When Did "Modern" Yu-Gi-Oh Actually Begin? 

My theory is that casual play had a geneneral guideline that went loose very slightly every passing generation of the game like so: DM era had a generally slow pace where you often had to set cards to make use of FLIP effects or were tied to your Normal Summon of the turn, while removal was specific as +0s, or -1s when chainable. You needed time and advantage both to generate a power play really. I always think of Magical Dimension where you spend 3 cards to end in a high Level Summon from the hand, but if you do it when the opponent has a monster to pop it becomes just a -1, and if you intercept some other play it can climb to +0. GX era kept the same advantage investment in cards but allowed players to spend them a little more quickly. This would mean more glass-canon scenarios if one went for like a turn 1 Flame Wingman, but competitively speaking pacing yourself with advantage management was still king... the casual but cool option of speed up a play was there though.... also, archetypes restricted plays more. It makes sense to happen gen 2 since gen 1 proviced enough of a cushion of generic stuffs to play with. 5DS era decided to keep the GX speed potential mostly, but it upped the ability to make future plays. In a GX era play you'd have a big boss and that's that. In a 5DS era play you'd end with a similarly big boss but the resources would often be good enough for a future "half play" and the concept of setup became more important like so. You often had stuff like a Level Eater, Plaguespreader, Quibolt Hedgehog, Spore, and things like that which will be back as part of a new Synchro but never without an extra push from your hand/field resources. ZeXal era pushed boundaries, introducing effects that directly Summoned from the deck more often, and making searching effects generally a must for efficiency. Inzektors, Wind Ups, Madolche, Heraldics, Tour Guide. They wanted to get away from GY as a focus and they wanted a different source of Summons to fill a new niche.... 5DS support made adding small levels super flexible but nothing could put multiple high levels on board well enough to warrant spending them in Rank 5+ Xyzs so it was kind of a genius change of direction. Arc V went a bit more overboard now... The game essentially took the previous power level and said "hey what if we don't lose card advantage over our plays, always having a ton of toolbox options? It just exchanged it for a very marked tempo one had to avide with, be it hard OPT stuff or P-Summon being OPT in general.... we see it not just in Pendulums but Performage Clown always comes back, Shaddolls, Burning Abyss, Nekroz, Yang Zings, Soul Charge, they all can refill your hand or field as they play, not even Dragon Rulers were that efficient at concerving advantage. ZeXal and Arc V were very much turned into "Modern day" and I recall them more consistently left older decks in the dust generally, while the Synchro era you could still see people playing GX and DM themes against the new stuff.... if it wasn't an FTK generally things were more moderate than it might seem... lack of common searches in a lot of decks and only bringing out 1 or 2 Synchros in a turn in a good day. VRAINS then went "what if we stop counting stars and start counting entire monsters?" and well... yeah, that's modern day alright.

This is absolutely not the best example ever, but at least it is one i remember from years ago, when i was still playing with my friends. I think the "modern yugioh" era began around the time xyz came out, when monsters started to be designed to be a piece of a puzzle, instead of monsters. To explain myself i can make the example of monsters like parsec, the interstellar dragon. It's a level 8 dragon monster with 800 atk and def. Its effect is that you can normal summon him without tributing, if you control another level 8 monster. The sole purpose of this card is that it's easy to get on the field to use it as a material for an xyz summon of a rank 8 monter, because, let's face it, nobody is going to tribute two monsters for 800 atk. This is what I like to call a "puzzle piece" because it has no other uses other than the one is is created to have. At the same time, it can be used to "cheat" on the xyz summon: if you want to make a rank 8 monster this card is a must have, because every other option is far inferior. This also means that the rank 8 monster you're trying to summon is much more easy to get out, because you don't have to tribute 4 monsters to get on the field two level eight monsters the "usual way". It is a faux cost. And too much strategies are built around this concept to cheat on the costs of the cards or on the limit of summons per turn.

I feel like the moment we started seeing "modern" yugioh was around the time decks like six samurais and infernities came around where they would just dump out a whole bunch of monsters in a single turn and make a board that was hard to break. It slowly got closer during the xyz era and ramped up a lot more by around DUEA format

I'd say two major things started this. 1 - Infernities. Negates, endless comboing, setting up a board. 2 - XYZ monsters. Toolbox decks already existed, and they switched from having to force bricks in to make bosses (poly, fusion materials, tuners) to any two guys works. This made boss monsters a lot more generic.

