Asking A Magic Player if "Imperial Order" is a Problem.... 

The deck that arguably ran this the most effectively was Swordsoul. Although Imperial Order is gone, Swordsoul is still alive and kicking. Here's a decklist, go nuts: bit.ly/3zmlKOg

I think 1 thing that wasnt mentioned properly is that Pre-Errata, you had to only pay on your turn for Imperial Order while after the Errata, you had to pay on both turns. So Pre-Errata Imperial Order could be up double the amount of turns, which was relevant back in the time because games were that much slower

A way to make IO more “fair” would be to errata it to say “negate the first spell activated each turn” or something along those lines. But at that point, the effect is so different they might as well print it as a new card.

I still remember a remote duel YCS where a guy playing Beetrooper lost to a well timed Imperial Order, but the thing is, the guy only played like 4 spells in the entire deck, which goes to show how powerful locking someone out of spells can be

When talking about Yugioh's version of MTG's 'Power 9', pre-errata Imperial Order should certainly be part of that. Nuts card, even after the errata.

I still have nightmares of pre-erratta imperial order

A perhaps usable version idea: Continuous trap card: Negate all spell effects on the field. Once per turn, during the Standby Phase, you lose 1000LP (this is not optional). Either player may discard two cards at any time to destroy this face-up card on the field.

I'd say that one way that I can think to balance this card would be like "When this card is activated your opponent can discard 1/2 cards to negate and destroy it" which means built in counterplay to the card, and it also allows for more interesting gameplay as one would have to keep in mind how many cards they have in hand and if they need to be able to respond to Imperial order

I think this card is actually most similar to Magic 'lock pieces' in prison decks. They're decks designed around invalidating most of an opponent's cards. Like Moat "Non-flying creatures can't attack", Blood Moon, Ensnaring Bridge, Trinisphere, Diving Top + Counterbalance. They're pretty unpopular, but the big thing that stops them being broken is it's much slower in Magic to set-up a lock.

My balancing idea would be to have the live point cost apply for every spell negated and being non optional. Like with other suggestions it essentially becomes a different card at that point though.

Soul charge would be fun to talk about in a video like this 😀

To fix Mystic Mine: Give it the Spirit Reaper treatment. Make it destroy itself if its ever targeted, even if the effect that targeted it is negated.

I remember playing this card as a middle schooler right after Pharaoh's Servant dropped and having multiple people straight up refuse to believe that the pay 700 was optional at that point lmao

Similar to Chalice of the Void, Iona is another good MTG card to talk about. In a commander game, you can completely shut out everyone from playing a color.

I'd say Anti-Spell Fragrance is basically what a balanced Imperial Order would be - a broad-scope continuous trap that prevents the use of spells, balanced by only delaying them rather than completely shutting them down.

This is my fun little version of Imperial Order :) "Imperial Order", Trap, Continuous. Negate all Spell effects on the field. Your opponent's Monster and Trap card effects cannot be negated. Once per turn, during the Standby Phase, you must pay 700 LP (this is not optional), or Banish this card. Once per turn, during the Standby Phase, you must roll a die. If the result is a 1, Destroy this card. Once per turn, during the Standby or End Phase, your opponent can Draw any 1 card from their deck. If it's a Spell card, they gain 4000 LP. When this card is removed from the field, you lose the duel.

The only way I could think of maybe making this able to come back is something along the lines of its only a single spell per turn maybe? Or with each negated spell you are giving a worse and worse burn effect. 1st spell negated is 1k, 2nd spell 3k, etc etc something like that even then it's still insane & the fact that it says ALL spells is what makes this card so strong.

I think Thunder Dragon Collossus would be an interesting card to discuss with an MTG player. I wonder if it would see play in MTG, I don't think they have much searching but the protection effect, fairly big body and the generic summoning condition might still make it very strong over there?

Adding harsher restrictions to the card would make it less powerful, but just as sacky and frustrating. An interesting design space is adding a cost to be able to play spells, but it would be an entirely different card at that point. (Spell cards can only be activated by paying 2000 LP/discarding 1 card from your hand at random). I went with soft costs, but you could be harsher as giving the choice to your opponent and still letting him resolve spells makes the card much less powerful.

