Why Nobody Plays Exodia the Forbidden One 

You have to build the right deck for Exodia to work. I've actually created an unstoppable deck and here are the cards I use: 1x Exodia the Forbidden One 1x Left Leg of the Forbidden One 1x Right Leg of the Forbidden One 1x Left Arm of the Forbidden One 1x Right Arm of the Forbidden One 35x Pot of Greed Suffice to say, my success with this deck has been unparalleled.

Excuse me, but my Grandpa plays yugioh and my grandpa's deck has no pathetic cards but it does contains the unstoppable Exodia.

Nobody plays Exodia, because you need Pot of Greed to make it work, but nobody knows what Pot of Greed does.

Well, just play Reinforcement of the Army or something like that. You search your deck for a card, and, while you are searching, you take your deck in your hand, therefore all cards in there are in your hand. So, if all Exodia pieces are in your deck you imediately win.

Because they're tossed into the ocean by Weevil, you don't need a 14-minute video to explain that Dzeeff

but doug, i play this deck casually and beat my friends at lunch table

0:58 that arrangement of exodia should be legally considered a war crime

But Doug. I play an Exodia deck with my friends. And I always win 100% half the time. Which is extra sad coz I only play with one friend and her name is my sister and she's 8 years old. Oh, I took it to a local tournament and got 15th place. It's an eight person tournament.

I just wish Left Leg was unlimited so that my Left Leg beatdown was competitive in this new meta.

Best win I ever had to this day: I drew all 5 pieces in my opening hand. COMPLETELY RANDOM and everyone at the table just broke down laughing.

nobody plays exodia becuase anydeck that can acually pull it off conseisntly gets banned

It's because they don't know about the heart of the cards

Too be fair you need a pretty High Iq and the luck of joey wheeler to Win with Exodia

Why play this when you can win in 20 turns with Final Countdown???

Exodia is inconsistent? I never had any problems winning turn zero. You just have to draw all five pieces turn one, not sure what the issue is...

I wonder if most players here are aware that playing "competitively" doesn't mean "I play really aggressively with my friends during lunchtime"?

so what you're saying is, IT'S IMPOSSIBLE !!?!?!? NO ONE'S EVER BEEN ABLE TO SUMMON HIM ?!

Because you can just return the infinite attack with magic cylinder.

Exodia!? That's impossible! No one has ever made Exodia competitively viable before!

nobody plays exodia because weevil threw away the only copies

Who Here is expecting the follow up Video: „ Casual Players don‘t understand Exodia“ ? 😂

He isn't played because nobody's been able to summon him.

I love my Exodia deck to death, but it's a third rate deck for fourth rate duelists. I mainly use it for testing out new decks my friends are building because it has so much stall and destruction in it that it's a good test for poking holes in people's strategies for them to tune out of the deck.

me, an old exodia player: "I could make a house with all these bricks"

If anyone's still confused about the trap card FTK that beats out Exodia that's mentioned at the end of the video, here's how it works. 1. Use the draw spell Upstart Goblin to put your opponents LP to 9000 or more. 2. Use the draw spell Into the Void, that discards your hand in the End Phase. 3. After hitting a dead end on your draw streak, set 3 cards and pass turn. Your hand will be discarded. 4. Play Wall of Revealing Light - pay 7000. Chain Magical Explosion. Chain Life Equalizer. Chain resolves: opponent has 3000 LP, then takes over 4000 damage from Magical Explosion as you're running 20-30 Spell Cards. You win the game. If you take first turn, your opponent can't even use Quick Play Spells at the start of their turn to destroy your backrow - if they do, you just chain your cards in response. There's no way to stop the combo after the 3 cards are set and the above conditions are met.

Exodia is inherently a card that cannot be allowed to be consistent.

Or, in other words: Why Left Leg of the Forbidden One is a staple in every deck.

Dzeef if you really want to know than OPEN YOUR MIND *MIND CRUSH*

I think Exodia more hilarious in a mirror match there is an astronomical statistically pretty much impossible zero turn kill if both players draw all Exodia pieces in their starting hand.

Play 5 bricks, then when you brick SUPER hard, insta win. It’s definitely not just bad

I really like your series "Why Nobody Plays", but here is an interesting idea: Do a series where you talk about what it would take for the cards you talk about in this series to be viable in a competitive format.

I cant wait for"Why Nobody plays YU-GI-OH"

Also, Exodia transcends not only Yugioh but card games in general. I see a lot of other games ( MOBAS for instance ) where they get a perfect team comp and the casters will say " they have the Exodia comp " It's really charming.

I can smell the memes about this video title

To those who are interested, the chances of winning before the game begins, is 0.00000633% chance for your opening hand to be an instant win. And that's with 40 cards in your deck.

