Can Yu-Gi-Oh! Use Keywords Like Magic the Gathering? - A Conversation on Card Text | Game Design 

I am amazed by YuGiOh's ability to do nearly the exact opposite of every other card game and still be somewhat functional with a fat playerbase.

And the thing is, the handheld YuGiOh games DO THIS. YGO: Legacy of the Duelist for the Switch and the last DS game, HAVE search functions FOR these card effects. You can pull up a drop-down menu with icons and CHOOSE these effects. Indestructible, for example, has an icon of Marshmallon, the iconic monster for the indestructable battle effect. Parshath's ability, in that drop-down, is just called 'piercing'. It's an actual categorized ability and keyword that's applied TO the card, without being explicitly ON the card as you're suggesting. (This is me saying I agree these could just be added to the cards for easy referencing.)

I've become all to familiar with "missing the timing" as I'm an Ancient Gear player. A key card of the deck, Geartown, has strong effect that summons any archetypal monster from anywhere, but the card says "when" so it can miss timing in a lot of situations. The newer Ancient Gear cards are worded in a specific way so that they don't cause it to miss timing.

I used to dislike keywords. The way I saw it before: they become pointless since you would have to print Reminder Text on them, otherwise you would have to look them up which complicates the game. Also, the older a game becomes, the more keywords are added, and the harder it becomes to remember each one (such as MtG, which intimidated me with its long list of them). I've since changed my mind on them, realizing that only a handful of MtG's keywords are "evergreen" and always stay in rotation. Reminder text is good for learning, and simpler cards with reminder text are a good teaching tool to help remember. I've always thought of "piercing", "banish", and "excavate" as Yugioh's only "true" keywords (there's room for argument with "unaffected"). They simplify a game action or a broadly applicable card effect into a single unusual but evocative word, the word choice emphasizes/indicates how the effect works, and Yugioh gracefully incorporates them into full sentences to maintain the structure of their card effects. Heck, in the case of excavate, they even made Adamancipators, an archetype of miners that "excavate" Rock monsters to summon them! The existence of the "excavate" keyword absolutely reinforced the theming of it, and with how amazingly varied Yugioh's modern archetype aesthetics can be, I'd love to see it be able to do more unique things like that!

Mill was player slang and then became a keyword. Also Reborn sounds like a good keyword for that mechanic.

Yu-Gi-Oh wants to avoid "geekspeak" then goes and uses a ton of them like "quick-effect" "link" "counter trap (vs regular)", and so on. Like they're easy terms to get a hold of but "geekspeak" none the less.

I'd say Tuner's functionally a keyword, and Spirit/Union look very close to ones. Seemed like they were trying to experiment w/ keywords, and design space a common ability provides, early on w/o utilizing text saving. Archetypes were also a possible answer for Konami's need for keywords. From Dark Worlds/Glad Beasts to Tri-Brigade, archetypes are often held together by shared lines of text. Hell, while this might add more text, if they used Ability Words (text w/o no rules but implies a shared feature) that'd also make it easier to read.

10:15 "YuGiOh is a game designed to be played by everyone..." 👀

PSCT is a closer way to make card easier to understand, but I don't think Konami will use keyword along side it (they would probably just shorten the card text in other way) Still having keyword would make the card easier to read and lesser wall of text on card.

I honestly see Konami slowly adding keywords. (Quick Effect) has replaced "during either player's turn" for example. It won't be the same as MTG but it'll be a similar idea.

Hello there, Yugioh Guy here (obviously) and I'd like to say that this video is the STRONGEST argument in favour of keywording in Yugioh I've ever heard. Our community tends to be very un-receptive to outside criticism of the game's design, mostly because these types of suggestions always seem to feel like they're coming from a place of acting with superiority or smugness or what have you. This video really does lay things out very nicely in a way that is very in line with existing community mentalities and slang, which I think is far more convincing than any other attempt I've heard. A problem a lot of people run into criticizing Yugioh is that they fail to take into account what Yugioh IS and what it's playerbase enjoys or wants. Too often it feels like the criticisms can boil down to "but it would be so much BETTER if it was like Magic/Pokemon/Duel Masters/Vanguard/Ect instead!" and so on and so forth, which I think always rubs the wrong way. If yugioh fans wanted magic, we'd be playing magic. I think keywords integrated with PSCT would be pretty easy because most players have their own slang for it anyway, which you outlined, and I think if more people framed the suggestions in this way (conducive to how yugioh already IS rather than trying to fit a square peg in a round hole by making it change what it is fundamentally) I think more people would be receptive to it. Great video.

