchron.
Good point.
And it provides more places to errata some of them to make them less generic without necessarily modifying the summon or cost conditions directly.
Verte, for example could just need to be pointing to a plant monster or co-linked to get a similar limitation to it's spell copy effect without changing it's summoning condition.
Hadn't thought about it but this would work too for making Links, at least, less generic.
No thanks. Just release retrains, don’t errata cards.
i think the statement is exxagerating a little, cause the link mechanic was a counter measure to the old pendulum mechanic (old master rule) and most people hate links for be the enabler and must play it for extra summons , and other summons like synchro have improve over time (not only halq , better generic synchro summons are better than initial ones in the 2008/2009 era) the game tends to power creep and change so it doesn't mean that link summon can only be for co-link mechanics that's a very narrow point of view .
i like Link-1 that searches within archetype starter/core cards you need. But when you make them too generic, like striker dragon, its not played in that archetype anymore but only used as a small engine. So either make them generic, like Striker dragon with any low level dragons, and give them a lock; or make them less generic to summon (require for example specific cards in the archetype, and not random dragons). Or, a similar concept I like from Mysterune, is that all their quick play spell can choose to do that banish from top of the deck effect, or you can summon one of their fusion monsters from the extra deck; and one of the fusion monsters is a searcher for spring of mysterune which is the core card of the deck, while others have different effects
of course some decks are already too strong even without a link-1 searcher, and thats what they keep printing support for older archetypes who hasnt seen play because not consistent enough or other. But the problem is again if they do those link-1 searcher too generic
Fairly certain Appolousa's arrows were used in dragon link combo where link arrows actually do matter for guardragon setup, but I guess that can be said with every link monster incorporated in the dragon link combo. So about the arrow thing, I have several opinions to say. Most of the ones that you said do have applications for their arrows because they were released back in MR4 when link arrows mattered a lot more compared to now, and so the card design philosophy also revolved around utilizing the arrows. Also, Konami was also experimenting with arrow functions outside their intended purpose, so some link monsters have their own tricks to be done with their arrows, from decode, saryuja gaining attack and giving attack to guardragons' link arrows management, and the most recent, I wanna say, being geonator's swapping effect. And there are only this many gimmicks you can do with the arrows without making them way too, well, gimmicky.
Few more things I want to point out. About powerful game-winningly link monsters' arrows being "useless" it's because, to me at least, they're endgame monsters that konami thought players would exhaust their resources to make. If you use every monsters on your field to make one of those strong link 4, you would have no monsters left for the arrows of those link 4's to matter. If anything, those arrows serve more like a power level representation than being practical. Also. Verte was originally released in Japan in 2019, before master rule revision, so its arrows do matter because you had to summon fusion monsters in the arrow-pointing zone, chances are that zone is where verte points at. Every borrel link monsers' arrows were designed based on their artwork, so I guess you could say their arrows do have purpose, aesthetic purpose at least.
Except Konami "forgets" the mess of a game they have and how big of a playerbase ygo has and as a collective can theory craft on how to just straight up turbo stuff out turn 1.
Ehh there's not much way to fix stuff since players will find a way to abuse something they think it was balanced.
You could argue the same about many XYZ monsters that barely/don't at all use their XYZ material effects and instead their non-unit effects are the reason they're played
But I 100% agree with your sentiments
They still have level and type requirements. And their units does something for them. Maybe they don't detach bt the unit still have a role to play.
I agree with u there might be some that doesn't bt it's really a minority.
And did like ur comment.
What does that aside from toad?
@@nathanielbacon2451 toad detach to sp a frog from deck. Only the negate doesn't involve units
Kraken xyz is all I can think of.
And technically plunder xyz and technically numeron.
I agree, especially since as shown by cards like Rusty Bardish, Link Spider and Relinquished Anima
These mechanics can make good cards that are more interesting to use.
Even cards like the Link 1s for Nordic and Superheavy Samurai use these mechanics
Meanwhile a lot of Link decks don't even have considered the option.