You never mentioned one of the biggest key things you gotta have when using an Exodia deck. Belief in the heart of the cards ;)

just wait until a 4 star sphinx monster gets released and use exodd master of the guard to win every duel

I had a great lesson with my math class where we watched this episode for fun and then I asked my students what the probability is of drawing all 5 cards in your opening hand since it fits right in with probability where you don’t replace your sample.

There's a reason Kaiba said nobody's ever successfully played Exodia...

Saw him get summoned in a card shop tournament called wild wolf once in Illinois. As a 10 year old kid it was one of the coolest things ever like watching a straight royal flush lol.

i remember taking my exodia deck to a local tournament at some point, way back, then the guy who ran the tournament made a deck specifically just to discard my hand and such to specifically counter exodia, that was quite fun while it lasted (i didnt actually have much success with it, it was just what i had so i used it and had fun with it) I played more of a stall deck rather than a superdraw

BUUUUT DOOOUUUGGG!! I play my exodia egiptian gods deck and got top 4 on a regional!! YoU dOnT kNoW aNyThInG aBoUt CoMpEtItIvE yGo!!!

Simply put Exodia, Dark Magician, Blue Eyes White Dragon and other cards from the original first series are the OG pioneers of the game. As the game evolved, they became useless, but to keep them in use, like he said, they tend to be the stepping stones of powerful XYZ and Synchro cards.On a similar scale...The God Cards. Back then, there was so much hype with them, but eventually people began to realize, they actually suck compared to many fusion synchro and XYZ cards, but like I said, they are the OGs of the game and like all OGs, they still get their mad respects.

That image of a kid playing with his cat just makes me wonder what plot line in the Yugioh anime he must be to fight the legendary kitty duelist

I think you're just angry because you can't beat Exodia. I win all the time with this in casual, you just have to know how to play it properly. Exodia cards have extra effects which aren't written on the cards which, for example, let Exodia head be treated as a normal monster (useful when playing Heart of the Underdog) or which help them get back into the hand from the GY. If you use graveyard trade economy like Frogs use deck trade economy, and rock proper ranks, this deck is a force to be reckoned with.

Because it's horrifically inconsistent and all the draw cards that *could* make it less so are either limited or banned. God, I wish the Heart of the Underdog strat was feasible tho. That one's hilarious.

Update: in Master Duel you can draw your entire deck in one or two turns perfect for exodia

I think that [Motion wave cannon] combined with [Swords of Revealing Light] is a very easy win condition. Especcially if you have cards that can prevent your opponent from destroying your spell cards so that you dont have to reset the MWC. After you place the Motion Wave Cannon, it begins powering up, when you activate it it deals how many turns has passed since you placed it times 1000. If you have multiple motion wave cannons that you can place them at the same time and can win in 4 or 3 turns. Only way of countering the mwc is by destroying it, it has no requirements for staying on the field. Your opponent probably doesnt have a lot of spell card destroyers, so if you place one then survive for 8 turns, you win. Hell, add Messenger of Peace(?) into the mix and altough it deals 100 damage to you at the start of your turns, it makes it so that monsters with 1500 or higher ATK cant attack. Place a monster with 1500 atk or def and you are safe from battle damage.

What happens if you play his third leg?

Because no one realizes how good it would be with 3 Magic Cylinders and of course we don't know what Magic Cylinder does, since it is equal to Pot of Greed.

I like the idea of hitting all 5 cards in your opening hand in a live tournament, it’s possible you just need to remember someone wins the lottery 100% of the time the potential it’s you is just ( 1:population of country )

Please, my Left Leg of the Forbidden One beatdown deck has never lost a match.

WHAT? EXODIA? NO ONE HAS EVER SUMMONED HIM BEFORE! ... And now we know why :p bless you final Egyptian god dzeeff

Or you want all 5 Exodia in your opening hand

I'm rewatching this in the post master duel era and it's funny in hindsight how many different exodia decks Dzeeff ended up playing.

The virgin magical mallet and the chad reload.

Another issue with exodia is that if any of the pieces go to the graveyard, it's going to be tough to get them back in your hand

They should really semi limit left leg.

It's really cool how this game looks at the higher up levels. As someone who's only ever played casual, it's making me rethink the way I look at YGO, and card games in general.

As someone who watched a small amount of the anime and collected cards only for about 1 month, this was a really interesting video. You clearly aren't some joe schmoe talking about yugioh, you have a huge knowledge pool to pull from to make well reasoned points understandable by anyone. Great job

But Doug, it has no bad matchups. You always have the chance of drawing all 5 pieces turn 1.