Properly naming the simpler keywords helps with this. Basically anyone would be able to grok what "Flying" does, and First Strike is almost impossible to get wrong even if you know nothing about what it does (it strikes first. That's it). I like how Konami said they didn't want you to need a manual to decipher the cards, but then "if" and "when" work differently, and you need a manual to figure out the difference and why. (Honestly, I really don't like the idea of missing timing like this, and think Dupe Frog should just take effect before the summon that would cause it to miss finishes summoning) I also don't understand how Last Turn causes a draw there. Why can you play it without a monster of your own, and how does that not allow your opponent to summon a monster and win by default?

someone may have said this already but, MTG did the turning a fan term into a keyword when they made "MILL" a keyword for putting a card from top of library into graveyard. the fan term was derived from the card "millstone"

Honestly this is a much better video/anything on keywords in yugioh is a lot better than a lot I’ve seen I think keywords would be helpful in the long term but would be very difficult to implement without updating the card text of nearly every card (at least in the database). The official reasoning for no keywords aren’t great but I can understand the idea behind them. PSCT was a great way to update things but they also don’t update card text in the database across the board as card text advances

A lot of yugioh card text nowadays is on restrictions, which also is one of the easiest part to trip up on. Sadly their complexity and nuance will often make it impossible to keyword them well. Some things you could probably technically keyword like being locked into a specific attribute... and then you go into detail about for which summon types that restriction applies, then whether that restriction must have been met the whole turn or only after the effect applies... or maybe whether or not the restriction still applies when the effect gets negated. It's a mess to not have keywords, but I guess at least they can experiment with stuff that can't realistically be keyworded?

I always considered yugioh card text to be a way to trick people into comprehensive reading “You fools, you may think you have escaped school, but now you must do your reading lesson! Tell me the difference between a semicolon and a comma! Mwahahahahaha!”

Another thing that MTG does is use reminder text on simpler cards (that are more likely to be played by newer players) that explains what the keyword does. Most players have probably learned what most keywords do from cards with reminder text rather than googling them. Also I think its funny that Yu-Gi-Oh are concerned that cards with keywords would be confusing for new players. Current Yu-Gi-Oh cards look like scientific documents and it takes a really long time to read each card and then work out what it does which I think would be much more off putting than "search" or whatever. Of all of the TCGs I don't play, Yu-Gi-Oh is the only one where I genuinely don't understand what most of the cards do. I can understand all of the words on the card just fine but putting it together into the concept of what the card actually does is really difficult.

On the subject of the complexity of yugioh, what are your thoughts on the 'pacing' or 'speed' of the modern era of the game? A lot of new players I find drop the game rather quickly after being overwhelmed by the number of actions (+complexity of individual cards) the first turn player takes to setup their board.

you should've compared Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon to Raidraptor Ultimate Falcon, as they have seemingly the same kind of protection. except Ultimate Falcon is described as *unaffected* with no regards to targeting, letting it have better protection than Hexproof, since Hexproof isn't immune against field nukes

The problem with keywords is that it increases the barrier to entry, a card saying hexproof instead of this card cannot be targeted by your opponents effects make for easier reading for those used to the system, it just adds another layer of things you need to memorize to the game which makes the game harder to get into for new players. I don't play magic often but every time I do I always have to lookup what each keyword does even though I know how to play the game. That being said I personally prefer if games do have keywords, but I can see why konami would be against them

Great video as always! I think there’s some truth to what Konami says about keywords being kind of technical in a way that might be offputting to new players, but also I think konami is being a bit hypocritical being critical of keywords as a concept when Yugioh cards are basically infamous for being complicated and inconsistent when it comes to card effects. I mean, just in general, yugioh is a game that favors deep technical understanding of mechanics and card text over being easy to learn for a beginner, so they basically failed if that was their goal in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, I love Yugioh, but it’s a complicated mess of a card game haha. Also, I think Konami underestimated how powerful keywords can be because the best thing about a keyword, I think, is not that it shortens an effect, but just that it gives an effect a name. For instance, I remember what Trample does in mtg despite only hearing about the effect once and never playing the game myself, because the name is memorable and the way it relates to the effect makes sense as well. It’s especially helpful with card effects that are a bit wordy to explain but are simple in concept, because then all the player has to remember is the simple effect tied to the name and not the specific wording of the effect necessarily. All that said, I’ve found that it is a lot easier to design cards using keywords as a tool rather than just writing unique effects for each card. Like, I can just look at my list of keywords and think about what combinations don’t exist yet as a card or what keywords would be appropriate for a new card thematically.