You could add a new conditions to the trap that says something like "Activate this trap only if the opponent controls X or more spells," where X is some number appropriate to YGO. -an MTG player

Thinking about Magic cards that lock out entire types - Archon of Valor's Reach is a huge beater that locks out a non-creature card type that you get to choose on resolution (your opponent does not know what it will lock them out of while it's on the stack), but the 6 mana casting cost makes is slower in the same way discussed here. Even then, it sees play in Legacy Elves in a way that mirrors the Swordsoul deck you mention - turn off the instant speed interaction or board wipes as necessary to wrap up the game. I think it's also interesting how the increased number of card types in Magic mean that even when effects like this do show up, the pool of cards they hit is smaller than their counterparts in Yugioh.

I think if they had errata'd it to only negate all normal spell cards, it would be situationally useful but not broken.

A 4000LP cost could actually be interesting. Activate it in the opponent's standby or earlier, and it is suicide. If not, it works exactly for 1 turn.

Possible imperial order erratas: 1: Each turn you pay 700 LP to negate all of one type of spell card(normal, quick play, continuous, etc) for the rest of the turn. 2: Current cost....Each player is only allowed to activate one spell card for the rest of this turn 3: (This one is more spell royal oppression then imperial order if I'm being honest) When a spell card is activated, pay 700 LP, negate that spells effect. (No 1 per turn/not optional) I have some other ideas but I think this would keep the card at an incredibly powerful anti spell card, but not so powerful it complete breaks the game.

Idea for imperial order errata/rebalance: Sacrifice a spell/trap for activation. Then for each turn (including the turn it was activated) where it has been activated, at the beginning of the turn, sacrifice n+1 more spell/trap. So you activate it on your opponents turn, you have sac a card to keep it there. Then at the start of your turn, you have to sac two. In trying to implement what's called "cumulative upkeep" from MTG here, with an additional startup cost. The theory is this: Since card advantage is king in ygo, saccing each turn is detrimental. If this is the only card you've put down, it sacrifices itself. If you have two, you get to use this on your opponent's turn, and then it goes away because you can't sac two to keep it around. Etc. With a loss in resources, filling your deck with "feeder" spell/traps makes it harder to use. Too hard?

You also didn't mentioned that back then Imperial Order only needed to be paid on your standby phase. The errata changed it to be paid on both standby phases.

I actually wonder if you could give this card the sekkas light treatment. Where you can only activate it if you have no spell cards in your graveyard, and if you do activate it, you cannot activate spell cards of your own for the rest of the duel. And then keep the maintenance cost. Not a lot of decks have a way to banish spells from their graveyard, especially now that snow is gone. Route to fix it.

In Magic, there is a mechanic called Hexproof (and an older variant called shroud), where a card with it can't be targeted by spells or abilities your opponent control. Magic has a couple of cards that come in and give everything Hexproof. A recent one called Shalai, Voice of Plenty gives the controller and all OTHER creatures Hexproof. I think something similar could be implemented for Imperial Order where it negates all spell effects that aren't targeting it. So something like Lightning Storm that hits all traps wouldn't work, but Twin Twisters or Cosmic Cyclone would allow people to get rid of it. I think this strikes a nice balance of still being very powerful, but not completely unbeatable.

You have to show vanity's emptiness. Explain that it saw zero play for over a year after release and was a short print common

While IO may be the only card to be banned for two different effects, Sangan and Witch of the Black Forest in the OCG join it in cards that got banned after erratas. For the first couple years of their existence, they didn't have to be on the field for their floating effects to trigger, and while they were never banned for this, it does mean that when they eventually were banned (pre-worldwide errata), it was the OCG-errata'd/TCG versions.

We still have quite alot of Imperial Orders in the game, but none of those are banned. Perhaps looking at those will give hints on how to balance it. Hidden Village of the Spellcasters requires you to control a spellcaster in order to apply. Spellbreaker of the Ice Barrier is tied to one of the worst archetypes. Naturia Beast or Exterio have hard summoning requirements. White Howling requires you to use water monsters and have your opponents spell in GY.