Honestly shaddols and burning abyss were way ahead of their time, its crazy how these two decks have still bin played for almost seven years and have had their own ups and downs in competitve relvancy

I’d say quasar dragon highlights the beginning of modern YGO where a boss monster has a floating effect and a negate. However with quasar, you had to build an entire deck that is built around bringing a single boss monster with a single negate, whereas now your deck isn’t considered as competitive if you can’t bring out several negates disruptions from turn 1. It made YGO built around two types of play: either build a board that has several forms of negates or be able to break a board that has several forms of negates. If you compare this with MTG where there are 5 different colors and each color has different winning strategies. Even within these color there are various winning strategies (for instance the blue color has a negate strategy, bounce strategy, mill strategy, etc.) it really puts into perspective how limited YGO is now when it comes to winning strategies

As a Yu-Gi-Boomer who left the game when Xyz monsters became relevant, I have to say the Xyz era was the beginning of what we consider to be modern Yu-Gi-Oh. Synchros felt like a progression from fusions, no you didn't need a specific spell card anymore, but you did need to do some math and build your deck around having these new tuner monsters in there, similar to how you would build a deck around having polymerization or it's constituents. Xyz monsters were the first inkling of "warm bodies are resources", though small by current standards, the ability to just stick two same leveled monsters together was insane, and opened the door and stepped into the world of "solitaire" Yu-Gi-Oh we have today. But I'm a boring old man so who knows!

I’d say around 2016-17. OTK’s started to become more common place as well as a move away from turn based strategy and setting up your opponent with traps and more towards just killing your opponent with a huge combo. Monster effects started becoming super complex and actually focused into channeling their pilots into specific combos and interactions. in the past, players mostly just had to figure it out. Essentially the rise of huge combos and hand traps that sped up the game and made regular trap cards obsolete

I'd say 2017 was the last time we saw a change in what we think of when we think of the term Modern Yugioh as that was the introduction of links. Mainly because how we play the game now isn't too different compared to back then and power creep hasn't been that crazy since then either. But I think there are distinct points in time where you can see eras of power creep, and the start of those eras would be what I call modern yugioh of those time frames.

Definitely started around 5D's era. Things like dragunities, infernities, synchrons come to mind, and every boss monster nowadays feels like they took inspiration from Quasar (OPT omni negate, big atk boss monster) Edit; also effect veiler paved the way for what future good hand traps were going to be like

I would divided these into 1.Pre-Master Rules Era(Before Synchro) 2.Post-Master Rules Era(Synchro and XYZ) 3.Renovation Era(Pendulum) 4.Modern Era(Link)

Modern Yugioh began when Fusions and maybe even Synchrons got powercrept. Think about it; Xyz and especially Link summoning really simplified the older mechanics and really sped up the game. Why spend up to 3 cards for a fusion to get 1 card when you can summon bare minimum 1 monster, get an effect off its summon, and then turn that monster into a Link Monster and profit? Obviously the summoning mechanics aren't the sole reason for modern yugioh, but I think it's one of the reasons.

I feel like the zoo format was when the game really started feeling different. When links were introduced a few months later, it basically felt like a new game. The game has always evolved, but for me, this was it. If there’s a line in the sand for the game, I feel like it has to be MR4/links.

Synchro Summoning was the start of modern yugioh. As soon as the extra deck became a strong utility toolbox you could easily dip into. Fusions were never good (except when cheated out, which often got banned). They were super negative in card advantage and often difficult to (properly) summon, so it justified powerful fusion monsters. Nothing justified the power of Synchros, as Synchro summoning became so easy.

Modern yugioh for me is when the synchro mechanic was released. It's completely changed the game and started the massive combos you see to this day. The trend of having the extra deck become essential to high level play started here. Prior, the extra deck was mostly a novelty for certain decks. Synchros changed how you had to think about deck building.

One aspect that you didn't even really mention was the role of field spells. I think Dragon Ravine was the textbook example for how a field spell is usually responsible for how consistent a deck is. If you think about the older field spells, they just give a minor stat buff and that was it.

Modern yugioh didn't really have a hard start date, more like we had sneak peaks of what it was in 2011 with x-sabers and six sam, a preview with windups, and then once dragon rulers came out that was essential the point of no return. I'd define modern yugioh as the gameplay style of board making and board breaking. The game moved from one for one interactions to combo and disruption. It was the chunkification of card effects where cards acted as both removal and recursion and you used such effects multiple times a turn.

I always thought that "modern ygo" began with the increase in the consistency in the decks. If I think about older decks, they had strong combos in certain scenario, but all the decks were unconsisten. So imo when decks started to being able to perform their combo with consistency, that's the start of modern ygo for me

I think it begun when Ash came out, a card good in every deck against every deck. Puts me in the mind of pot of greed.

Yugioh maintained a equalibrium of game state from DM-GX era pretty well. Synchros lines started to blur but by XYZ's things spiraled out of control. To be honest we've never quite left the XYZ era, where GX and Synchros had their time to breath Pendulums were out paced by XYZ decks. Link summoning really didn't change that either.

I think tier 0 spyral format left a big influence in terms of "modern" yugioh, while not necessarily in terms of their cards/archetype being memorable but it was by this time where we started seeing a shift in modern deckbuilding specifically the abundance of main decked handtraps. While handtraps were always being played (dd crow, veilers, maxx c, gorz, trag, etc) they werent considered staples so to say, they were considered techs as real traps were the better option at this time, mostly played as side deck options i would say this shift was slowly being integrated with the ghost sisters as they had multiple implications and were more widely techable, i remember the invoked deck that played (10+ handtraps in the main deck) in zoo format which was funny at the time not knowing that would become the standard soon after. Players started replacing traps and running (10+ handtraps) in their maindecks as a necessity to counter the powerhouse that was spyral at their peak as their turn 1 boards were absurdly powerful as traps were too slow to stop their turn 1 plays.