The problem comes in the terms of weird text, like sure most cards can't be targeted or whatnot, but there's literally a card in the game that says "This Link Summoned card is unaffected by your opponent's activated effects, unless they target this card". So that's a specific type of hexproof that has a hole in it's protection and requires a specific type of Summon, what sort of keyword would we use for that specific instance?

Awesome video! I was having a discussion with a buddy of mine about this very topic, and one thing that came up in our conversations then was not only the use of keywords to shorten text and simplify rules, but the idea of reworking card borders to open up more space as well. MTG, to take the oft-cited example, has both physically larger cards and a larger space on the card proportionally for it's rules text. In times past this was different, but the borders of the game have evolved over time, while maintaining their core identity. You show an example of an alternative frame for a yuigioh card that appears to accomplish the goal of having a larger rules text space, but do you think that Konami might ever change the borders of the mainline card releases?

The funny thing is, that players use their own keywords anyway. Everyone says "search" instead of "adding a card from the deck to the hand". Every player says "hand trap" instead of "a quick-effect that activates in the hand" or "an at least spell speed 2 effect that activates in the hand". Actually YGO kinda has many keywords already. It's probably just because the cards still have sooo much text on them, that everyones first reaction is: "Needs keywords!" LOL. But it is supposed to be a "game for lawyers" where one little different word somewhere mid-sentence changes everything.

Also if I remember correctly, piercing was a word created by the players way before Konami officially adopted it. I played at shops around 2009 onward and that's when I first heard it.

A similar argument could be made in which the "Mill" keyword existed before it actually existed. Sphinxes Tutelage, Consuming Abberition, or even Millstone were wordy in the fact they read as "Target player takes (number) cards from the top of their library and puts them into their graveyard" or in the i stance of Abberition which reads roughly "When Consuming Abberition deals combat damage to a player, that player puts the top car of their library into their graveyard untill three land cards are put into the graveyard this way" Now, nobody wants to say all of that so the players simply dubbed the mechanic "Mill' after the aforementioned Millstone, and would simply say "Sphinxes Tutelage triggers, mill a card" or "Abberition triggers, mill for three lands, or whatever Of course, yes it is a keyword now but look at how old Millstone is and then look at what year the first "Mill" Keyword was actually used. So, yes. Yu-Gi-Oh easily can and should incorporate keywords. At least the "search" and "recover" ones for sure, even piercing is reasonable. Thats just me though

last turn is very clearly worded to explain a simple mechanic difficult to engineer within the rules of the game. You and your opponent have a duel between just two creatures, whichever wins wins the game. Yours has to be already played, your opponents has to be a special summon cost 1 in his deck.

For Suprex and Dupe Frog you could also keyword "sent from the field to the graveyard", as Magic does with the term "die". So Dupe Frog would just be "When this card dies you may search or recover one frog monster." If you really want to get creative you could find a way to keyword cards that are treated as though they have the names of other cards. If, for example, you could add a card's "true name" to its type line, you could take out a lot of extra text.

As someone who plays Duel Masters (Japanese Magic the Gathering Spin-off) in Japanese, I can say that Keywords are a major reason I am able to play the game. Also Yugioh does have keywords like Gemini, Toon and Union, But all of these cards have the full reminder text on the card as well, Making the keyword absolutely useless for shortening text. (Granted they've changed the Toon tag so much there's only 1 ability left that's actually shared by all Toon cards, But there used to be a lot of rules they shared.)

Master rule 6 could do this and other things instead of introducing a new summoning mechanism.

Shortening graveyard to GY is something they should do with other common words/phrases. Like "once per turn" to OPT

I think the biggest keyword that the game needs is regarding once per turn effects. I think leaving the old once per turn effects that are colloquially known as soft once per turn is fine, but a keyword for hard once per turns would save a lot of space on a lot of cards, but idk what keyword would make sense for it, and how to adapt it for twice or thrice per turn, or distinguishing between each effect once or only one effect only once per turn.

More so than keywords, I feel like we need a change in formatting. Having the cards list their effects with bulletpoints like in the OCG could go a long way to help read the cards easier, instead of having to skim through all the “fluff” text. Once you’ve read enough ygo cards you realize that the main things to look for in a card are: summoning restrictions, timing of the effect, if it’s hard once per turn (you can only use this card’s name once per turn) and weather it locks you into anything. Konami has already streamlined the timing of the effect part when they changed “during either players turn” into “quick effect”, if they did the same for hopt writing it would go a long way.