Looking a bit through MTG rules, the closest I could translate the card to an MTG card would be something along the lines of it being an Artifact, and having the effect to Counter all Sorceries. And the non-optional upkeep equivalent would be about 2 life per turn, out of the starting 20.

The best way to make imperial order more fair wile still being viable would be that it only negates spells in the main phase 1. This will allow your opponent counter play by going to the main phase 2.

I think the closest card to Imperial Order is Counterbalance. Its really a 2 card combo of Counterbalance + Sensei's Divining Top, but that combination can completely lock an opponent out of the game.

Apart from adding a restriction making the card near useless (this card can only be activated at the start of your Main Phase 1) there is no good way to balance this card nowadays. Its funny that this came out at a time when negating spells took a discard (magic jammer) or was unreliable (magic drain). I guess the original thought was it was balanced by preventing you from using staple spells like pot of greed, monster reborn, or raigeki, but then they made it optional to keep up, meaning you could leave it up when you were ahead, but get rid of it if your opponent got ahead and you needed your comeback cards. Releasing it with an errata was even stupider since they should know a lot better by now.

I suppose you could re-make IO to either have a limited turn counter like swords of revealing light, or force you to place x number of cards onto the bottom of your deck. The easiest I could see is just remaking the card into a counter trap instead, or limiting the number of cards it can stop. There's also the option of making you return a card to your deck or banishing for cost for each spell card you want to stop.

12:30 Carl brings up a good point. Magic has a mana system to limit cards like this on the first turn. Yu-Gi-Oh! has monster sacrifices. Make it "cost" two monsters when first activated (or even three {heck, even five}). You could require the health point cost as well on the standby phase. Maybe even switch it over to a monster cost per turn. It would self counter cards like Scapegoat, though the synergy with Scapegoat (or any other card effects that summon tokens/monsters) could be neat if played before Imperial Order. While the running cost while active is still nice to have, Adam does mention that Yu-Gi-Oh! is more or less "won" in one turn. I haven't played in over 15 years, but it was mostly like that back then too. I don't know if the cost offset (requiring a turn or two to get the requisite monsters on the field) would nerf the card enough on its own. Anyways, thanks for the video. keep on being awesome.

The weirdest thing to me is that when they added the "not optional" clause, is that they didn't just remove the "or the card is destroyed" at the same time. If the purpose is to basically force you to remove it or make it stay until it drains you. Then what purpose is there in having a destroy clause on the card itself? Makes the text needlessly more confusing.

You would have to add an additional restriction to the card like "the controller of this card cannot conduct their battle phase or cannot add cards from deck to hand" or something else like that

Since the card itself has no trigger, it was highly versatile. In the old days, if you didn't activate on your opponent's turn, you'd activate on your own standby phase to negate the discard effect of Mirage of Nightmare. Those were the days... In addition to making the maintenance cost mandatory, the errata made it so it had to be paid during BOTH players' standby phases, effectively doubling the cost. One thing to be done which can prevent these first turn shut downs would be to include a caveat that it cannot be activated until after the third turn of the game. So, even if turn 1 player has it in their opening hand, and sets it turn 1, turn 2 player gets at least their first turn to activate spells and prepare a defense. 🤷‍♂

So here's what I'm thinking: Imperial Order Normal Trap Negate all spell effects on the field for the next 2 turns. This card can only be played during your standby phase. This way, it's still strong but it can't be a flip up during your opponents turn and just straight win the game card. Probably not gonna be run at all given that average duel time is like, 3 turns but still.

How could you not at least mention Teferi Time Raveler. He eliminated your opps instants. He removed and entire aspect of Magic, instant timed responses.

I think the only way to deal with Imperial Order is to require it be activated in your turn, probably either your Standby Phase (and thus pay the cost the same turn it is activated) or start of Main Phase 1 (so you can't use Spells that turn). That would slow the card down so much that people would likely stop playing it, but it might make sense as a Side Deck card if there is a slower Spell-focused deck to deal with (e.g. Mystic Mine decks).

