The Truth About "Tier 0" Yu-Gi-Oh Decks 

Paul always articulates the issues I have with Yugioh way better than my brain can!

I kind of agree with what was said but one aspect you forgot to mention is how expensive those tier 0 decks get. It might seem laughable for those that have it easy, but tier 0 gatekeeps a lot of people by virtue of their prices. Even if I wanted to play Sprights, I'm not willing to give up an entire month's salary to do it (if not more). And guess what? The tech cards that counter those decks? They happen to get expensive as well because the deck's running rampant everywhere.

My only input at the moment is my locals play for packs, so everyone plays meta except me and this one dude that brings blue eyes every week.

Tier 0 in yugioh is strange because no matter how good a deck is they will still lose to some matchups for example spright is insane but if they get scythe locked they still have a decently good chance of losing so they can be countered unlike in other card games but it’s luck reliant and if you want to beat the best decks you have to win the die roll

I like how people are calling splights "splights" when they were called "sprights" in the OCG and still localized it as sprights

Love the shirt my dude. Love the discussions even more. Appreciate all you do. Game was much easier to get back into thanks to all the content. You guys rock.

I don't know why people are surprised. Konami released a new set and the cards in it are better than what you have now. While Tier 0 decks aren't inherently bad, they cause too many problems and lower interest in the game. The benefits are all focused around tournament play, which is a small fraction of total players.

I remember playing Evilswarm during the DR formats and it wasn’t so bad, except Spellbooks were around at the same time so I’d go decently against Ruler decks but then get stomped by most spellbooks 😂

Good points , though i would disagree with some of them(and agree with those i dont mention): 1. Throughout history the times people have left yugioh the most have been tier 0 times 2. Tier 0 makes the prices go so high it feels like its the wallet winning not the player(just like most gacha) 3. I find very hypocritical from players who claim to be the best to say that the formats should be 1-2 decks because they need to do less homework. 4. A lot of "innovation" that comes with tier 0 decks is usually playing more floodgates

They forgot spyral it was tier 0 when they got double helix. When every other deck had to play 14 hand traps just to function.

Tear and splight became so prevalent in ocg not only because of its power level. Those decks are cheap. I got my full Tear deck for only $20. Splight is cheaper than tear. Man I saw how expensive these cards in tcg, it made me sick 🤮

This is why I play casually, even if one of my friends plays a really good or "tier 0" deck, we can always agree not for them to use it during our duels.

You bring up very good things to talk about, solid video man. You make me think about things like the ban list for tcg and how certain archetypes get hit and others don't. I would compare the adventure token cards to spright cards and the power of these two archetypes individually side by side

I really like when it's a 3-4 deck format since you have a much better time deciting if you wanna play for going first or blind second. Nekroz for example really hates a format with a lot of different decks cause they either main deck for going first or second and alot of match ups are you want first or you want second

Splights: i hope your playing rank 2's or a mirror match. opponent: No im playing for fun- Splights: NEGATE!

1. New Broken cards get released 2. New deck is over hyped and over priced. 3. People buy overpriced cards to win every game 4. months later 1-2 cards from that deck get banned 5. The cards price have dropped from the ban. 6. You can now finally afford the deck but now it's irrelevant 7. New Broken cards get Released. 8. New deck is over hyped and over priced 9. People buy the new cards to win every game... 10. new broken cards get banned crumbling the deck...

When the top deck or decks become too opressive it drives people away. that's the main problem, really. Same thing is currently happening in MD. The power gap is simply too wide. The good decks are just so much better than everything below that you either have to join them or play some floodgate riddled shitpile. in either case it's not fun.

Chaos Control immediately came to me and I’m shocked you didn’t mention it. It’s strength and representation at the time was absolutely unmatched.

love the shirt! great points as always Tier 0 decks can be a pain but it does end up creating some unique and cool counter strategies.