I personally think modern Yu-Gi-Oh started getting more complicated when xyz was Introduced because it kinda added a whole new layer to how people played and I think the link era of Yu-Gi-Oh is when stuff started to become very similar to how the game is played today

I think the Dragon Rulers indicate the start of "Modern" because you can see the power influential cards afterwards are made in a similar spirit. They indicated a new direction that boss monsters/archetypes from then on would try to get "right" where the rulers were too much.

So I was sitting here watching this video and had a thought. Why don’t they have more Icons on YuGiOh cards to categorize them like spells and traps do with field, equip, counter, etc. to get rid of some of the text on 90% of cards? For example: an icon for “Once per turn” so you can just look at the card and immediately see that instead of having to find it in a wall of effect text. Or how about a non-target icon that you can see “cannot be targeted by card effects, spells or traps” you could have a different icon for each type and it would be quickly identifiable and eliminate a lot of redundant text Thoughts?

Im inclined to say that "modern yugioh" started with xyz. Card design went from going from blowing all resources to bring out big boss, to spamming tinys for multiple monsters of strong power

Modern yugioh began with the idea of multi summoning, which started with syncros for me

With the introduction of synchro summoning

As someone who has been here since the beginning playing this thing in middle school, modern Yugioh really started when synchros were introduced. That changed combos and playing styles forever

I wouldn’t consider the formats around this time period to necessarily feel like Modern YuGiOh, but I do remember playing during Return Dad format. It is one of the first format where the gameplay feels similar to what we have today.

Loved hearing your perspective here and also going through some of the “modern” history of yugioh!

It was the introduction of Links that really pushed the game into it's current state. Not only because of they plethora of ridiculous effects, but because it offered an endless outlet for all the free advantage one could generate as a result. - Synchros required tuners, non-tuners and getting to a specific level. Because of the need of both Tuners and Non-Tuners (Unless you were running Gottoms), you often had a finite line of play that was heavily board dependant. - XYZ's required creatures of similar levels, tokens couldn't be used, you normally couldn't chain XYZ into XYZ (At least until way later) and XYZ materials didn't instantly go into the graveyard (Which stopped a lot of effects from going off, and could often slow down loops as they wouldn't hit the graveyard right away. Links basically took Synchros/XYZ, and removed the limitations of their respective mechanics. As such, you can have lines of play that take several minutes to execute and either end in a hugely positive boardstate or a soft-lock (Or often times a combination of both). The only thing holding back lines of play are the actual creatures being used (Often in the form of hard "once per turn" effect)s and not the mechanics used to summon them.

For me, "modern" YGO has two meanings. The first is when the game, for the first time since its inception, began being played differently. I don't mean in terms of summoning mechanics and power levels, I mean in terms of what game states players found themselves in where knowing when to trade was good, when multi-turn resource management would make and break games, when would be good to hold cards or summon monsters over several turns to account for different interactions, when you would "option-select" interactions. The fact is that classic YGO (I define "old school" differently, and will define below) was always trying to accomplish then what we are accomplishing now with getting as much value out of cards as possible, the game was just far less effective at doing so and strategy had to supplement the limitations of older cards. Now, there are rarely times when players don't dump their hand to get their combo going to set up the most powerful board possible, you're no longer thinking of which monsters to normal summon/ set (setting monsters was HUGE up until Xyz summoning, and even then a good amount of decks regularly set monsters) this turn and next turn, you're no longer making decisions on how best to trade because so often now the swings in YGO are so large then when you build your board over your opponent's, it's usually such a washed situation that you sequencing doesn't matter. These are all obviously over-simplifications and all these things still happen (the things that are better now, similarly, were also occurring back then), but they've taken a backseat to concepts such as combo structure, SEGOC, playing around handtraps, etc. It's not a matter of which is better or which is more difficult, it's more about what is good now versus what was good then, and how the game is played differently. Back then the game philosophy was a balance of speed, power, and consistency. If something was fast and consistent, it wasn't powerful. If something was fast and powerful, it either had some kind of condition or required some amount of unrecurrable resources. If something was consistent and powerful, it was slow. These days, that balancing philosophy doesn't exist. Cards are being conceptualized as all three before going to print. The second way we could talk about modern YGO is talking about the most recent iteration of game state. Not format specific, just what metas tend to be good, what players are looking for overall until the next trends arrive, etc. The things that were good in MR4 are not the same things that are as good in MR5 in a meta sense, not necessarily in regards to what concepts are good between modern vs old school. So to me, the first type of modern YGO began when the way YGO used to be played was no longer in the majority of what we were seeing in the meta, and for me that time came after HAT format where decks consistently started being played in the way described above. I believe every format prior to this was "classic" YGO. Not old school, that would be pre-synchro era, but classic in terms of how the game played and felt. The second usage of modern as I've described I'd say began with MR5, as that was the most recent and extreme shift in what cards were good as opposed to what strategies were good.

