I’ve made no secret that I love card games. I’ve played so many of them on stream and written about them so much on this blog, that it should be obvious. What I don’t often get to talk about is how I got into card games in the first place: Yu-Gi-Oh.
Back when the anime first hit America, I bought the original Yugi and Kaiba starter decks and learned to play the game with my neighborhood and school friends. Nobody played Magic at my school, but Yu-Gi-Oh was super popular among the student body. I eventually had to stop playing during the Synchro era, but that was less because I wanted to stop and more because I could not afford to keep playing Yu-Gi-Oh and video games, so one had to give.
I’ve been on and off a few times since then, but for the past few years, I’ve been on an “off” period. Of course, now everyone has become obsessed with this new free-to-play game, Master Duel, and there’s no better time to dive back in.
So let’s dive back in.
The Yu-Gi-Oh of today is an entirely different game than it was back when I left all those years ago. For that reason, it is tempting to shake my fist at the clouds and proclaim that it’s been ruined. However, I’ve long since made peace with the fact the Yu-Gi-Oh I knew back then is long gone, with no chance of coming back.
And though I still have my gripes with it, the game that has been built on its bones has become a different and equally impressive game in its own way. From a game design standpoint, after getting familiar with other card games and how they operate, I am impressed how Yu-Gi-Oh created systems and methods to summon monsters with powerful stats and abilities, without any form of resource mechanics like mana.
Further, while I dislike the concept of “handtraps”, as I’ve played more I’ve started to understand their purpose. Since there was no such thing as mana, old Yu-Gi-Oh would have players broadcast whether or not we had a response by placing cards on the board face down, and to a large degree, that’s still true. However, there are now many cards that allow us to negate our opponent’s plays by discarding them from our hand in response.
This still bothers me, but it has a clear purpose. Decks and strategies have vastly accelerated since the time I played Yu-Gi-Oh, to the point where it is highly possible for even decent decks to build up powerful boards and card advantage on the first turn before the player going second has a chance to make a move. Handtraps solve that problem by giving them a chance to have instant speed interaction against the turn one player. One can argue, as I have, that the speed of the game is a problem, but accepting the game for what it is, handtraps serve as a good compromise.
The game isn’t perfect, far from it, but I respect what it has become, and found fun within the new form it has taken.
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