I feel like maybe one way to errata the card would be to make its resource cost relate to cards rather than life points. In that regards, I have two ideas: 1. When a spell effect is activated: you must discard 1 card or this card is destroyed; negate the spell effect. 2. When this card is activated: discard any number of cards, and add that many tokens to this card. When a spell effect is activated: remove 1 token from this card or this card is destroyed; negate the spell effect. The idea for both of these suggestions is to associate a meaningful cost for each negation made, rather than just having an inconsequential cost for each turn the card is active. That way, the opponent is able to induce at least some negative effect while they're blocked, and also the person who placed the card is also incentivized to not let the card remain in place for too long. And if sending cards to the GY is not consequential enough cost, then we could make it so that cards get banished, or facedown banished.

The only thing I can think of would be if it said “you cannot activate other cards or effects the turn this card is flipped face up.” So you can use it as a spell-floodgate for the turn still but you wouldn’t be able to use your turn 1 board to stop your opponent.

"This card can only be activated at the start of your main phase 1" It would mean you could only activate it on your second turn, and would have to suffer through the effect as well.

In magic there's a lot of "you can only cast one spell per turn" cards. Maybe they could make it say "players can only summon one monster per turn" or "activate one ability per turn." Not sure how broken that would be. Maybe make it only 2 or even negate 2 spells/monsters/abilities. They can't be activated anymore. Even that is like, yes it's one sided, but at least it doesn't say ALL. There's a theme with these banned Yughio cards. They all say ALL. What is their obsession with that? Just pick a number like 1, 2, or 3 so that they aren't immediately broken. Limit things and slow things down. Don't just say your opponent can''t play the game anymore. In magic terms, these cards seem like boardwipe effects, except in magic, you can't cast a board wipe on turn 1 or 2 because that's broken. Instead you have to wait until your 4th, 5th, or 6th turn depending on how good the boardwipe is. And, different game, in yugiho turns that's turn 8, 10, or 12, which will never happen, but you get the idea. Bigger effects come on a bigger turn number, but since a lot needs to change in yugiho in order to get to bigger turns, they have to just limit what the cards do and stop printing cards that say ALL.

Something interesting is to give it a punishing cost like whenever the activation of card or card effects are negated, you banish cards face down from your extra deck. Or for each card effects negated by this card you receive 2k damage at the end of the turn

The only errata to IO I can think of would be something along the lines of Vanity's Emptiness' effect, or perhaps something like "If you control a face-up monster, destroy this card. This card cannot be activated while you control a face-up monster. For the rest of the turn after this face-up card is destroyed, the controller of this card cannot activate spell cards or effects." To the text. This would prevent it from being used to a degree, but the amount of people that would still use it, maybe set it turn one, activate it on opponents turn 2 as a floodgate, then immediately go into turn 3 to set up their board is still substantial.

My first thought of a magic analogue was Collector Ouphe. It reads, "activated abilities of artifacts can't be activated". This means all mana rocks are useless, which in high-powered formats, and especially against artifact-based decks, is brutal. Also, Humility converts all creatures into vanilla 1/1s. It's not legal in most formats, but if you want to really piss off your commander table, you can throw that down. It basically entirely shuts down any creature-based strategy, which is really the vast majority of decks. Control and spellslinger wouldn't really care I suppose. I could go on, there's some pretty evil magic cards. But there's so many formats and so many cards that most of the time they don't end up being a huge issue.

Can we get a video on cards that were seen differently from how they’re read? I would find that super interesting. I wish I had an example! Essentially, if there were any instances where linguistic experts were needed to clear up any card texts and how that nerfed/ buffed them accordingly? You could get one of the non-Yu-Gi-Oh players to see how they read the text similar to how Imperial Order was read in this one. Love the videos!

you could make it either only activatable on your own turn, or only apply to the player who is currently in turn, ie. for the first example it can be used as a spell defense to protect from negates but not to shut down your opponent on their turn, or in the second version, it can be used on your opponents turn, and it negates, but you now have to deal with not having no spells on your turn.