Modern Yu-Gi-Oh began with the introduction of Link monsters, and more specifically the introduction of the new Master Rules which allowed the summoning of all extra deck monsters again, without needing a Link monster first. Link's and especially Link 1's facilitate so many combos that just wouldn't be possible without them. Being able to trigger monster effects by linking away a card instantly made the game a lot crazier because it sort of devalued the normal summon, or rather changed its value as almost always being a way to facilitate a special summon.

Anything around Neo Heisei era (2011-2020) is when Modern Yugioh began. Most specifically during Duelist Alliance.

Synchros. It was like opening Pandora's Box. A flood of other summoning mechanics would soon follow and power-creep the shit out of the game. But I'm just a casual old-school fan, so feel free to disregard my opinion haha. Also, good video Paul. This was a cool trip down memory lane of how Yugioh came to be what it is today.

I think when cyber dragon came out is when yu-gi-oh changed direction to eventually become what it is today. Generic special summoning is what got yu-gi-oh to be so fast, Floodgates and hand traps are just an attempt at slowing it down.

When Number 16: Shock Master started seeing play is my answer for this. Cimo made some good points that it's where it was one of the first cards that actually prevented you from playing with one of mechanics, monsters, traps, or spells. While there was always cards that did that, they could only do one of them, Shock Master alone was able to do any of the 3.

Dragon ruler/spell book format is the start of modern yugioh. Those 2 deck absolutely over powercrept everything we had prior. The dragon rulers card just did too much and they would float. Soellbook of judgment was too op back then. PePe was when modern yugioh became more 1 card combos to making big fields. Then Konami just made cards after them pretty much the same to what we have now with 1 card combos to too many generic Omni negate boss monsters.

For me Tengu Plant format is the dividing line. After that the game became way more archetype based, faster, we had to start min/maxing deck building with only turn 1 in mind and main decking the maximum number of decent legal hand traps started to become mandatory. Wind-Ups and Inzektors feel like the first truly modern Yu-Gi-Oh decks to me. It just felt like a completely different game from that point forward. Mermail progressed it and then Dragon Ruler/Spellbook format was an absolute culture shock.

In general the primary demarcation has to be Synchro (though the Cyber Dragon stuff itself also didn't help, since it's what most archetypes came to be like, it wasn't anywhere near the spam of material). Everything since has simply been a faster version of Synchro. Fusions you could only originally use from hand or field or, at their most powerful, had to wait a couple turns for from deck so they didn't NEED the ability to special summon everything in your hand and a third of your deck turn one. This kept the power level low. Particularly since you usually still had to draw specific materials to even start doing it rather than having a searcher for a searcher for a searcher. But once you have a thing that needs two or more monsters on the field you're going to need something to be able to special summon itself to make use of that. And then the archetypes who care less about the ED need to be able to do that so thing to keep up which led to things like tributing backrow or banishing from wherever. Of course, the real point is that you didn't NEED to be making ED monsters turn one and certainly not boss ones. Being able to drop boss monsters turn one just makes little sense and clearly wasn't the intent of the game originally. All of the anime pretty clearly show what they intend the game to be but when they print cards they refuse to put proper restrictions on them to make it so. Plot keeps the anime balanced which obviously doesn't exist in the physical game.

I'd say around the Sychro era of Yugioh was when modern yugioh started. Combos began to become more consistent as well as have a more fleshed out goal for said combos. There was enough support out at that time for you to even say "Oh I won with ___ archetype". And it even evolved more so when we touched the XYZ era. I'd definitely love more discussions like this.

Synchro was the start of it, with xyz comig the fate was sealed.

I remember playing through the duelist challenges in Legacy of the Duelist. Shadoll and Burning Abyss stood out in terms of difficulty to overcome. Though at times it felt that BA was unfair, it really helped me understand where my own decks were lacking and I am grateful for at least that.

This was a wonderful explanation of the gradual power creep. Discussing the themes more so than the decks themselves. Because these themes are what "modern" design builds upon.

Just hearing the words “wind up” gives me PTSD that’s when I had to quit knowing I no longer stood a chance at a regional tournament watching those wind up, rescue rabbit Dino decks. I didn’t play for ten years after that regional but tried to pay attention to the game. Playing master duel I’m astonished how fast the game has become and I thought it was crazy in 2012.

In the synchro era, because at the end of it six Sam was crazy

As an oldie, I’d almost argue for when Dark Armed Dragon decks became popular

It started in the pendulum era. The field changed. pendulums became relevant. Decks became heavily more and more “archetype” focused.

To me the main transition from old school to less old school to modern is how the extra deck is used. Old school was when extra deck was generally neglected or a bonus. Less old school is when boss monsters where moved to the extra deck. The deck gradually became a tool for extra deck access. (It can be seen as a refined version of what was intended with LV monsters) Modern era, to me, is a state of the game where your extra deck is basically a secondary hand thanks to link monsters. A monster is summoned, his effect is activated and it is tributes right after.

Well that's depends which part of modern yugioh we'll talking about. Cydra started the special summoning. CED was the first "boss" monster that you really don't have an out too. The dragon rulers started the long combos but also controlled decks. Also during that time. In the rouge and junk levels, we started to see hand traps slowly replacing traps.