When I played YGO (from the time it first aired in the US to 2015), I only managed to win by playing Exodia once. Mind you, I only got the Exodia cards in 2009, but I only had them in my deck as filler, basically would "accidentally" show my opponent my hand partially if I had two or three of the pieces to scare them. I somehow managed to draw all five Exodia cards on the opening draw when I was playing with a friend. Absolutely sheer luck and not likely to ever occur again. It was hilarious, though.

Thanks dzeeff, you literally brought a smile on my face with that photo of a cat sitting on his back playing the amazing game of Yugi oh ☺️☺️☺️☺️

In heart of the underdog variants, you can play reload and hand destruction, since they are quick spells and thus can be played in the draw step. And since HotU triggers of any card drawn during the draw step, it will continue the combo

I love how Exodia isn't the best Exodia combo on Yu Gi Oh

Hats off to the guy that played it and won at a competitive level. GOD bless him!

The issue with an Exodia Deck is that is can be easily countered by cards that force you to discards in your hand so cards like Card Destruction and Morphing Jar when you have 3 or more exodia cards in your hand. when combined with a card like Banisher of the Light you have a 0% chance of winning (unless you have cards to bring back from banishment). Exodia decks also require high defense monsters to stall while you continue to draw exodia pieces before hitting 0 LP which increases the 40 card count to as high as 60 cards. a standard 40 card deck consists of: 5 Exodia pieces 1 Sangan 1 Witch of the Black Forest 3 Emissary of the Afterlife 1 Pot Of Greed 1 Graceful Charity 1 Dark Hole 1 Monster Reborn 1 Call of the Haunted 1 Premature Burial that's almost half the deck on these cards alone and now you have to fit in 20 cards while trying to prioritize what is important. in those 20 cards you need support cards like UFO Turtle/Mystic Tomato (these cards protect your LPs and allow you to easily special summon Sangan and WotBF), Gravity Bind/Messenger of Peace (these cards further stall by preventing strong monsters from attacking you), Magician of Faith (allows you to use again important magic cards like Monster Reborn, Pot of Greed, Graceful Charity, etc...). then you need to find space to add counter cards like Mirror Force, Magic and Trap Jammers aswell as High Defense Monsters like Giant Solder of Stone and Labyrinth Wall to further stall and now that 40 card deck is no longer 40 cards. it's actually much easier and better to use a card destruction deck where you carry more than 40 cards and using cards like Card Destruction and Morphing Jar to make the opponent run out of cards before you do than it is to try to win with Exodia.

That deck was always very vulnerable, I remember back in days when I was active Yu-GI-Oh player, all that you needed to stop that deck is Morping jar or card destruction when they take their first part of Exodia with some card like Sangan or Witch of the Black Forrest

I am surprised you never mention Exodia's support Exodia incarnate and Obliterate!! Which don't really help a traditional exodia deck do help it play in a new and different way which I always found fun in a casual setting. If Exodia ever became competitively viable I would hope it be on introducing more support for exodia specifically like those two cards did, since it felt more like I was playing with my opponent instead of playing solitaire that my opponent could possibly thwart if they happened to draw the right counter.

I always played and loved decks like this, but I always felt like Empty Jar was by far more realistic. It actively hinders and harasses the opponent, I almost never find myself scoping in response to a single move unless it's a REALLY good movie at a REALLY bad time. More importantly, it psychology messes with players as they second guess every play they make.

I do. The Hope for Exodia strategy still works, but if you put in Evenly Matched to deal with overextension and slide some Designator from the Grave in there to deal with Ash/Droll, you'll be quite fine.

Ah yes, 2005. The beginning of all recorded history.

Who plays this when you can play Creator of Miracles, shout "ZEXAL Field" and win by attacking directly

I think it would have been good to talk about the bunch of cards that are ban because of Exodia and that even then it is still a just a fun deck that fails on the competitive level

in a deck about drawing exodia, drawing exodia is quite literally the last thing you wanna do

i can't help but think of a minor villain in the "battle city" story. he had 3 of each Exodia part, a bunch of "graceful charity" cards (draw 3 then discard 2), and some "wall" monsters (low attack but high defence). Yugi defeated him by using "chain destruction" to remove all of his "left arms" from play. (he beat Joey with that deck earlier)

Cyber Stein into Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon was amazing

You have to run it in your side deck! Without it why even bother playing this game...

While I do have an Exodia deck and I really enjoy it, and making it either more defensive or draw powerful, I know Exodia has never seen too much competitive success. Gotta love Exodia though. Dzeef I love your videos, listening to your advice on bad and good cards has made me a better player, and I thank you for that. Have you ever thought about making a series like your 'Why nobody plays' only making it 'Why everybody plays'? Like 'Why everybody plays Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring' or something along those lines. I think that'd be interesting.

