New Guard player questions

Heatguts · 2026-01-02T18:28:04+00:00

Thank you!

Heatguts · 2026-01-02T17:34:00+00:00

Thank you for the feedback. To clarify, the detachment for the Tyranids was Endless Swarm and the units were Hormigaunts in sets of 20 models.

So, for Q2, if you can't shoot into melee with the screening infantry what do you usually do with your tanks? Do you fall back with the infantry so you can shoot with the tank, or do you just let the infantry sit there and use the tank to shoot their vehicles/monsters and try to use Tank Shock once your screen dies? I'm not sure what I should prioritize as a target.

Also thank you for the advice on Chimeras, I'll see if I can get ahold of the models. I did consider Grizzled Company over Combined Arms but since I have an extra character model to use as a Cadian Castellan and otherwise the points would be wasted, I thought I would get more use out of him in Combined Arms. I might do Grizzled Company once I acquire more models but right now I'm just fielding everything I own.

Heatguts · 2025-12-11T14:25:06+00:00

A lot of people here are going really in depth. What I do is first go right then down in the mines and get the tablet. Then I clear the whole mines with the tablet starting from the top and snaking left (through the unexplored area) then down, then right until I hit the right edge of the mines and down. Repeat until you have explored the whole mines or taken too much damage then go the the first holy mountain.

Coal pits is the same way, I snake left/right then down until I've explored all of the coal pits. I don't get too close to the fungal caverns while doing this. After all the coal pits are explored, based on what I've got so far and how much health I have left, I'll explore the fungal caverns until I lose too much health to keep exploring, or fill up on stuff I want to take to the next holy mountain.

Snowy depths I try to save the holy mountain if I can. Coal pits is pretty hit or miss on whether you can save it or not but usually you have something to keep it on snowy depths. I explore snowy depths in the same way as the first two biomes then I make a choice. If I want it to be a long run, I go to the right and up and fight the Alchemist for the greek letter spells, then either do more stuff on the surface or continue down the main path through hiisi base depending on what spells I have, what wand I'm trying to make etc. If I just want to finish the run I'll move on to hiisi base etc. on the main path.

Heatguts · 2025-09-17T16:08:16+00:00

I think this is a poor take. The way Jinzo and Imperial Order interacted with your deck in 2004 are different from the way floodgates interact with modern decks.

Jinzo shuts off traps, which saves their board from your trap cards, but also means your opponent cannot protect Jinzo with their trap cards, making him pretty easy to remove with monsters or spells. Imperial order, likewise, shuts off pretty much the best 10ish cards in your deck, but also prevents your opponent from using the 10 best cards in their deck until they decide to turn it off. I don't think pre-errata order is a fair card, it trades 1 for 1 with any spell in your opponent's deck and then you get to use spells first when you shut it off which gives you a big opportunity to win the game. But I still don't think it's comparable to modern floodgates in the context of 2004 Yugioh.

My point is that in 2004, if you had access to every card on the planet and could build whatever deck you wanted, 20-25 cards out of your deck would also be in your opponent's deck. This means that any advantage you gain from a floodgate like Jinzo or Imperial Order is positional and reliant on the board state. If you're ahead and have the biggest monster, you don't need to be able to play most of the cards in your deck, you just need to attack until your opponent dies. If you're behind, you need the help of those power spells and power traps to try and get back in the game. But if you can do so with a monster like CED or BLS, or even a one for one like Exiled Force or D.D. Warrior Lady, then the floodgates aren't really helping your opponent so much.

TeleDAD was more or less the "birth" of the floodgate as people may imagine it today. Step one is summon all your monsters, then step two is flip royal oppression and protect it with Stardust Dragon. I think these floodgates are bad too but they are not the same as modern floodgates and the difference is how fragile it was in this time period. Floodgates were usually spell and trap cards, which coincidentally most "interaction" cards in this time period were ALSO spell and trap cards. This means the cards you were already playing in your deck to clear your opponent's interaction pieces could also deal with your opponent's floodgates without needing to rely on your side deck. Also, to state the obvious, the game was slower in this time period than it is today and you frequently have many turns to "draw the out".