I can kinda agree to this. It'd be really nice if each mechanic had like their own specific quirks but only XYZ, Pendulums and Links even have those and unless you're playing a Pendulum deck a lot of the Link specific mechanics aren't relevant. Another idea I'd like to throw out just because I think it'd be interesting is if all Ritual Monsters had like the Vendread/Djinn mechanic where the Ritual monsters could gain effects based on the materials you used to make them. Could be hard to balance but it'd definitely make Ritual Summoning feel strong. Though I feel like we're past the point where you could do something like that generically since a lot of Ritual Monsters have super OP effects to make up for how many resources you need to make them. If we start stacking effects on top of those I think we'd start seeing some real anime Winged Dragon of Ra type shit (which tbh I'd be down for but still)
I agree with most of the arguments, the problem is that some links are to generic.
For a long time I really hated links and wanted to avoid that, but you had to play them. After I took the time to play a main link deck like code talkers or @ignister, I had a blast of a time. Link wasn't just a query generic way to summon good stuff or finishers, it was like a jigsaw puzzle, trying to figure out the best way with your materials to get the best board or answer. That's a lot of fun and in my opinion the true meaning of link.
It's the generic stuff man 😁
While I definitely agree with the point behind this video, I also need to point out that Link 1 and 2s have been an incredibly useful way to give some lesser decks that bit of extra kick they need to perform at a higher level. Not necessarily competitive of course, but just the sheer ease of making a Link 1 that does exactly what the archetype needs to field another monster or two is probably one of the best ways to buff decks anymore. Provided they're specific enough.
Link monsters had to be really generic and good at the start but now that you don’t need the arrows unless you use pendulums… it’s a little more difficult to justify the gimmick if the deck doesn’t require it. But some decks weren’t playable under the old master rule 4.
I completely agree with you, I have been out of the competitive scene since Late 2018 but I’ve noticed in lurking through the yugitube parts of the internet we really have had very few strong link/colink/arrow dependent link monsters and the ones that are strong and don’t have these effects are most of the “bad” or “toxic” strategies people talk about.
If anything, the problem with link monsters comes down to the nature of MR4 and MR5. The former was intended to slow the game down and to encourage less 2-3 turn duels, but all it really accomplished was killing any archetype that didn't have a dedicated Link monster in it. The initial generic Link monsters either had no effect or in general were not good. In my case, I vividly remember running a Gem Knight Deck in MR3, but when MR4 came around my deck got dumpstered. It was already a pretty inconsistent rogue deck but the rule change killed the deck to the point where the only use of Gem Knights was in the brilliant fusion Engine. Near the end of MR4, they tried to mitigate it by giving a ton of older archetypes Link cards, but the damage had been done. MR5 tried to undo the damage, but that left Links in the arrowless, OP Extra Deck cards they are today.
Links themselves aren't the problem. They just needed to Revise the MR4 format. If I were the one to decide how to alter Extra Deck mechanics in a theoretical MR6, I'd make a return to the MR4 format but not as hard. If you summoned the extra Deck monster excluding links and pendulums the proper way (Fusion summon a fusion monster, Synchro summon a Synchro, etc...) They the would function as do now and be summoned into the main zones. But if you Special Summon them in the "incorrect" way, (I.e through a card effect that does not specifically state that the summon is treated as the correct summon, like Monster Reborn.) then it can only be summoned in the Extra Zone or to Zones Link monsters point to.
I agree, and this situation is due to the rule change that said "Only Link and Pendulum monsters must play by Link rules. Fusion, Synchro, and XYZ are unleashed."
There are a limited number of Link and Pendulum decks that are competitively or even casually viable, so Link monsters just "matter" much less right now, except that they're excellent combo enablers and boss monsters.
To be fair, Halq, Isolde and Verte were made during the time when XYZ, Synchro, and Fusion decks were hindered by the Link mechanic. Now they are just really good because of the new rulings and don't really function in the way they were originally made for.
At least Accesscode Talker requires you to use Links in order to have it's effect live. But yeah. It ends up just becoming a game ender, rather than something that works like a link monster should.
I've not been a fan of link monsters from the start. I understood what they were kind of meant to do even they came out which was slow down the pendulum summon from extra deck spam, which could then turn into xyz and such spam. But they became nothing but free summons from the extra deck at virtually no cost to a spam deck (and why summoning limiting cards, outside niberu who is easily played around, didn't get fully main decked at this time I don't have a clue). Unlike xyz, synchro, and to a point fusions which had costs or limitations to them. And the fact we were forced to basically use them in order to use the other extra deck monsters we wanted more than 1 spot for. And they got instant protection from many used spell/trap cards and monster effects because they couldn't be put into defense was bogus. Basically slap an ax or other atk boost equip and attack away. On to of the 15 card limit for the extra deck. Thankfully they got rid of mr4 so these things can take a hike.
