THESE YU-GI-OH CARDS WERE UNBEATABLE WHEN WE WERE KIDS! 

Joseph, only you can read this message. Do NOT ask a woman her age, a man his salary or what the Ghostrick end board is in 2022. You will need this information for a future video.

One of my first memories of YGO locals was going to a tournament at a GameStop in 2010 and getting 3rd while playing Solar Flare Dragon stall/burn. I didn't have my own cards at the time, so burn was the only strategy I could make out of the random bulk my friends had. Everyone I managed to beat was so mad, but all the hate was worth it to me when I got my 3rd place prize, early screening tickets to The Last Airbender. After I left the theater, I knew that this was God's way of punishing me for playing burn.

We used Polymerization as a fusion for anything so if you fusion a Red eyes Black dragon and a Blue eyes while dragon you had a dragon with 5400 Atk and made up names for them.

Man, absolutely no love for "kids completely misunderstanding how battle and flip effects work". I remember Dark cat with white tail being a house to get over, because a flip effect that read "return 2 opponents monsters and 1 of yours to the hand" meant when dark cat was attacked, just pop it back into your hand. Man eater bug was another legend, can't be destroyed in battle if you destroy the attacking monster first 🤔

Dragon Mirror + 5 headed Dragon was my unbeatable combo when I was 10 until our meta evolved and we all played magic cylinder.

I remember a time when we didn't know what we was doing and my friend used the combination of stop defense and stop attack thus confusing my monster and destroying it

Colossal Fighter was such a hard synchro to out due to lack of spell/trap removal we had back in my middle school that we had it banned

For some reason when i was kid nobody owned polymerization so all fusions worked like contact fusion/synchro monsters.

My sister and I misread the rules when we were kids and thought that the "one per turn" only applied to Normal Summon, but you could Normal Set as many monsters as you wanted per turn. Was a bit of fun at our first tournament when we realized we'd been playing it wrong.

When we were kids and neither of us spoke English we had my dad translate the effect of "Scroll of Bewitchment" to us which came out as "Change the effect of the equipped monster to one of your choice" since we did not know what else could hide behind the word "attribute". We just made up dumb effects mid-duel anime style and then proceeded with the made up effects

My first deck that didn't just contain random cards was actually a dark deck during phantom darkness. My final boss monster was the strongest dark dragon boss monster ever. You need to have certain cards into grave to summon him and banish cards from grave for him to be good. That's right, I was playing... Rainbow Dark Dragon Turbo.

Funniest thing for me was attacking into my friend's set Man-Eater Bug who thought you had to literally flip the card like a coin and I presume land it facing up to destroy a monster. I say presume because I didn't let him get that far, I asked wtf he was doing when he placed the card ontop of his thumb 😂 Childhood Yugioh, truly a one of a kind experience 👌

The most insane part of this is that if Gate Guardian really did read 'If you Summon this card, you win the game' I still don't think it would see play

I'm amazed that nobody mentioned Tornado Wall. In a kids' meta where backrow removal was completely unheard of, this card was able to completely clean house!

Shoutout to the 2006 Dino structure deck and the dark emperor structure deck, these were literally format warping for us. All of the cards we admired but couldn't afford or get a hold of were in these structures.

I remember playing someone for 'keepsies' (destroy the card, you get to 'win' that card from them). They played Revival Jam in defence and claimed it would infinitely resummon itself therefore I could never win it. I wasn't the brightest child.

Shout-outs to all the kids (and adults) who treated Penguin Soldier as if it could bounce itself and the attacking monster.

I remember back in the day (about 18ish years ago) my friend group misread "tower of babel", and our reading was broken: Basically once you activate it, you would "counter" (negate the activation and destroy) the next 4 spell cards your opponent plays and then deal 3000 points of damage after negating thier 4th spell. We also mostly played drawing from one shared deck (because only 2 kids actually had cards)

I used to think you could use scrap iron scarecrow more than once per turn, so I literally could not lose lol

when i started playing yu gi oh i was using a watt deck, including watthopper. the amount of times i had to tell people "you cant do that" was probably in the hundreds

For me the #1 playground staple was Legendary Jujitsu Master, we didn't know what a damage step was so it just sent monsters back to the top of the deck, you needed spell/trap removal

My brother and my minds were blown when we found out Blue Eyes Shining Dragon doesn't negate dark hole and that there was a difference between targeted removal and non-targeting. Truly my childhood ended when I found out Shining Dragon was bad.