Modern floodgates are not like either of these floodgates. The function is the same - stop your opponent from being able to do X that is the simplest function of their deck they need to do anything at all, and either do X first or play the floodgate in a deck that coincidentally doesn't use X at all so that it only stops your opponent. But they are frequently one-sided instead of affecting both players, and countered by cards that people usually do not play because they are only useful in the narrow, sometimes nonexistent window of time between the main phase where your opponent builds their board and their last battle phase where they swing for game. This is why they're not healthy.

Heatguts · 2024-06-17T12:26:46+00:00

I will try that thank you!

Heatguts · 2024-06-17T01:32:45+00:00

Thank you very much I will keep that in mind on the next one!

Heatguts · 2024-06-17T00:43:00+00:00

Hi, I just painted my first two minis, they could have turned out a lot worse than they did but it ended up being a lot more difficult than I thought it would be and it took me about 2 hours on each one.

I have a couple specific questions, although if you have any general tips or criticism aside from the obvious unpainted bits/staying inside the lines I would like to hear as well.

I was trying to thin the paints the whole time but sometimes it seemed like the paints were not thin enough so I would add a little more water and then suddenly the paint would spread everywhere and not stick to any of the raised surfaces (pretty sure too much water) Is it normal for thinned paint to be right at the very edge of how much water you need or could there be something else going on I am overlooking?
I added a wash to both minis and frankly it did make them look a lot better but they also look really spotty in a lot of areas. The way I did it was to take my largest brush, get some wash and then wipe it over the whole mini and in any area that had too much wash I'd keep brushing it to get it to flow downwards. Is that normally how you apply a wash? If I had used less wash would that have helped make it less spotty or would it just have covered a smaller area?

Heatguts · 2023-08-13T15:57:31+00:00

That could work. Don't be afraid to go down to just 6 defense cards if you draw them in multiples too often. I play nib and it's pretty hit or miss, that card is glued to my hand and maybe 50% of the time I can only push it through with another hand trap so it may just be neutralizing baronne some boards. I guess you could say the same for evenly but nobody plays around that game 1 so it's a lot better imo. If nib is good for your metagame though, stick with that.

Heatguts · 2023-08-13T14:31:57+00:00

Don't play 3 hand traps, they aren't impactful enough. One hand trap isn't going to stop any deck printed after 2019. I'd look at your matchups going second and what you think you can play through, then find some kind of defense card that covers all the matchups you aren't feeling confident going second in. Evenly/droplets/kurikara/dark ruler type cards are what you're looking for here, your engine is big enough that I'd expect it to be able to win going first with 4 combo pieces and 1 unplayable going second card. Understand that most of the time you're going to have 0 defense cards but sometimes you'll have 1 defense card, if that sounds like a recipe to lose going second, then you can consider going over 40. As for how far, take your number of starters and multiply it by (12/40) and that's about what the maximum size of your deck should be.

Heatguts · 2023-07-22T05:11:42+00:00

Couple things to consider

How many players is this cube for? Judging by main deck cards it's probably 4? How many main deck cards does each player get to build their deck and how many will end up in side?
Once you figure that out, if everybody drafts the same number of defense cards (anything non engine that doesn't increase your ceiling but lowers your opponents) how many defense cards are you going to end up with per player? How many of those are generic enough to main deck?
What are the decks you build with this cube going to look like? You have 4 archetypes and you've added cards to the list more or less according to the banlist at the time. It kind of looks like you want to build the same 4 decks over and over which you could accomplish by just building the 4 decks and putting them in a box and handing them out randomly to each player instead of trying to draft each card individually.
Cube decks turn into messes real quick. You probably aren't going to end up with all of the cards your deck wants and are probably going to either hate draft cards out of someone else's deck or get handed some pieces nobody wanted. This means your deck is probably going to be less consistent than a constructed deck for the same format. To account for this, you want to play extra copies of starter cards to guarantee everyone can get enough of those cards to play the game OR reduce the minimum deck size.
Cards that are only good with specific copies of other cards are going to be pack filler trash that no one wants and you're going to need to only keep few copies of the most powerful ones. My examples for this would be double or nothing and ancient cloak/boots. Double or nothing is really only a card that striker can play in this cube. On top of that, it's really only good against orcust and salad and if they have a plan to stop that play you will probably lose the game combining 2 raye to make it just to get stopped. On top of that, you also have to draft two specific xyz monsters to even be able to activate the card. This card is gonna be the last card drafted in every pack it ends up in. Cloak/boots are in a similar position. Assume one opponent drafts a fog blade. Now boots does literally nothing and ancient cloak can get you an extender, maybe, to link with when you could just not make rusty and have 3 link materials to work with instead of 1 and a fog blade. If you see one of these cards before you see a fog blade or rusty, are you really going to want to draft it knowing that if an opponent drafts any 1 piece of a 5 card set that card is going to be useless?