Toadally Awesome, Ash Blossom and Lock Bird are gonna have a feild day with all the reliance on spell combos.

What about other Exodia cards like Necros, Ultimate Forbidden Lord, Legendary Exodia Incarnate and the few other spell / trap card supports? Was there any potential viable-ness or was Exodia always destined to be for casual play?

Why nobody plays the forbidden one? Well, simple, it's forbidden. :^)

I still feel compelled to discover a way for Exodia to live in competitive play lol

I remember in the anime, they did stuff like throwing the pieces in the gy and then recovering them with monster reincarnation or feather of phoenix. And I guess people didn't play them with deck thining like those monsters that summon 2 more copies of itself from the deck for whatever condition just so you can draw the pieces naturally.

Can't wait to see him mock commentors in a week on this one

Just learn sleight of hand and pretend to play the deck for a couple of turns then whip out the pieces

I played exodia once in a school tournament when I was younger and it was difficult as hell

Little note I'd like to add about the 'heart of the underdog' exodia strategy. I personally play that strategy with a fuck ton of pendulum monsters, allowing me to just dump my hand one turn, summon a bunch of stuff, use pendulum normal tuners like hallo hallo to go into coral dragon to pop things and draw more cards, building up a big board and providing protection for my heart of the underdog. It's still not competitive due to the chance of not drawing heart of the underdog, or drawing exodia too early and either having dead cards or having to use the exodia pieces as impromptu link pieces, but it certainly is a rogue deck that can have some powerful plays turn after turn if you get a good hand.

Why would life-equalizer be a good card? You have to have a difference of at least 8000 life points, that's not exactly easy to do. What combination of cards would let this work? Can someone link me a deck that utilizes life equalizer and magical explosion?

Like hope Exodia is a good deck, I have no idea what you are talking about..., The issue isn't Exodia, the issue is that EVENTS/Formats that have multiple rounds, and you have a single win condition due to basic RNG your not going to always pull that win condition off. -Also that build is really old and there is better ones and stuff..., ergo my build was better. A true exodia deck does not care what the opponent is running you are playing yourself...

I wish I still had my Infernity Exodia Deck Profile I topped locals with years ago

The often forgotten Chess board game is my favorite and its a career too

More than 10 minutes video ✔ Casual bait ✔ Angry bait ✔ A fact and weakness that everyone already knew about it ✔ Free revenue yay

Dzeeff: Exodia bad Konami literally next year: Y'all ever heard of..... *MYSTIC MINE?!*

You can't call Life Equalizer+Magical Explosion a 2-card combo. You need to use at least 1 more card to make the difference between the LP 8000

But Doug, I play this deck casually and beat my friends at lunch table all the time.

I only play Left Leg, with Brilliant Fusion, that is

But doug, I play exodia casually in my Fearal Imp Deck!!!

Bro, just play Exodia in the Bandai game from 1997, that game only ends when both player's decks are empty or when one player gets Exodia

I had a Dueling Network friend back in 2012, we devised an lockdown type of Exodia deck. the main play style was, activate cards like Skill Drain, Imperial Custom & Metal Reflect Slime backed by two Dark Bribes or two Fake Traps (Back in 2012, we also run cards likes Upstart Goblin & One Day of Peace @ 3) or alternate combo switch out Reflect Slime with Scrubbed Raid, other defensive cards that were used are Prohibtion, Nimble Momonga, Battle Fader/Swift Scarecrow and as for draw cards, besides the Upstart & Peace we relied with Legacy of Yata Garasu, Reckless Greed, Card Car D, Allure of Darkness, Emissary of the Afterlife, Pot of Duality. The main idea was, with those cards on board, we basically lockdown all possible options for the opposing player, they can't attack, no monster effs and negation to any sort of trap destruction/removal, while we draw to the pieces of Exodia with a somewhat strong draw engine. The funny thing about this deck was, it was quite effective against some meta decks back in the day. The Deck: (we strictly followed the "40" card deck but I'm gonna list all the cards that we used) Monsters: The Exodia Pieces Nimble Momonga x 3 Swift Scarecrow x 3 Battle Fader x 3 Card Car D x 3 Emissary of the Afterlife x 3 Spells: One Day of Peace x 3 Upstart Goblin x 3 Allure of Darkness x 2 Pot of Duality x 2 Prohibition x 3 Traps: (your bread and butter in this deck) Skill Drain x 3 Imperial Custom x 3 Metal Reflect Slime x 3 Scrubbed Raid x 3 Dark Bribe x 3 Fake Trap x 3 Reckless Greed x 3 Legacy of Yata Garasu x 3 Fast forward to 2021, the deck is now neutered in the TCG format (but somewhat playable in the OCG)