Misplay for me. Towards the end I mention Kaiba could have fused and made Ultimate Dragon to attack over Dark Magician, but fusion monsters can’t attack the turn they are summoned. Sorry about that.
Your videos are awesome man! And I agree, Kaiba could've easily won if he brought back obelisk and sacrificed his remaining two blue eyes! Damn anime plot armor!!!!
22:35 i guess both the reasonings were: if Kaiba deletes dark paladin, assuming yugi took something from the deck to help him defeat ultimate dragon, Red-eyes would have not been able to defeat his fusion monster. Yugi knowing this activates Magic formula to boost the attack to dark paladin to try and bait a response from kaiba, as he says "You cannot win with darkness and hatred in your heart" We can assume he knew Kaiba would've tried to get the final blow there, so if he uses a bait e would definetly use something in response. so now that yugi knows all his moves got wasted, he can safely use de-fusion. Yugi knows how Kaiba thinks: to achieve anything, you must win and in multiple occasions Kaiba tries to win by crushing the opponent, even at the start of the Duel he tried an otk to crush yugi
I'm glad he made a note of how Yugi waited for Kaiba to walk back to his spot before activating exchange. The level of pettiness in that moment is hilarious
Between that and the finisher where he destroys every Blue Eyes despite not needing too, Atem really does come across as wanting to just destroy his rivals whole career. 😂
Gotta admit it. Kaiba walking all the way up to Yugi, talking smack, then walking all the way back to his side of the field just for Yugi to make him walk all the way back to him again as a kind of payback was gold. My only regret is we don't get to see Joey laughing his butt off about it.
I really wish the plot would throw my boi Joey a bone dueling Kaiba at least once. It would be nice to see him finally shut up and at least regard Joey as a capable duelist.
@@anthonym840 To be fair, he actually does in their duel near the end of that arc. Sure, it is in his own Kaiba way, but he does acknowledge Joey isn't as worthless as he thought, mostly for his determination and guts. In Kaiba's words it would be something like: "You know what, Wheeler? You're right. I was wrong about you. You aren't a third rate duelist after all. You're second rate on your good days." (smug smirk and walks away) I think it was a great moment for them both.
I love how, after the Gods clash and destroy each other, both Yugi and Kaiba begin using some of their original cards. Yugi goes straight into Dark Magician and Kaiba goes straight into Blue Eyes.
"Lightforce Sword had a 25% chance of getting Obelisk and it paid off." Gonna be honest, I feel like Kaiba's grandstanding drastically increased those odds.
No matter how many misplays there are in the duel, it'll always be my personal all time favourite duel. Six episodes of then just slugging with each back and fourth.
If I remember right, its the one that made me sub. I kept clicking and watching things when they were recommended, but this was what finally pushed me over.
Part of why I love this duel so much is that it’s very character driven. Both Kaiba and Yami Yugi make bad oversights through the duel that they don’t tend to make with other opponents - there’s a lot riding on this duel for both of them, Kaiba had his mind and his pride utterly wiped by Yami Yugi and this entire tournament is about taking that back, Yami Yugi’s just seen his friends get utterly shafted by an evil magical egomaniac and he just wants to get past Kaiba so he can defeat Marik. There’s so much grand-standing ego bought out in this duel that they miss a lot of opportunities to win, and I actually like that 😂 goes to show you can be considered an amazing duellist but you’re just human in the end. Anyway, great analysis, I love these kinds of videos from this channel!
I also liked how the duel emphasized them resorting to their classic cards at the end of it, becauseof who they are. They tried to stop each other from otk-ing with god card, then resort to Blue eyes ultimate vs. a Dark Magiciant variant. This and the duel with Marik are the two where Yugi actually seemed to sweat.
Yeah alot of people seem to forget that these characters are people too with their own wants, desires, personality quirks and so on. They’re naturally gonna make moves based on their approach to life and with what they have.
I think Kaiba, being Kaiba, wanted Yugi to summon Slifer as destroying it would feel like a more complete victory, and he was so confident in his strategy that he allowed Yugi to make certain plays to allow this to happen.
As this duel is based on the manga, monsters cannot attack the turn they are revived from the GY. So reviving Obelisk would be useless as it'd just go back to the GY at the end of the turn. Hence why Ra's ''instant attack'' ability is a thing as it can attack the turn it's revived.
My only argument for Kaiba doing what he did was to win with his Blue Eyes to prove that "his fate was NOT destined" as he did with ishizu. I know he wanted to beat Atem with his Obelisk versus Atem"s Slifer, I think the moment Obelisk got destroyed his first thought was, "Blue Eyes has my back."