Yu-Gi-Oh! even has some keywords: Flip and Tribute! That said, the one is needs more than any is Nomi: this monster cannot be normal summoned or set.

Keywords will also make the yugioh cards less intimidating for new players due to less text

When my friend and I started playing YGO, we actually had to look up what 'Excavate' meant on Pot of Duality because we 1. Thought YGO didnt use keywords and 2. They could have just used 'Draw' like they usually do, which completely went against their reasoning for using keywords in the first place. It's so crazy that they stubbornly refuse to use keywords when one of the biggest barriers most people have with YGO is the wall of texts. They dont even label the abilities like the OCG does.

Another way to shorten the text is to abbreviate some of the stuff like how Graveyard > GY Main Phase - MP and MP1/MP2 Battle Phase - BP And it's not like that unusual for them to do because a lot of the older yugioh game have done that

Have you considered making a discord server? I think it might be a good way of keeping the community of the channel engaged, especially in the time between video releases. Amazing video as always.

while the whole piercing phase can be shorten due to how common it is there is actually a reason why they still write it out fully, what happens if you were to attack a monster that either has an effect or is under an effect that prevents the player from taking dmg (e.g a fairy type monster while sanctuary in the sky is active on field), would the piercing imply it goes through such an effect or not or what if in the same scenario the monster being atked is also in atk position, the answer may seem simple as in to just clarify how this effect applies in every situation as a ruling but unless its tournament most people would probably just try to interpret the interaction between such effects in an obvious manner in this case having effects written out on the card fully gives a more clear and concise basis for interpretation and eliminates a lot of the uncertainty on the spot

I think one thing missing from the section about why Yu-Gi-Oh doesn't use keywords is that Yu-Gi-Oh is driven by Konami in Japan. It is the Japanese game designers who decide how cards work, while Konami Europe and America have to localize the cards to communicate those same effects to players. The PSCT article that mentioned not wanting to use keywords was written by someone from the English localization team. The real reason that the TCG localization team don't want to implement MtG-style keywords is because the Japanese side doesn't use them. All of the arguments for implementing keywords could just as easily be pitched at the Japanese designers-but it is the Japanese designers who would need to implement keywords, as otherwise it would likely cause a large number of inconsistencies between the English text and how the cards work in Japanese. The big problem with implementing keywords without the support of the Japanese side is the very literal meanings of the existing game terms. For example, "Tribute" sends a card to the Graveyard, but a card is still considered Tributed if is banished instead by a card like "Macro Cosmos". Conversely, if a card has a cost that requires a card to be "sent to the Graveyard", that cost cannot be paid if the card would be banished instead. Likewise, if a card says "Send a card from your hand to the Graveyard, then do something else", you can only do the second part of the effect if the card actually went to the Graveyard (if it is banished instead, you don't get to perform the "something else"); conversely, if a card says "Discard a card, then do something else", you do get to do the second part of the effect even if the discarded card is banished, because it is still considered "discarded". This could be a big deal for a term like the proposed "Bury" (sending from the Deck to the Graveyard)-if "Bury" appeared in a cost, it would lose the fact that the card must actually go to the Graveyard in order to pay the cost. Similarly, if an effect says "Bury 1 card, then do something else", you would implicitly be able to do the second part of the effect even if the sent card is banished. Theoretically you could still use "Bury" in limited circumstances where these kinds of issues don't occur, or rule that "Bury" is a keyword rather than an action word ("Tribute", "discard", etc.) and so works differently, but neither option is ideal. This would not be an issue if implemented on the Japanese side at the same time (as they get to decide how cards work), but without them on-board it would only cause further problems like the ones I mentioned. I think it would be much less of a concern for proposed keywords for Continuous Effects though, such as "indestructible" or the abbreviated "piercing".

There's only some real keywords in YGO to save text space. 1)"Remove from play" = Banish 2) "Graveyard" = GY 3) "During either player's turn" = (Quick Effect) 4) [Look at Airknight Parshath's original debut text , not its newest erratas] = inflict piercing damage.