The old IO essentially reads: "Spell cards are entirely useless until you (the IO user) draw one you want to activate".

1 thing could be adding an action requirement like must have atleast 3 spells in grave so then it could be used to it's full effect but only in a way that require set up and ensures that you are more affected by it as well since you'll need to be running spells to use it.

I have an interesting errata for it. Imperial Order: Declare a name of yugioh card in your deck. Once declared, Negate the activation and effects of all Spells on the field. At the start of your Standby Phase, (this is not optional) banish a copy of the declared card from the deck, or destroy this card.

Here is my idea to balance Imperial Order: Negate all Spell effects on the field. *When a Spell Card is activated, you take 700 damage.* Once per turn, during the Standby Phase, you must pay 700 LP (this is not optional), or this card is destroyed. *When this card is destroyed, you take damage equal to the number of spell cards in your opponent’s GY x1000.* The numbers on the damage may have to be adjusted, but the idea is that the if used recklessly the opponent can burn you for game. Ways to tune this more is to up the damage on spell activation such as *When a Spell Card is activated, halve your LP.* and you can also add *Your opponent can activate Trap Cards on the turn they are Set* to punish blind activation on against trap decks and easy answers via sideboard trap speed removal.

One way to errata IO is to add an additional mandatory tribute or discard cost during your opponent's standby phase. This balances the card because the player with IO in the field is not increasing the cards in their hand on their draw phase. A different way to errata IO is in addition to its current life point cost the player with IO on field has to also mandatory skip their draw phase while IO is on the field.

I think the best bet for Errta-ing it is to change to a different typeof maintenance cost. Not life points. Maybe send a card from hand to grave. Or shuffle back a face down card from spell/trap zone or something. Card advantage is the primary resource of the game, so make it cost in that way.

One potential fix would to be to replace or supplement the life point with another cost that forces the player using it to tribute somewhere around two-three(unsure which would be the sweet spot here) monsters in order to activate it initially. Combo decks would lose a bit of their presence during their opponent's turn, and much slower control decks end up having to figure out how to shill out those kinds of resources without it feeling painful.

Long time Yu-Gi-Oh player here, and for my opinion on Imperial Order I believe it should be a 3 or none type of card. Mostly people were upset about being sacked than the card itself it feels like. If you actually have 3 you'd have to put more main deck outs which makes the game interactive imo. The main problem Card Games have is not hitting direct hits I.E Urza for magic and Yu-Gi-Oh take your pick Firewall dragon was such a menace forEVER, but each banlist added yet another card to pay for it's sins. Like as soon as imperial order got unbanned Sky Striker started tearing up the scene. Which sure anti-spell "hurts" them it just wasn't anywhere enough. We each have our own views, but I'm just giving mine as a since the beginning player. I quit for awhile during Bujin H.A.T format, and never during B.A, Shaddoll, Zoodiac format so I can't say the whole time.

10:58 I'd say 'City in a Bottle' is the closest Magic card in terms of design (a card that stays on board and prevents a certain type of card to be played). But Magic has a ton of "Hosers" (cards that hard counter a specific thing). 'Blood Moon' is a notorious example that sees a bunch of play.

One way would be to add an initial cost, such as revealing and then banishing face down a spell card from your own hand. That way two pieces from your hand are necessary even if you top deck it and you have to work with the other 3 turn 1. But there is no way to make IO playable as more than limited to 1. Even if you were to take that initial cost and add "as well as all other cards with the same name from your deck."

There was a widely-hated floodgate card not too long ago in the MTG meta very similar to Imperial Order (Teferi the Time Raveler). While it didn't completely disable enemy Spell Cards, it was an enemy-only disable Spells and Traps during each of your own turns until it got destroyed. (It did other busted stuff on top of that.) It eventually got banned, and I think it got banned in the legacy format too. Just all-around banned everywhere, and MTG rarely bans cards (although it's been more frequent in recent years). And also MTG has no limited list so you would have 4 copies in a 60 card deck.