I'd say the start was with hand traps, the inclusion in decks as staples evolved over time the rest of the cards in the deck to individually have to do more to keep up. For example with starting hand having two hand traps meant that the other three cards needed to go further to make up for the "smaller" starting hand.

After XYZ I noticed how the game started to change, but after 1-2 years I took a massive break until ’20 then a 5 Month break again to ’21. It was so different & much faster..

Modern Yu-Gi-Oh for me probably started around the 2012 era, when something like wind-up and dino-rabbit started to swarm the scene. Some decks have gimmicks, but generally their boss monsters are easily summoned with 1 card combo and have this super effect either it's to negate everything or basically "towers." Yeah you can argue plant synchro that can summon quasar turn 1 exist, but they still need some sort of setup and half their deck was gone just to summon 1. Tele-DAD was an anomaly and too strong for their time, but it's still needs couple turns and setups for their deck to work. I feel like having something such as laggia-dolkka in the field, or 3 zenmaity while your opponent have nothing, was something that changed Yu-Gi-Oh forever. It became something else entirely that's not fun to play anymore, at least for me. All of that hammered by dragons rulers release in the mid 2013, my goodness, I remember it's so stressful to play the game and in the end I decided to retire from the physical TCG. I returned to this game only because of the release of master duel, and discover many channels such as APS and MBT, well here I am now, I guess.

"Modern yugioh" card design has always existed, but it has slowly been drip-fed to us over the last 20 years. That faucet has since broken, along with any semblance of game balance or intregrity which leads us to the awful/beautiful game we all know today. If you go back to 2009, Swap Frog was a Level 2 monster with 3 (even 4 technically) effects: it could summon itself (1), send an aqua from deck (2), bounce a monster you control (3), let you summon an additional Frog (4). Inzektors and Wind-Ups showed off how strong combo decks could be. Then I'd say the Dragon Rulers were some of the first monsters that were both engine, beaters, and searchers with utility effects built in (each had 3 effects). By 2014 we had really cemented the word "engine" into Yugioh vernacular (though maybe Gravekeeper engine or Destiny Hero engine were ran before) with simple lines like Tenki->Bear and Myrmelo->Hole or Sanctum->Artifact, etc...

For me it was when the hand-traps starting taking over your main deck, Ash Blossom's release is for me the start of it. We are so reliant on this card even now.

I can't say exactly when this happened but I feel like it became modern Yu-Gi-Oh when every archetype became based around foux costs. As in effects had costs on them but if you were playing cards from the same archetype that cost was actually the condition of another card. The example that comes to my mind is dinos. The level 4 and up dinos want to destroy monster(usually other dinos) to trigger their effect. The lower level ones want to be destroyed to activate their effect and scrap raptor sits right in the middle. Basically everything in the deck that isn't a hand trap may as well have a plus 1-2 attached to it as long as you had another card from the archetype in hand

Paul, you're getting real existential with some of these videos, and I like it!

I generally considered DM/GX to be definitely classic YGO, with 5Ds being this weird in-between "pre-modern" time. Zexal is sort of "early modern" where many staple features came to be, but not quite in the form with know and love(/loathe) them now. Arc-V and onwards is what I'd fairly definitely call modern YGO with Vrains representing power creep, but not really fundamentally changing the paradigm of YGO (beyond F'ing with the extra deck for a while during MR4).

I think around the time Hero Strike was released, 2015ish. From this point forward there was more CRAZY stuff being released. Monster that could do more, and in the graveyard. Unbreakable boards were becoming more of a thing, and otk decks started becoming a thing too.

i believe the start of modern yugioh was the synchro era. from the ftk burn decks, to plant/junk synchro, to frog ftk; it started out as kill your opponent as fast as you can or lose. as the game progressed it became more of a break my board; while it wasnt so bad during the xyz era thats certainly where it started imo (Bujin) (dino rabbit). after that it became what it is now; ultimately why i left the game post NECH.

Really enjoyable video from start to finish. One note to mention is Burning Abyss I feel could use more emphasis as they were the first introduction of OMNI FLOATERS.For example, they could be excevated and of course even discarded from hand by own card effects or opponents and still trigger effect, in addition to "sent or destroyed" from field to grave. To add insult to injury, they wrote Burning Abyss effects to not miss timing, unlike the Yang Zings which debuted alongside them in Duelist Alliance. This was the first time we saw an exclusive Archetype from TCG that went to a strong top of 1st Tier (unlike the unplayable F Tier Noble Knights before them), outclassing & blindsiding shaddolls which had just got done dominating the OCG. The part about Nekroz being a monster that is never "dead in hand" evolving after burning abyss example could actually of been implicated as originating with Burning Abyss instead of Nekroz. Again, loved the video.

