THESE TERRIBLE YU-GI-OH CARDS... were BROKEN in Duel Links. 

Trying to describe the meta of duel links to tcg players is always a fever dream. Like Woodland Sprite FTK, Fur Hires, or Invoked Submarineroid were all legit meta defining threats.

Hey! New voice actor for Yuma, here! As the new Yuma, I was sad to see both the Gagagas get semis AND the skill get a nerf, but I was happy to see my voice featured in this video! I still thank my algorithm for throwing your channel at my face during my character research! Love your style, keep it up if you're enjoying yourself! BTW - I just want to make it public knowledge that Gagaga Sister has another effect. We all clear on that? Good. I think I've made it as clear as I can possibly make it. Noah B PS - "Round 'Em Up, Gagaga Cowboy!" was my favorite line to say, ever. That is all.

It’s always hilarious going back and seeing what was meta in duel links. I always tell friends “Whatever was tier 500 irl, it’ll be BROKEN in duel links” and it’s almost always true

im surprised there was no Sphere Kuriboh, one of the few handtraps the game had for a while

I still remember the impact cyber angels had in the game, it was the equivalent of cavemen using stone tools to bonk each other in the head, then one caveman finds a revolver just laying around and starts blasting anyone in his path, then other cavemen see this and go find some of those revolvers laying around for themselves. To this day i don't know what they where thinking adding those cards in such an early state of the game.

I’m surprised I didn’t see aromages. One of the best F2P decks for a while

I remembered how people saw the Fur Hire cards get announced and how they called a deck that lost to one interruption broken. There's a bit of solace in knowing they were at least strong in Duel Links. Wish I could use them in Speed Duels though.

The Cyber Angel meta sure was something. Felt like I was playing a modern Yu-Gi-Oh combo deck.

Shouts out to Koakis (a very stronk deck), Hey Trunade (the enabler for many OTKs and caused multiple decks to be hit instead of it a la halq), and Localized tornado (enabled a extremely toxic stall deck using Kalin's one card wonder skill to draw 2 and constantly get more and more handtraps, and then localized to cycle them all back)

Wall of Disruption functionally changed the way Duel Links was played. The meta changed from fill your board with big bungus beat down to play around Wall of D or lose. I remember main decking 7 tools of the bandit in every deck I played just to counter it.

Onomats didn't become meta cause of rank 4, it was because of rank 6, cause the basic play was to Bounzer on your first turn, then on your kickback you'd summon Head, return sister, then xyz into M7 and attack for game.

I Think a thing that is often overlooked in terms of how unique duel links is, is the fact that the decksize is limited to 20-30 cards. Seeing specific 3 offs More often can really be what enables a strategy

Amazoness was probably the least fun I had with DL, not only was it protect the castle when generic traps were strong and backrow removal was sparse, but pre-nerf Endless Trap Hell let them +1 and recycle 3 in the off chance you had removal that wasn't hard drawing Cosmic Cyclone. I haven't played in years and thinking about it still makes me mad lmao

You forgot shiranui. A deck that never really saw play in TCG but was a monster to overcome in duel links while grass is greener was legal and much further beyond that.

E-Con was a meta relevant card IRL for years, I don’t know why everyone just forgets that.

MBT talking about cards in the past tense (Malevolent Sin, Enemy Controler, Treacherous Trap Hole) but those are used to this day.

Surprised no mention of Red Eyes Insight/Spirit from the early meta. Red Eyes beatdown was so prevalent when that Joey event dropped

Onslaught is an actually good card... if it had come out in like 2010, not 2017.

Duel links despite it having a weaker meta than TCG/OCG, was probably one of the most engaging yugioh experiences just because of its unique meta, if it wasn't so stupid expensive to build half a regular yugioh deck, I'd still play the game every day.

I played amazonness, and you triggered the 2nd effect a lot when onslaught was at 2. You played galaxy cyclone to destroy your opponents cards, but as your followup you destroyed your own onslaught to summon back princess to search another onslaught. It was actually crazy how strong that card was.

14:30 in defense of MBT, you gotta remember that the semi limited in duel links means that you can only play 2 CARDS from the semi limits. not 2 copies each. 2 TOTAL. make up your mind. do you wanna play your combo cards? generic cards? or the extra deck vanilla lava golem.

he's missing some: MS judge plus guaranteed heads is an omni negate you CANNOT respond to. SIx samurai came out too early and its spell and trap negate ran over the format. dm got circle and navigation arguably too early and it destroyed the format with the exact same play every game. list off the tea burn cards there's so much you can get out of this list.