Plus it's just a good old fashioned callback for the show as they go from the gods to their ogs with blue eyes and dark magician. I guess in a way it shows that while they've grown as characters they're still the same people deep down plus blue eyes and dark magician have rarely let them down
All the misplays Kaiba made make sense. I knew plot dictated Yugi had to win, but all the missed opportunities really made sense in context: It wasn’t enough for Kaiba to win. He had to claim the perfect victory. An absolute domination. He was tunnel-visioned not on just beating Yugi, but proving his unquestioned superiority. He needed to win with Obelisk or his Blue-Eyes. And as we saw, he made a play for Slifer too. He wanted, no NEEDED, to make Yugi look as small as possible. If this were a mook or Marik? Basically anyone else other than Joey or Yugi? Kaiba would have just wanted to end the duel quickly. He has nothing to prove against anyone else. NOTE: I included Joey here because I feel he would take a similar win over Joey as Yugi, but for different reasons. Kaiba is personally insulted by Joey’s participation in HIS tournament. So yeah, he’d want to go for a similar sense of domination. But for Yugi? This is personal. And this tunnel-vision clouds his judgement. And it’s why Kaiba will never ever eke out a true win against Yugi. Yugi brings out the worst characteristics in Kaiba. Against Yugi? Kaiba is not logical, he’s temperamental. He’d totally forgo a sure thing in favor of the bigger win. Just look at Pyramid of Light. Had he just taken Blue Eyes Shining Dragon? He might have actually won! Kaiba had Yugi dead to rights. But he went the extra mile to take an additional card he didn’t NEED but would make the victory even more decisive: and this cost him. Kaiba will never play at his full potential against Yugi. He’ll misplay, he won’t take game if it’s not a devastating win. Against Yugi? Kaiba is inherently compromised.
In Dark Side of Dimensions, it pretty much happens again, where Kaiba is seemingly so obsessed with dueling the Pharaoh that he refuses to believe Yugi is actually good and thinks he's mocking Kaiba from the cards he uses, which blinds him to the fact Yugi is beating the guy.
@reaperthegrim5654 some of those moments yeah plot armor. But still doesn't mean crap about all the thousands of times he's lost to Atem man just misplays a lot when dueling Yugi. It's like Yugi plays mind games with him so bad that he forgets to read his own card while bragging how he's the best. It happens.
@@unhingedgamin2706 Funny thing? Yugi/Atem aren’t doing anything. Kaiba’s doing it all to himself. He’s his own worst enemy when he’s up against Yugi/Atem.
It feels appropriate that they'd both have tunnel vision during this duel. They both have a significant amount of history with each other at this stage and the duel is high stakes for both of them, even if they consider different stakes to be the important ones. It makes a lot of sense they'd both get wrapped up in outthinking the other, overthinking their way past the available winning moves to find a strategy that wins in 3 turns or something, or otherwise generally overlooking ways to win now in favour of sticking to the way they'd planned to win going in to the duel. Being cautious and avoiding overextending only to underextend and misplay, missing the forest for the trees and all that. I was thinking about these breakdowns just yesterday rewatching V-Rains; It might not be an end-game/ super plot significant duel like most of the ones you've covered, but I'm curious how a breakdown of the Playmaker VS Ghost Girl duel in episodes 14-15 would go. Altergeists are a known rogue deck that's been relevant enough for long enough to achieve the highest praise any control strategy can get of making people groan when they realise they're matched up against it, and this was their anime debut. There's also a fair amount of talk from the duel's onlookers about how it's such a "high level duel" and "so complicated [they] can barely keep up", so while it's not the most important duel it seems like it might be an interesting one to examine like this.
One problem... . the deck wasn't fully completed nor upgraded at that point but was in it's beginning stages... I can see many people being able to fight a beginning stage Altergeist but later on.. .it would give trouble to most opponents .. personally I don't even wanna play against it.. it's too unfair.. in my opinion.
I think they also overlooked some of the more obvious winning opportunities, assuming that the other would have thought of that and prepared a counter for it. So they end up overthinking, never realizing that the simplest solution would in fact have been enough.
Regarding Magic Formula play at the end, what I am assuming the writers are thinking, is that Absorb Spell could have absorbed the effect of De-Fusion, so by Kaiba wasting it here, by just being power greedy, he missed the chance to steal DeFusion and split up Dark Paladin. Yugi played Magic Formula first to try to lure Kaiba spell card, and it worked
@Mister Perfection oh that’s interesting! See that’s what I’ve thought every time I’ve watched this duel, I was always like “as if kaiba didn’t just let magic formula activate, makes no difference in the end he still destroys yugis monster” but if absorb spell wouldn’t work on defusion, then that makes more sense. But it doesn’t explain all the other misplays 😆
@Mister Perfection It still works if you consider that it was what Yugi was thinking rather than what the writers were thinking. Yugi couldn’t have known what specific card Kaiba had, but he could easily have guessed that Kaiba would have a card that would let him stop a spell/trap card and would want Kaiba to use it before he used defusion.
