The 10 Biggest Yu-Gi-Oh FAILS! 

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It’s called a quarter century rare because it will be worth a quarter for centuries.

Maybe that’s why we haven’t gotten a new summoning mechanic in Yugioh. Konami saw the people leave from pendulum era, and a close repeat of the link era, that they’re just now focusing on preexisting mechanics.

More context for the Dome event. This wasn't just any promo card. At the time, the OCG had been slowly releasing pieces of Exodia in multiple sets. And the final piece, was being sold in a booster pack that was confirmed to only be sold at this event, and you would not be able to obtain the cards in this pack outside of the event. I have no clue how they didn't see this going wrong.

As someone who doesn't have any card shops nearby, I hated the Lost Arts program. :/

I Think the biggest fail is how they are treating the video game scene, imagine if instead of us getting just recyle game after recycled game, we got a huge rpg with character customization adn a intersting story, i think most people would kill for that

The Lost Art Promotion was such a fail that they discontinued it. I'm surprised this wasn't brought up in the video since Konami hasn't announced anything for 2024.

i 100% agree with link/pendelum being on this list. I would even go as far as to add "generic syncro monsters" with it as well. Every deck runs the SAME extra deck. Borreload, Baron de Fleur, Accesscode talker etc..... There needs to be more extra deck monsters that are "archetype" specific.

I will never understand why Yugioh is still censoring the tiny amount of Dark Magician Girl cleavage but Digimon be having Angewoman fully stacked and extra thicc and both game’s target audience are the same age group.

Thank you for talking about Minerva! As a Lightsworn player from release to date, that period of time on TCG where I couldn’t play competitively anymore, PREMATURELY, cuz Konami made Minerva exclusive was… awful! Absolutely stupid. I couldn’t believe it.

For me the biggest fail in Yugioh was when Konami had the bright idea to force players to use the new link summoning mechanic otherwise you couldn't play your older decks or decks that relied on multiple extra deck summons. 🤦 Eventually they removed that master rule but it was dumb from the start. It made me hate links even more. Even with Konami's official tutorial video I was still confused as to how links were supposed to work. Eventually I learned it like pendulums but I still don't care for links. Pendulums might be annoying but I'd argue that links are even worse. Only certain older archetypes got specific archetype link monsters which was also annoying if you were playing older decks with that master rule because you'd have to use generic link monsters which weren't great in the beginning and were just wasting your resources.

Quarter Century rares being common makes sense, since the idea is to celebrate the game. You want people to be a part of it. If you wanna feel special, buy the $1000 Blue-Eyes.

Rush duel is one of their biggest failures too, but that’s because Konami is too afraid to bring it to the tcg except as an add on for duel links

A more recent one that would've been an interesting honorable mention I think would be the Stainless Steel God cards which is essentially just the Platinum Blue-Eyes and Dark Magician...again. Neat that they used the Manga art and names for these cards but I KINDA wish they just got printed as promo cards for a set instead.

I'm a longtime MTG fan who got priced out and started looking around. I always looked down on Yugioh, but I tried Duel Links and had a rough start but started having fun once I figured things out. But, I'm going to be honest, while I'm having fun on Duel Links, I'm not putting money into paper. Whenever my opponent puts down a link or a pendulum card, my eyes glaze over and I just alt tab while they finish their turn. You're absolutely right about Link and Pendulum being huge failures of this game. They're incomprehensible, in a game that already has a steep uphill climb for new players.

The censored artwork and Erratas for me >.>

I mean I consider remote duels a fail considering how easy it was to cheat on it.