I’m surprised you didn’t mention Naturia or Ice Barrier. They were consistent OTK decks back in early duel links format. Tons of people got to KoG with both of them

I really do honestly enjoy how different duel links is from master duel. I wish duel links didn’t get such a bad wrap all the time. Edit: Everyone who’s saying Duel Links main problem is it’s a gacha game and that’s why Master duel is better. First of all, I never said one was better then the other. Secondly, Master Duel is also literally a gacha game. Yugioh it’s self has always been a gacha game. Look up the definition of a gacha game.

I'm shocked that nobody put cards like Woodland Sprite. Part of one of the first hyper consistent ftks in Duel Links; or Restructer Revolution, key piece of Tea Burn, the first consistent ftk in Duel Links Also, shout-out to Witchcrafters, one of the most meme decks in tcg and one of the strongest decks Duel Links ever had

Important info: in duel links the banlist works diffrently !!! If a card is on the „2“ list that means you can only play 2 cards out of ALL cards that are limited to 2. so you had to pick your poison!

Yubel Nephthys and Cyber Angels were the only 2 decks that helped me to get to KC Cup round 2. Never forget.

God bless Dire her little touches and jokes in editing are always great and make these videos a lot of fun

Honestly, I'm surprised nobody brought up Destiny Hero Dreadmaster. Dreadmaster is a L8 that can only be special summoned by a Clock Tower Prison that already has FOUR counters on it - with the card only gaining one counter per turn. IF it's summoned, you basically get Soul Charge and all your Heroes can't be destroyed by battle or card effects, but that condition is WAY too slow and easy to prevent. Of course, you KNOW that there's some dumb skill involved. You can discard a Hero monster to search the field. You can put 3 counters on the field and search MST for free. You can only activate each effect once per duel, but you can do them both turn 1. As such, you're getting an OBSCENE defensive play turn 1, being able to destroy CTP w/ four counters in the opponent's turn (the fourth gets placed in their Standby Phase - so you can also block all battle damage) in order to get Soul Charge + be impossible to OTK, followed up with the ability to do over 10'000 battle damage next turn (3200 Dreadmaster, 3200 from the two Destiny Hero monsters, 2800 twice from the Anki you summon - don't forget the ability to use the likes of Excaliburr for 4000 atk beats). Oh, and this deck has four Pot of Greed effects (3 Decider and a Destiny Draw - more GY setup too), so you always win a grind game. And what's the cost of this? Only being able to play Heroes in the maindeck? WHO CARES? It's a Hero deck!

I would have submitted this but I just realized that Magician's Circle was crazy in duel links. Popping the normal summon or first synchro was basically game and DM was amazing at that. You had so much consistency with rod, navigation, and with teched sealed tombs could BEAT shiranui. Shiranui is often regarded as one of the best decks in duel links history, next to Koa'ki Meiru and Aleister and this was the first format of Shiranui so they didn't have any hits yet. Early Shiranui decks also had grass looks greener builds in which you ran a skill called spell specialist which lets you draw spells more often in your opening. By messing with your deck building, you could open grass around 70-80% of the time and basically FTK your opponent because of your value. The point with all this is with all of this explosive power and f2p to Shiranui so everyone was running it, it wasn't a tier zero deck because dark magician also existed and basically created this 2013 dragon ruler/spellbook format where two decks were absolutely crazy. I believe the height of these decks in a MCS was 45% DM and 40% Shiranui with the rest being stun or strong rogue decks like blackwings. TL:DR Dm was crazy, stopped Shiranui from being T0, and had access to every sort of staple you wanted.

another thing about fortune ladies is that they enabled degenerate de-synchro decks that drew their entire deck with water. Good? I mean kinda, since hand traps aren't a thing

You forgot that Temperence was also played in Thunder Dragons, since its a light, and the deck lacks lights, so it helped with being a kuriboh. Also the level was kinda niche good, because sometimes in order to close games, u could summon him, make a rank 6, bounce something or get a Levianeer from gy.