Actually, Magic Formula could make the Dark Paladin beat Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, as it originally increases ATK by 700, not 500, thus Dark Paladin's 4600 > Blue-Eyes Ultimate's 4500. My personal theory is that they made it +500 because of the Atem-Bakura duel earlier; had Dark Magician Girl gained 700 ATK there, she would have wiped out Bakura's LP by destroying Dark Necrofear instead of him surviving with 150 LP. They just went with it after that lol
Actually for Kaiba that wouldn’t have even worked at all since Absorb Spell only absorbs the effects of Spells that increase Attack Points, so it was there if Yugi used something that could have made his cards stronger than BEUD, like a Pump Up or a later Magic Formula, and De-Fusion notably doesn’t change Attack Points but the state of monsters, so the effect would have just misfired had he tried anyway and we would still have the same end result. But for Yugi it was still the best move since who knows what sort of negation or removal Kaiba would have facedown, something that could have interrupted his De-Fusion…
I’m pretty sure the idea is that Kaiba believe Yugi would try to beat his Ultimate Dragon with some attack boosting spell because earlier Kaiba understands that Yugi relies on attack boosting cards so he chose absorb spell to counter any attempts by Yugi to get a decently strong monster and then close the gap with an equip spell. As for equip spells, Kaiba knows Yugi has magic formula and horn of the unicorn, so when Yugi sprung magic formula, it could be safe to assume that Kaiba expected Yugi to have also chosen Horn of the Unicorn so he sprung absorb spell to shut down that eventual plan, not knowing that his other set card wasn’t an equip card. On the topic of ultimate dragon, it’s fair to say that Kaiba chose to go with ultimate dragon because if he didn’t, he would have to contend with Yugi’s Buster blader which he knows Yugi has and would decimate him if he had gone with a blue eyes beat down strategy. So it’s safe to say that Kaiba saw past the obvious choice Yugi could have gone for in choosing Buster blader as one of his 3 cards as Yugi has 2 monsters to sacrifice for such a play.
Honestly, you mentioned Yugi having tunnel vision, but they really both do- it's why Kaiba didn't attack earlier- he was so incredibly focused on bringing out Tormentor. Most characters seem to have tunnel vision wrt their aces, but these two get it Really Badly the whole series.
Watch any card game streamer and you'll eventually get into a "missed lethal" moment. I remember committing at least a couple when I played Magic Arena.
Yugi is mildly justified. Kaiba has an Egyptian God which is way above the power of the usual monsters he faces on a regular basis and is well aware Kaiba would use it at any point if given the chance. Slifer was pretty much Yugi's main way to fend off Obelisk. Kaiba meanwhile was just flexing and focusing in demonstrating superiority over getting game. So it makes sense. Yugi's tunnel vision was admittedly being properly paranoid, Kaiba however has no such excuse. Keep in kind Yugi didn't use Slifer that often even after beating Strings so it's safe to assume he uses Slifer as an emergency weapon rather than a go to monster.
When regarding the Enemy Controller play with X Head Cannon, that wouldn’t happen because if you remember, the anime effect just uses the opponent’s monster as tribute. This was brought up when you did the Joey vs Kaiba vid. So Yugi could’ve attacked and won the duel there.
Thats true, but considering that Kaiba didnt attack when he totally couldve, its very easy for Yugi to assume that hes got something protecting him regardless, so even if it was Enemy Controller and he wouldve won the duel that way, it was defly understandable to choose to not attack that turn from Yugis pov
Kaiba also misplayed by not using lullaby of obedience on the turn he used soul exchange if he did he wouldve summoned slifer since yugi didn’t set change of heart.
@@UhOh239 The anime rules are a bit fuzzy, likely anyway, but I think he couldn't do that. I think that Enemy Controller was only going to let him tribute X-Head in that exact moment. So when Yugi used Lifghtforce Sword and hit Obelisk, he had lost the ability to tribute it, because he didn't have something to tribute it for. Now he could/should, in theory, have done that before he went for Soul Exchange and used it to start the chain of events. I think that he just wanted to beat Yugi with Obelisk, and was only willing to use Slifer when that option was taken off the table, in addition to the possibility of Slifer being in Yugi's hand instead of his deck.
Nice Video, one Duell i would like to see in this format is Yu-Gi-Oh GX Cyrus vs Hell Kaiser in season 2. I think that the duell is pretty interesting.
Really brutal duel but Cyrus really put everything he had to beat his brother. Can't say anything hold him back only that he undermined what level of cruelty Kaiser would got to.
I feel like a lot of the problems with this duel could have been fixed by simply changing the order each player drew their cards in. The way it’s written both Yugi and Kaiba hold onto perfectly good cards for turns on end when they should be going all in for game.
