My Biggest Problem With Tengu Format (#1) 

There's a 0.2% risk you draw 3 Reborn Tengu so yeah, god forbid drawing that or using it as an example when making your case of "you have to draw well for your deck to work". Also, how is drawing two Tour Guide bad? You have two super strong summons to put pressure on the board. Especially since Tour Guide often gets countered by Veiler or Warning so having a backup is very good.

Luckily there is warning. I prefer it over oppression

@@TenguFormatItalia True, but it's not like every deck can run oppression, whereas Warning is pretty much main decked 99% of the time.

@@mulesa101 I always prefer solemn it can negate only one time. Oppression is not only one time

@@TenguFormatItalia sure, but solemn is a counter trap. not doing much to counter that unless you have a solemn. whereas oppression you can deal with mst or dust.

Yeah I agree with this. This type of gameplay flow is what I was trying to describe when I discussed using smaller plays to bait bigger plays before using your best plays, which is why currently I prefer to play Edison. Getting blown out by brain and dad does feel bad, and something I forgot to mention is that I think the tengu blow outs like reborn + dark hole are a much better combination than just brain control. Brain control is definitely more powerful in stealing/reversaling games than reborn or dark hole imo.

Yeah absolutely. I didn't want it to seem like Tengu has no post-timing counterplay. It's just that the number of cards in a deck is finite which means if you include direct or pre-timing responses, then it trades off with post-timing counterplay because it's zero-sum. Since I prefer post-timing gameplay much more, it frustrates me when I have inactive cards and an inability to answer a board. This doesn't always happen of course, but it happens more often when you have to include hand traps, and warnings and thunder king. For the second point, I'm afraid I don't really understand it. Could you please clarify it for me? Regarding the third point, I think I disagree with using timing as a reference for format enjoyment. I have played every format between 2002-2014, and 2022-Current, and I think even when viewing current formats, people in general want there to be post-timing counterplay. And current is largely dictated by direct or pre-timing counterplay. For sure I don't think that having pre-timing or direct-timing cards makes a format bad. Tengu has a greater focus on pre and direct-timing compared to the formats before it, but I still enjoy Tengu far more than most of the formats before it (but that's mostly due to broken win conditions for older formats). The worst current formats in terms of playability are often the ones with very little post-timing counterplay. In my experience, most people have told me they don't really want to play against the go-first-win decks like Drytron or Superheavy where you just have to have Droll or Maxx C or lose. I've also personally agreed with this as I feel when viewing my favorite formats of all time (Edison, Tear, HAT) they tend to have post-timing counterplay. So even if pre and direct-timing don't make a format bad, I do think it's a good reference to use post-timing counterplay as a prerequisite to predict how much you will enjoy a format. It's been a good reference for me after I made the realization about counterplay timing.

The counterplay timing theory really helped me realize why I've been enjoying other games like Shadowverse Evolve as much as I enjoy Edison and why modern Yugioh is completely intolerable for me now. Answering threats on your own initiative just feels better than having to always have the answer at point of resolution. It's also not nearly as soul crushing when your threats are outed on the opponent's turn since there's a baseline expectation of the player with priority being able to make gameplay progress.

exactly! Everyone remove maxx c from your 55!

Okay, hold up. I didn't say anyone should cut maxx c lol. I just said it's not a card you main 3 copies like people who don't play tengu think.

Yeah absolutely. +1s and -1s and trading for sure matters in Tengu and I didn't want it to seem like it doesn't. I just wanted to say that a lot of games have cards that suffer from inactivity which means that you end up winning or losing much harder than you should be based on number of actual cards held.

Let's not kid ourselves and detract from the fact that Tengu also has its own toolbox cards that are splashed into almost every meta relevant deck. Literally Tour Guide + Tengu package or just the obscene amount of 3x Thunder King Rai-Oh as well.

Why ?

I may not have explained myself super well, but 3 MSTs is not a reason that Decree is not a problem. Often times when a deck is boarding decree, they either board out of backrow, or started with minimal backrow in the first place making decree some of the only targets for MST. I personally do not think it is good gameplay to side 3 MSTs or leave 3 MSTs in your deck exclusively to hit one Decree just so you don't lose and this gameplay shows itself most often in T.G. games postboard. T.G. Does not have efficient ways to answer decree with engine. Maybe they can try and get to Wonder Magician as fast as possible, but your opponent can also streamline all of their defense to answer the Wonder Magician since it's the only engine out. This makes T.G. side MST just to out Decree which just leads to drawing the out gameplay, and I really do not enjoy that type of gameplay. Regarding blowouts, it would only work if the blowout were the more likely probability. This is because I agree that your opponent is more likely to have MST, which means that playing conservatively is often not the best play because you will lose your defense to MST and get destroyed by a tempo push. But this means that you are essentially forced into playing into heavy and then making them have it. I have never enjoyed making them have it gameplay because it leads to higher variance in games by conceding if they actually have the blowout. I don't really understand how MST being at 1 would make this issue worse.