One of the big fails is absolutely the management of the later Gallop anime series, in particular Arc-V. While there is a degree to which the production issues can be used as an excuse, Arc-V at the time of airing maxed out at I believe 15 of the lowest 20 rated anime episodes in all of Niconico's history, and like 8 of the bottom 10. It was a catastrophe - forward planning so poor that things in the anime openings never happened in the actual show, and the like. While Gallop was able to continue on to make Vrains, Vrains also was notoriously dull and it's honestly no surprise that the Yugioh anime switched studios entirely when Konami decided to pivot to Rush Duels. Yu-Gi-Oh was Gallop's bread and butter and they haven't seemed to do much after the flops of Arc-V and Vrains, which had a large amount of the burnout that contributed to the poor quality caused by Konami demanding Gallop simultaneously make DSoD even after Konami knew that having the same studio make a movie and a series seriously can hurt the quality of the TV series (5D's and Bonds Beyond Time). On that note, the launch of Rush Duel in the West. What launch? Exactly. While I don't think that Rush Duel would have done as well in the Western territories as it did in Japan, the actions taken to halfheartedly acknowledge its existence in the West doomed the spinoffs for failure over here. There was a pretty big card game boom in 2022 and that was when the Sevens dub was ready to release, on top of it being around the time a lot of people who were freshly interested in Yugioh due to Master Duel's release were falling out of Master Duel because it wasn't the game that they remembered. If there was ever a time to release Rush Duel in the West, it would have been then. Yugioh would be fresh in people's minds, on top of card games having traction, the new spinoff game is available (in this hypothetical it's in stores) and it's got the show releasing its dub at that exact moment. Konami either needed to determine that it wasn't suited to the market and just ignore anything Rush-related getting official releases in the West or go all-in on it at a good time which has passed. They did neither of those and went halfway.

18:50 specifically MR4, not just link monsters I think people perceived link monsters more favorably than pendulums, but hated the MR4 rules where you needed link zones to summon XYZs, synchros, and fusions

You'd know what an interesting duel would be: Kaiju vs. Machina (takes inspiration from Pacific rim)

Remember when they released all 6 Knightmare Links in the same pack, only to drip feed us for years on the Link 2 Charmers? I remember

1) OCG only cards, Holactie the Creator of Light & Magi Magi Magician Gal being the most infamous but there's lots more stuck in OCG promo land. 2) Erratas, Two words: Future Fusion

I spoke with my Local cards shop owner and I've been told that Lost Art cards are for 18+ costumers only and cannot be given to minors ... While normal sealed Products can be SOLD to children as well. It is Because of this Restriction that LART cards can be made and distribuited in the West. It's all a matter of Products' Age rating from what I understand...

Ok, I know, believe me, I KNOW this is not the point being addressed in the video, but I feel Paul's eyes just piercing into my soul whenever Alex is talking

Biggest fail is letting any Yu-Gi-Oh youtuber to pretend they get product early from Konami when its just vendors breaking street date

I love that y’all are running the yu-gi-oh! lofi beats for the background music!! 🥊🙏🏼🦂

I feel like one of the biggest fails is Ritual cards, which were cool in the early days, but got way out shadowed by everything else way to fast. They seem to at least have learned their lesson with adding new card types, and instead seem to be focusing on creating unique and interesting formats and expanding support for existing archetypes/summoning methods which is at least cool.

I ended up taking a break from Yugioh when Pendulums were released, for obvious reasons, and at least with Master Duel I was able to learn the basics of Link summoning, and while I don't hate Link monsters, I'm not the biggest fan either (at least Link summoning is easier to learn and has less words to read). I guess a fail I would consider is how extremely easy it is to summon extra deck monsters nowadays. I do feel like power creep is another problem, which also leads to failing to attract new players/bring back old ones, but it does lead to this point. Since the extra deck has some of the strongest monsters in the game, I feel there is a problem if you're consistently bringing out multiple copies on the 1st turn, and Link monsters don't really help that either. Like you normal summon any monster, and you already have access to an extra deck monster for combo enabling. I feel like synchros, xyz, and modern day fusions balance this out a lot since you need to sacrifice multiple specific resources to bring out a boss monster. Synchros and xyz monsters require at least 2 monsters while most fusions require that and a fusion spell card (I will say fusion summoning in the modern day is better and more convenient than it was in its introduction). Link monsters require at minimum 1 monster to start an extra deck combo, which just feels kind of wrong. That's just how I feel.

I find it funny that Konami tried to sell the Dark Magician plaque before the god cards. Like... how do yall screw up that much?