I mean it makes sense why they are overly cautious. Look at how they were both playing each other with spells and traps for this duel, its likely that neither wanted to risk their resources on a move that gets immediately countered and leaving them open... nothing to excuse the misplays though lol. Least it isn't like modern decks or else we'd be here for 10 years well they counter play each other with card effects, like Maxx C, and Ash Blossom. No offense to modern decks... but damn is it easy to brick your opponent in the first 3 turns with those types of cards and decks... Don't even get me started on Accesscode Decks and DPE Decks.
You should do one of these in s1 where there like weren’t rules as a joke. CLEARLY IF KAIBA HAD MERELY SUMMONED KAISER SEA HORSE AND A VORSE RAIDER AT THE SANE TIME HE COULDVE DONE A SYNCHRONIZED ATTACK AND KEFT YUGI HELPLESS
@@AngryWindmill neither did monster effects really. They were just like, oh this guys a moth and as we all know, moths have poisonous scales that corpse your monsters
@@AKiwiBird actually monster effects did exist in season 1. Man Eater Bug could destroy a monster when flip summoned, Reaper of the Cards could destroy a face down spell card and Relinquished could absorb the opponents monster
This is the best duel in the franchise for me. It was long, good written with constant back and forth and was in the making for the entirety of anime and manga. But my favorite part about it was Yugi and Kaiba's clashing ideals: one chasing his past, while the other tries to leave it behind.
My favorite part was Slifer VS Obelisk. It lasted multiple turns with a great deal of suspense as the attack points for each (especially Slifer) get messed around with throughout.
Its a good duel monster Duel for me, but man I think the odd eyes Raging dragon Duel (the one against the two dimensional girls, I can't remember there names) is my favorite. But if where talking about Duel for Duel monsters, it's definitely Joey vs marik, love underdog characters and that is a great underdog duel
I feel the point with Kaiba in particular always was that he doesn't just want to win. He wants to win in a way that lets no one ever think he maybe just won by luck. So it has to be a spectacle, which is why he made the whole Colosseum to begin with (don't forget that the duel was broadcasted). A one turn kill would be one of these ways. Or beating the Dark Magician (the monster people know Yugi for) with his Blue Eyes (the monster people know Kaiba for) showing that his Ace monster (aside from the god cards) is the stronger one where the battle of the gods concluded in a draw. The only problem I have with it that this is never actually really discussed in the content of the show aside from that one moment where Yugi talks about Kaiba's hate and I guess you can make a connection there. The only things that are a bit weird (like with most duels) is that they seem to not just set cards when they easily could. But I feel this is also done to make sure that the viewer/reader doesn't need to keep track of too many cards at the same time since we usually don't get an overview of the whole field and you could easily lose track of all the cards (as someone not super familiar with the game) during all the dialogue that happens in between. Might even be more of a problem that comes from the manga, considering that the anime typically adds longer and more shots which help in that regard. Though to be fair, this is usually balanced out by just giving the characters extremely powerful cards like "Power Balance", so I gues it's fine.
Obelisk’s effect seems to count as simultaneous attacks, which is why Kuriboh was able to block the direct attack damage by being discarded. So, he probably wouldn’t be able to use Obelisk’s attack ability when he was revived, since the gods (or maybe monsters in general) seem to be unable to attack the turn they’re revived (with the exception of Ra, which is why its “Instant Attack” ability upon revival is supposed to be unique). So I don’t think that’s a misplay from Kaiba in his penultimate turn.
9:30 Actually, I think there could have been a misplay here. Yugi knows that Kaiba has Life Shaver and even debated wether or not that was the card on the field. If it was that card, it could have forced Yugi to drop a card and Slifer would have been destroyed. If Yugi played Pot of Greed at the start of his turn still expecting Life Shaver, Yugi theoretically would have only lost 1 card and still would out-gun XYZ had Life Shaver been the card face down.
@@ninjacrafted At first Action Cards were a really cool concept along with Action Duels in general... then we entered the Synchro Arc and Action Cards were nothing more than a huge plot device only used to save Yuya from every single OTK he had to face
@@tempo3352 To be fair, it wasn't just Yuya, a lot of people miss-used Action Cards, because a lot of Duelists in Arc V have no concept of having enough cards to draw cards or conserving resources. I mean look at how Kaiba and Yugi started their turns in this Duel: Yugi first turn summon one monster and set one card. Kaiba activates a spell, summons a monster, and set a card. They both still have plenty of cards in hand and resources at their disposal. Characters from Arc V first turns where you can't draw on the first turn so you only have five cards in hand: Pendlum users first turn, set the Pendulum to summon at least one or more monsters, Fusion users first turn activate Polymerization to bust out a Fusion Monster, Xyz users first turn like Shay spam the board with like three monsters to Xyz Summon, all of them use up over half their hand or their entire hand in their first turn so they have nothing left to work with for like protection so they spam Action Cards instead of just building more balanced Decks.