Cards like this and Mystic Mine in concept were the core of Prison Decks in Magic back in the 90s/00s; they were just as much of a problem there and Konami should have seen the danger coming for its game. The closest thing I can think of to 'fixing' this card is requiring a discard of multiple spell cards for the effect (say 1 on activation and 1 each turn) thus tying the effect to you actually having the cards it blanks, people would probably still find a way to break it though. The other option would be requiring you to activate it in your Main Phase 1 or your Opponent's End Phase, again probably still a problem card in either scenario. Effects like this, in any tcg, fundamentally cannot be viable as any cost where they are usable is a cost where they are a problem.

You fix mystic mine by turning it into the magic card Ensnaring Bridge which reads "Creatures with power greater than the number of cards in your hand can't attack." For yu-gi-oh, change the restriction from creature power to number of creatures. So if you have 1 card in hand, 1 creature your opponent controls can attack and etc. Ensnaring Bridge is a very powerful card, but the huge downside of having no cards in hand is a big deal that your entire deck has to be built around and would be in yu-gi-oh as well especially for things like hand traps. But not impossible to build around in the spirit of the game. That restriction would actually target the decks which want to use it in a serious way rather than the effect just being free.

I would say the closest thing to this in magic would be Linvala that says opponents creatures cant activate effects. Notably its one of only two or three cards that DONT give exception to mana generating abilties. Even stronger would be Iona, an angel that prevented opponents from playing a chosen color, potentially ruining an entire deck or making a multicolor deck pitifully handicapped. there was also the infamous mycosynth lattice and Karn combo, where lattice made every card an artifact and Karn said your opponents artifacts (all their cards now) cant activate any abilities.

In addition to Chalice of the void, also some similarities to Blood Moon or Ensnaring Bridge not in a counterspelling sense, but in a turning off certain things sense

Haven’t played since pre-tuner age. Picked up some revived goat control era stuff with old friends and kinda miss how the game was. Don’t miss at all what the game became.

Great video. I love the Yu-Gi-Oh/ MTG crossovers. I'm an MTG player and these bring me to the Yu-Gi-Oh channel.

7:38 Actually, a deck called Scrap Dinosaur used to be able to end on Imperial Order almost every turn. A card called Curious, the Lightsworn Dominion can send it from Deck to GY, and then you can Set it from the GY using Knightmare Gryphon. Man, I miss Scrap Dino and Dragon Link.

This would make a good magic card. There's plenty of effects that hose certain card types, we just have 6-7 common card types. Artifacts tend to get the most hate, every color has some way that they interact with artifacts. In powerful formats people play artifact hate like "activated abilities of artifacts can't be activated". There are creatures that prevent your opponents from casting spells, ways to stop gameplay by locking the board and being the only player who can act. Fun stuff

With the prevalence of hand traps and availability of quick play spells you had responses to this card, As for how to fix imperial order give it an effect where the opponent can pay half lp to destroy it maybe? Or print traps similar to dust tornado but with quick play to target destroy the imperial order

7:35 you can tutor it tho with curious send it and make gryphon to set it if you can make them.

Funny thing is you could add an absurd cost like "Banish your entire hand facedown:" to the activation of Imperial Order and it'd probably still see play.

For the Magic audience, a better comp than Chalice of the Void imo is Karn the Great Creator - Karn has a static ability saying "Activated abilities of artifacts your opponents control can't be activated". It's still pretty different; as the Karn player is still allowed to use their artifacts, and the non-Karn player can still do certain things with their artifacts (attack, get triggered abilities), but, for the most part, Karn shuts a relatively major portion of the game off.

I think the only way Konami could errata Imperial Order would be to make it have a restriction on how many spells it can negate per turn

Potential Fix: "Spell cards on the field have their effects negated except during the 1st turn that card is on the field (including if the card is face-down). If your opponent would activate a Spell card or effect; Pay 1000 LP (this is not optional) and negate the activation, or this card is destroyed. You can only control 1 "Imperial Order". " This would let your opponent burn you to death with Imperial Order as well as makes it lenient on continuous spells and quick-play spells.