I find it crazy how I see people use Verte anaconda in Almost every deck except predaplants
Not anymore , thankfully they banned it , check the recent banlist
in master duel it's not 💀
you know as a player that exited out right after mr4 was out i'm a glad that arrows don't matter because columns are not a thing i like to play around of, when i came back to the game i was glad that not only very few cards had arrows that matter outside penduling but most of all that the thing that i feared the most hadn't happened in the scale i thought it would and that is mosters that do stuff if they point to an apponent's monster, being aware of my zones due to my link's arrows was something i was weirded out by but i wasn't against it, if anything I thought it could be fun but i refused to have to start thinking about zones to avoid because of the other player
but objectively speaking after mr(totatlly not)5 arrows lost a lot of relevance, that is bad for the mechanic and that has to suck for someone who really likes links as a mechanich BUT personally i'd take that trade all day, free that extradeck bby
now in all siriousness they could make more monsters with inwards pointing links that be fun but konami would 100% take it in the direction i'd hate and release broken shit that points outwards
yeah the only thing that the arrows do that could be considered good is the ability to co-link to take the other extra monster zone
Honestly, I think that a way to help pull in the reigns is make it that if you Link summon, you can only summon Extra Deck monsters to link zones for the rest of the turn. Either that or go back to MR4, which could potentially help?
Also, a deck aside from Codetalker that actually focuses on Link arrows and zones is Crusadia. Main deck monsters summon themselves to link zones, and the Link monsters get benefits from monsters ending up in their zones or just work with them.
As a pendulum player who is forced to use the link arrows to even play yall got it easy lol
I love Aromaseraphy Jasmine, she is an amazing link and is a perfect example how link monsters should be designed.
She is kinda generic make with only requiring 2 plant monsters but that's not an issue it allows her to be used in plant decks like sunavalon, but really shines in an aroma deck. She also has 2 effects that focus on her arrows, 1 protects any plant monster she points to from battle destruction but the better one let's her tribute a card she points too to summon a plant from deck.
I think also with the problem with links is that if they're added to an archetype they are essentially supporting an old arc type unless they're built as a link archetype. For halqifibrax for example, it was a support to a primarily synchro base deck which is why it makes sense that someone's a tuner can sync or someone in the opponent's turn. Unfortunately because it supported a synchro heavy deck it doesn't have much for linked stuff. Doesn't mean they couldn't have done anything with it but they just chose not to.
Another one I think is a good example is Madolche French Sistart, which if it was pointing to a madolche your madolche spells/traps you control can’t be destroyed or targeted by card effects.
But yeah I do miss link monsters having effects relating to their arrows
Huh, interesting. I re-joined the game when Toon Chaos was released and just learned link monster to be those easy to access extra deck toolbox monsters. While there are some of them who have those "if this card points to/co-links"-effects, I always figured that they are just.. unnecessary and cluncky. Compared to synchro and xyz, who mostly were just "do the summon, get the monster" deals, this seemed like doing that and then some extra, just to get actual value from the process. It never occured to me, that this is give the cards some extra flavour.
What I do however enjoy, are those cards that interact with the other players positions. Like Relinquished Anima, Geonator Transverser or S-Force Justify, because they do not provide extra steps for me, but a danger for the other player to play around. This makes the cards feel way more rewarding on their own, while still having those link arrows relevant and adding another layer for both players to watch out for.
Knightmares were insanely strong in part because they could co-link with eachother on top of their strong effects.
And it's not like Knightmares or cards like Rusty Bardish are completely obsolete for having these situational effects,
So I don't see why people don't think it's odd that Halq doesn't care where the tuner goes.
for what it's worth, I think it is less of a problem with striker dragon since the one other card that would be relevant, Guardragon Elpy, is banned, but you still kinda need the arrow if you want to make pisty live in most decks that play it
My favorite part about link monster is just how splashable they are and can be used in almost every deck. I mean sure you can add link monsters that rely on it's arrows or co-links but they will always be only played casually.
I think the same, Knightmare Phoenix has solved many duels for me.