One thing that i find interesting is that when Kaiba activated his card of demise, if he would have set final attack orders facedown before activating his card of demise, his 3rd card would have been the flute of summoning dragons. He could have brought out all 3 BEWD's along with lord of D crashed into dark magician, destroyed REBD, and attacked with Blue Eyes #3 for game. HUGE MISPLAY Kiaba!
That’s literally what I thought. Also if he set poly facedown he could have drawn an extra card(we don’t know what it could have been since he actives final attack orders)
@@Blazecap Yugi already had the traps set to block the attacks though, Magicians Selection and Spellbinding Circle. At best one BEWD would have survived and taken down REBD
@@Amitlu youre one turn off. The turn he draws card of demise, yugi only has magic formula and spellbinding circle FD. He gets magicians selection on his next turn. so the play would have given kiaba the win
@@phillipdillard87 Ah then Kaiba is a victim of the manga's rule of only being able to set 1 Trap per turn and not wanting to commit to setting Final Attack Orders yet. Unfortunately the anime never used that rule and also did not adjust duels for it, making some players look like fools. (Thats the same reason why Yugi didnt just set Lifeshaver) Edit: In hindsight they should have just had Kaiba have a different card in his hand before activating Card of Demise. Like another Blue-Eyes maybe.
If I recall correctly, XYZ Dragon Cannon in the anime was considered to be a Union Monster much like Gate Guardian back during the Para and Dox duel. So yeah that attack gets a pass cuz it isn’t actually a fusion monster
Magician’s Selection was an anime only card. In the manga, it was Magic Cylinder that Yugi used to redirect the attack to Lord of D. However the IRL magic cylinder was printed at this point and they chose to make an anime card (selection) to mimic the anime effect of cyclinder
Please do Revolver vs Soulburner please. That’s the best Vrains duel to me and deserves a video not just for who could’ve won but the meaning behind it and the character growth both characters made by the end of the series. If you do cover it in the future, I suggest doing the first duel as well where Revolver holds back yet his opening hand looks like he could’ve OTK’d Soulburner with Borrelsword.
Yeah Revolver's opening hand vs Soulburner R1 was literally the _perfect_ one for what his deck did - if he wanted to, he had multiple routes that all resulted in clapped cheeks.
Meh. Soulburner only won because of plot. In both his skills and his deck Soulburner doesn't even begin to match up with Revolver. Literally all he does is turbo out Heatleo every duel.
@@aaa1e2r3 I believe Revolver make misplays in various of the duels he played (in the duels he lost) so losing fairly against SB doesn't seem unbelievable
The last part, in which Kaiba should have had take obelisk instead of ultimate Dragon was because Kaiba thought that Yugi would prepare for obelisk and not ultimate. That why in the end, kaiba was surprised that Yugi predict Ultimate and had defusion
It was a defeat Kaiba deserved with how selfish he was. Despite the damage Marik caused, the people he hurt and the threat he was posing to all of humanity all rich boy cared about was becoming number one again.
I always felt like Kaiba was forced to take dumb choices just for the sake of plot. Don't even look at misplays, the cards he plays prove it. What was he possibly thinking when he put Final Attack Orders in his deck and give Yugi easy access to his best cards, especially knowing he has a card created to counter dragons. And all he prepared to counter said card was a negate for boost spells?
That was insane, practically every turn there was a misplay by either one or both characters, amazing duel of course but it does feel abit soured now knowing how heavily they nerfed Kaiba for the plot to happen
I feel like it’s good that they both ended up misplaying, I think it’s better how they respect and know each other so much that they don’t settle for anything other than a perfect play they’ve tunnel visioned into
@@kujikawathemeekmage3640 Well the goal is to create an enteraining show first and formost and it is a great duel, I dunno if Kaiba would skip out on a chance to beat yugioh out of respect though, Yugi sure but for Kaiba it seems very out of character
Exactly and Kaiba wanting the perfect victory of absolute domination is why Yugi knew Kaiba would fall for the bait. Its like Yugi said, Kaiba was blinded by his hatred and anger.
7:25 Actually, since that rule only applies to Fusion Summoned monsters, this is ok, since all of the A to Z fusion series are technically Special Summoned by their own effect, not Fusion Summoned, so it’s not illegal by technicality
@Zenith technically not, as he stated that it was a “bypass” like he was letting Kaiba off, however what I was saying was that Kaiba didn’t need an off in the first place, as what he did was totally legal
I was never aware of how many misplays were in this duel. I guess they were both so stressed by how important they are to each other as opponents and by the stakes involved.