Man thank you guys for explaining pendulum monsters. I've been playing for a month and I had no idea what they were.

pendulums staying locked to link monster arrows is also a fail. when they moved the zones into the backrow, they could have just decided to rework the entire mechanic, instead they make it objectively worse and dependent on another type of extra deck monster. it should have been overhauled with master duel 5 if it was that much of an issue.

Draft format at ycs sounds like the best idea ever... The best duelist can overcome any situation. Put me up against your top player... Give him and I a battle pack, and make sure he doesn't get the best cards but I do... Bet he beats me.

Pendulums mechanically are a fail, this is why mr4 brought more players back than ever. EU WCS in 2018 reached 1650 participations breaking records. I know I was there

Love you guys! Keep up the good work!

Cross duel had huge potential but released as beta essentially as was all online and no campaign mode. That would’ve settled people in and increased player base for the online

From as casual as casual as a Yugioh!player can get, I’ve always thought the biggest failure especially as of late is not having a relevant anime alongside the card game. Feel like if there was an anime that people cared about, the positive affects on the card game would be tremendous

At least that pokemon figure battle game had a few years under its belt, Cross Duels was a fail that can be etched into history, cause barely does a game leave a store that quick

I actually liked cross duel, im sad its gone

Great video! I want to comment on one thing and also add two things: First of, I really think the addition of LInks and Pendulums totally deserves to be on this list. I hated Pendulums. I did not use any of the Decks (aside from D/D/D) and it was not really fun to play against most of them. And they were super complicated. At some point I was giving Demos at a Convention, and everyone understood everything about the game, up until a point it came to Pendulums. Those were too complicated for new people. But, I think Links might have even been worse at the beginning. Simply because during Pendulum-Era, I was still able to play any Deck I like, even if it did not use Pendulum-Cards. However, when Links were introduced, I had to play Link-Monsters, just to play my Decks. I used to play Burning Abyss a lot and this Deck was not playable without Links. Just as an example. I think the Master Rule addition to only need Extra Monster Zones and the linked Zones for Links and Pendulum-Monsters summoned from the Extra Deck was a step in the right direction. Sure, there are still Link-Monsters which are problematic, mainly those used for Link-Climbing, but I think the mechanic is in a good spot. What also would have deserved a spot on the list: First - Errata. Those they did to allow cards to be played again. Not every of those Errata was bad, some cards saw play. But others were just destroyed. E.g. there is no world in which you would use Sinister Serpent anymore. Or Goyo Guardian got a lot more niche due to that, even when the card was on 3 in the TCG and only banned in the OCG. Another example would be Brain Control, which got completely destroyed by the card text change, but years later we have Change of Heart (which is even stronger) legal in the game and it does not do much. IMO they should have just printed new cards instead of tinkering with the old texts and given that we did not receive any Errata for quite some time, I think they thought the same. Second - The Forbidden & LImited List used as a Marketing-Tool. This is something which happened with the change that TCG gets its own F&L List. Back in the day we also got the OCG-List, which means that TCG-exclusives were not on it and also that some things were banned quite quickly here. But once the TCG gets its own lists, the F&L List is often used for marketing purposes, where a specific Deck gets hit just to remove it from the Meta so that players need to buy new cards. And while I understand it from a business perspective, I think the F&L list should solely be a balancing tool and not a marketing tool.

That's was a solid list. Y'all should do one more of these videos

Links is what broke me, but not because of the mechanic itself. I loved Yugioh, but I didn't like what it became. Combos and stuff are fine, but having those OTK decks pop out more and more. combos that took forever and boards that shut you down completly, I lost my interest more and more. But then, there was a ray of hope on the horizon, Link monsters. A mechanic that should slow down the game. Now you need Links to summon your other extra deck cards and can't just go haywire turn 1. Finally something that will make the games slower again, so there is more thought put into how you have to play your turns. And then they showed the first cards and we all knew, this is just gonna make the game even more stupid. That was the point where I and a lot of others left the game for good.