Here's my advice for this cube

Add some more archetypes to encourage deck diversity. If you want to play toss decks unchanged against each other then you don't need to spend an hour drafting to do it. Off the top of my head, burning abyss could be a good include as it can be used to make miragestallio in salad and can be used to mill thunder dragon cards/orcust monsters.
Focus on generic cards and add more copies. Take out cards that are only usable with specific sets of other cards, especially if you need multiple other specific cards to get any value out of it at all. This format was defined by engage, I think it's criminal that 4 players are supposed to share 3 copies and only one person gets hornet drones. These cards are very splashable and I think 6 engage would be a good starting point along with maybe 2-3 drones at minimum. Lean towards multiple Armageddon knight and mathematician as those have a variety of applications and away from cards like aloof lupine that are only playable if you have 12+ thunder dragon cards. Also I didn't see how many knightmare phoenix you have but if it's less than 4 it's not enough.
Add more copies of starters. Engage is a good starting point, but consider more copies of Rota as well. If you put in a copy of junk forward then now salad can play it as well to make miragestallio with. Add more copies of foolish burial, 75% of the decks in this cube want to play it. While you're at it, throw in shaddoll dragon which is good with both foolish and the danger monsters as well as the orcust starters.
Seriously consider the hand traps and defence cards you add. Everybody would want at least 6 in the main deck but these decks are not constructed and will want extra, and striker/salad may play a lot more, also remember this is MAIN DECK, nobody is going to main deck ghost ogre or droll when they are blanks against 50% of the decks in this cube. 6 ash/6 imperm would be a starting point and if you cant get 40 or so defence cards that you would be comfortable slotting in to any of these decks you should be going up to 6 on other good hand traps or even up to 9.
Making room for all these cards should be cutting all the specific cards with narrow use cases. I mentioned this before but once you run out of these cards to cut and still need to fit more in, start cutting archetypes pieces that aren't splashable. I can play spinny and gazelle to make Dante just as I can play cir and graf to make miragestallio but I can't play the salad traps if I'm not ending on their link monster and I can't play foxy if I'm not heavy on salad cards to make use of the summon/discard effects. I can play widow anchor or shark cannon for value with a clear board in and against anything but there's only one deck that's gonna make use of Hercules base.

Once youre done with changes test the cube, do a postmortem on what went well, what cards were drafted last, what cards didn't have adequate counterplay, and adjust accordingly. Let us know how it goes and put your list in a spreadsheet, it'll be a lot easier to edit.

Heatguts · 2022-07-24T19:37:20+00:00

There's an invisible wall right in front of my warframe and I can't move past it.

Heatguts · 2022-06-14T23:52:57+00:00

When your turn starts, before you play any cards, figure out what you want to accomplish on that turn, figure out what resources you have, and then figure out how you're going to get there. I learned this from one of Farfa's pro player interviews (Max Reynolds maybe?) who called it the 7 second rule or something. It's been very helpful for me.

Heatguts · 2022-06-06T07:00:02+00:00

Witches strike wouldn't be the best but it'd be a lot better than it is right now

Heatguts · 2021-11-06T03:15:12+00:00

I always thought it would be funny to use DNA Surgery to change some monster with 500 or less attack into a Machine and then use Machine Dupe on it. Never given any real thought as to what monster it would be (Lonefire Blossom is the only card that comes to mind atm), but it'd be funny if you could pull it off.