On the playground i was the bane of everyones existance 1. i marked on the back my carts so i would always optimally sort my deck before a battle (never was called out) 2. i had 5 Mirror Force and 5 Trap Hohles and 3 Dark Hohles 3. my deck was made up entirely of Dark Monsters 4. I had like 5 Summoned Skulls too ( My Favorite Monster card) and on the playground anything with over 2k ATK was just amazing 5. and of course Patrician of Darkness - the way we used it on the playground (our interpretation) - it forces the enemy to attack no matter what - AND - you could choose which monster to attack - so with 5 Mirror force and alot of Fodder - i practially steam rolled most games 6. i also spammed the shit out of Monster Reborn i had 4 come to think of it my deck was incredibly simple espacilly because of playground rules you were allowed to play EVERYTHING - if oyu had 5 monsters on hand that diddnt require sacrifice - you just put them down this was to speed up battles because of recess

During playground yugioh a friend of mine ran an umi deck with Tornado Wall. I didn't have enough spell/trap removal to deal with it and it always made it impossible for me to do anything.

Sad Relinquished wasn't on there. I used to think that he stole one of the opponent's monsters like a quick effect so every time my opponent attacked it, losing what was equipped to it as protection, I would immediately equip the monster that just attacked it. I use to use the ritual spell as just summoning it from the deck.

As a kid I would always play with my brother and the one set of cards that would always win for me is Cloudian Nimbusman and Cloudian Squall. Turn into a big boy that can't be destroyed by battle and gains 500 for each fog counter and none of us would ever have spell or trap cards for monster removal. And I swear neither of us could read and just agreed that fog counters from squall also go on set spell or trap cards

As a kid, we didn't realize you can just chain to Xing Zhen Hu so we thought it was 1 of the most busted spell & trap removal in the game

I played the original Six Samurai as a kid and used their effects even if they were the only six sam on the board. Zanji is incredibly strong if you're cheating!

From my playground Yugioh experience, the most broken cards were honestly just…battle traps in general. If you didn’t have them, and a LOT of them, you would generally lose. Dimensional Prison, Sakuretsu Armor, the ever-encompassing Scrap-Iron Scarecrow… Well, that was until I got my hands on an Ancient Gear Golem, which became the end-all be-all annihilator.

Ah, Swarm of Scarabs. What made it even more powerful in a kid-format is that we thought "Flip Summoned" was just a synonym to being flipped face-up. So, worst case scenario it was still a Man-Eater Bug with better stats, and since all our decks contained 3x Man-Eater Bug, I definitely had the edge with my Swarm of Scarabs added on top of that.

this was my first time seeing one of those bootlegs in ok condition. the only ones i've ever seen were either given to me or owned by other children who, prior to me seeing the cards, must've slathered the bootlegs in mustard or something idk. crazy how shiny that thing is

Power tool dragon was a giant generic level 7 synchro with protection from destruction and could search equips to beef himself up and gain more protection. All I did was turbo him out and then proceed to either win or lose because my best friend played traps, direct attackers and a monster with 9000 attack that took me way too long to figure out it was fake

My one friend played what could only be described as Galaxy Eyes Photon Dragon turbo. This was at a time when every kid who played Yugioh on the playground was obsessed with random pack filler and starter deck xyz monsters. I don’t think he ever lost a game.