I really do not think there is a single benefit to tier 0 decks existing at all. If a benefit is that you can practice a matchup or be able to tech against the best deck at the cost of loosing to other decks feels like a fundamental flaw in the whole game rather than jus the tier 0 issue. Open decklists like so many other card games have, allows all those benefits to exist without tier 0 decks warping the format. A low tier deck winning wouldnt cause much hype if they only won cus of the better deck bricking. Its so much more interesting if piloting a deck actually causes a win not a coin flip. Decks that limit diversity are never good cus it goes against the fundamental principle of card games expression in deckbuilding. Adding a few graveyard hate peices or some extra removal is fine but having to dedicate my entire sidedeck and part of my main to maybe beat the top deck is straight up bad for the player base but good for konamis pockets in the short term.

I will say that how a tier zero format affects your locals is going to depend on the area. Back when I was playing in a city that regularly holds regional events, whenever the next tier zero dropped, people were on top of it. They're the kind of crowd that is always keeping an eye on what the OCG is getting, and what's going to be super broken when it comes over to North America. As soon as Dragon Rulers were printed in the TCG, people had the deck and were just stomping locals with it. Sure, some people were playing "fun" decks, but pretty consistently, I saw those tier zero decks, and they would always completely dominate the top tables. And, maybe if you have a bunch of decks built and ready to go, you can use this to anticipate and catch these players out, but if you were like me back then, you had one deck. And that deck involved summoning synchro monsters, so when Evilswarm dropped and locked me out of anything remotely useful, I had a lot of rounds that just ended with me quitting outright because I just had zero options. I know Evilswarm was never exactly a "tier zero" deck, but it created a similar effect for me, that tier zero decks tend to have against people who just play the game for fun. And it was very similar to when Dragon Rulers came out later, and would trash pretty much everything, and at the time there really wasn't much you could do about it. I will say that some of the upsides really only apply to high-tier players who can afford to put money into the game, or people who have their finger on the pulse of the game and can get good counter cards while they're still cheap before they catch on. I recall a friend giving me particularly good advice to pick up copies of Debunk before they shot up in price due to the oncoming wave of Dragon Ruler shenanigans. But aside from that, having such an oppressive deck be out there, it can be absolutely demoralizing for players who just want to use one deck for a while and have a good time at locals. But, once again, it does depend on your locals. If your locals aren't super competitive and there's maybe only 1-2 high tier players, it isn't that big of a deal. But if you know there's a lot of people who want their YCS invites and need test subjects to play against at your locals, tier zero decks are just going to make the game so un-fun, you might as well just scoop matches 1 and 2, and just wait for all the rogue tier players to settle in the rankings so you can actually play the game. If you even bother to begin with and don't just decide to play with your friends exclusively at that point.

I personally think the way tiers are decided in YGO are beyond fucked. Instead of representation at major events, tiers should be decided by: 1. What is the counter-play? 2. How consistent is that counter-play? Decks that die to a single hand trap are all universally lower tier and decks that have search power, can combo through multiple hand traps and set up multiple omni-negates turn one are all universally powerful and competitive regardless of how they get there. Representation numbers alone don't give anywhere near an accurate picture of how powerful a deck actually is and my personal opinion is that those in the know are willfully ignorant of this because it shows that meta/tier 1 decks all are basically the same save their card artwork and deck diversity has been dead for longer than it's been alive at this point.

im surprised you didnt mention pepe for teir zero at the begining it literally had an emergency balist made for it

This whole video highlights the reasons why I have adopted a certain mindset with the way I decide what decks I build next. I don't look at any videos, just future set information. If I like the decks' mechanics, I will plan to build it in the future. If I fall on a high teir meta deck, cool. If I don't, also cool. I'm building something I like. I know I just built Tearlaments. However, I chose to build this deck months ago with no information on it, no outside opinions, just with the limited information I had on the archetype after reading the translations of the OCG variants of the card BEFORE it released to the OCG. Don't stress out about what is competitive and what is not when deciding to build a deck. Just do what you like and have fun!