The biggest thing that defines modern yugioh, and arguably the thing most of these things stem from, is the shift of the Main Deck from being the main source of your power to being a resource pool to fuel your Extra Deck. The vast majority of modern meta decks don't care about their Main Deck monsters; most of them are glorified spells or traps now that just happen to leave behind a body that can be used for extra deck plays. You could arguably print an archetype that is nothing but spells and traps that have an added effect of "put a token with X/Y/Z stats on the field" *(HI ADVENTURE ENGINE)* and not notice any difference in play.

once synchro came imo before synchro the only special summons were basically just cyber dragon and the like and extra deck needed fusion spells

The biggest difference between modern and old shool yugioh is monsters being able to interact on the opponent's turn. Before, that part of the game was reserved to only spell/trap cards.

I think Ash Blossom is just good at showing what's wrong. It's the type of card that would be banned in old yugioh, but now it's necessary so you can counterplay and try to interrupt your opponent to give yourself a chance to play on your turn

Ash Blossom is kind of like the 'Swords to Plowshares'/'Force of Will' (MTG cards) of hand-traps - it's far too versatile too efficiently, out-powering anything else with a similar effect. Even Ghost Ogre - the FIRST Yokai Girl - doesn't feel QUITE so oppressive.

I personally played through most of yugioh's history bar quitting in early MR4 so I'm def biased but I feel like there's 3 main 'periods' of Yugioh: DM-5Ds ish was like early yugioh. Games were slower, power creep was super all over the place, & decks rarely had a consistent game plan. Archetypes were kinda the beginning of the end for this era, a theme that could plug into a deck & make a consistent strategy really changed the concept of how you played. Mid Yugioh was like late 5Ds-late Arc V, it was when Yugioh really became a different game than what it was early on. Decks became more & more consistent, power creep was much more regular (with exceptions obv), & the extra deck was important in a way that it really had never been before. Late/Modern Yugioh, to me, is when Zoodiac was released to now. It was the moment where cheating summoning mechanics became normal instead of extremely rare, combos became exponentially more powerful than anything that happened before, & the extra deck monsters that came out of MR4 turned into both your main extenders & your bosses.

I'd honestly say its around Raging Tempest and Maximum crisis where we truly shifted into the modern meta where card advantage completely gave way to tempo and hyper consistency. Duelist alliance might have shifted the archetype quality a lot but a lot of the match ups were still back and forth grind games.

What really kicked off modern yugioh was not adding X summoning mechanic. Instead it started when creature started getting their enter the battlefield triggers immediately. In the past if your searchers were things like Sangan or Giant Rat which you played then used when they got destroyed. If you wanted removal you set Ryko and had to wait for the flip, etc. The only card that really acted immediately were the monarchs, but they were balanced by needing to tribute. In a modern deck you play a monster and search immediately off its effect. Or immediately get the ability to special summon again, etc. Modern yugioh started when important abilities of summoning and searching started happening on the entry of monsters, instead of some kind of delay.

As long as we still refer to terms as ‘stratos, infernity barrier, rota, etc’ I will believe that is when modern yugioh started

To me it feels like DUEA was the start because it flushed a lot of people out and changed how easy advantage was accrued. You had "plus 1" fire fist being a thing only for shaddoll fusion to come in and say "That's adorable, watch me go plus 3 off one card". The arc V era was loaded with decks that changed the game and gave us our stream of monsters that float or recur, or could recur themselves. Shaddoll fusions, tellar xyzs, infernoids, ba, qli. And then towers, we compare so many cards to towers and shaddoll fusion, and even the whole "pay 8 feel great" any time a deck pays 800 because of qli. Now every meta archetype has some form of protection, revival, or floats in some way. And I loved that era...even if I only played it on dueling network, but Nekroz was the first meta deck I ever picked up in real life. I just loved the art, playstyle, and fact I didn't need an expensive extra deck.

Duelist alliance was the set that changed yugioh for what it is today, literally every archetype was a toer 1 strategy and 1 card leads you to 3 cards and 2 cards gives you full combo, summoning mutiple bodies and even if they die, every card and their mother floated into something,

One of the funniest things is that Konami didn't want decks to be the same, but powercrept themselves right back into that very same situation. At this point the different archetypes are just different coats of paint. Duelist Alliance is probably the set where Konami shifted design philosophy to make archetypes more resources. Power creep then lead them to making things more generic and more efficient.

To me, it started with the Danger Thunder Guardragon era. You know, those unbreakable boards full of negates that forced other players to run 10-15 handtraps.

I feel like when your turn started to consist of cards played during your turn that were not in your had at the start is when the game changed. Pretty much once a top deck could still get you 3 cards played is when.

Many have already said it, but I think that synchro era was something of a "pre-modern era" of you Yu-Gi-Oh, when we'd get cards like Glow-Up, Effect Veiler, Gale The Whirlwind, Dandylion and Goyo Guardian, that showcased what the modern era turned out to be in the Xyz era. But also we got cards like Stardust, Black Rose and (God knows) Ancient Fairy Dragon that didn't become instantly obsolete. (Though we found out how good AFD was only in the link era)

I think that 5 Ds is where the idea or maybe the basis of the modern Yu-Gi-Oh came about. In terms of special summoning boss monsters became less expensive or hard to summon considering tuning was just two monsters. Instead of there being specific fusion material and or ritual spells and monsters of specific levels, it was just two monsters that somewhat mirrors the link summoning of today.