The memories of childhood Yu gi oh is something alright! I remember that one of the scariest cards me and my older sister used against eachother was "Pumprincess the Princess of Ghosts". In the slow format we played in it was a true threat that after 10 turns made the beat sticks weak! Also it was the only out we had to Utopia at the time xD

In non English speaking countries this whole situation was even better. Because, as kids in the elementary school we literally had no idea what the card was saying at all, so we were assuming what effects the cards had, based on the artwork. The only things we knew for sure were the attack and defense points, the level and when it comes to effects only those of the cards used in the anime.

The first starter decks and Metal Raiders got super-popular at my school near the end of 3rd grade. On a road trip to the states that summer, I managed to talk my dad (who was super cheap at the time) to buy me a Starter Deck Kaiba when we found one at a gas station - he agreed on the stipulation that it counted as my month's allowance. When we went back to school for 4th grade and started playing, I quickly realized literally everyone at the school was playing a super clown-shoes variant, which my rules-focused, Asperger's-inflicted mind could not comprehend. The rules they made up: No tribute summons (like Duelist Kingdom, you can normal summon big guys without tributes) You can play monsters, spells, and traps in any of the ten main zones, and you can play monsters in both face-up defence AND face-down attack position. You can only attack directly if your opponent's board is cleared - including spells and traps. So you can attack spells and traps if they're continuous or face-down. Traps can ONLY be activated when they're targeted for an attacked, even if they say they have another trigger condition. Needless to say, this all caused me to pretty much ignore the TCG in favour of Eternal Duelist Soul and Stairway to the Destined Duel. The last time I saw any of the school kids playing was a couple of years later, where they were mostly playing by TCG rules, with one exception - to tribute summon a monster, you must tribute monsters whose total levels equal or exceed the monster you wish to summon. Essentially tribute summons were ritual summons that didn't need a spell card.

Heliosphere Dragon was *the* dominator card at our school yugioh group, everyone would always play normally and then be filled with incredible regret when Heliosphere dropped and we couldnt declare attacks anymore. This was also significantly aided by the fact that none of us read the "and this is the only monster you control" condition

Don't worry, im a freshman, and when i was in Elementary school hiding Yu-Gi-Oh in your sweatshirt pocket then bringing them out to recess was all the rage. I would use Junk Warrior, since i thought i gained attack equal to the current attack of all level 2 or lower monsters, not just when it was summoned. So i'd summon Junk Warrior and 3 atlatean pikeman

3:51 I had a card from that set as well. It was Magician of Black Chaos, but it was translated as "Magician of Black Cows" somehow and it still sends my sides into orbit. Sadly I no longer have the card, but man I wish I did.

Unbeatable cards when I was a kid were just any big beatstick monsters because we had no idea there was a tribute rule or a limit on normal summons so if you draw into 3 blue eyes turn 1 just slap 'em all on the board Kaiba style and GG. Thank you, Yu-Gi-Oh anime, for teaching us the rules of the game so well.

I used to use Number 22: Zombiestein as my ace. Pretty decent beat stick at least, but I realize now that its effect is a lot more restricted than I thought. Plus I didn’t realize that the Gagaga Child I used to summon it had a restriction that you aren’t allowed to go to battle phase during the turn you use Child’s effect.

I always remember Tragoedia being broken at school, me and my friends just played random cards but it was broken enough that my friend bought 1 because he was sick of losing to it every game

Oh man, I remember playing Bazoo and telling everyone he gets to banish 3 monsters and then gain ATK for ALL banished monster, so he became a Gren Mayu but better.

I was using "Skull Lair" before it's errata with "Gren Maju Da Eiza" The rest of the deck was monster removal, spell removal and trap removal. Emptied the opponent's board, feeds my graveyard for Skull Lair, finishing with OTK.

funny thing, im a brazilian, so loads of fake cards around here, and my friend had a card(now its kinda obvious that it was fake) that couldn't atack the turn it was summoned but had infinite simble for atk and def, so it was kinda unbetable, until i put 3 raigeki in my deck and proceded to never lose a single duel in school after... kids sleep on removal

For me, it was dark hole. Me and my friend always thought it meant "destroy all of YOUR OPPONENTS cards, not every card. So when I finally got my blue eyes ultimate dragon out that I fished for every game, he would just wipe it out with all my spell cards.