Weren’t Dragon Rulers fighting with Spell Books, preventing either from being tier 0?

Can I hire you to teach me what’s what man? This explanation was crystal clear!So thank you for this sincerely.

Absolutely love the shirt! Couldn't even focus on the content..

My tier 0 deck is Fireking's. because those memories are gonna carry me through the game of life with ease ^^

Watching this i just realize I have never played thru a tier zero format despite the fact the I've been play yugioh for the past 12 years. Its like I can sense when the game is going in an unhealthy direction and take a break.

funny enough - tier 0 decks are a much bigger issue in master duel than the TCG/OCG

Dimension shifter price is gonna skyrocket against tearelements

Last format was you need DPE Scyth to compete Then you’re either playing Brave or Therion otherwise you aren’t winning Now if you aren’t playing Tearlaments or spright you’re having to build your deck around beating them. It’s just boring. Decks like branded despia felt completely OP when it came out and got completely washed by these new decks. We didn’t even get to enjoy playing against it before we had to worry about 5 other decks and engines

I think a tier 0 season pushes for new tech innovation while a varied deck season format welcomes mew types of decks to innovate.

I like the take he has. I personally build my deck around break any board via lava golem and Kaijus and have success just because I have going second decks that prosper on people making boards. I played against sprites last night and won because tributing them is the only nonactivating out and it works

I think it's a bad thing when the deck is expensive and hard to pull. If I could pull an entire deck core with a box of product it would be fine. The secondary market is too needed..

Tier 0 decks in most card games creates a Rock Paper Scissors effect of anti meta beats tier 0, tier 0 beats “the field”, and “the field beats the anti meta deck.

Love the content as always! Super informative. I would like to know however where did you get the Pokémon shirt it’s awesome!

tier 0 decks that come in mind are frog ftk, tele dad, zombie synchro(with the old crushcard),spellbook,dragon ruler but nowadays yugioh i feel like the amount of interaction we have available in comparison to those format is so much more which makes it so i do not believe we have tier 0 decks anymore good tier 1's but no 0's

4 months later we are in an absolute tier0+ and it’s been polarizing at the least but it’s definitely looking bad for the game from my pov

Case for casual players. Tier 0 deck tend to push the limits of mechanics. Meaning more decks and more mechanics get pushed out in the long run because those tier 0 decks necessitate it Or the less interesting side of tier 0 they just put certain cards on limited or banned lists which is the boring side of tier 0

if konami doesnt touch toad on the list it sounds like this decks going to have the amount of popularity 2008 Gladiator Beast had (where they took 1st place every event even worlds.)

I'm looking forward to splight. I got back into the game in April and after messing around with the albaz strike structure deck with some of the despia cards I ended up finding Swordsoul and loved it. I'm looking forward to my deck getting out of the sights of a lot of players and getting to play the deck I love without dealing with the token collectors and nibiru's everywhere. Funny enough I was the only swordsoul at my locals and played against a ton of branded and floowandereeze and have a ton of fun playing against the other top tier decks. That being said I don't think it's going to be a tier 0 format. Splight and tearlaments will be tier 1. We don't have all the cards in the tcg that the ocg has and we have brave engine at full power which the ocg doesn't. Our meta is very different. I think we'll be just fine

Its harder in a best of one format like master duel.

Teir 0 decks are good for a short time but they need to either be crept out by powering up more decks or limited to force the community to keep searching for that new super deck.

I just don’t like how skillful these players claim to be.

Odd to see Dragon Rulers, the most infamous almost tier 0 deck listed, and not Spyral, the actual most recent tier 0 deck that was doing 95% top cuts.

It’s so dark in there! Turn the lights on!