Im still holding hope for original name god cards

The thing with the card censoring, is Konami love money, and they did it to get money from fans wanting uncensored, but now they have seen that it’s a viable market to make both versions, so it may infact cause more censoring so they can get more profit selling uncensored versions

Pendulum card viability is so weird. Not too long after they were released, Pepe decks (which revolve around pendulums) were released and became tier 0, pretty much dominating every single event. Now though I almost never see them, except for the rogue deck built specifically around pendulums

Cross Duel was fine, but it tore through my phone battery. It wasn't good for a computer game, but if it wasn't such as battery drain on mobile, I think it could have fallen into a decent following and maybe evolve to sit next to duel links

A big fail is erratas on classic cards like Brain Control and Ring of Destruction. Just make retrains instead.

As someone who played Yugioh as a kid and got back into trading cards around 2019 I looked into playing again and you’re so right that pendulum and link shit was my like “yeah okay I’m over it” moment. I get chaining effects and stuff but like come on man. Tried learning on one of the mobile games and after tutorial first game is against someone taking 50 moves turn 1.

I love pendulums, I learned them through Duel Links and think they have the potential to be really cool. The trouble is Konami hasn’t done anything with them for ages. In theory, they’re supposed to be support for other types of mechanics, as represented by stuff like D/D and Odd-Eyes having monsters for every type. But they’re inexorably tied to links now because they weren’t freed from the old master rule change.

I actually think a draft event as part of a tournament series could make sense. Definitely stops people who only net deck , who don’t necessarily understand the game well but just has the cash to blow on a tier 0 deck. But adding more chance to a card game with inherent chance built in kinda sucks, even if it can reveal who’s actually more creative and a better deck builder than others

I like the lost art card

I'm surprised that number cards weren't brought up

As someone who loved Master Rule 4 I feel the biggest failure of LINK Monsters is the ability to LINK-CLIMB. If a LINK-4 required 4 monsters even when having two LINK-2 monsters on you field that the LINK mechanic would of been amazing at balancing and slowing the game of Yugioh after the fast paced PENDULUM format.

Honestly I skipped out on the game when pendulum monsters were first released but returned a while after, and to this day the only pendulum deck I've ever played myself and indeed still play in different variants is the mythical beasts because they don't play too much like the original ones, though I do that a variant with Endymion and yeah I love that deck. I do like links and even the lost art but I do agree with you about them.

I like Links a lot as a returning player. I found the mechanic was pretty easy to get my head around and I think its really cool when Yugioh cards interact with your card zones in such a way that you have to plan out where you place each of your cards and in what order you play them in. Pendulums I am literally not going to even bother learning and just trust that if my opponent is playing them they will be able to fill me in on how it works 😂😂😂 Please do top 10 Yugioh wins next!

I'm glad you mentioned link and pendulum monsters. As you may be able to tell from my handle, I'm more of an MtG gal, but I dabbled in (casual!) YGO in the early 2000s. I came back to it when Master Duel released and found myself absolutely flummoxed by links and, particularly, pendulums. Trying to learn them both at the same time was a pain. I'm still not sure I understand the specific rules for these cards very well, and I certainly don't understand them well enough to have made my own decks with them. As I'm, again, mostly an outsider to YGO, I'd like to personally nominate the game's overall capacity for early instakills is also a fail. Since I'm not as clued into the community or the game's meta, my opinion may be skewed, but the fact that I kept getting rocked on turn 1 or even 0 was what made me eventually quit Master Duel. Even in the cases where it's not an outright instakill, it can be super annoying to sit there for five straight minutes while your opponent cycles through, seemingly, their entire deck, attempting to finally get lethal damage down on the board.

One of the biggest fails I always felt was not continuing some of the goofy spin off games like forbidden memories,duelist of roses, and false bound kingdom,capsule monsters,etc the styles that take the existing ip and make into a fresh experience. I mean seriously imagine a modern reimagining of duelist of the roses maybe set it as a sequel with gx era characters and they could take the unique chess strategy style and make a video game series with each generation while trying to implement the style of each era like adding synchro summons into the chess style it for 5d's that would be hilarious and people would buy the products. I just miss the creative video games and there loss is felt I know they tried something different with cross duel but I feel like they should realize that a lot of the people who play these older games now do it for their silliness like the forbidden memories speed running community they don't play that game because it's perfectly balanced gameplay they play it because it's really random and silly which makes it fun. I know there's a lot of problems with the tcg too but they are really slacking on just doing the silly games I loved as a kid that tie into the ip. I just miss the goofy games they used to put out that were kinda Yu-Gi-Oh and kinda something else because you could see the creativity.

