Media Yu-Gi-Oh discussion

[Sanger Zonvolt]

What are normal pendulums like and what do they do? Do they use normal monsters?

Basically there are 5 monsters that are Normal Pendulum monsters that you can spam. It's neat since their levels are between 4 and 6, giving them a good range of levels for Xyz and Synchro summons (if you add tuners), and a few of their Pendulums have useful effects in the Pendulum zone. Dragoons of Draconia lets you search out more Normal Monsters if a Normal Monster destroys an opponent's monster, Dragon Horn Hunter gives Normal Monsters 200 attack (making them minimum 2000 beaters) while preventing Battle Damage you take from battles involving them, and Lancephorhyncus lets them deal piercing Damage. It's also nice because their typing makes most of them searchable using ROTA or Summoner's art. It can also do cool things like add Tune Warrior, who can be recycled with Dark Factory of Mass Production, or use Polymerization to make First of the Dragons, which basically mandates removal via a Spell or Trap card.

They're not quite as deadly as Qlis (they're tier 2 at best I think) but if you want a budget deck for the express purpose of using Pendulums, it's both consistent and customizable.

 

[jrp]

there's a normal pendulum archetype called Igknights coming out in CORE. They seem like they have a lot of potential so they might be a good choice. Current normal pendulum is definitely not tier 2 right now though, current tier 2 is dolls, heroes and tellas, and normal pendulum def can't hold up against those three

 

[Sanger Zonvolt]

there's a normal pendulum archetype called Igknights coming out in CORE. They seem like they have a lot of potential so they might be a good choice. Current normal pendulum is definitely not tier 2 right now though, current tier 2 is dolls, heroes and tellas, and normal pendulum def can't hold up against those three

Sorry, forgot about Nekroz knocking half the tier one decks down a tier. I am looking forward to Igknights (gunblades galore!), though I do hope they get a little more spell and trap support besides their trap and field spell.

 

[vyomov]

What do you guys think about the new Blackwing support? It seems to be pretty decent, but idk whether Blackwings can compete with Nekroz atm(or for that matter if any of the old decks can; Six Samurai might have been able to if Konami hadn't hit Gateway and Legendary Six Sam Shien so hard)

 

[Llama]

What do you guys think about the new Blackwing support? It seems to be pretty decent, but idk whether Blackwings can compete with Nekroz atm(or for that matter if any of the old decks can; Six Samurai might have been able to if Konami hadn't hit Gateway and Legendary Six Sam Shien so hard)

Lol, black wings got boosted to tier 3 maybe. Sams can have 3 Shi en it won't do a thing. Gateway is most likely gonna come back in ocg with an OPT clause and do absolutely nothing.

 

[phil]

The most relevant thing about Blackwing support will probably be the fact that Nothung is one of the better generic L6 Synchros. Other than that I'm not expecting particularly big things.

 

[Jebus McAzn]

reviving this thread because i might be casually getting back into this (mainly online and on 3DS). i woulda bought legacy of the duelist cause it looks pretty fun, but i don't have an xbone or PS4

did some reading and it seems like qliphort towers turbo is the next broken thing? pendulums just seem broken as hell in general

apart from that, idk what the metagame has been recently. apparently qliphorts and burning abyss are both top-tier right now while shaddolls, nekroz, and satellarknights still see a lot of play (i have no goddamn clue how any of these decks work)

i'm picking up YGOPRO to get back into the swing of things because apparently you can play against an AI there, and the game checks mechanics on its own

 

[some hero]

You're close. Nekroz are currently the best deck. Period. Then there are several viable decks that can win consistently. Those being burning abyss and shaddolls. After that you have Qlips, satellark, and maybe infernoid and some other debatable decks.

Qlips are really good, however Towers Turbo is easily their worst build and overall a mediocre, inconsistent deck. It's borderline terrible in the usa. The deck revolves around getting a big monster out consistently. It's not that great at doing that and since it's conception has become a weaker play. It had some success when it caught people off guard, sort of like in poke battles when you face a gimmick Pokemon, and had success in Europe where king crab isn't out yet. However, the deck is extremely weak and cannot overcome towers being taken out. The best deck Nekroz for example runs searchable counters to towers. Meaning against the best deck, unless you got completely lucky it's almost an auto loss. Towers turbo does have some success against Burning Abyss which has no way to get over it normally. However, smart play and siding combined with towers turbos inherent inconsistency makes it a complete non issue. The deck is only a fun deck to use against noobs but isn't very good.