It's literally a MST from the Extra Deck.
link arrows don't matter anymore, pendulum scales want to be destroyed instead of kept, synchros can use non-tuners now, xyz don't care bout levels now, fusions no longer requiring only the fusion card now to fusion summon, normal summons are far more important while special summons are numerous and less special per se. the game, overall, is in a weird state
- Link Arrows doesn't matter: Yes
- Pendulum Scales want to be destroyed instead of kept: Not sure...it depends on which Deck they play too
- Xyz don't care about Lev--: YES... actually...Xyz don't care about anything!
- Synchro can use non-Tuner: Depend...if it is not Swordsouls...Tuner is still be important for them.
- Fusion no longer require Fusion card: aside from contact Fusion...any card that can perform Fusion is a Fusion Card to me...so, no.
Also...
- Ritual don't care just about Level anymore, thanks to Meteonis Drytron.
@@นวพลเกษเจริญคุณ Fusion only requires the Fusion card I meant... materials on hand, field or GY no longer required. Ritual I excluded because Drytron requiring ATK is just 1 example. The next best Ritual Deck the game had, Nekroz, still played on the actual game rules.
@@GenesicShinZyraelKai ritual don't care about their ritual spells anymore: Megaliths
@@StigmaKRL they're not really meta defining, and also, only 1 archetype did that as a gimmick. If we get more generic rituals that did something similar to those mentioned, then we can add them :)
However, what I can say is that Rituals don't use Ritual Spells anymore... they either use Field Spells, Quick Play Spells, Monster Effects, and maybe even Traps (can't recall if a Trap did Ritual Summon before, but pretty sure it exists already).
Plus Link Monsters inadvertently power crept XYZ Monsters as a whole. XYZs were the most generic extra deck cards we had at the time with the only big restriction being what level monsters you controlled. There used to be so many Rank 4 Toolbox decks in the game that have now either died out entirely or converted to using Link Monsters. The only exception I can think of is Zoodiacs but let's be honest, they are the most broken XYZ specific deck we ever had. But popular XYZ decks like Battlin Boxer, HAT, Burning Abyss, Utopia, etc. Either can't converge to using Link Monsters or just die out in obscurity. (Not being literal, just using examples)
I've been playing Harpie Ladies since 2013, back when they were a Rank 4/7 Toolbox deck, in today's game; most deck builds you see of them are just as support for other engines like Tri-Brigade or run at most 5 XYZ Monsters with the rest being other Links and the Synchro. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy playing them, but there uses to be a simplicity to them that gave them charm back when they were just a Toolbox deck IMO.
Also IMO, I think the only reason Link Monsters even became a thing is because of Pendulum cards, just to reel them in and not make them as broken as they were.
I’m actually going to agree, The link mechanic is the most overpowered Mechanic. For example
Xyz: Has level requirements
Synchro: has tuner/nontuner requirements
Fusion: requires monsters/ Some sort of fusion
Pendulums: needs scale
While Link requires just monsters and depends on text but usually now and days it’s generic.
The problem is that link monsters can be spam. And there is no consequences to link monsters.
they ruin game for completely. theier effects make no sense
I feel like another good use of the Arrows for links is the crusadia archetype. It promotes utilizing the placement of both your opponent’s and your monsters to maximize the attack points on your big link monster.
One issue with needing to co-link is either means using Link1 in EMZ that points down so you can co-link, or it means you will basically need 4 monsters to get it to work. It still encourages these really long combos that plagues modern yugioh.
what I wouldn't mind in terms of design are drawbacks or restrictions that require it point to a specific Type or archetype to use certain effects, like Knightmare's draw or Transcode Talker. Cost is something modern cards don't really have in mind as much as it should; powerful effects should not simply have a HOPT because otherwise the only out is to "bait it".
I agree with the comments. I do play glad beast as an example as well where their link monster just became a better toolbox or engine instead of using link mechanics. Test panther is just a super good monster that could have also been a generic contact fusion and wouldn't change anything for glad beats. I think the arrows where originally needed in master rule 4 but now given it does not matter anymore maybe a few changes is needed.
I agree with this opinion 100%. I suggest two things to improve link cards.