Melodious and yubel being meta in duel links literal years before being solid decks/engines in the TCG now is wild to me

Wild how for a while BEWD and DM were actually top tier in Duel Links

Honestly any deck that can go into fortune lady every safely consistently and easily at this moment I think would be a pretty good deck because fortunately every is just a great card just nothing in the actual meta really is good enough to get it out too many focus on one of the other extra day types

Gamushara was one of my favorites in gimmick puppet after making zombiestien and watching your opponent think they won easily and then running into a 4500 wall and losing instantly xD so fun Edit, also number 70 spider xyz, is still the number 1 most played card IN THE GAME. Thats above monster reborn, mst, or any meta deck.

I think this strat happened after this video came out but one of my favorite combos in Duel Links was 1 Card Shooting Star. there is this skill for Yusei which gives you Junk Connector in your graveyard at the start of your duel. if you had Junk Synchron you can grab it from the gy--> synchro summon Junk Warrior--> activate Connector's effect in order to bring back JS--> go into Stardust--> go into Stardust. and the skill had a Subskill where if you had Stardust you can summon Formula Synchron for free, letting you instantly go into Shooting Star. They gave Jack Atlas a similarly powered skill which let you go into swap out Fiend Cards in your hand if you showed your opponent a Resonator from your hand. There's a strat that you can do with Red Resonator, Wild King, Crimson Resonator, and Chain Resonator where in 1-2 turn you can double tuner into Red Nova Dragon with +1500 LP and like 6k attack. they nerfed this skill and not the shooting star one even though this strat was more open to interuption, sadge.

Anti-Magic arrow was a drop from Arkana when he was an unlockable character, and unobtainabke for like a year afterwards. That cards was THE ONLY way you were attacking in early-mid 2017 without eating a Wall of Disruption, or later a Drowning Mirror Force. No AMA? Enjoy playing Wildheart Aggro!

Shoutout to Sylvan’s being my first real meta deck in DL. What a time that was.

7:08 has yubel holding yubel pop up for no reason lmao

Error: Sergeant Electro came in the Mini Box: Flame of the Tyrant (A box that at first glance, wasn't meant to do a thing, but thanks to that box several decks came birth)

It's soooo hilarious Malevolent Sin is STILL THE RANK 4 KING BABY

I'm sad nobody mentioned Massivemorph cause I still remember getting to KoG by running Marik with the skill Sinister Shadow Games and running Amazoness Swords Woman into Massivemorphed Lava Golems.

Heres a good one. All the evil eye cards. The deck was actually really good. But the storm hit really hurt the deck more than most.

At the very beginning one spherical kuribitch was striking fear into my heart

I still don't know what Konami was thinking releasing Fur hires, a link era archetype, in Duel links back when they were still in the "synchro era".

9:50 not just sartorius but thunder dragons also abused temperance to summon levianeer

This took me down memory lane, I stopped playing a bit before XYZ and started again recently when pendulum was added. I remember when Dyna fur hire was limited, I only had 1 at the time so it wasn't a big deal to me, but for every deck I made I would always add Fur Hires so the deck was full lol. I also remember doing the math for how many wins I would need to get the SR tickets for 3 copies of "Red-eyes spirit". Good times.

One of my favourite decks from Duel Links during the Fur Hire meta was actually BLS Envoy of Twilight Turbo. When streamers tried to play it they literally said it might have been too hard to play optimally otherwise it might have been a meta contender. Didn't help it was a deck almost entirely made of SR and UR cards tho

Am actually surprised World Legacy Clash wasn't mentioned. That card was an instant three of in any deck that could run it. Most notably, it was used in Six Samurais (including the duel links worlds winner version), because you could end on stupid boards like Shi En + Enishi + Dual Wield + Clash.

Fur Hire was also cheap to get a core for, since you can easily tech in some tuners to go into a whole bunch of synchros, and them they have some XYZ potential too. Great deck for beginners.

I can't imagine Masked Hero Anki was good in TCG but damn was it amazing in duel links due to the low LPs.

fun fact; I ran Temperance in Hearald of Perfection in paper. if I wanted to summon a herald with a 6-star and not go minus, you could use it and also in a pinch it saved you and possibly turned your Krystia on.

Just wanna put this out there: masked heroes that aren't dark law

I have a funny story with Order to Charge. I was at an AnimeExpo and saw a Duel Links promotional stand from a bit of distance but could still hear and see what was going on. And the player was dueling against Yugi and he used Order to Charge to pop Dark Magician by tributing Axe Raider....and it didn't work. Guy was so confused and the staff nearby couldn't understand either.

Anyone remember 3 Crystrons cards being on the banlist along with Scrap Recycler?