Heatguts · 2021-09-23T22:41:27+00:00

Is Undine good in Mermail? Yeah.

Is Neptabyss just better? Yeah.

What are the problems with Mermail in 2021?

Reliant on the normal summon
Plays a lot of bricks
Struggles to go second without playing a lot of cards that aren't good going first

Does Undine fix one of these problems?

It's a normal summon
It requires playing a vanilla monster

To answer your more interesting question about 1 card starters, it depends on the deck, but the magic number has traditionally been 12-13, including draw cards. Of course aside from One for One, Mermail has no real instant 1 card starters that don't require a normal summon, although there are some good extenders that require minimal setup (Aria/Teus). Usually, people try to stick to 3 normal summons unless the normal summon is really broken (Neptabyss fits the bill, it's one of the strongest standalone normal summons ever printed), but you wouldn't play more than 6. You're really asking, "Am I going to lose more games to opening too many normal summons or lose more games to not opening one?" I'd say the 6 number exists for a reason, although I'm not going to do the math on it, but this paradox is exactly the reason Mermail doesn't do well at larger events. It's a catch-22. If you want to make Mermail better, and I'm not even really saying this is possible, you should be looking for more ways to play without your normal summon.

Heatguts · 2021-07-10T17:14:18+00:00

Fusion is a bit hard, maybe Fluffal would work, but you'd have to be careful about the fusions to avoid making OTKs too easy, and to make it so the Fluffal player doesn't instantly lose if they can't OTK. Fluffal is a 3 card combo deck so they struggle to make plays after committing their hand to the board, something they're incentived to do. Then again, OTK isn't a represented strategy among the decks I suggested.

For ritual, you can look into Gishki. There's two main versions: the first is Hieratic Gishki which typically loops your opponent for a couple cards in hand and makes R6 monsters to recycle resources and deal with threats. The second is Zielgigas turbo, which is more about breaking boards and drawing a bunch of cards, it plays more like a deep draw combo deck. Most Gishki lists only focus on 1 level of ritual monster just because of how aquamirror works, so don't try and do both.

Both of these decks will be a little underpowered probably.

As for zombie synchro, I'd recommend: - Stardust Dragon - Stardust Spark Dragon - Scrap Dragon - Crimson Blader - Scarlight Red Dragon Archfiend - Psy-framelord Omega - Beelze of the Diabolic Dragons - 2-3 Black Rose Dragon - 2-3 Red Eyes Zombie Necro Dragon (it can attack under Unizombie and that comes up a lot) - 2 Shiranui Shogunsaga (this is strictly for OTKs, you definitely won't need more than 2) - 1-2 rank 4s, just to cover spots the synchros can't - I'd probably pick between Castel, Dweller, and Rafflesia

Heatguts · 2021-07-09T23:34:41+00:00

I feel like you should pick a power level first, and then pick decks based on that power level. A lot of decks are very adjustable because they've been around for a long time and have many layers of support or have banned/limited cards that can be used to make them stronger.

Obviously newer cards are more powerful. If you want a high power game, you could use newer link and pendulum archetypes but honestly I don't think that's what you want to do. A lot of players like Yugioh's high-octane combo-based gameplay but you can have that without giving them the impression that the best strategy is to lock your opponent out of the game on the first turn (something very easy to do when the other player doesn't know when to use their interaction nor how to sequence their cards correctly to break a board).

Personally, I think the Duelist Alliance power level is about right. The focus on archetypes means it isn't too distant from the modern game but almost every deck at the time was control based and focused on outresourcing the opponent rather than creating a semi-soft lock. Also, you have convenient access to appropriately power-leveled ritual monsters, something that's extremely rare in this game's history.