Right now, burning abyss or satellark are probably the easiest to play because of the simple combos and card effects. Nekroz are the hardest to learn because every card is a wall of text and the deck does take a bit of skill.

 

[Jebus McAzn]

I was under the impression that Nekroz got nerfed severely after Djinn Releaser got banned? Or are they still ridiculously powerful?

I'm mainly basing my metagame impressions off of the YGO subreddit and some random streams.

 

[some hero]

Yes they got 1 card limited and their most powerful play banned. The deck is still the most consistent in the game and is still the best in the game. It needs to get hit again and more severely to balance it. For reference in the ocg it has i think 4 cards limited and 1 semi limited and it's still a good(but no longer best) deck. People will always overreact when the banlist comes out, but the deck didn't lose too much.

 

[Random Passerby]

Trying to get back into this since a very long hiatus but totally gets destroyed by the Special Summon and Search spam that everyone seems to use. The Decks now seems to be very much faster than it was during the Synchro era (last meta I played was when Gateway was Unlimited and people were spamming Shi En and Samurais). Any decent decks or techniques to get me back on track? (I like totally not know what happened when he just Searched spam, recover cards from graveyard, swarm monsters in 1-3 turns or simply spam Xyz Effect Monsters / Ritual Monsters. No idea what Pendulum did either)

My favourite Decks to use are actually the Crystal Beasts and Gladiator Beasts. Yes, they are not good or viable but I have loved these series since they were introduced. Shame that they got left in the dust (and weren't particularly good during their time either. GB was only decent once they introduced Gyzarus, I think ). Personally, I don't like the fact that Konami keep on giving us power creep and fast search + swarm that they have to change their own rule (as in the 1st player skipping their Draw Phase) that it seems like a race to see who can deliver their OTK first with all their Search and Swarm available now.

 

[Sanger Zonvolt]

Trying to get back into this since a very long hiatus but totally gets destroyed by the Special Summon and Search spam that everyone seems to use. The Decks now seems to be very much faster than it was during the Synchro era (last meta I played was when Gateway was Unlimited and people were spamming Shi En and Samurais). Any decent decks or techniques to get me back on track? (I like totally not know what happened when he just Searched spam, recover cards from graveyard, swarm monsters in 1-3 turns or simply spam Xyz Effect Monsters. No idea what Pendulum did either)

Yeah, there aren't a lot of slower decks out there right now. Satellars can be a good way to ease back in since they are usually easier to pilot due to their much simpler combos, though you'll have to know when to disrupt combos with what traps. It's a bit on the expensive side, but I believe it's cheaper than some of the other tier 1 options, and outside of Worlds it doesn't see a lot of use, so it's less likely to get randomly hit by the ban hammer.

 

[Asheviere]

Pretty sure Satellars will get a sizeable nerf as well. Of course Nekroz is the elephant in the room but that doesn't make altair into deneb not a completely broken combo.

 

[Sanger Zonvolt]

Pretty sure Satellars will get a sizeable nerf as well. Of course Nekroz is the elephant in the room but that doesn't make altair into deneb not a completely broken combo.

Unless they nerf Satellars based on Worlds I don't think there's any tournament data that really justifies hitting Tellars. Prior to the new ban list, Tellars usually only took a small number of top spots (if any) compared to the other meta decks in larger tournaments, and there haven't been any large tournaments since they nerfed Nekroz again. I also doubt they'd base it on the results in Worlds since the combined banlist seriously handicapped Nekroz and Shaddolls plus BA was straight-up not allowed, which gives a disproportionate view on how Tellars fair in the TCG.

 

[phil]

I don't like the fact that Konami keep on giving us power creep and fast search + swarm that they have to change their own rule (as in the 1st player skipping their Draw Phase) that it seems like a race to see who can deliver their OTK first with all their Search and Swarm available now.

The game isn't actually like this. This is what the game is like-

-There's actually thought put into going first vs going second nowadays. Some decks always want to go second, and some always first so in certain matchups it's really interesting to see who actually chooses to go first because the extra card can actually make a big difference.
-Although most decks are capable of OTKing OTKs are pretty rare since a lot of them require lots of investment which is lost if they have one way to stop it. Things don't float nearly as well as they used to a couple of years ago.
-The best way to win is to cut your opponent off from their resources. A lot of decks require specific cards to maintain advantage and if they're cut off from that card it makes it very difficult for them to win.
-Lots of games are decided by "floodgates", cards which stop a deck using a certain style from basically playing the game (a continuous trap which stops both players searching, for example, or Macro Cosmos. This is probably the worst of the game right now.
-There are a handful of cards so powerful that people actually have to play differently just in order to avoid the opponent resolving them. I personally like this aspect of the game because it means that you're punished for making mistakes and there's a much higher ceiling for skilled play.