1. No more generic materials
2. Arrow effects with more diversity
3. Support/counter cards to help with the non effect link cards
You kinda touched on it but it’s that a lot of the links you mentioned were made to bring old decks up to speed in mr4 now that we aren’t in mr4 the power level of the links are instantly higher then they were designed to be because cards are necessarily bound by the mechanic
in terms of halquifibrax the card was made to be the syncro link during master rule 4 when you couldnt summon from the extra deck unless it was to where a link monster would point to so it was a way to get out your syncro summon to one of the zones it points to. Because of this mechanic a lot of link monsters needed to be generic in order for them to be able to function in the decks people used to run otherwise all of yugioh would have become unplayable at the time so now the link mechnic doesnt make as much sense
edit when i worte this its was before I saw the rest of the video I see now that this point was addressed
My problem with Link Monsters is that now I can't used Level Eater anymore. I swear I wish Konami would errata the card so it can't be used for Link Material. I miss that little bastard in my Synchro Deck.
I feel like this is also kind of a leftover from the transition to the new master rules. Links were initially supposed to be used to open zones for your other extra deck monsters to be played. Since that's no longer the case, Konami would have to focus more on making it beneficial to co-link or have linked monsters. Funny enough, I think Splight Elf is the first one in a while that actually uses link arrows the way they were intended lol
It is not a deck that is played (by anyone) but I think that the appliancer archetype has a very nice way of utilizing link arrows. So maybe you could take a look at them.
bet if firewall was made later than it was, itd have an effect where it doesnt need a co link or anything near it to summon anything else
fresh release not an errata, point is, return links back to the extra monster zones(co link to make them stronger, they have an effect that maximizes the link zones, guardragon was bad but it still adhered to link zones)
crusadia was the first deck i made when i came back to yugioh and it introduced me to link summons since i hadn't played the game since GX era. Really cool archetype that uses link zones and mechanics
I think having the arrows matter a lot would probably be worse for new players since you have to plan ahead on monster placement more. Making it easier to misplay 3 moves before you realize it is probably not the best thing to attract and keep new players.
It would be interesting to see the arrows get used more however.
It sucks they don't even use the link arrows as a resource mechanic like xyz materials. We also rarely got any column mechanics with just Mekk-knights,Appliancer, and a little bit of Magical Musket, but those are mostly just handtrap based. Co-link was mainly just utilized for tacked on effects. And most of the time links are just used to cheat out other extra deck types. Makes me wonder if the game could be better if you were locked into an extra deck type for the turn based on what you 1st summon like if you summoned synchro, you could only summon synchro for the turn. I think if they allowed main zone link arrows pointing to your opponent's valid for effects, it would free up how restrictive the design currently is. Also imagine if you could summon on spell/trap zones that your link arrows pointed to. Then they could introduce a frontline/backline mechanic
I appreciate the discussion being brought up here. Some of the more prevalent Link cards aren't necessarily being used because they're Link cards, but rather, because of the utility they provide. Them being Link cards has less to do with them taking advantage of the mechanics of Link monsters (arrows) and is more so a convenience to get them on the field. It's almost as if some of these cards, let's use Halqifibrax as an example, need a category of card all their own. Their arrows can be useful, but that is entirely secondary to why the card is normally played.
I will say Link Arrows matter plenty for Tri-Brigade. They are a strategy that needs you to think about how you position yours cards or else you lock yourself out. I and many others have made the mistake of locking up Extra monster zones preventing the activation of Tri-Brigade Revolt. It's true that the Link mechanic kinda lost its meaning outside of preventing Pendulum from popping off too much, but some decks still make use of the Link mechanic.
Crusadia themselves have a pretty good use of link arrows, save Avramax. The links 1-3 all gain attack from monsters that they point to and ensure they can only attack. The main deck monsters could also summon themselves to arrows and stack buffs like double battle damage and piercing. T.G. Trident Launcher summons a whole host of T.G. monsters and protects T.G. Synchro monsters it points to from being targeted by effects which isn't much but it's cute.
Unfortunately, the pandora's box has been opened in terms of how Link monsters work now that they have all these generic high powered Link monsters that have no real interaction with their arrows and co-linking. Can't really do a new big wave of Link monsters who make tons of use with their link arrows without attempting to power creep the effects to provide significant value.
Problem with link monsters is they were designed to be necessary for every deck, since you needed links to summon multiple extradeck monsters at a time. Because of this they had to make them generic and spashable in every deck, because every deck had to play them (except stuff like monarchs that didn't play any extradeck). Cards like Crystron Halq and Verte were designed with the intent of being generic support for other extradeck summoning mechanics, because if they had to play links they might as well play ones that support their main summoning mechanic.