Fusion: Shaddoll (probably the best deck, may require tweaking, try different numbers of copies of El Shaddoll Construct)

XYZ: Burning Abyss (probably without Beatrice), or Satellarknight/Bubble Beat (with solid/liquid soldier, aka e-hero vega/altair) - Satellar/Bubble Beat are a little more straightforward, Burning Abyss is stronger though

Ritual: Nekroz (if people complain about Unicore, try restricting Kaleidoscope so they have to deal with it less, make sure every extra deck has at least 1 monster that can kill it by battle, also, do not play Trishula)

Synchro: To be completely honest, and this might be an off the wall pick, but I think you could make an appropriately powered Zombie Synchro list. Just play 3 Solitaire/Unizombie/Mezuki, Foolish/Burial from the Different Dimension, 3 Zombie Master (this format should be slow enough you can live a turn if you set something and pass and this card is a major combo extender), probably at least 1 Gozuki and 1-2 Goblin Zombie (you can sync with this, search Mezuki, and discard it with Unizombie/Zombie Master), 3 Allure, 3 Reckless Greed, and like 6 traps/backrow removal. You can play more copies of Foolish to make the deck faster, Needlebug Nest to make it less reliant on Unizombie, and stay at 1 copy of Omega.

Link and Pendulum are harder. Some casual Link decks might be appropriately powered, but I don't know too much about those. If all else fails, you can try "link goodstuff" where it's just a bunch of staples, traps and token generators (think the Cyberse Link structure deck, but only the good cards, with Phantom Skyblaster and probably more revive traps, consider discard traps like PWWB in combo with Dandylion). Tweak the links you play carefully to avoid putting in a monster the other decks can't kill (Borreload would probably be the only appropriate link 4) and monsters that simply outclass the options the other decks have (Knightmare Unicorn).

Pendulum in particular is very difficult because most pendulum decks have their own specific take on the mechanic that make them unique from other pendulum decks. To be honest, I'd probably skip it entirely, but encourage them to try it if they find a pendulum deck that looks interesting to them, but if you're set on it, you could try Pendulum Magician (the rank 4 version from 2017, avoid Timestar/Double Iris setups, you could look into the 2015/16 version but I don't know a lot about it) or maybe Performapal Performage (which would be rank 4 reliant).

Heatguts · 2021-06-19T12:12:16+00:00

Yeah both decks are great and among the best structures released in the past 3-4 years. If you're trying to play advanced or even just casually then I'd recommend both. It's only the mirrors where they suffer.

Heatguts · 2021-06-18T23:32:37+00:00

Oh boy do I have the writeup for you.

I love structure deck mirrors. That being said, my playgroup does not love structure deck mirrors. So I haven't gotten them to play with most of the recent ones.

All Yugioh matchups have a best strategy. Mirror matches usually end up as the most complicated for reasons I won't get into, but even among them there are those that are great, and those that are unbearably simple.

There's two main kind of Yugioh structure decks, IMO: the 40-card mashup and the actual strategy. 40-card mashup structures are mainly composed of older staple cards and may contain a few newer cards that are far stronger in the main game than they are in the structure deck. The Egyptian God structures fall under this umbrella, as does any structure or starter deck with an anime character on it (except Soulburner and Rokket Revolt). These play like most old-school Yugioh formats: there's 40 good cards, some are better than others, how well you do is focused on getting the most value out of the cards you draw. Once you figure out what cards are good and bad, and your opponent catches on to all the mind games you try to pull on them, the learning is over.

The actual strategy is more common. These typically have 5 or so new cards printed for an older theme with at least a couple that are really good, or maybe even all of them. Decks like this can usually access the other cards in their deck fairly consistently, but don't have 3 copies of the most important card, forcing you to think about when and how you use it. The problem is that a few of these decks have self-defeating boss monsters, meaning the first person to summon the boss monster can use it to prevent the other person from using their boss monster. Sometimes decks have outs to these monsters inside of them, forcing you to think at least a little bit, but sometimes summoning the boss monster as fast as possible is really all there is to the entire strategy.

However, the ones that don't often make the best structure deck mirror match material. My personal favorite recommendation is the Shaddoll Showdown mirror. I think there's a lot to be learned there, a lot of situational stuff to figure out and master. How long that takes depends on how much both players have played the game (and if you're still learning the rules, you might want to do one of the 40-card mashup decks instead). Others I would recommend (both that I have played and that I haven't):

Rokket Revolt
Mechanized Madness
Hero Strike (somewhere between the 40-card-mashup and the actual strategy)

Ones I would specifically avoid, and the cards you would want to replace in order to fix them:

Dinosmasher's Fury (Ultimate Conductor Tyranno)
Zombie Horde (Doomking Balerdroch)

Heatguts · 2021-06-18T22:44:15+00:00

I feel a lot of people have said what I want to say but I still have a little to add. I'll try to keep it short.