Prime Material Dragon was an absolute lifesaver in the 5ds DS games.

I remember misunerstanding submarineroid's effect thinking if it attacked directly while it had it's attack boosted, that boosted attack became its original attack that the boost then stacked on (so with united we stand alone, it was now 2400 attack after one hit.)

When we were young, we thought that gladiator beast monsters could use their effect to return to the deck even if they were destroyed by battle, needless to say they were incredibly strong

I played a Raging Flame Sprite deck on the play ground. I remember UFO turtle to be my main searcher for it, and playing axe of despair so the Sprite could get big fast. I also had 1 copy of Solar Flare Dragon and played Inferno for more damage. But my Ace monster was Metal Armored Bug as it was the highest Attack point monster I owned My brother played Spirit Barrier and Astral Barrier together so that he'd turn all of my attacks into direct attacks to protect his monsters and then take no damage thanks to spirit barrier

"Okay that was a test everyone who said me is banned" God i love you Joseph

Gives me good memories. Reminds me of when I 1st played Yugioh where I bought the Ancient Gear and Pendulum Domination Structures and just mixed them into 1 deck lmao. It was a wierd combo that worked surprisingly decent until I started buying play sets of D/D cards. This deck only worked decent cause 1 of my friends played Performapal and the 1 played cyberses which didn't do too much at the time since it was around the time when Vrains 1st started releasing episodes. Though once he made Encode, things got a bit difficult.

Oh Maiden with Eyes of Blue was practically my boss monster as a kid. I'd slam that thing down and people would groan. Only thing anyone had that outed her was if one kid miraculously got obelisk on the board. Which is the only reason I got a Five Headed Dragon. When I first learned how to play this game though, there was one kid who had a straight up six sam deck. Whenever he'd manage to get the shien synchro out, we knew we were screwed because that thing was an ASSHOLE when you were playing mishmash with a warrior splash. No combos to cheat out anything at his level, and he'd run over your facedown defenses. And its not like we had any good removal, even if we could get past all his protection. I had fissures and was happy about it.

My playground Yugioh happened to have occurred in TOSS format. There was this group of kids who were religiously on three structure deck soulburners, one guy playing dark warrior orcust and everyone else using some sort of mashup made from trading legendary hero decks.

A more modern example of a card that would absolutely be broken on the playground (and in sealed formats) is devouring sarcophagus. It just steals a monster if it's destroyed by battle and then if the monster you stole gets destroyed then you get to steal another one.

I cheated at Ordeal of a Traveler in a completely different way. I just didn't reveal the card to my opponent lmfao. I'm pretty sure I always told the truth but I just straight up didn't realize you had to show your opponent the card lol

Me aging myself beyond belief, “Revival Jam was so annoying when it came out.”

As a young child, I thought "Infinite Cards" gave me free reign to just ~PICK UP MY ENTIRE DECK, AND USE IT AS MY HAND~. Yep.

Raging flame sprite was one of my favorites as a kid. That plus swords of revealing light was basically game over

When I was just starting Yugioh I knew barely any rules and learned from friends who didn't know any either, not knowing monsters had to be tributed from the field made egyptian gods tribute summoned from the hand the best win condition, once you got psychic blade on them it was pretty much game

I used to think Multiply could target any monster (granted it was a fake multiply I drew myself after watching the DM episode) and the tokens would have the same name and stats, so I used it with my BEWD to fuse BEUD.

When I was like 10-12 and Hidden Arsenal 1 came out, it was the biggest thing in the world. Only one person at school pulled Brionac and would wreck us with it, but by far the most meta card was AOJ Catastor which nearly everyone had and because no one really had a good out to him, we all ran Junk Synchron to summon Junk Warrior BECAUSE HE HAS 100 MORE ATTACK and is indeed a Dark monster.