When are we getting the pendulum matches? Show them off, they were great, I loved them. They were the dumbest lol.

Honestly, for me, I feel like the issue was less with Link Monsters specifically, as they sort of feel like a slightly different flavor of XYZ monsters (though they very much had/have issues) and more just Master Rule 4 in general completely breaking most decks due to the extra monster zone limitation (which was then fixed in Master Rule 5)

The fails that I witnessed were probs Legendary Collection Joey's World and the Noble Knight box set. Printing banned cards (i dont think retro formats was a thing yet at the time) and unbanning and short printing a common Sixth Sense to sell the set just for it to be banned a few months later and I don't think many people bought the NK set.

Not to defend Konami too much, but here's how I assumed the Lost Art cards worked. They keep the censored cards in regular booster packs because those are the ones that little kids are going to buy, or their parents will buy for them. But Lost Art promos are for people who are regularly going to locals, who are probably going to be teenagers at the youngest and usually adults. It's not about removing all the censorship from the game, it's about separating censored and uncensored cards by the players' ages. Again, not trying to defend Konami, this is just what I thought their thought process was.

I really enjoyed Pendulums when they first came out. The text seemed like it was too much just because the text box was smaller. I thought the game could use a real mechanical shakeup like that coming off of the Xyz era where Xyz cards were getting crazy with Xyz Evolution mechanics and all that. I also like that the Arc-V anime kinda played with the idea that Pendulums were a bit more complicated by making them a new thing in their world and the main characters had to figure out how they worked themselves~ I feel like the mechanics weren't THAT much more of a step up from what came before than Synchro monsters were from Fusions (when they renamed the Fusion Deck). It was a little complicated, but it isn't very hard to wrap your mind around. I've explained them to non-Yugioh players and gotten them to understand pretty easily before. But yeah, like with everything else, I feel like it didn't actually become a problem until the card effects got so long and convoluted that it was just that much more of a pain to read and parse card text, and where every good pendulum card had to do too many things. It was the fact that you now had to deal with TWO convoluted effects that does too many things that pushed them too far. When they were simple, 3-4 lines of text or less, they were fine as a mechanic imo. I mean...they definitely needed the nerf of moving the Pendulum Zones to the ST Zone, but still. Personally, I actually like Pendulums WAY more than Links. Links, while they are remarkably simple to actually summon, complicate the game to a ridiculous degree due to the fact that WHERE you place your cards on the field are now extremely important. Links are what killed the game for me, personally. All that said, I'd still consider Pendulums a fail. Not only did they fail to get the audience to latch onto them well, but they also pretty much KILLED them when the Extra Monster Zone and Link Arrow rules came down and never lightened the load. xD

Pendulums always felt like a totally different game. Synchro and XYZ felt compatible with our ideas of fusion summons, and you could theoretically use as few or as many as you wanted But pendulums were fundamentally incompatible with the rest of the game. Now if you wanted to use them, your whole main deck had to be rebuilt from the ground up Can't believe we've had pendulums for like 10 years now, kinda happy they've faded into obscurity :x

I’m with y’all, but I do love the lost art promotions

I loved cross duel but the game was badly miss manage , concurrence didn't help either. -That game didn't have that much publicity -Was release in region lock for some reason. -Has poor balancing with no nerf , we did come from a BEWD destroy meta to an absolute dumbass stall/burn meta when you coundn't move at all forcing them to release card like IO just to shutdown your opponent from paralysing you. -Has some questionnable design like raid boss , why having 15 level instead of just 4 , easy , normal , hard , master and maybe an endless. -Has some device issue , i still wonder why they didn't release that game on steam with that quality it did have. Despite all of that , i still wish i could play it today , it was a very interesting game.

Cross Duel wouldve been popular if it were released in the late 2000s. It wouldve been in the same decade as Duelists of the Roses, Falsebound Kingdom, etc.