Honestly, the game's as good as it's ever been in my opinion. Decks are powerful but none are so powerful that they seem impossible to beat with anything other than that deck (look back at 2013 as an example of when that was not the case), the best deck is only just about the best deck and is capable of losing to many other decks purely based on those decks own merits and not the other decks floodgating it out of the game, there's a wild variety in playstyles of top decks etc etc. No, Gladiator Beasts and Crystal Beasts aren't good anymore (and Gladiator Beasts used to be amazing btw) but there's definitely enough in all areas of the game to make it worth playing. If you want to get started with a slower deck I would recommend Tellarknights, although they're most likely going to be hit since literally every deck ever that's won worlds has been hit significantly soon after. Other than that, Burning Abyss is easy to play to a reasonably good level and often goes deep into games so you'll be able to see more things in games and see how decks cope when they go deep into a game these days. Qliphort are good to teach the pendulum mechanic but are boring as fuck.

 

[some hero]

Trying to get back into this since a very long hiatus but totally gets destroyed by the Special Summon and Search spam that everyone seems to use. The Decks now seems to be very much faster than it was during the Synchro era (last meta I played was when Gateway was Unlimited and people were spamming Shi En and Samurais). Any decent decks or techniques to get me back on track? (I like totally not know what happened when he just Searched spam, recover cards from graveyard, swarm monsters in 1-3 turns or simply spam Xyz Effect Monsters / Ritual Monsters. No idea what Pendulum did either)

My favourite Decks to use are actually the Crystal Beasts and Gladiator Beasts. Yes, they are not good or viable but I have loved these series since they were introduced. Shame that they got left in the dust (and weren't particularly good during their time either. GB was only decent once they introduced Gyzarus, I think ). Personally, I don't like the fact that Konami keep on giving us power creep and fast search + swarm that they have to change their own rule (as in the 1st player skipping their Draw Phase) that it seems like a race to see who can deliver their OTK first with all their Search and Swarm available now.

Gladiator Beasts in their prime was the best deck, and overall it is one of the most dominant decks of all time. Its beyond garbage now sure, but what it did has been done by few decks in the history of the game. I'm talking about tournament tops btw.

The game isn't actually like this. This is what the game is like-

-There's actually thought put into going first vs going second nowadays. Some decks always want to go second, and some always first so in certain matchups it's really interesting to see who actually chooses to go first because the extra card can actually make a big difference.
-Although most decks are capable of OTKing OTKs are pretty rare since a lot of them require lots of investment which is lost if they have one way to stop it. Things don't float nearly as well as they used to a couple of years ago.
-The best way to win is to cut your opponent off from their resources. A lot of decks require specific cards to maintain advantage and if they're cut off from that card it makes it very difficult for them to win.
-Lots of games are decided by "floodgates", cards which stop a deck using a certain style from basically playing the game (a continuous trap which stops both players searching, for example, or Macro Cosmos. This is probably the worst of the game right now.
-There are a handful of cards so powerful that people actually have to play differently just in order to avoid the opponent resolving them. I personally like this aspect of the game because it means that you're punished for making mistakes and there's a much higher ceiling for skilled play.

Honestly, the game's as good as it's ever been in my opinion. Decks are powerful but none are so powerful that they seem impossible to beat with anything other than that deck (look back at 2013 as an example of when that was not the case), the best deck is only just about the best deck and is capable of losing to many other decks purely based on those decks own merits and not the other decks floodgating it out of the game, there's a wild variety in playstyles of top decks etc etc. No, Gladiator Beasts and Crystal Beasts aren't good anymore (and Gladiator Beasts used to be amazing btw) but there's definitely enough in all areas of the game to make it worth playing. If you want to get started with a slower deck I would recommend Tellarknights, although they're most likely going to be hit since literally every deck ever that's won worlds has been hit significantly soon after. Other than that, Burning Abyss is easy to play to a reasonably good level and often goes deep into games so you'll be able to see more things in games and see how decks cope when they go deep into a game these days. Qliphort are good to teach the pendulum mechanic but are boring as fuck.