You're videos are very good, very underrated channel

one easy thing to avoid confusion about key words is to include the explanation of those keywords on cards that only have one. for example if all a monster does is piercing damage you can explain what piercing means and then any player who has seen that card knows what it does when they find one that just says "piercing"

Took Konami about 10 years to print a version of Waboku that didn't imply your creature's toughness stat was alright, and it took "Hallowed Life Barrier" another decade to be written in a way that hinted at it covering battle destruction rather than just damage protection. Also their latest Legendary Collection only updated text of legacy cards that had already gotten updated by other products across the years. Random stuff like the Orca Megafortress of Darkness from IOC doesn't even have PSCT and is written just like it was back in 2004, but in 2023. ..... I don't have a lot of expectations for Konami making quality of life improvements based on these things, but I'd love to get keywords. They instead do stuff like "excavate" which replaces "reveal" but only for deck-interacting effects and just makes text longer.

I'd argue that basic things like 'draw' or 'discard' or 'destroy' are also keywords since they hide rules text as well. And the introduction of the term 'piercing damage' is an actual keyword

The whole missing timing thing is a discussion worth having in the first place. Why is it even in the game? Its so bizarre and easy to reolve just publish an article saying ((No card misses timing anymore)) it would even be a buff to certain old cards.

Yugioh has no rotation (which I love). Do you think this would make it even more complicated as time goes by. I also feel like while alot of card effects are similar many of the slightly differ to add character to the cards

A couple Keywords that thought of: -Allied: Cards you control. Example: Tribute 1 Allied Archtype Monster; Add 1 Archtype Card from your deck to your hand -Opposing: Cards your Opponent Controls. Example: Destroy 1 Opposing Monster -Held: Card in your hand. Example: Discard 1 Held Archetype Monster; then Draw 2 cards

Hi there! I'm developing a very unique card game that might be a topic of interest to you! Pls let me know if interested for more infomation!

Yugioh could totally get the keywords you suggested, especially since excavate and quick effect are already keyworded in the exact same way

we have Piercing, and a dozen ways to say "unaffected by effects"

I think that yugioh used to haves it fair share of keywords. Polymerization used to be "Fuses 2 or more Fusion-Material Monsters to form a new Fusion Monster." That are a keyword but they removed it, now it is "Fusion Summon 1 Fusion Monster from your Extra Deck, using monsters from your hand or field as Fusion Material." Also they haves the keyword Excavate that is a shortening for "Reveals the top x cards of the deck" and Piercing for "if the monster attacks a Defense Position monster whose DEF is lower than the equipped monster's ATK, inflict the difference as Battle Damage to your opponent"

I think a mix of Key Words and PSCT would be great. I'm working on a TCG for fun, and I've noticed that since my goal is to have less words as possible, Key Words has helped, but effects for things like removal and stat boosting that don't really spread to other cards, PSCT that's tighter on the word count feels like the best for those kinds of effects. I do come from Yugioh being my most prominent TCG, so I can learn from them & improve on what PSCT can be.

I don't really like the idea of keywords in yugioh Makes a lot of the cards feel more unique in how they work than just being standardized samey effects Like for example Infernity Archfiend, Aleister the Invoker, Elemental HERO Stratos and Satellarknight Deneb all have effects to search when summoned, but all have scenarios where they can trigger and can not trigger. If key words were a thing, they would likely all just be the same keyword which would make it more boring

Just got roped into YuGiOh from MTG, this video is a way better stated version of what i was trying to tell em. I was ready to learn a whole lot of terms, rather than read fine print for 5 hours. Luckily i had good friends and I knew it would be worth it but YEESh it took ages to play them correctly cause impatience.

I always thought Yugioh's 1000 essays cards are what deters me from playing it for too long as I have to keep up with each and every competitive viable card's text to be able to even play with anyone ( and not wasting their time in me reading each effects). I also have problems with memory issues and made me quit the game entirely. Having simpler or rather easy to guide to keywords would gave helped in my opinions since it helps me to find guides for it. But that's my take on it.

i personally never liked round about “thematic” card terms like “flying”. I think it provides way too specific of a contextual idea of what it means in the fantasy rather than structly refering to its practical effect in game. however, more broad, effect facing terms like “pierce” I dont mind since they describe WHAT game mechanic is going on, rather then providing a specific fantastical interpretation. Its the same sort of principle I prefer in rpg’s. sruff lime “hit point” and “attack” are mechanic facing enough to apply broadly regardless of setting, in space or a fantasy kingdom, but a word like “bash” is too specific and context facing for it to be broadly fitting. and one other thing. I think keywards farget an odd denomination of players. a newb probably wouldnt know them all and a pro probably knows them off hand anyways. while yugioh’s method may be slower, being deliberate, even if not experienced, will allow you to understand a card flat out. so i kinda agree with their “geek speak” point.