Arguably link climbing which a lot of these cards enable or require to summon is inherently part of the link mechanic just as much as using the arrows for effects
Remember when you plays red eyes deck and set black metal dragon facedown,hope opponent hit it and get to search something...now just link it and VOLA!. Anything that needs to be sent to graveyard from field just speed up one turn with doing link summon.
if the materials, or summoning conditions are all over the place right now (rituals doesn't even need levels anymore) at least links could go back in using his arrows for something outside from opening rooms for more links and pendulums. By the way: Even beyond the pendulum cares more about its link arrows than the majority of links
After giving it some thought, I feel like the reason why underutilizing the unique mechanic only seems so bothersome for Xyz and Link is because, for all the other Extra Deck monsters, the unique mechanic is /the summoning method/, not the effect of the monster that gets summoned. Synchro in particular completely changed how people built decks; before, levels only mattered for Tribute Summons and floodgates -- after, people suddenly had to keep very close track of what they can go into with this or that combination of very specific levels on the field. (... at least until Lv4 tuners with no negative effect started to drop, so people just went back to playing Lv4s all around in order to go into Lv8 synchro). Contrast with Xyz, which kind of requires the most braindead sort of board state -- not to mention that every second card printed in the early run of Xyz was like "normal summon this to special summon a second thing and make the two things become the same nigh-on arbitrary level" -- and Link, which doesn't even inherently /require/, you can go into them just off a horde of tokens if you can work with the prequisites on the Link Monster itself.
Although, naturally, none of this is to say that only Xyz and Link have an implementation problem right now. Synchros, for one thing, really lose a ton of the spark when most decks are running generic engines to form generic Synchro Monsters instead of at least having to keep theme on the choice of Tuners. And Pendulum damn nearly came out of the box broken, considering all the restraint Konami didn't have about printing archetypes that revolve around immediately stacking the Extra Deck without any major loss of card advantage, which drops them down from a quirky interesting mechanic and right into solitaire territory. At least Fusion is still pretty interesting these days, actually -- it's kind of crazy thinking about how one of the preeminent uses of it now is to use your opponent's monsters as material!
Super Polymerization was a mistake that should have never left the GX anime, because it also spawned Fallen of Albaz which is basically Super Polymerization in monster form...
I don't think a card that let you fusion from deck and then have the monster fusion more through banishing or shuffling gy is interesting at all.
Maybe 1 day we can link/synchro from deck.
Or pendulum summon from deck with jst 2 scales or maybe not need scales.
I do wish a lot more of the meta Links actually did use their own mechanics, because it does add more strategy to them. One archetype I feel did it well was the Topologics, as they made both you and your opponent have to think about where their monsters were summoned, and Gumblar, though quite broken, rewarded you for creating an Extra Link, a mechanic I've never actually seen some pull off outside of the Vrains anime.
The issue with this is that cards like halq (synchro), isolde(warriors), verte(fusions), Electrumite(pendulums) were designed to support the types/mechanics shafted by MR4, but wound up being generic'd for the sake of selling the link mechanic.
I would have loved to see these cards with the restrictions that you have to use two monsters and at least one of them must be from the archetype that it belongs to.
Crystron for Halq
Noble Knight for Isolde
Predaplant for Verte
Heavymetalfoes for Electrumite
The hero archtype does make good use of the link mechanics into there own archtype and not just generic 'oh just be pointing to another link card' so like more archtype specific link effects could be good.
Same with how alot of the links could benefit more from less 'generic' summoning costs
There is a subgroup of link monsters I call “Sorry for MR4”: Predaplant Verte Anaconda, Crystron Halqifibrax, Heavymetalfoes Electrumite and… uh… Bujinki Ahashima.
They were cards meant to boost greatly (albeit the clear exception) the mechanics slaughtered during the link introduction. They were no meant to be part of any link strategy, but enablers for the rest of them.
and then as soon as it was lifted they could have side arrows for all that matters
arrows not mattering was a ange caused by improvements. by allowing non link and pends to do what they want with out needing links they lost the they must be played even if your deck does not want to play them. for link arrows to matter more genericly more linked protetnion or buff effects which are more than 300atk and more archetypes which have reasons to point to sutff