Earthshaker was one of the most broken cards in my house growing up. The effect is supposed work by selecting two attributes, your opponent picks one of those, and destroys all monsters with that attribute. But because the text didn't say "different attributes" we ruled that you could just pick the same one twice, basically removing your opponent's choice. This crappy common trap from Pharoh's Servant became a staple field nuke for any attribute you wanted, and it was glorious!

One of my playground NIGHTMARES... Was _Inaba White Rabbit_ 🐇 POKE directly... Return to hand. POKE directly... Return to hand. Over... And over... And over... And over... And over...

When i was a kid, i didnt really get what a tribute summon counted as, so when i read Dark Dust Spirit's effect, that says it cant be special summoned, my child brain just kind of assumed that meant you didnt have to tribute summon it and could just normal it for free, and i also misread "destroy all other monsters" as "destroy all other cards", which i also somehow assumed it only meant the opponent's cards, meaning you would get a free board wipe with 2200 atk to attack directly, which would then go back into your hand to do it again the next turn, it was insanely powerful until i learned what it actually does

I got into Yugioh in high school. A friend of mine used pot of duality after special summoning a bunch because he said the card’s text meant you can only not special after activation. I just trusted him on that one

That one time where we intentionally disregard the rules and just came up with random stuff based on the card art alone was the most fun yugioh session we ever had. It happened because the class clown (who doesn't play yugioh) one day showed up with a deck of random cards. Bootleg exodia defeated by getting hit by a car was quite the highlight of the year.

Red nova dragon was my go to, the effect was so complex that basically we resorted to "you can't destroy it no matter what". But it was also pretty hard to summon

It's hilarious that you mentioned the whole Toys r Us thing I used to work at Toys r Us in Wood watch over the kids playing the Yu-Gi-Oh that's what got me into it

This video was an absolute joy, Scrubbed Raid was one my friends would play a lot to make games last forever, fun times :)

This video has to be one of my favorites from you. Cracked up man.

My friend convinced me that Black Rose Dragon remained on the field when it used its nuke effect

I know this video is like 7 months old. But 3x gravity bind, 3x messenger of peace, 3x swarm of scarabs, 3x swarm of locusts, 3 des lacoda, and 3 mysterious puppeteer was basically my deck for high school yugi. It annoyed so many people, and because i was " flip summoning" my lp would go up, while my opponents would keep going down. Sweet memories.

Man-Eater bug was one I remember being crazy strong alongside Dream Clown, but also, I remember having a Toon+Relinquished deck that used both Raging Flame Sprite AND obnoxious Celtic Guard in it and I won more than a few games off of comboing Flame Sprite with Pitch black war wolf (since we thought traps could only be activated when a monster attacked since that was what usually happened in the show) or stalling with Obnoxious until I could relinquish their boss monster or get out and direct attack with Toon blue eyes for game.

At my school every single deck includes a copy of mataza, scapegoat and ocg united we stand because if you pull out that combo in a empty field is game. And we used to play with lot of ocg cards since it was most common and cheaper for us, the owner of the shop, for our relieve, knows every single effect of the cards we pulled.

8:21 friend of mine did the same thing, not only with humming bird but also with golden lady bug. Each turn he would gain at least 1000 LP, while the rest of his deck was dealing effect damage and not allowing you to attack.

Patrician of Darkness was part of a combo I made myself: Redirect all the opponent's attacks to Defense Position Gogogo Golem, which can't be destroyed in battle once per turn while in Defense Position. Finally, have The Dark Door up, which makes it so only one monster can attack per turn. An indestructible wall between my opponent's monsters and my life points.

While I got into YGO a bit too late to experience the wild west of true playground YGO, I have alot of memories of what I like to call "Broken telephone Yugioh". At some point, you remembered exactly what the card's effect is and what it was specifically capable of, but the further you go from the last time you fact-checked it, the more strange qualities start creeping in because of simply misremembering the card text, remembering the card doing something under a very specific circumstance and all it takes is for you to forget a few rules on the side and suddenly you're playing what might as well be a custom card. In mild forms, it can be something like a "when" effect turning into an "if" effect or forgetting that Dora can target other monsters on the field with it's effect. At it's worst, it can turn a card like Dark Law into a hand-ripping machine for a duel, just because you forgot that his effect is not once per turn and never bothered to fact check it until it was too late or Kaijus being able to swarm the field, because you forgot that one small stipulation of only controlling one of them. This tends to happen the most with the "Pot" cards from my experience. At some point you forget which one had which restriction and which ones even had restrictions to begin with and all of a sudden you're using 3 Pot of Extravagance on your Main Phase 2, because you think it only restricts you from special summoning.