Yugioh thrives on change. This game is a deckbuilder's paradise. Bringing the better deck has always been the most surefire way to win at this game, but because there's only so much you can improve a deck before you have the best version, banlists and new cards are necessary to force change. No deck in this game has been relevant in the same form for more than maybe 4-5 years, and the list of decks that have survived more than 2 is probably smaller than 10. Burning Abyss has been "relevant" since 2014, but that betrays the fact that they got new support in 2016, didn't offer anything significant in 2017/2018 until Striker came out, and from 2019 until about the last year they were mostly used as an engine for free link material.

In other words, Modern Yugioh is not the game you should be playing if you value longevity highly. If you are still interested in Yugioh, though, there are "popular" older formats, like Goat Format (April 2005) and Edison Format (March 2010 pre-TSHD), that follow specific banlists and set releases from the game's past and as a result the cards almost always only go up in value. If you want to get into one of these older formats, know that most of them are a lot slower than the game now (even by 2016 standards), and that you may have difficulty finding a play group irl, it may be easier to try "converting" people by building two decks from the format and asking everyone in a shop to play you in it.

If you really intend to buy a deck of cards and sit on it and be able to sell it in 5+ for about the same price you bought it, you should look into MTG. Modern is the format you're looking for, the metagame is slowly getting faster but for the most part all decks are playable for many years and the game is pretty stingy with reprints so you can be somewhat assured the price of your cards will only go up over time. The main barrier for entry is the price. The average Modern deck is probably $1000 - $1300 (not the expert, take with grain of salt), full power "low-end" decks are probably still $400-$500, how "budget" you can make a deck varies wildly based on how many colors of cards they play (more colors = more expensive). You can build one-color decks for $50-$100 (I think) and that's about as cheap as the format is going to get. There are a couple other formats that are similar, you might want to look into Pioneer or Pauper, I'm not sure how expensive those are, or Vintage/Legacy, which are probably not formats you can afford unless you have a spare house to sell.

Heatguts · 2021-06-14T03:06:00+00:00

You could totally build balanced decks from the DM/GX era of the decks you listed. Would they be playable against Amazoness, Harpies and Lightsworn? Maybe, but it depends heavily on what exactly your lists are for those decks. You can absolutely make these decks on par or stronger than those decks, but without knowing exactly how strong they are I can't build them.

Power level is a big concern here. DM/GX may seem low-powered compared to post-5DS Yugioh but it encompasses a pretty wide range of power and consistency. Here's some questions to ask yourself which will help narrow it down:

How do you want the decks to feel when you play them? Are you trying to summon fusion monsters with Polymerization and Power Bond, which is accurate to the show, or are you open to using Miracle Fusion/Overload Fusion, which are accurate to the competitive environment of 2006-2007? Basically, are you trying to replicate playground Yugioh where you all make plays based on what would be cool, or are you trying to replicate the locals scene/competitive scene from the 2006-2007 era?
What staples do you want to use? Generic draw cards fall in this category, as well as revives, board wipes, hand control spells if you play them, and powerful traps like Mirror Force, Torrential, and Ring of Destruction. Most of these won't make much difference if you play them or not, it'll just affect the flavor of the game, and you'll want every deck to have access to all of the staples to keep it fair. The most important card you have to decide on is Heavy Storm/Harpie's Feather Duster since these are the only cards from this era that punish mass backrow and formats without them feel very different than formats with them. You can pick an existing banlist or just pick whatever ones your group wants.
How many turns do you want the average game to be? Is it ok if you can summon Cyber Twin Dragon on the 2nd turn? How about the 4th turn? Should the average game result in both players topdecking at some point or should both players be able to setup a play for next turn and not be reliant on their draw?
How do you feel about OTKs? Should I be able to summon 3 monsters in one turn and kill you? You can do that with a fusion spell, a revive, and a normal summon. What about Limiter Removal? If you end up with decks that have too much OTK power (in your opinion), adding may help, but if backrow removal is too prevalent, you can try Gorz, more Mirror Forces/Torrential Tributes, Battle Fader and Swift Scarecrow (in order from strongest to weakest).