I disagree that keywords make a game beginner friendly. Now yugioh isnt, but all it’s likely to do is make someone read a card if they see it has less text on it, but when they read it and understand nothing it’s still not gonna entice them. Talking about effects like search is super easy and that’s maybe the only thing you said i think should be implemented, but these cards just do so many things. It’s the having 3 effects per card that makes it impenetrable not how long it takes to say them. It’s easy to take something like parshath and Knock a couple words off that one effect, but how do you intend to shorten even just the rest of suprex, or take something like borrelload savage dragon where negation can’t be keyworded cause of how differently targeted negation, negate and destroys, aoe negates ect. work differently and equipping a link from grave and gaining counters baser on it’s link rating is an effect not seen anywhere else. Yugioh is a complicated game cause cards do so much so differently. The real best way to simplify them isnt in the effects but the conditions and formatting. Have each independent effect on a new line, with an icon to show if it’s continuous, quick effect, trigger, trigger that misses timing ect like the icons for different types of spells, and write it something like condition | cost | effect so that it’s very obvious what part is what. So for example gouki suprex would be normal summon: special summon one gouki monster from your hand. sent from the field to the GY, you can only use this effect of gouki suprex once per turn: add one gouki monster from deck to hand except gouki suprex Or air knight parshath would be: this card inflicts peircing battle damage this card inflicts battle damage to the opponent: draw 1 card. It actually keeps the wide variety of different effects just the same but make it much clearer how you use those effects and makes it easier to scan cards to pick out specific effects.

I think the biggest missed point in the video is the design philosophy of Konami. I agree with cutting down the "geek speak," as not even MTG or Digimon can get away with not printing reminder text on an absolute TON of cards, mostly to get the point across off of one pack/deck opening, that certain cards are designed to simply tell you what it does fundamentally while the quality of said card suffers in the long run. I can sympathize with cutting down on keywords and keeping the text in a sort of conversational tone because keywords themselves can get daunting. Ben Brode spoke about this during development of Hearthstone. They deliberately cut down on keywords for almost his entire tenure and just kept effects short and sweet, keeping keywords unique to certain cards. That way, they didn't need to make a ton of cards with the sole purpose of having reminder text for a new mechanic. This entire video feels like it's has too much gamer brain going on, because while some keywords help, not everyone will get it on the first go and players who put the game down must now catch up with an entire dictionary of one-word mechanics that need to be either researched online, or shown to you on a card.

We are way too late for keywords and yugioh is a rulings nightmare through and through where you will find 2 cards that interact 1 way and 2 other similarly worded cards that do the opposite and you just have to be familiar with the interaction to know how it works.

The lack of keywords is a big reason why ive never tried yu gi oh. I dont want to have to read an essay every time someone plays a card. In Magic, someone could play a card i've never seen before, and i could fully understand what it does within a matter of seconds thanks to keywords.

Yaaay hes back

I... I kinda like their explanation. I never realized it, but I actually do enjoy the layman's explanations on their cards.

Keywords make it easier to understand cards at a glance. Sure you might have to learn what “trample” or “hexproof” means, but once you do you instantly know what a card means when you see the word trample or hexproof. Without the shortened keyword text I have to learn what a card does by sitting and reading it. I’m not very knowledgeable when it comes to knowing what yugioh cards do from memory. I have to read the text box, and often times that takes a huge chunk of time from the duel where neither player gets to do anything just so I can understand if or how I might be able to respond. If the text were shortened it would save time reading a new card. When I play magic and new cards are played, I only have to read the card for a few seconds and everything I see has implied rules. Take Atraxa, Praetor’s Voice from Mtg for example. The text box reads exactly: Flying Vigilance, Deathtouch, Lifelink. At the beginning of your end step, Proliferate.” That’s 4 words and 1 sentence that also has a keyword. It took 2 seconds to understand what this card does but the expanded text is: “This creature can only be blocked by creatures with flying or reach. This creature doesn’t tap when attacking. Any amount of damage this deals to a creature is enough to destroy it. Damage dealt by this creature also causes you to gain that much life. At the beginning of your end step, choose any number of permanents and/or players, then give each another counter for each kind already there.” That looks like a yugioh card text box… but it really only does 5 things. Reading a keyword immediately tells me the expanded text after reading just 1 word, or if I’m looking for the effect I can skim through the text box until I see the keyword. If a magic card can’t be targeted it would say “hexproof” somewhere on the card. If a yugioh card would have the same property, I have to find the whole sentence because just the word “can’t” or “target” could be used for a number of other situations…