My first thought was to make it a regular trap that, once activated, it has a lingering effect for the turn, after paying like 1500 lp once. Or it becomes a counter trap with a turn effect.

Maybe have the initial activation cost deal with removing cards from the field/deck/hand face down and any time a spell gets negated you banish the top card of your deck face down as well?

This just makes me remember way back when, playing gravity bind control as a kid.

When it comes to banning an archetype in magic it depends on what you mean. There is a 9 cost gargoyle that counters the first non creature spell each turn. there are a couple of different spirits that limit the number spells each player can cast to 1. There are a number of cards that completely negate monster attacks, something like omen machine disables peoples ability to draw. there are cards that turn instances into sorceries, cards that make your whole field and you untargetable, there are cards that make enchantments unplayable, cards that make artifacts unplayable, cards that add a cost to all cards of a type, card combos that make land unplayable and destroy all land (looking at you mycosynth lattuce + march of the machines), and many others, the balance factor usually being that they cost 4+ mana meaning the earliest a player will likely play one is second turn rotation or they will end up comitting 4+ cards to locking a portion of the field on turn 1.

One way is to make it say "negate spell cards/effects unless it's controller pays 700 LP for each card/effect" this is a common magic ability to simply add a "Tax" to cards and has decks built around it known as "death and taxes" or change it to "the opponent of the spell card(s) controller may pay 700 LP to negate spell cards/effects for each card/effect" something like that, ofc the wording and amount paid would be changed to the proper wording and a balanced amount.

What pushed IO over the edge is that most of the ways to out IO are Spells, which are exactly what IO stops. If it was on a monster it wouldn't be an issue, but since most backrow removal is done through Spell cards, IO is its own protection.

To activate you must banish 3 cards from your hand face down. End of each players turn banish the top 7 cards of your deck facedown (this is not optional).

I doubt Konami wants to fix IO with an arbitrary errata. It's more likely they'd make a retrain instead. Some possibilities are: change the upkeep cost to another resource, like discard or banishing cards from your extra deck add a condition that destroys IO, such as when a player normal summons add a cost that gets payed every time it negates a spell add an activation restriction, like only being to activate on the 3rd spell played in a turn add a restriction to make IO fit into fewer decks, like gating yourself from special summons make the affect narrower by only affecting a subset of spell cards, such as normal spells, quickplay spells or field spells

could erratta IO so that it only affects spells "currently" on field and remove the lifepoint cost, so spells played after its activated work normally; it would change it from a constant to a one turn emp like a mass counter spell kinda thing. At that point its basically a new card but its still be pretty damn strong

IO change: for the rest of this turn negate all spell effects on the field, at the end of the turn pay 700 LP for each effect negated by this card. During each Standby Phase pay 700 LP(this is not optional) or destroy this card. Basically if your opponent is going to have a ton of useless spells they get some sort of punch back on you for it?

the way I would describe Imperial Order as a lapsed MTG fan is... it's like if your favorite Stax piece had flash. Like, imagine if Stasis had Flash. Spell cards are Yugioh's Instants, Sorceries, and in a way, enchantments. they are your non-monster proactive plays in Yugioh. Traps are a bit like the MTG mechanic fortell, except they're susceptible to removal, but... at the time of imperial Order's printing, practically every bit of removal worth playing was on a spell or was... I dunno, Dust Tornado. Hosing spells, and then having the option to not pay the Life Points to get your crack at your own spells was like time walking someone. Brutal, BRUTAL shit.

There are combos that do similar effects in magic, but you need more setup. Microsynth lattice turns all permanents into artifacts and March of the Machines turns all non-creature artifacts into X/X artifact creatures with X=their converted mana cost. Land cards, the most common source of mana, have a cost of 0, so they automatically die. Both of these cards stay in play indefinitely, so if either player tries to play a land, it will immediately die. There are other sources of mana, such as certain artifacts. I had a teacher who ran this combo and his deck would develop these mana-producing artifacts before permanently wiping out lands. Of course you need to draw and pay for these card, which leaves you open to damage and disruption. Yu-Gi-Oh seems to have a more limited design space because it doesn't have a good resource building mechanic. Casual Yu-Gi-Oh had a bit of a resource with only allowing one normal/tribute summon and needing to sacrifice creatures to get more powerful ones, but there is no such limit on spell, traps, and special summons. Even if you can't find a way to get around tribute summoning a creature, you can probably special summon a few sacrifices with a spell.