Name one meta deck that wants to go second. That hasn't changed and will never change. You go first no matter what. Unless you're using a fun deck or something. There is no decision to make. If you're trying to win and using a competitive deck, you go first. Also September 2013 is the greatest format ever. Despite the Drulers being far and above the best deck available they were actually fun to play with and against. I look at that format with fond memories.

 

[phil]

Name one meta deck that wants to go second. That hasn't changed and will never change. You go first no matter what. Unless you're using a fun deck or something. There is no decision to make. If you're trying to win and using a competitive deck, you go first. Also September 2013 is the greatest format ever. Despite the Drulers being far and above the best deck available they were actually fun to play with and against. I look at that format with fond memories.

What? Are you serious? Nekroz and Shaddoll want to go second every time.

 

[Random Passerby]

Gladiator Beasts in their prime was the best deck, and overall it is one of the most dominant decks of all time. Its beyond garbage now sure, but what it did has been done by few decks in the history of the game. I'm talking about tournament tops btw.

Name one meta deck that wants to go second. That hasn't changed and will never change. You go first no matter what. Unless you're using a fun deck or something. There is no decision to make. If you're trying to win and using a competitive deck, you go first. Also September 2013 is the greatest format ever. Despite the Drulers being far and above the best deck available they were actually fun to play with and against. I look at that format with fond memories.

Yeah, I know GB used to be good. What I meant was even when it was in its prime, it's consistency was nowhere near the DAD Decks, Legendary Six Samurais, Dragon Rulers or Inverz in their prime (or even any Decks nowadays).

I agree. The meta seemed to change completely since the introduction of Synchros and Xyz in such a way that you get punished for not making aggressive play and swarming tactics. Any decks based on slower builds or defence simply gets overwhelmed by sheer speed, power and consistency the newer cards provide.

 

[Catherine Walker]

If you have to buy the actual cards, I can imagine playing Yu-Gi-Oh is quite an expensive hobby.

 

[Max]

Gladiator Beasts in their prime was the best deck, and overall it is one of the most dominant decks of all time. Its beyond garbage now sure, but what it did has been done by few decks in the history of the game. I'm talking about tournament tops btw.





Name one meta deck that wants to go second. That hasn't changed and will never change. You go first no matter what. Unless you're using a fun deck or something. There is no decision to make. If you're trying to win and using a competitive deck, you go first. Also September 2013 is the greatest format ever. Despite the Drulers being far and above the best deck available they were actually fun to play with and against. I look at that format with fond memories.

ravine rulers was not that great of a format, lol. I liked the baby ruler one a lot more. It's crazy playing those mirrors again now and seeing how in depth some of the plays could be.

Also posting a little mini tournament way after the fact, but I was lucky enough to get to represent the USA at worlds this year, and ended up with a disappointing 9th place. Decided to play Satellarknights and I think it was a fine decision (although many of my friends said I should have went with Nekroz but that deck really only had one push in it per game). Lost round 2 to Chase Cunningham in Satellar mirror and round 3 to Jake Phinney against his BIG Hero deck with 3 mask change, mask change II, and polymerizations. Beat tellar mirror r1, tellar mirror r4, and qlis r5. Oh well, maybe I'll get another chance next year. 8)

 

[mertyville]

I am probobly the only one who watches the anime which got really good to be honest

 

[Random Passerby]

I am probobly the only one who watches the anime which got really good to be honest

Think so. I stopped after the 5D's Ark Cradle which got silly real fast. ( Card games on motorcycles was the only reason I started in the first place :-) )

 

[aVocado]

2 cyber dragon infinites, 2 cyber end dragons

goddamn cyber dragon infinite is broken as fuck

 

[Sanger Zonvolt]

Don't worry, I'm sure Konami will get around to banning broken cards to keep top-tier decks from being overpowered like they did with Ritual Beast Ulti-Cannahawk.

...wait something didn't sound right about that last sentence.

 

[Random Passerby]

Don't worry, I'm sure Konami will get around to banning broken cards to keep top-tier decks from being overpowered like they did with Ritual Beast Ulti-Cannahawk.

...wait something didn't sound right about that last sentence.

lol. Don't these card designers actually PLAY the game to check whether these cards are OP?
Or perhaps they purposely made it OP so that they can cash in on the hype. Then, ban or Limit the cards. Rinse and repeat.