13:55 Yugi playing Necromancy as a Quick-Play is legal, due to the second clause of Spell Sanctuary treating spells as Quick-Play on the respective opponent’s turn
Considering Spell Sanctuary is the Continuous Spell counterpart of Temple of the Kings, the effect is also applicable during the respective player’s turn
@@FranciscoRamirez-nb4uu yes. Spell sanctuary allows both players to go through their decks and select one spell card, then for the rest of the duel as long as spell sanctuary is still on the field, all spell cards can be activated during each other's turn as long as the spell card was placed face down first. Of course Kaiba doesn't say this in the dub when he activates it. Although I think he used it an earlier episode in which he did explain both effects. I think that would be a pretty fun card to play with even if It's broken as fuck.
Please continue to make more of these! As someone who doesn't play any yugioh but still has an understanding of the rules, this is the perfect way for me to enjoy the game. Love it!
11:41 - 12:16 Question. It just hit me... Since Life Shaver was originally Yugi's Card that Kabia took through the effect of Exchange, if its sent to the graveyard and come back with Disgraceful charity should it technical return to Yugi's hand? 🤔
Actually, Battle City Rules state that the card goes to the Graveyard of the one who controls it, not the owner, so it returns to Kaiba's hand. It's the same reason Revival Jam kept getting revived on Yugi's field after he took control of it from Strings, Slifer's effect destroyed it and it was sent to Yugi's GY so it revived from there to his field with its effect.
Great video! I had no idea there were so many misplays and opportunities in this duel, but I don't mind at all. Like you said this duel was about plot and spectacle, and it doesn't disappoint!
Important fact to point out : Every normal spell cards that has been activated on the opponent's turn is not an illegal move. In the anime, Spell Sanctuary (continuous spell) has been activated at the beginning of the turn, allowing Seto Kaiba to add Soul Exchange that would make summoning Obelisk much easier while also making summoning Slifer much harder for Yugi, using 2 of his own monsters to summon his god. Yugi added Change of Heart. While Spell Sanctuary is face-up on the field, both players can play spell cards as quick-play.
Right, but you can't play Quick-Play Spell Cards on your opponent's turn when it's in your hand and not on the field, you can only use QPS on your hand when it's your turn. Well except Spell Sanctuary bypasses this...
Kaiba didn't attack with X Head Cannon because it was under Yugi's control with change of Hearts. In Joey vs Kaiba we ruled that Enemy Controller doesn't take control of an enemy monster, it just allows you to use it as a tribute.
@@Cloud-dt6xb It's a little mistake that goes in favor of Yugi vs a bunch of misplays at Kaiba's cost. He's not being biased, even as a kid I'd ask myself why didn't kaiba play some cards earlier. This Duel was gloriously set up for Yami to win.
@@roncerjani9063 But your forgetting to factor in who Kaiba is as a person, when it comes to Yugi he get's serious tunnel vision and in this duel he's determined to utterly overpower Yugi to prove he's the better duelist. That mindset leads to mistakes he would'nt normally make, but his rage and arrogance made him incapable of seeing that during this duel. While Yugi remained calm and focused which allowed him to predict what Kaiba would do and how. This is not a sudden charachter flaw this was always an issue for him until this duel where he finally got a good smacking of humble pie. And if you want to talk about duels with Kaiba where the plot favored a duelist let's talk about how in both times Joey dueled Kaiba. Joey's suddenly made to look like a much worse duelist than he actually is. The second duel was much better than the first in this regard but it's still irritating that he's somehow the only duelist who does'nt know about Kaiba's crush card despite being present when Kaiba used it against Yugi.
@@Cloud-dt6xb You are right, and you definitely are right about plot armor being a big factor in this game, still Kaiba in this Duel was straightout careless. He wanted like always to overwhelm Yugi in every possible way, but he didn't think half of its turns through. Especially near the end, he shoot himself in the foot playing Final Attack Orders and instead of using it in his characteristic fashion to mill ops deck or shut down the rest of his plays, he aids him even further. He also made no preparation for De-Fusion which even LK pointed out in the abridged version of this duel what a dumb missplay it was. And then he didn't use his Monster Reborn to revive obelisk and burn for 4k is so uncharacteristic, because he loved flexing his God card. Hell he even used it against a deadbeat random duelist in Battle City. The second half of this Duel was as if Kaiba suddenly forgot who was he fighting against.
This was only in the manga, not anime. Also, he did say to attack with the revived Obelisk, but to use him to inflict 4k damage which was by all means very much allowed.
I actually agree with you about Kaiba's options. Yeah, it wouldn't have been FUN to win without using Obilisk(he could've just activated Soul Exchange and swing for Game), but a Wins a Win. Kaiba-boy lost this due to both Arrogance and overrelying on a God card(honestly think Yugi did the same thing after getting Slifer, but that's just my opinion)...
@@-AirKat- there's Flexing and then there's WINNING. Given what we know of (and seen of) Seto, he should've been more focused on winning the Duel. I can still see why you'd be tempted to use the God Cards, but you should never rely in just one game plan(plans and enemy contact an all)....