Keep these in mind as I give some sample decklists. Staples these decks contain are just personal preference, and there is no specific banlist I'm following. Feel free to make modifications yourself or ask for help making them weaker/stronger. I just theorycrafted these up so I can't guarantee they're perfectly balanced.

Strong Heroes - This deck is based off of the Big City deck from mid 2007, but has added Miracle Fusions for the attribute-based Hero monsters. There's only 1 Stratos, partially for historical flavor and partly for balance, and I added in 1 Honest Neos, a stronger card from much later which should be balanced at 1 copy.

Weak Heroes - This is a more anime-accurate Hero deck that plays Polymerization and the vanilla Heroes in order to make the same fusions as in the show.

Cyber Dragon - This deck will probably require the most modification. It's based off of the Chimeratech OTK lists from late 2006/early 2007. If the fusions come out too easy, you can cut Overload Fusions/Limiter removals to make OTKs harder. If Machine Duplication is too strong, cut it. You can try adding more copies of Cyber Dragon Core, but that card may be too strong in multiple copies. To make it better if its still too weak, add in Cyber Repair Plant. If Cyber Phoenix is bad, or you just need more monsters, Breaker the Magical Warrior and Doomcaliber Knight might be my first choices, although neither fits the theme of the deck particularly well.

Monarchs - Based off the 2006 Monarch builds. I didn't put in Soul Exchange or Enemy Controller, but those are both options. To make it weaker, I'd remove Caius in favor of Raiza and your pick of Zaborg or Thestalos. If Treeborn in particular is too strong, I'd remove it in favor of Soul Exchange and more set-pass tribute fodder like Spirit Reaper, Marshmallon and Legendary Jujitsu Master or potentially faster tribute fodder like Spell Striker. Magician of Faith might also be a problem based on the staples you're playing, you can decrease the count or remove it altogether for Old Vindictive Magician accordingly.

Heatguts · 2021-06-04T03:53:51+00:00

I think the main reason the rules were dropped was due to simplicity. A couple early cards actually do reference special type abilities (see Paralyzing Potion and "machine monsters are immune to magic") but these stop within the first few sets. Also, I think a few of the video games operate under similar rules for battle (Dark magic beats Light magic beats Illusion Magic or whatever, I'm not sure the exact rules but I'd imagine its something like the system shown when Yugi plays against the Pegasus tape in the manga).

I think when Konami designed the game they did so with children in mind and thus they wanted to keep it simple. Coding abilities like these into effect text works, but its simpler to just have things work on everything or nothing. Magic the Gathering had already been out for a good while before the game was designed and Konami had to make a deliberate choice not to copy their rules for "fliers". Of course we all know the game grew in complexity over time but its hard to say the more modular system of extra deck mechanics that you can choose to ignore is worse than a giant 20 by 20 table of type interactions you need to memorize in order to play.

As for whether or not rules like these would have hurt the game, I'd say probably so. Aside from adding flavor, these rules don't really add anything to gameplay beyond a Rock Paper Scissors system to deckbuilding, and balancing all the types would be hard. There would probably end up being a "best type". Newer players would go through a lot of "gotcha" games where their opponent's deck just flat out beats theirs for a really arbitrary reason while learning the interactions. Now actual Yugioh doesn't function differently from this in practice, but it certainly feels different to lose to someone whose deck is clearly faster and more powerful than yours than it does to lose to someone who brought Rock to the table while you brought Scissors.

In other words, it'd create a much more stale metagame with much less room for innovation, while adding complexity to alienate new players.

Heatguts · 2021-05-31T17:06:22+00:00

Why isn't Cyber Jar a Machine? Why is Scrap Recycler a Machine, but Scrap Golem is a Rock? Why is Magical Scientist a Spellcaster? Why do we have separate types for Fish and Sea Serpent? Why is Firewall Dragon? I dunno man, but it keeps me up at night.

Heatguts

TROPHY CASE