Honestly, I was fully expecting Dungeon Dice Monsters and Capsule monsters to get a mention.

the biggest fail of yugioh is not remaking either the tag series, forbbiden memories or duelist of the roses.

I for sure agree with link and pendulum fail!! I hate those two monster types!!

the biggest mistake to me, konami not respecting red-eyes enough, they always do all these special things for DM and BEWD and red-eyes gets shafted 😭

Link monsters was their biggest fail when they came out because it simply locked your existing extra deck behind a paywall and you HAVE to use the link monsters in order to play your deck again. Glad they changed it later but at the time it came out i literally quit the game because of this issue.

Pendulum support for Majespectre and D/D/D are good. I just wish the chokepoints weren't so obvious though.

I'm amazed you didn't mention the unified ban list when they hit tengu plant and agents in the middle of windup inzektor format or the infamous 2017 Tin where half the good cards where banned or limited because they where zoo cards

Honestly I gotta agree on the pendulum and link takes cause I remember coming back into the game around when links dropped it was a hella learning curve but luckily I joined back around when MR 5 wasnt too far away cause after requiring links for everything it felt really unfair to all the decks that were built around no links and just one summon type especially for poor fusions and synchros

They killed cross duel by making it too slow to play and a gatcha game.

I can say that pendulums and links put me off getting back into the series so badly for so long. I downloaded and deleted master duel like 4 times before finally giving it a chance when I learned that fusion decks were viable. I played the original card game, fell off partway through the gx era because I was just getting older and as a teenager it's not cool to like the things you liked as a kid. Kinda got into stuff with some of the games as an adult, mainly the tag force series, and when I finally gave master duel an actual chance....well, now I actually understand the game and these new mechanics and like the link monsters. Don't use pendulums, just not a fan of that mechanic but at least I understand it now.

the biggest fail is them still not being partnered with dragon shield for sleeves, konami sleeves are a waste of money

For me, the writing was on the wall with synchro summons. To my old school eyes they were just fusion summons but without checks and balances. I was done buying cards at that point. The power creep was accelerating too fast for my taste, and my wallet.

Something worth pointing out with the Tokyo Dome event is that the specific promo card was Exodia's head after the limbs had been slowly released, and this was Exodia at his strongest since Witch of the Black Forest and Sangan could trigger their effects just from being discarded by Graceful Charity, and on top of it all, Konami said that THIS was your only chance to get the head, EVER How they didn't see this coming is anyone's guess

"why don't they just uncensor cards?" Because its making them money 5head

Link Monsters are a nightmare.

Seriously the lost art promo could have just been like it’s own special set.

I don't think Konami foresaw that pendulums would only be viable in pendulum-only decks

omg love the jars !!

I quit paper Yugioh when Pendulums were released for the exact reasons you explained in the video. I have still not returned. I am content to just get my fix every now and again with Master Duel.

I have to make a statement to fail 1. I am pretty sure that konami is fully aware of gotcha waifu games and they definetly know that waifus sell. So I highly doubt that it is their own decision to censor any cards. There are most likely just countries where the uncensored version couldn't be released and or would be age restricted and they still sell to kids aswell. So it makes ABSOLUTE sense for them to release the censored version in a big new set wich everyone can buy and then release the uncensored version later on in something that they feel may not have that mainstream appeal. It's a money decision and it is country restrictions that lead to them. Otherwise they would release naked girls on cards by now but they can't. To draft in top cut: that is actually a good idea that was badly implemented. They should draft tbh but there should be 6 staple cards or so that everyone can use. Everyone uses a ash blossom (sorry if I called it by the wrong name) but that's a staple card, and those should have been given to the players before the draft. That would even the playing field

Link monsters being able to be in def would be wild, imagine turning it left and not right then your arrows are pointing to your S/T zones instead and now it's pointless to have it in Def because you goofed

Another issue with Cross Duel is how obviously P2W it was. It DEMANDED you spend either thousands of hours or thousands of dollars to max out your deck, because every duplicate of your Deck Leader gave it more slots for effects.

I’m surprised they didn’t mention Rush duels, since everyone keeps saying “It’s just master rule for toddlers.”