Soul Exchange would not allow him to attack with the monsters he chose. They are only being tributed. He didn't even technically control them and their going over to his field was merely cinematic.
Personally, I feel like Kaiba was REALLY going overboard with that Final Attack Orders gambit. Who knows how the duel would have gone if he hadn't force himself and Yugi to shut down their own decks?
Kaiba also misplayed by not using lullaby of obedience on the turn he used soul exchange if he did he wouldve summoned slifer since yugi didn’t set change of heart.
This duel is pretty hype, but it also annoyed me a lot for the number of strange plays and the blue-balling of the Egyptian Gods duking it out. It's also a bit difficult to ascertain when and if something is going to affect the Gods in the anime since the rulings are all over the place in general compared to the TCG in real life.
21:40 My take on this play: Kaiba attacks Red-Eyes to go for game, but Yugi activates magic formula as a bait. He figured Kaiba set something like absorb spell, and would jump at the opportunity to destroy Joey's monster while defeating Yugi. Kaiba takes the bait, and without absorb spell, Yugi is free to safely activate De-fusion
Misplay on Dark Paladin's attack points by the creators of the episode. Dark Paladin gains 500 ATK for not only every dragon on the field, but for also every dragon in the graveyard, meaning DP would've had 5400 ATK. Even though Red Eyes and Ultimate Dragon were on the field, there are 3 BEWDs in the graveyard, due to all of them being used for fusion summon (confirmed in The Pyramid of Light). So Dark Paladin would've gotten over Ultimate Dragon, and Red Eyes would've attacked for game.
"Why didn't Yugi wait to activate Exchange until his turn?" Cuz the comedic timing of making Kaiba walk back over right after returning to his side of the field was too good. I'd say the pettiness offset the misplay. Remember, messing with an opponent's head is an entire facet of strategy games too. Maybe Yugi was trying to get into Kaiba's head. That might have caused the aggressive misplay that turn, Kaiba not seeing the optimal play cuz he's so annoyed, he just goes into offense mode.
22:10 when yugi decided which cards to keep, you could see how he had gilfer's demon in his deck, what he wanted to do was take 500 attack from blue eyes ultimate dragon with his effect and then increase another 500 with magic formula and thus defeat him and the one that yugi had played his magic formila first was not meaningless, he wanted to force kaiba to play the card that he drew, and so it was, already with all the cards played yugi played his de-fusion with total freedom
There are a couple duels I like better because of personal reasons but yeah this duel is peak in terms of entertainment. From an actual duel perspective its kinda bad given all the misplays and yugi wins cause of plot vibes but overall it's one of the best in the series
It's cool that this is the duel you choose to go over as I just rewatched it. Love these videos and your archetype ones as well. If I may make a suggestion, how about either Leon's duel or the Fairy Tale/Golden Castle archetype for your next duel or archetype video. Either one would be cool.
because the anime never reveals Yuma's hand at any point, it is unknown when Yuma had the Mirror Mail trap card in his hand. If you assume Yuma had it in Turn 4, Yuma couldve set it and used it when Kite attacked with Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon on Utopia in Turn 5, destroying Photon Dragon and letting Yuma attack directly with Utopia on Turn 6 I just assume Yuma drew Mirror Mail on turn 6 so he lost
Kaiba's final move, that cost him the game (hint: 4400 attack), seems logical if you consider his flaw suggested by Yugi. The flaw I am referring to is Kaiba's obsession for power. Kaiba did not know about Yugi's face down cards, but Yugi knows about his lust for power. So, Yugi bates Kaiba, and he takes the bate resulting in his defeat.
Personally it would make sense for Kaiba last card to be De fusion. He would first attack Yugi Strongest monster with Ultimate then wipe out Yugi's remaining defense's and life points with his last 3 BEWD.
It would've been so badass for Kaiba to fusion summon Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon and follow that up by immediately defusing it into three Blue-Eyes White Dragons for four powerful attacks as a frequent strategy in duels.
@@cameraredeye3115 In the Battle City Final Duel, yes, but I was referring more to doing this as a common strategy during his duels. Of course, in order to believably do so, he'd have had to have had reliable ways to search out his three Blue-Eyes from his deck, and cards that searched other cards were extremely rare back in these first seasons.
Man rewatching this and just how both Yugi and Kaiba planned to steal one another's Egyptian God cards, kind of makes me wonder how things would have gone had they succeeded. Yugi has Obelisk and Kaiba has Slifer
In the italian dub they slightly changed it in a way that I think makes more sense: Yugi told Kaiba something like "I was expecting that you couldn't even wait untill the end of the duel to try and take my Slifer, so I prepared exactly for that" and then procedes to activate his exchange spell card
Not sure if mentioned below, but it made sense for Yugi to activate Magic Formula to bait out any potential card that could stop De-Fusion. It ended up not mattering since Absorb Spell only works on attack increase, but that was a smart move. It was good final trump card.