Forget the Tier 0 discussion, that shirt man, I love it

didn't hear a single word in the 14 min video... I was too concentrated on the awsome shirt

Super awesome shirt! Such a cool vibe! Also what is your current favorite deck to play for fun?

can’t forget inzektors when they were tier 0 and the dino rescue rabbit deck

Tiers in yugioh don't have anything to do with how good a deck is. It's solely based on how many people are playing it.

Not even 10 seconds in the video and all I wanna say is, I NEED THAT SHIRT!!!!!

tier 0 adds more fuel to the fire that is pple who just copy a strong deck and play that to get wins, whether its a tourny or not

As someone whose locals is full of meta tryhards.... I honestly think that the last comment you made here was incorrect. A lot of people want to win locals to get invites to higher level playfields, so of course, they're gonna play a tier 0 strategy. Also, Dragon Rulers were never a tier 0 strategy, because Spellbook of Judgement existed at the same time. There are more tier 0 strategies than the much lesser talked about tier .5 strategies. Tier .5 is only populated by two decks, being Dragon Rulers and Spellbooks.

Yo good way, but even better shirt my man looking fresh. Can you tell me where you got this ?

Sprights were tier 0 in the ocg for multiple reasons" 1) It could search maxx "C" Turns out that being able to consistently get access to one of the most powerful cards in the game is pretty crazy 2) Multiple handtraps that kill the deck (Such as ash and gamma) were hit on the banlist It's easier to dominate when your counters are hit. Common counterpoint I see is that we have 3 toad. How does 3 toad make the deck tier 0 when we have more counters to the deck and the very thing that made it oppressive is banned? Yes, they can make toad again, but that isn't something to cry "TIER 0!!" about.

I'm still waiting for support for Hungry Burger :(

Here 4th 👀 tier 0 decks are fun when you can break their boards it seems to be more achieving there to counter a deck like that

One thing I’ve noticed is the yugioh community freaks out over what happens with the OCG, ae: Halq and Dragoon, and then when they arrived in the tcg, they were popular for a very short amount of time and then not talked about. Not just because something got hit, but because they weren’t simply used the exact same as the OCG

Yo man where did you get that shirt? I want it so bad!!!

Your point that players dictate the meta is so true it's not always about the numbers.

Tier 0 decks I think are. Chaos Yata lock(2004), TeleDAD(2008), Frog FTK(2010), Nekroz(2015), PePe(2016), Zoodiacs(2017), Spyrals(2017), and Splights(2022). Orcust in late 2019 was a close candidate because it had 65% representation only twice at events. Dragon Rulers and Spellbooks were 50/50 split so they don't count. if their counterparts didn't exist at the same time they would have been tier 0s by themselves. Tier 0 decks are extremely rare because most decks have glaring weaknesses that keeps them at Tier 1 or 2. However those Tier 0 decks at that time has no weaknesses at all. Hand traps and powerful going second cards been more numerous after 2017 and been a sort of a brick wall to decks achieving Tier 0 status. Splights in OCG broke that brick wall.

A tier zero deck yo me is one that has a 60% w/r or better (aprox) vs most other decks in the meta except a mirror match. As such the w/r consistency makes it highly represented too.

I agree with this video, tier zero formats aren't anything to be afraid of. And only tournament results can show us if we are in a tier zero format.

That Jawline, damn. I mean eh - Good Video

The "chaos" deck was my favorite and now 60% of the cards got hit by the ban hammer

I like triangle formats where 3 decks are at the top but rogue has reasonable playable options

I came to comment as soon as i saw your shirt. I love it so much! Which water type on there is the best? I'm torn between Tododile and Vaporeon👌

You forgot to mention spellbooks in your list of tier 0 decks

What a dope shirt

that shirt is gorgeous it looks great on you omg

We are NOT in a tier zero format yet

I love your top. Nice design.

Grave keepers says Hi to Tearlements

That shirt is amazing. Keep up the great work Paul/TeamAPS.

Yooooooo wtf is that shirt though? So sick! I want one now! I wonder if they have a grass version.