I remember seeing those bootleg cards way back at flea markets. Some of the vendors brought cheap bootleg toys and sold them there. Ah the memories.

Oh man the days of playground yugioh in the early 2000s. We negotiated with our teachers on our one free day a year to let everyone bring in their decks. Massive duel and trades session. My first card was a mechanical spider. Still love that card. Goosebumps and yugioh in 3rd grade, those were the days

I had one kid back in middle school who thought that if you controlled Jam Defender and no Revival Jam. Then you couldn’t be attacked at all. Nobody could convince him otherwise and he kept trying to use it as a floodgate.

We did labyrinth duels at my house using graph paper that had bigger squares. We made up rules like it uses 3 of the spaces to fly over a wall. Ten other regular labyrinth rules.

My killer deck back in the day revolved around Gravity Bind, Swarm of Scarabs, Eye of Truth and Bad Reaction to Somochi. Gravity Bind to stop pretty much all of my opponents monsters. Scarabs to keep their field clear just in case. and my coined combo "Bad Reaction to the Eye" so I can see their hand, and they lose 1,000 LP each turn. Rarely got all 4 out on their field at once, but even with partial combos I was undefeatable.

0:18 Really had me going and I was honestly kinda hoping that Joseph would just put a blank screen for an entire video

God, THE NOSTALGIA! We legit had a black market for yugioh at my elementary school. I remember when white horned dragon came out. I think it was summer or something because I was at a school, but it wasn’t my normal school.

there was an old pc game with patrician of darkness where you could use it to attack your opponent directly, but that was one of those cereal disks that was a simulation of facing kaiba

Thank you for the Nostalgia trip… I really needed it ti remind me of the glory days of TCG

The first Yu-Gi-Oh! cards I got were from a single booster pack of Legend of Blue-Eyes. A short while later my brother and I would get the Kaiba and Yugi starter decks respectively and with them came a rule book, where I learned that Flame Ghost didn't have two different attacks but that those were the materials for it's fusion summon. It's an understandable mistake when the only card game you've ever known was Pokemon and your introduction to a new game was a booster pack.

The Dark Necrofear's type being "Sound" is very cool actually, you can learn more about it from r/Sounding

So back in 2007 as a child I got Rise of the Dragon Lords as a birthday present from my parents. I adored (and still do) how Felgrand Dragon looked but I also didn't understand what a trigger and an ignition effect was due to priority confusing me. This lead me to believe that If I summoned Felgrand Dragon from the Graveyard by first sending it there from the field, I could infinitely target a monster in my GY to gain attack but also to stop gaining it at any point I wished but I couldn't gain any after I decided to stop. Still love it to this day, for different reasons though.

I remember back when the anime had first started coming out in North America. everyone I knew was playing it, but they were playing by Duelist Kingdom rules (make shit up, ignore most card effects/don't read things properly, etc...) and I remember getting a Berserk Dragon from a card-machine at a convenience store. I would slap that down on the field, ignoring it's summoning requirements, and use a spell card (I can't remember she spell's name) to change it's attribute from dark to light, and said "well since it's now no longer a dark monster, it doesn't LOSE attack each turn from the dark one's blessing, but instead GAINS attack each turn". I was 11 at the time, and nobody called me out on it

I couldn't think of it when I saw the thread, but when I was at camp, summoning Marshmallon made me effectively invincible until I could build a board of cards like labyrinth wall and Millennium Shield until I could OTK with Shield and Sword