The original tier zero deck I remember was that stupid apple card and the pumpkin princess. Back when my best card was fiend megacyber lol

Sargeant electro was not in the card trader, it was a super in mini box

wait kiteroid is only in duel links? that card was just so like ingrained into my brain that i didnt even realise

Victory Viper and Riryoku were soooo good together. The option tokens attack are always equal to the attack of Victory Viper, even if you cut the tokens attack in half. This combo allows sharp rises in attack

Temperance was also used in Galaxy Eyes for a bit as a tech option. Pretty much the only hand trap you could use because it was light.

Idk if it was super competitive but i remember having a lot of fun with hazy flames real early cause one of your playmakers who needed to guess the top card of your own deck could just be played with Mais ability to always see your top card

Ok, let's see... Lost Blue Breaker (hammer shark beatdown), Naturia Hydrangea (naturia beatdown), Invader of Darkness with Mausoleum of the Emperor and The Golden Apples (just because it counters econ), Windstorm of Etaqua and Curse of Anubis being turn stalls, Woodland Sprite FTK and Fire Princess FTK, Desert Twister (last gamble desert twister), Caninetaur (early Hazy Flames), Sea Stealth Attack being the bane of my existance for a LONG time, Cyber Stein FTK/lockdown using first Life Cost 0 and then Life Boost Beta, and, probably my favorite, Vision Hero Witch Raider being OP in Paleos

duel links meta is the most confusing thing cause skills just make things work

I used to roleplay as the underdog joey trying to beat my opponents with red eyes slash dragon, while meanwhile they would pop off with their synchro xyz links pendulums 3000 attack dragons.

Nephthys Yubel was the one deck where I really was into duel links. I had been building Nephthys then the yubel event happened and I suddenly had a meta deck.

You forgot "the entire Archfiend archtype"

You forgot to mention one thing about treacherous. Not only was it good for decks that ran few traps, the effect allowing you to go +1 was so good that even a lot of trap heavy decks ran 1-2 copies (Amazoness, FL, stall, vampires, etc.)

Storm is also a good enabler for Ancient gear as it can pop their continuous spell and get out a reactor dragon.

shoutout to the days when you could Normal Summon Ancient Gear Beast for free going 2nd and it was one of the best plays in the format

Cyber Angels are responsible for my fiancé basically bankrupting himself to get all 6 of the searchers and starting his spending spree on duel links. A game he has now fully abandoned to play master duel.

Cocytus is literally my nightmare. Would rather face full power Six Sams again rather than a card that requires you to hard run Herald of the Abyss as the only possible non-archetype specific out to it.

I think the worse part about early E-Con wasnt even the manual labor you need to do to grind Kaiba, but the fact that there wasnt any consistent way to grind him because his deck was stacked for early duel links, his level 40 have 2 E-Con, 3 1900 and 1700 normal summons (in a time where the highest we could get was 1700), 2400 1 tribute (our highest was 2200 i think), 3 monster removal with dd warrior and cost down

Can't believe that Sea Stealth Attack and all of the cards it enabled wasn't mentioned. That deck was tier 0 for like two months when it was released. Having Super Rush Headlong on all your monsters was absolutely insane in that meta.

Some honorable mentions should've been Citadel Whale, SSA and Sylvans. They were so frustrating to deal with

the way that most tier 0 decks dropped in duel links and a lot of people just went "yeah this sucks" they then proceeded to dominate masters and king of games. this is why i love duel links

how could no one mention the menace of ladder backrow.... WALL OF D

Fun fact: Knightmare Mermaid was recently added to duel links

Battle Phase hand traps are a thing in DL. After the Sartorious Skill nerf, Temperence mostly saw play in Thunder Dragon/Levianeer decks since it was also a light that you could banish for Levi.

14:28 For context, this card was very powerful because, at that time, one of the most played traps was Fiendish Chain. Fiendish Chain only targets EFFECT MONSTERS and thus this big invoked Chungus was immune

Gimmick Puppet nightmare is actually really playible in duel links, simply because of the limited size of the field, it's not easy to get multiple XYZ monsters at once so being able to tag out something like Zombiestien or bagooska negate then go into nightmare and then either gigantes doll yoink two and then strings. It makes nightmare and actual tag out combo extension and even makes Des Troy less niche due to Quattro's skill. I'm actually impressed with duel links format

I love these videos. Is there a playlist of them? I think I have binged them all but ya know...just in case lol

I could never get into the more limited format of duel links but did appreicate the notably higher production values. It is nice to hear that some of my more casual decks like melodious, amazons, cyber angels, yubel .etc had their time in the sun over there at least

I played the phone version for hours upon hours for years. I once lost a rank-up to a phone call disconnecting me. (I never got beyond Plat 1. King of Games, I heard needed 5 Wins in a row. I don't see how that was possible when I never spent any money on it.)