I thought your shirt was really cool until i saw it has pokemon on it. Dang.

Where is Tyrell? Haven’t seen Treall in a while on the channel. Wash ya ass.

People treat tier 0 as if they're the end all be all for yugioh. Tiers truly don't matter but many people try not to believe it's true. You summed it up so well

Yo Paul, where’d you get that shirt?? Loving the water starter appreciation 👌👌

Tier 0 is 65% representation people want to say is other reason but is only that if you do research on the tier 0 decks is how you can check is the only way you can call it tier 0 and right now those two decks they are not tier 0 until we got a big event and we can check the representation on the tournament.

Sky Striker with zoodiac extradeck and Zeus 💯

These formats really turn me off from playing at locals anymore. Almost everyone is playing what's broadly in the top meta sigh.

if yugioh only had a rule where non banned ,or limited cards are all semi limited would that change anything for the game?

I define tier 0 is a deck that consistently gets 75% of the top cut at YCS/WCQ

Benefits: a couple people with $1000 to burn like to play dragon ruler mirrors (and hey, I think those people should be able to do so, I have a friend like that). Downsides: the rest of us hate it I think most of us just like having fun and playing with decks that we like, and having a tier 0 deck invalidate everyone's deck and force us to either buy all the new cards or quit, leads to a lot of quitting. Or we can go play GOAT or EDISON format :)

after playing against splight i think it will be tier 0 or at least very close especially if halq gets hit.

WHOA! I love the shirt I got two styles at AX dragon and grass ! woo awesome channel keep it up !

Paul Please tell me where you got that dope shirt!

Spyral was crazy

The gap between the best decks and rouge decks is a lot smaller now, so being tier 0 isn't the same these days.

I don't play competitive yugioh (and not planning to) but I have an opinion just like everybody, yugioh should be fun to play and should not be a total nerd sweat fest. Playing meta decks in master duel is not really fun and I can't think of watching someone take more than 10 minutes to make the same exact moves I seen 1000 times.

I love tier zero formats because it allows for the most skill expression in both deckbuilding and playing. If you know what you're going to play against you can specifically focus on what your deck does best and don't have to think about 20 different cheesy decks (imagine having to include an out to mystic mine, towers boss monsters, or imperial order in every deck). At the same time if you have a tier zero deck most of the time you should go into a mirror match so you will have to study every possible play and variant of your deck. Tier zero decks also often result in a different deck being played to specifically countering them and playing that deck can also be plenty of fun as you get to develop a counter strategy specifically for one deck. I don't think any other format takes as much skill as one of these, with maybe the small exception where 2 incredibly powerful decks are released at the same time such as Dragon ruler and spellbook which was my favourite format ever.

Where can I find this shirt...it's so amazing I need it in my life

I despised t0 for a long time. Then I learned something. I love this game, the playstyle and archtypes, and those T0 decks make everything else super cheap! And if I want a T0 deck? Wait for it to fall out of favor. Don't believe me? Check the price on Mermail, Thunder Dragon, Sky striker, zoodiac, etc. They all go cheap eventually, and if you can just enjoy playing them with friends, family, casual, its even better. In truth, most T0 decks arn't really unbeatable, unstoppable machines due to the archtype itself, its usually how it plays/interacts with the top support/filler cards, and how it responds to them, like ash blossom, super poly, skill drain, etc.

8/15 of my side deck cards are there just for sprights lol.

Personally I don't like tier 0 formats b/c they erase rogue chances and show the game lacks options to deal with the new decks,for example against spyral was either droll or die but against drytron you had so many options the deck never felt out of hand,plus the other top decks plus anti meta picks were just below that power lvl which made each match unique, and yes I get why top player love mirrors but that's miserable for anyone else

Hey Paul I have a question for you will you guys be at the ycs regionals in December

Thats a Tier 0 shirt you got there. where is that shirt from pls i need that