I remember trying to use Forbidden Chalice on Maiden with Eyes of Blue back in middle school and kicking myself realizing it still targets it and summons a Blue Eyes 😮‍💨

by the time Magic was dying at my high school and Yugioh took it's place, it honestly did not take long for us to escalate from the sort of beatdown decks that defined the game up to Labyrinth of Nightmare to things with actual synergy, and people were tossing around decks that would just try to empty the opponent's hands ASAP and then use big beatsticks alongside Don Zaloog and Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer to pick apart the opponent's options nice and quick. These shells very quickly gave way to the sort of chaos shells you are probably thinking about. I actually played some really funny jank that actually would somewhat pick apart the chaos decks via the likes of Hoshiningen, Luminous Spark, Banisher of the Light, and a few fun LIGHT attribute beatsticks. I noticed that almost all the LIGHT attribute cards in their chaos decks were the likes of Magician of Faith, Thunder Dragon, maybe Blade Knight if they were particularly spicy. so much of their decks were the likes of Mad Dog of Darkness or Breaker the Magical Warrior or the like. the real fun was them having to dance around a beefed up Airknight Parsath piercing through and drawing me cards. I ran some dumb shit in that deck. like Cestus of Dalga. and Time Wizard for a board wipe that could get around Horus of Blackflame Lv. 8 and Jinzo combo. I actually can think of an instance of people not understanding a card, and funnily enough it was Monster Reborn; they thought that Monster Reborn's text change from "Special Summon 1 monster from your Graveyard in Face-up Attack or Face-up Defense position" to "Special summon 1 monster from your graveyard" was a power level errata where they would special summon Magician of Faith face down with Monster Reborn and then find ways to immediately flip it's battle position. I remember having to literally buy a fresh structure deck, bringing it to school, opening it up fresh in front of that fucker and then making him read from the rulebook to get his ass to stop cheating. My best friend from high school played the solar flare dragon lock. He would get very angry when he'd start dying to a pair of Hoshiningen and Luminous Spark not caring about Gravity Bind or Level Limit Area B.

We knew about the side deck and that you could swap cards, but nothing more. so we put like every powerspell into the sidedeck and once per turn, you could swap out a card from your hand with a card from the sidedeck. wild times :D

I'm so glad Ordeal of the Traveler was mentioned. That was my one stall option against my brother to get my boss monsters out. And my boss monsters at the time were Sphinxes and Exxod, Master of the Guard.

There was this kid I went to middle school with and he ran a 40 card deck that was 34 traps and 6 monster cards. Every time we’d have tournaments he’d always make the final 2 and if he didn’t he lost to the eventual winner. His monster cards were 3 copies of Drill Barnacle and 3 copies of Uria. I miss the guy and I miss dueling his deck with whatever flavor of the month I used between HERO/Dragons/Gravekeepers.

So when I was in middle school, I used to completely destroy everyone on the playground with a frog deck. And this for a very simple reason: You see, in the french version, before an erata came in to correct it, the card was named "Frog of Permutation", effectively making it indestructible in Battle, so just playing this gave my good ol' Wetland beatdown infinite consistency which would often lead me to play Substitoad, Dupe Frog and Unifrog to win by being absolutely untouchable. And in case of stuff like Dark Hole, I had Aegis of the Ocean Dragon Lord. I was basically indestructible. Lots of fun.

My brother made a stal deck that consisted of cards such as "The Dark Door", "Gravekeepers Servant", "Burden of the Mighty". "Mirror Force", and then buring cards such as "Solar Flare Dragon" and "Dark Room of Nightmare" to make anytime I dueled him with my crappy combo deck a terrible time. Since I didn't have any Spell/Trap card removal I just had to sit their slowly attacking him with only one monster, and him milling my deck and burning my Lifepoints slowly. And that is why I don't like stall decks anymore, but combo decks instead. My brother slowly killed any love for them that I would have throughout our childhood.

Shouts out to the 'Remove Trap' spell card I played as a Quick Effect and thought I could negate stuff like Seven Tools because I didn't understand what speed spell or the lightning icon on MST was.