I've designed 2 card games, none of which I've released because I'm a poor slacker. My errata would be to keep the text as is post-errata, and add "you must choose one of the following effects: your monsters have their abilities negated OR you cannot activate cards in your spell/trap zone until this card leaves the field. Doing this is a condition of activating this card."

Errata: discard 2 cards on activation in addition to each standby phase otherwise destroy imperial order. So if activate on opponents turn, counter 1 spell but no discard opponent can play spell’s again

How to fix Imperial Order: Pay Half your LP to activate this card during the Standby Phase and must be activated during the Standby Phase, also Pay Half your LP during Each Standby Phase (this is not optional) till your LP are at or below 700 or Destroy this card; The effects of Spell cards on the Field are negated (but you can still activate), if this card leaves the Field, you cannot activate Spell Cards or effects till your next End Phase. This way it can hurt both and even has a massive draw back for if and when its removed so if your opponent does out it including if its chained to or even if they pop it face-down when u set it, it really hurts you and makes you risk setting it at all. I feel that or make it so while its face up each player can only activate 1 spell per turn.

Could make it so that the cost is the 700 as is to keep on the board. But also an additional cost that the user can choose if they do want to negate the spell card. That way it could work as a double edge sword if thr user wants to risk being burned to death or will they allow a spell to go through. Example is your opponent plays Pot of Greed, you respond with Imperial Order, it resolves and main ohae continues. Your opponent then chooses to play another spell, you as the owner of imperial order gets thr choice of negating it at the cost of say 2000 life points, or allow it through taking the risk of letting the opponent play a spell. Rinse and repeat until the turn ends or the game is over cause you got burned to defeat by your own card.

Fixing Imperial Order: This card gains 1 counter each turn after it is revealed. Once it accrues 3 counters, the following comes into effect: Negate all spell effects. Pay 700 Life for every spell effect negated this way. If you cannot, destroy this card. This both puts it on a delay that gives the opponent the opportunity to react and remove it using a spell or ability, and the cost scales with effect. Your opponent can sacrifice spells into it to keep hitting you for 700 until you can no longer upkeep the effect. This feels like an entirely new card, however. Maybe named in relation to the original, like "Emperor's Orders" or "Mana Ration Order". Some shit like that.

Imperial Order: Each time a spell card or effect is activated on the field: you can pay 3000 LP; negate that effect. Works better for a redesigned card but at least its not a blanket effect and you have to choose what to negate at the cost of LP. Giving me Solemn vibes. Or maybe a huge restriction: You must have no spells in your deck to activate, or you must have 15 spells in your deck to activate (some kind of deck building restriction). Or a restriction on the battle phase/dealing damage.

So if I was going to adjust it what I would prolly do is... "Negate the first spell played during each turn, for each spell beyond the first you can discard 1 card in order to negate it's activation. At the start of the standby phase pay 700 life points(this effect is not optional), if you cannot this card is destroyed."

Just a thought, could you change IO so the cost was paid every time a spell was negated and then fiddle with the cost to balance it so if your opponent has a bunch of spells they could OTK you?

Secret Village of the Spellcasters is a (currently legal and sometimes 3 of) field spell where if you control a spellcaster and your opponent doesn't, they can't play spell cards. It's perfect for shutting down Runik decks.

Imperial Order Fix: (Same effect as now), but add "except for spells which target 'Imperial Order'". That way it can still be used to shut down spells, but it can't protect itself from removal. Maybe add a condition where the owner of IO can't target it with his own spells too.

Giving it the Sekka's light restriction (but with regards to just spells) would be an interesting start. Means it would be dead if you used rota's, pots, board breakers, etc. Basically, then it would be used in pure trap decks and, or monster-mash (competes with Sekka's light). Still seems pretty strong though.