Duel Links is good, why they decided to cut into that mobile game with cross duel I have no clue. Also, the biggest problem with Link monsters, was the fact that you couldn't summon monsters you had anymore without link monsters. That's when i quit, and I didn't come back until the rules changed back to "normal."

For me pendys were my exit stage i left yugioh completely from 2001 to 2015 i was an avid fan and player but in mid to late 2015 it wasnt the game id loved anymore In mid to late 21 i found your channel and now im an avid and happy duelist once again

Cross duel : I remember seeing one or two ads on RU-vid and ... Never earing or seeing this game until his end. And the awful Master Rules 4 what a mess and a massive nerf for majority of the decks at the time.

Honestly I believe pendulums were meant to ONLY be a way to summon multiple monsters for the speed of yugioh. For example: I ONLY use pendulums for the spell effects and pendulum range so my decks can keep up for a lot of combo heavy oriented decks.

I didn’t mind pendulums. I liked how it made some high level effect monsters more viable like that Mist Valley Apex Avian. The ability to splash some cool tech cards like that was awesome. The game became difficult to play when it was summoning 3+ boss monsters and setting 5 face downs. That’s why the zones got nerfed. Links forever broke the game for me and have stayed away from the competitive scene. Also they nerfed my extra deck to push links. That really made me mad despite changing it years later.

Personally, I think extra deck focused mechanics and archetypes pushed things too far. A turn two player could wipe the board and end the game dealing max attack damage or effect damage.

Reminder: They turned many beloved ace monsters into Humans for Cross Duel. (or at least only to use as Profile icons) but everyone liked that idea from cross duels.

Yall forgot about one thing...well...multiple things. Every single ban list. Every list a portion, typicly a large one, will get angry about the ban list, people will leave, saying the game is dead, on and on and on

I think pend's biggest problem for players to understand was the way they went to the faceup extra deck, a mechanic that really makes zero sense in all other contexts of yugioh. That just shouldnt have been the way the mechanic worked as all its rulings are where you lose so many players. Letting monsters act as spells in a sense wasnt insane to figure out, and the way you pend summon could be reasonably explained (just levels between the two numbers), however the moment you say if its removed from the field under standard circumstances it goes to the extra deck faceup unlike every other type of monster, but when discarded, under the effects of a card like macro cosmos, or as XYZ's material they dont do that anymore is so complicated to explain to a basic yugioh player. Links are also a mechanic thats not crazy hard to understand, but is also more unintuitive compared to previous methods, and is the extra deck mechanic most easily broken, and basically comes down to they should not be as easy to summon as they are generically. The biggest problem with link monsters wasnt them in specific, it was master rule 4 which just screamed you must play the new mechanic, but we are not going to actually start rotating sets. With previous mechanic changes you could just not use them if youre deck didnt want to, no one was forced to synchro summon if they wanted to play fusion cyber dragons, no one was forced to play pendulum if they wanted to play BA and summon Dante, but once MR4 hit with links, you had to play them if you wanted the ability to make more than 1 single extra deck monster at a time.

10:15 that might be the worst argument ever, lol. No one is making top cut without a stacked deck.

I'll say "Problem Solving Cart Text" is a fail. Because having to know the difference between an colon and a semicolon, and "if" and "when" in a card effect, is really stupid. Y'all have done skits on it.

On link monsters - Last week at locals i faced someone ive seen around the shops for a year or so on and off. He had the full tier 0 snake eyes deck going on. He summons one of the new link monsters to his extra monster zone that points to my side of the field and ends turn. I summon anima where his link monster points and he goes "you cant play that there" i explain how link arrows/zones work, and he doesnt believe me. After going back on forth for a few minutes he asks guys playing next to us if what im saying is correct. He was shocked. So, even people who play all the time still dont know all the rules of link monsters. Also, its not relevant but worth mentioning: I can't say for sure, but since it happens so often it felt like just a little bit of misogyny with him only believing what i was saying after asking other guys. Then if youre wondering about the match - We ended up drawing. He won the first game. I play mikanko and had enough stalling power on game two to pin his combos down and swing for game. Then game three started with four minutes on the clock, he wanted to go first and i was content with that figuring his first turn would take the last of our time.