21:16 Kaiba didn’t really misplay here because obelisk effect are treated as battle damage and since obelisk is SS from the GY (if that happen), it can’t use its effect because god card cannot attacking the turn they are SS from GY. idk i could be wrong tho
12:14 Another Kaiba misplay here: which effect of Obelisk Kaiba chooses to activate. Here, he could have tributed Blade Knight and Sword of Soul to increase Obelisk's ATK to infinity. Now, I know Yugi can reduce the damage to 0 with Kuriboh, But I'm pretty sure infinity beats 6000 and Slifer would have been destroyed by the Attack.
Anime Kuriboh also protects 1 monster from being destroyed by the same effect that was going to cause the life point damage. So he could have targeted Slifer, and we end up with the same result.
Absolutely fabulous video! I know this a year later, but I still to this day can’t figure out what’s the point of that magic spell book at the end. Even if yugi was like oh I need enough life points to activate diffusion wave, you still need to activate your own de-fusion to just keep dark paladin on the field! Seriously I was like what the heck are you doing yugi?! 😂
I like the idea that for all his cynicism Kaiba genuinely is a little superstitious when it comes to Blue Eyes. His blind faith in it saved him against Ishizu so maybe he felt compelled here again?
@@robrick9361 He did have some superstition for Blue Eyes in the sub. Obviously he dismisses most of the ancient Egyptian stuff as occult nonsense but he's much less stubborn than in the dub if he actually sees it himself.
The fact that neither Yugi or Kaiba set Life Shaver the second they got it in their hand make me question if these two really are meant to be the apex of duelists in this series.
They probably would have just activated it earlier and it wouldn't have made much of a difference. They would have just used it as a substitute for whatever defense spell or trap they already used in the anime. At the pace they were going not many of their face Downs were going to be on the field for very long.
In the manga you could only set 1 trap or spell card per turn. Kaiba used his next turn to set Interdimensional Matter Transporter instead, and Yugi had set Exchange and Lightforce Sword the turn before. (perhaps he also didnt draw Lifeshaver right away)
Hey, going through this duel again, I just realized: the first XYZ fusion monster Kaiba summoned, his XY Dragon Cannon, has the ability to, at the cost of its controller discarding one card, destroy one face-up spell or trap card on the field. Why wouldn't Kaiba use this effect, discard just one card from his hand, and destroy the Lightforce Sword that was holding Obelisk in place? He would have had his God card back in his hand much sooner.
I think that we could consider that most of the missplays in the first half of the duel were because Kaiba didn't just want to win, he wanted to win using Obelisk to prove he was the only duelist worth of a God card.
8:00 XYZ Dragon Cannon didn't have that effect originally. Some cards, like Black Paladin, were changed to have their real life effect later in the show. Also, Valkyrion was a fusion monster in the manga so I guess the no attack rule never applied to contact fusions.
If I had to guess the no attacking rule probably doesn't refer to Fusion Monsters, but rather Fusion Summons. The anime card text for XYZ specifies that it's special summoned, not fusion summoned. It sounds like a semantic but there is a distinct difference between the two in the real card game, so I'm willing to believe this is the case.
There was also a error when yugi used Necromancy Kaiba X-Head Cannon shouldn’t have return to the field because it gets banished when summoning the XYZ Dragon Cannon
I always thought kaiba misplayed in the turn he activated soul exchange. yes yugi stopped him from summoning obelisk but kaiba had lullaby of obedience in his hand, so why didn't he just use lullaby to take slifer from yugi and summon it to his field. as yugi wouldn't have been able to stop him as yugis exchange spell was still in his hand at this point. so had kaiba done this he would have had slifer on his field and possibly even obelisk later in the duel.
One of the things you have to bare in mind is when XYZ dragon cannon was released as a tcg and ocg card it was after the time of this series so its effects weren't established at that time. As for cards like necromancy, it still hasn't been released as a real card to the day of this comment, but I can imagine it would still have its original anime effect with some modern Tcg and Ocg additions.
@ 6:58 I think he didn't fuse XYZ Dragon Cannon. I think Kaiba just used it as a union equip card rather than contact fusing. That's the reason why it was able to attack and not be able to use its destruction effect
I think they kept misplaying because they were overthinking everything each other's strategies. They're arguably the best duelists either of them have faced and were swapping between being fixated on setting up their own play or stoping the other from doing the same that they lost the forest for the trees
I was hoping this series included this duel, yugi vs kaiba (the clash in the colisseum) was my favorite duel of all time in OG yugioh series. Yugi and Kaiba were just straight going after eachother with everything they had, it was so intense, both were pushed to their limits.
![Was Kaiba About To Defeat Yugi? [Clash in the Coliseum]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