@@SunnyYGO I get this Decree take completely. I play Nekroz in retro and I know my friends playing any trap deck hate siding in MST just for my Royal Decree, but they have to or I turn off 1/3rd of their deck. But to be fair at the same time I kinda need something like Decree or Denko to not lose to trap decks, if they flip Mistake thats a floodgate to me, but at the end of the day one player is gonna have it rough. A lot of the side deck in Yugioh allows one player to play the game at the expense of the other player having zero fun, and I feel its been like that for most of Yugiohs history.

@@SunnyYGO I didn't mean to say Decree is not a problem because of 3 MST. But how is it not much more of a problem with 1 MST? You can't use Dust tornado to get rid of Decree so then you have to use Twister (literally unusable if opponent doesn't have Decree compared to MST that can also be used in EP on MST, Book etc.) You can use effect monsters but the opponent can Veiler those and then you can't get rid of the Decree. It's illogical to both complain about Decree AND 3 MST in my mind, 3 MST counters Decree better than 1 MST. If the problem is that you get destroyed by a tempo push that's the real problem you have, not 1 or 3 MST + Heavy. You can still "get destroyed" by a MST punish or a Heavy punish in Edison, it's just more random and harder to predict since it's a 50/50 there. Also what kind of defence against Wonder Magician are you envisioning when people side in Decree? You don't really want to keep Veiler against T.G. in g2, g3 so that exact scenario you're describing sounds weird. Heroes have Spark, T.Gs have synchros and GK have Descendant to deal with Decree but they side MST too because it sucks not being able to deal with the card. Either way, I just don't see how Decree is a Tengu format problem.

​@@JankYGOforgot Veiler was Edison legal

​@@JankYGO I said in my video that I think decree is a problem in Edison as well. But in my opinion, decree is more problematic in Tengu than Edison for two main reasons: 1) In-Engine Removal 2) Format Speed & The Meta Decks 1) The meta decks of Edison play more natural outs to random floodgates like decree. I agree that no one plays dust tornado and twister to stop decree, but that's because you don't have to play those cards to kill decree at all. Part of why floodgates are so weak in general in Edison is because Edison is a very low power format, which incentivizes playing generic spot removal. It is a requirement for a deck in Edison to function to main deck generic spot removal which is why so many decks play cards like Ryko or Caius. And it's not just those cards. Lyla, Celestia, Spark, Breaker, etc. All decks will play non trap removal because backrow is so prevalent in the format which naturally counters floodgates by collateral damage. Effect veiler is not a legal card in Edison so it doesn't stop those monster effects, but even if it were, it wouldn't matter for reason 2. 2) The actual meta of Tengu has every single deck boarding multiple decrees while playing minimal traps except the actual trap decks like Hero or T.G. or GK. This is because the meta decks and power level of Tengu is higher meaning it's faster and thus they can abuse a push more effectively than an Edison deck. If you look at the Edison meta, there are no decks that can board decree or attempt to board decree except for LS builds, Dragon Turbo, and Fairy. There have been experiments before with Decree in Diva Hero or Blackwing, but have fallen out of favor because it ends up being an inconsistent strategy. The reason is because there's too many in-engine out every deck has to floodgates, and decks outside of LS builds and Dragon Turbo typically struggle to abuse the window the decree is active. Is there a chance the Edison community is building wrong and all of the top decks should play decree? Maybe, but I think it's more likely that decree just isn't the best strategy to deal with the Edison meta and that's due to the high amount of spot removal and low power. At the very least, it's clearly a substantially smaller percentage of the Edison format meta than Tengu format. Regarding comment 2, the tempo push problem I described matters more in Tengu again for 1) Counterplay Timing and 2) Format Speed. If a tempo push actually occurs in Edison, it's often not a very high power push, which means it's very easy to stabilize with backrow or spot removal. I feel like the other stuff I said in the last comment about 3 MST being worse still applies also. Because the card at 3 is MST, it means that you are deincentivized to set 1 ever because it is more likely to be MST than Heavy. This just means the risk assessment is skewed in favor of playing into heavy. Even if we ignore format power and speed, just because something is predictable, does not make it better. Even if you know there is a chance of getting blown out by 3 MST, that doesn't mean it would be better than not having the MST blowout 2/3 times, just as it wouldn't be better in my opinion for there to be 3 Decrees legal as opposed to 2, or even better 0. Regarding wonder magician, the scenario I described doesn't happen post board. I just haven't seen many replays where wonder magician is successfully summoned so I thought that defense like veiler would be a problem even though it's obviously boarded out. You're right about that, I completely agree. But T.G. still clearly struggles with Decree because it's easy to die while you find access to wonder magician since you need two T.G.s to even start to search the pieces to make the wonder magician.