Magic took the fan used keyword of mill and made it an official keyword in core set 2021. This comes from the card millstone which does that effect. Mill is when you take the top x cards from your deck (or make youre opponent do it) and put them into the graveyard where x is the number indicated by the spell or ability causing the effect

As another example of Yugioh's ridiculous card texts, I am still to this day baffled that they write so much text on the Toon monsters. The fact that they all don't behave the same makes things even worse! If Konami was never interested in keywords, they could have put some restrictions on the Toon monsters (e.g. this card cannot attack the turn it is summoned) and then on Toon World put all the extra effects (e.g. Toon monsters you control cannot be targeted by battle unless the attacking monster is a Toon monsters). This archetype doesn't function without Toon World so it just doesn't make sense to put all the text on all of the cards. Extract the common effects to another card where possible

Some keywords that could be useful in YGO : • Rank-up • HOPT • Quick Synchro/Xyz/Link These would replace pretty long sentences. Stuff like "Untargetable" doesn't bring much to the table.

While I agree with the general idea that Yu-Gi-Oh should use keywords, The example of dupefrog and goukis actually shows the complexity of it even more than you showcased. Dupe Frog can also return a frog from field to hand, so even "search" and "recover" would not be enough to cover everything the effect does, and I don't know if returning a monster/card from field to hand would be prevalent enough to be keyworded. Perhaps you could use "compulse", but then you would still need to specify that you can only compulse a frog you control (and not from the opponent's side of the field).

Also look at Keyforge. It has keywords but also defines the term on the card

I never understood why Toon is a Sub-type but they don't all share some Toon effect like "Attack directly if opp doesn't control a Toon". The first batch of Toons could have a significant smaller box if they did.

I don't think they're trying to say keywords are too complicated, I think they're trying to say keywords don't fall into their marketing strategy. Games like MTG are arguably targeting their own fanbase. When they say "geekspeak" and "technical", they mean they are avoiding lingo that isn't understood outside of the fan base/established players. They want anyone to pick up the game and not need to ask "What does this term mean?" or "Can you explain what this does. I'm just a little confused." They want players of a wide age range to be able to read the card and it have all the information they need, including brand-new players.

Your channel is sooooo damn gud bro

awesome video! simplify yugioh lol

Onmy found 2 decks that work similar. Reanimator in mtg chaos control in ygo Second deck is mine burn in yugioh and lantern control

YGO needs a draft format that limits cards to the last 3 or 4 sets with their own ban lists. It'll guarantee the longevity of the game, the competitive scene and the casual scenes will both improve. It'll also open up room for reprints and older archtypes to come back with slightly different mechanics and support leading to a dynamic and interesting competitive and casual environments.

I was thinking how yugioh cards could be made more readable. What I thought was that it should have its effects in the form of functions with parameters. As a very simple example, the card text of pot of greed would become "Draw(2)" I think it makes a lot of sense considering that yugioh cards already have a lot of logic operators in them, so might aswell format it like a programming language which have good readability for such things.

Yugioh can have *some* keywords, "hard once per turn" could be a fucking symbol on the level of MtG's tap symbol given how prevalent and important it is. But it can't have nearly the same level of keywording as any other game. The lack of a resource system has forced the game to use the units' effects as the entire balance/design space. They need the higher level of granularity. Its the same reason impulse draw/rummage/looting hasn't been keyworded in MtG except its for almost every effect in the game.

I guess yugioh wants every effect to be unique to the cards that's is why boss monsters are so iconic like DPE, V.F.D, Access codetalker, etc

Before keywords I want better readability on the text box, for instance in the ocg they use numbers in a circle to differentiate between effect, why tcg doesn't do that? in the tcg I have to read all the card just to find the second effect, like come on... MTG nailed it with by having a line break between effect, like for example I don't need to read all of _Questing Beast_ text box to get onto its second or whatever effect, meanwhile I'm practically forced to read all the novel that is pen Endymion just to get to second effect🙄 that is soo annoying...