OTKs and finishing the game in one turn have existed for a long logn time. I would actually say modern yugi began when Synchros were released. Even with the relatively tame tuners of that first wave. it was the first time I personally started to view the extra deck as more or less a constant extra hand that never changed and that i could always count on to be there. Removing the need to have a specific spell like poly or ritual spell to get out your boss monster was a big shift in how the game was played because now your boss monster was always accessible from turn 1. The fact it needed monsters to make means you didn't need to devote resources to search a specific spell that back then was a concern since monsters at any stage of the game have always been easier to fetch from deck aka sangan / witch of the black etc. As a general function of the game spells and traps are always inferior because most of them do not have atk points that can hurt you or force your opponent to expend resources to destroy them in some fashion because they for the most part are not a perminant fixture of the field and do not add value over multiple turns if not dealt with by the opponent. (obvious exceptions exist of course). What I feel also contributes massively to "modern" yugioh and the reason I'm confident in stating that it began so far back is money. there was a point in the game around 2010 ish perhaps? that reprints and re-releases of cards were pushed. Suddenly Dark armed dragon was just a rare and Honest was a common where just months before both were Secret / Ghost I think? The prices of structures and quality of structure deccks became more accomodating and whilst we still have bling decks today and some prices in the second hand market have crept up again the rise of online trading / markets for cards,, even top tier decks are in the $500 ish range rather than the $900 or more that I recall for a single playset of JD. The greater accessibility / commonality of the previous money / "good" cards meant that after that point Konami needed to design and release products that accomodated for a greater number of players being able to drop 3 dads on field and OTK. The release of things like Ash blossom and so many hand traps I feel is just a symptom of this rather than a genre defining point in the game. The key in the end I feel is consistency. When the game became noticeably more consistent because of an extra deck and a graveyard that are now basically more your actual hand than your hand is where we see modern yugioh. Facilitated by greater affordability and accessibility via lower prices and internet card providers.

As someone that played OG "chess match" yugioh I think the beginning of the modern era would be when E-heroes came out. To my understanding they were the first archetype that it didn't matter where the card was ((field, deck, hand, graveyard, or exiled (banished )) it was still able to be used to make plays.

For me modern Yu-Gi-Oh began with pendulum as it was the first mechanic introduced that I actually had to put some effort in learning. I always found every other summoning mechanic to be somewhat straight forward

Modern Yu-Gi-Oh started with cyber dragon 😂

I'mma jump in before the video properly starts to throw in my two cents: Duel Terminal. These arcade machines, and the meta stories attached, really focused on archetype-centric decks and Synchro Monsters, which expanded the fusion Deck into the Extra Deck, leading to the three-pile gameplay we tend to expect. Coupled with new effect-heavy Synchro and XYZ cards handed out by the machines, like Cataster or Brilliant Fusion, and you get some of the most iconic decks of the Synchro and XYZ eras. Also, the Duel Terminal really hammered home the "Gimmick Monster" releases that come with each new format and master rule change. The post-GX to early Zexal period was defined by these monsters in competitive, and they really made the game faster and more effect oriented. And while we had some hard-hitting archetypes from the GX era, and a few classic monsters with some supports, like Archfiends and Dark Magicians, none of them would hit their stride until Synchro monsters took off, and Ritual/Fusion monsters loosened their restrictive mechanics. The change was definitely gradual, and is still ongoing, but this "early middle period" of Yugioh really feels like the start of what people would consider modern.

I think at this point, we could split it into 3 eras (maybe 4, depending on if we split up the couple year's worth of sets vs the ~2006-2010 range), with the divide being when the average turn count went down to about 2-3 per player, from whatever it was at before, or when it went from "1-2 turns for a board that probably has the game wrapped up" to "1-2 turns for a board that's almost impossible for an opponent to come back from". Individual mechanics or cards don't necessarily break things (for instance, Thunder Dragon Colossus can be great if one can cheat it out, but a full Thunder Dragon deck doesn't make for a high-power deck at this point, and even Colossus's protection costs resources), so much as them being ubiquitous or readily-obtained.

In terms of Advanced format, I think it was around the time we started getting actual, functional archetypes and powerful, synergistic card design. Phantom Darkness was probably the start of this, with Dark Grepher/Armageddon Knight, Allure of Darkness, and DAD. Honorable mention to GX era Hero and Cyber Dragon stuff. Basically, decks that encouraged use of pre-designed strategies for huge tempo swings that were hard to come back from. After that, it just became an arms race of boss monsters. Before then, a competitive deck was one that exerted pressure to maintain advantage for an eventual win, with the occasional OTK running around. You'd see a lot of Monarch strategies, sure, but they were using Treeborn Frog or Macro Cosmos, not the actual cards designed for their theme. You'd see Warrior decks, but they were running a mish-mash of Warriors from different themes like Don Zaloog, D.D. Warrior Lady, and Mystic Swordsman Lv 2, with then-staples like Breaker and anti-meta cards like Kycoo. Old school YuGiOh was more about cobbling together decks from mostly unrelated cards that had synergistic effects, and filling the gaps with staples that were at least neutral in advantage (one for one removal and such) and some teched in spice to catch your opponent off guard. Modern YuGiOh began when the Archetype Deck became the best path to victory.