I have a few of them. Desperado barrel dragon. It’s impossible to play in today’s modern format due to deck numbers. But due to skills like sartorious’s and bandit Keith’s cheaters coin, it completely destroyed meta and is the main reason I stopped playing. Still unlimited as of March 2023 ever since it came out. Destroyed either 33% to 50% of your field and if you destroyed it, it just revived itself since they always had it in hand. Hate this card. Cyber dragons. Specifically overflow. If you don’t know, basically going first with this in hand and core means you win your first turn and your opponent can’t do anything about it. Lose your lifepoints, use the Zane skill to special proto-cyber dragons, set overflow and summon core to add cyber fusion support, pass. No joke, because you now have cyber dragons in the field, you are able to overflow their monsters before they can start their combo, then cyber fusion support when they set to summon rampage dragon, and that is essentially an OTK. Darklords period. Holy crap, I’m still upset they’re nerfed as hard as they are today, but I understand why. Basically darklord monsters can treat their own spells and traps as their own effects. In a format where the only thing more annoying to duel was ancient gear beatdown and fur hires, the fact that you can just activate a spell/trap and just instantly use it again in your grave and during your opponent’s turn too was just far too much for the meta to handle, so they hit them with the hardest banlist I’ve seen next to Koa’ki meru.

ah i remember that Cyber angel meta, the worst part of it was that it was LITERALLY FREE2PLAY, since all the cards were drops or level up rewards from alexis, so not only was it poweful,l you saw that shit on all ranked levels

"Gagaga sister has another effect!" That legit gave me a ptsd flashback, how dare u

Saw shadow scout in the thumbnail and said yup this the vid for me (:

Elementsaber invoked with destiny draw was by far my favorite deck to play. Destiny drawing into a concentrated current was such a blowout

There was also Sea Stealth Attack and Citadel Whale handing out trauma to duel links players

I mean, that IS why I like about Duel Links... completely different meta cards that would never work in the real game... XD Also, Gorgonic Guardian in Magnet Warriors was (and still is) an insane card that could activate during your opponent's turn, not to just lower ATK to 0, but also completely negate card effects of monsters... and during YOUR turn, you could lower its ATK to 0, then pop it with no issues of effects countering that (aka, it was a great tool to use on Bloom Diva, since it negated its anti-removal effects).

I think the funniest tier 1 deck in duel links ever was handless beatdown it was a deck that would try and have as little card in theyre hand left using a lot of traps and spell that all sucked at the time to try and normal summon swift gaia the fierce knight a 2300 k vanilla beater

Good old DL times damn, Warm Worm, E-Con, Jade Insect Whistle, Res-Rev, SSA, FK Avatar Yaksha, Champion's Vig, CA ritual spell, the GK 2000 ATK guy, Cup of Ace, Red-Eyes Zombie Dragon, Naturia Marron, ahhh those were the times.

The entire vampire archetype being able to foolish bacon saver and then get a pop because of it was such bull

I had a coworker that hadn't played the TCG since he was a kid but religiously played Duel Links. Every time I talked about how I'd do at locals he say something like "Yea if I ever came out with my Red-Eyes deck from Duel Links I'd destroy everyone there. Red-Eyes Slash is crazy I'm undefeated." Sometimes I wish I could be that dumb.

I remember always bricking against the assholes with 30 one-offs that always opened Red-eyes fusion and Power of the Guardians

Electo control was one of my favourite decks and I'm pretty sure wasn't in card trader when it was good. Played it in a few fun SR tournaments

Sargent Electro was not in the card trader, it was from that first fire set, that had tyrant or something of a similar name

Mirror Wall was the very first staple battle trap and it was very strong at the time.

The good ol times when Slash dragon was a staple in ladder, like most of my opponent did the speedrun to summon him and sitting on him by passing with no additional cards on field, just to get shit-on by a Dragunity Arma Levyaten boosted by Kaiba's skill in (the name's beatdown if i remember right). ABSOLUTELY MISERABLE