0:38 - gonna assume you mention it later. but yes it does. piercing for instance is a key word in yu-gi-oh! 6:56 - there we go

And now, months after the release of this video, Cross Duel got released and uses Keywords

Yugioh kinda has Keywords already with Quick effect, Flip and the different types of Spell and Trapcards like continuous, field or counter

I really think, that yugioh couldve been one of the best designed card games but safly what yugioh is now, is what we got

8:59 now suddenly we need a word for adding from GY, Banishment, or Face-up Extra Deck to hand. I never liked this idea of trying to reduce Adding from deck specifically to keyword, as it forces you to add a bunch of other keywords you'd then need to remember when you can just have for them all. Id rather "Add to hand" is changed to "Retrieve" and leave the specifics alone. "Retrieve X from your Deck", "Retrieve X your Deck or GY", and so on. 9:05 Bury should sending a card in general, not just from Deck. "Bury this card from your hand", "Bury all other cards from the field", and so on. Making it specifically replacing sending from deck is far too limiting. I feel like people want to fit too much into one keyword. There's middle ground between the needlessly long text we have, and the needlessly short text I see suggested.

It's hilarious and sad that this video is 2 years old and I still see people talk down to anyone that suggests Yu-Gi-Oh use Keywords. At a certain point Konami should just do it and stop listening to the people that will play no matter what

And if Yugioh were to add keywords, maybe they'll have enough room in their rule boxes to separate the abilities with a line break.

A card's function that uses a keyword may also, be represented with an icon. Alphanumeric text could be partially layed over the icon. This could be useful when the function being performed incorporates a mathematical forumla. It can be used to quickly recognize inputs and outputs necessary for the card mechanic.

Even key words, as simple and small as they seem, can also come off as way too complicated. For every DEATH TOUCH and INDESTRUCTIBLE, you have a VIGILANCE and SCRY. I had to look those up to understand them!

what're you talking about bro? yugioh has two keywords! FLIP and excavate!

yugioh could really use a reboot, a fresh start

In the past perhaps it could have been done but today it is impossible. Too many cards that would have to be reprinted. What they could do is distribute the text better to make it easier to read and not create new Endymions.

Yu-Gi-Oh isn't built around keywords, so adding them might be difficult, but nevertheless, I think it would be a good idea. I play master duel occasionally, but what takes me out of the game, is that each card has a paragraph of text. It is a pain in the ass to have to read all of it, it will be so much easier if you knew how cards worked at a quick glance, and I think it will make the game much more beginner-friendly.

Turning static abilities into the descriptor portion would cause a complete shift in the game. Effects like piercing and battle immunity are effects, not traits of a card. Hence, they interact with cards that interact with effects. Saying "Monster/Effect/Piercing" would mean that if your opponent activates something like Skill Drain that the piercing would not be removed, the same as how a Tuner with its effect negated is still a Tuner. Doing that with multiple static effects would be chaos.

Magic cards with key words: flying , haste . Yugioh cards if they keywords: piercing, mst, compulse, ashes opponents, does raigeki if not darkhole then it heavy storms your ass

You're half right about keywords. Yes they make things simpler and easier to understand, but only IF you know the keywords and what they do. Otherwise you're just stating at "trample" and thinking they just destroy any creature they attack. Keywords make games easier only if you understand the keywords

Play Magic more than one match, you can remember each single keyword and what they do. Like Trample. Deals the remaining damage, if any, to the player. Deathtouch, no matter the damage, the blocked/blocking creature is destroyed. Double Strike and First Strike is the same, they deal damage at the same time if blocking/blocked, but if Double Strike is attacking AND lives, it deals additional damage. The exact happen would happen with YGO. But they "wanted to write out effects like how folks speak" but that was the complete opposite. Who speaks in novel length? Thanks for hurting my eyes with that Relinquished...

"What can we do about confusing nonsense like the needlessly specific distinction of "If" or "When"? You do what I or any sane person does when trying to enjoy Yugioh and ignore that garbage.

One of the biggest things that keeps me away from magic is keywords, there is way to many keywords, I hate siting down seeing a bunch of keywords that I have no understanding of and have to either search them up mid game slowing the game down or just trust that my opponent both knows what they do/how they interact with everything and that they are telling me the truth. with little to no reminder text how would I know if certain keywords clash or negate other? I don't I have to look it up. But with yugioh (not my main card game, Im just a casual fan who enjoys anime style cards and decks) when I pick up a card I can see exact what the card does and how it interacts (for the most part) without needing to know 20 years worth of keywords. If yugioh started adding keywords now it would just make it more confusing as now new players would need to know all the keywords/geekspeak in addition to the yugioh rules. I understand why videos like this exist and I understand why the though of keywords would help, but at this point cards would need like several keywords mixed amongst their already long card text and with so many slight variations in wording it would be a mess.

Technically they've had Keywords. Tuner and Flip. Granted those are Types.

The When vs If missing timing is so un-intiuitive from a Design standpoint. There's no reason to make it that way. That's a thing they could do but won't.