i feel like the 1st 5ds set was when i noticed a shift into lightspeed, although lightsword and dad decks were heavy and hard to touch without the right tools

i'll say modern yugioh started during synchro era... that was the time solitaire deck started appearing... which is a signature of modern yugioh... not to mention that was the time when extra deck plays an importance roles which is another signature of modern yugioh... in fact the extra deck is so importance to modern yugioh that modern yugioh players doesnt know how to build a deck without extra deck... master duel zero-extra festival pretty much shows that you can fix most of the problem with modern yugioh by removing the extra deck..

I think it says a lot when you consider that being an omninegate was worthy of needing a synchro tuner and 2 synchros in something like quasar when today it's casually placed on the average boss monster like barrone or birreload savage or infinity

I’d probably say around ash came out. I felt like hand traps weren’t so big before and weren’t so damaging. Since once they came to be more common decks kept getting way stronger to have even more generic combos versus more specific focuses of decks

For me, gladiators assault when we started seeing lightsworns, gladiators and chaos decks started becoming coherent decks that revolved around setting up a big boss monster with a decent atk and some gimmicky effect.

Plant Synchro really did all the things before any of these decks. The Synchros had negates and were hard to remove or floated, Dandelion got its effect no matter how it was sent to the grave and level eater allowed for some really long combos. There was effect veiler, maxx C and battle fader for hand traps, Ash Blossom doesn't do anything new, it's just OP.

yknow what accelerated the game and built the chasm between competitive and casual decks? searchers. that's the difference between playing a slow game and adapting to your draws turn by turn, or rushing to get to your optimal board asap

For me it is two time periods. Before xyz, synchro, Link summoning: And after

2010. Duelist Revolution. Effect Veiler set the bar for handyraps which turned the design and how we play the game on it’s head and why we have what we have now

Duelist Genesis and the release of synchros is a firm divide in Yugioh. If you go back and play a Dark Armed Dragon deck pre and post Teleport you can feel the difference in how the games play out.

Modern yugioh is defined for me as "one turn boss monsters". Whether its the first turn or drawing a single low commitment card. Being able to go from empty field to your ace. I don't know much of the tcg release history but from the way the shows were, I would say it started around 5ds and the synchro era. That's when things demanded multiple monsters on the field, easily and quickly

I'd say Maximum Crisis was the real beginning of modern Yugioh. Including the ease of access to spam summoning with majespecters and other pendulum archetypes, as well as the Dinoshmasher's Fury Structure deck. 2016-17 was the change between classic to modern Yugioh; even back in 2011-12 you could still use a lot of old school cards with decent results. The pendulum era was the transition period between the two. Master Rule 5, which did feel like it was better for the game, led to having decks become overly broken compared to what they were in MR4. What I think is necessary is a new master rule that would include "only 1 special summon per turn" or something similar to this. That may seem extreme, but when Kazuki Takahashi and Studio Dice were designing this game, they had never intended for special summons to become so powerful and easy to perform. I mostly play Speed Duel nowadays, but I do keep a few modern decks up to date to challenge meta decks that come out. Try playing with only speed duel cards but regular Yugioh rules ie. 5 zones, 8000 LP, main phase 2, etc. I think this is the best way to play nowadays. I know a lot of former Yugioh player have been pushed into other games like Magic: The Gathering, but that game is pretty much as boring as ever unless you want to spend thousands upon thousands on vintage or legacy and even then you should just play GOAT format.

I definitely missed the back and forth grind game of yugioh where we had a perfect combination of cool boss monsters and combos, but also a lot of slower game states and come back potential because the boards didn’t set up a bunch of negates. That 2011-2015 sweet spot. Because of power creep, the back and forth is typically all happening on a single turn with hand traps and interruptions today. It’s always more fun when you get to actually draw cards and play a turn

I would say it started with the introduction of synchro. It's not about the synchros persay, but the rule change of unlimited fusion deck to 15 card extra deck. While there are other fundamental rule changes later such as pendulum zone and extra monster zone, this is the first and rather significant in its own right. It indicates a willingness to do anything to keep the power creep going, including rewriting the rule of the game to the detriment of existing cards and decks if necessary. Things simply grew from there, forever and ever. And it will keep on going, in a couple years, deck of the current age would be weak for some reason or other.

I would out the breaking point at the release of El Shaddoll Fusion and Virgil in The New Challengers. It marks the beginning of the era where almost every top deck can OTK with little effort. Now missing a beat would very frequently just lose you the game immediately. Obviously OTK decks existed before, but there were always plenty of slower decks as well. But now even the more defensive decks like Qli could just drop a Disk on you out of nowhere and end the game. One of the fundamental elements of a TCG breaks down at this point where every deck has inevitability, making games end more quickly and decks feel more similar.

Cydra is the point were we discovered fire, everything before it was the yugioh kazuki planned.