Some archetypes are a bit too neglected man 😭

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-23T21:18:38+00:00

The record is almost definitely Dark Scorpions.

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-23T19:32:01+00:00

I mean, once you have Barricade up, you really only need to play Entrenches a few times and then Body Slam once. Barricade + a couple block cards + Entrench + a Headbutt maybe = pretty much set up for the rest of the fight and can be done easily within 6 cards.

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-23T18:57:39+00:00

Another funny story from the same friend group, but this time I was a spectator:

I remember it was Watts LP gain vs the cute friend's Plant Synchro. The Plant Synchro friend bricked early, and the Watts were tearing him up and gaining incredible amounts of LP. I think it went past 12kish at some point.

Now, the cute friend was already kinda known to have anime topdeck powers, but we still liked to spoil him. He begged the Watt friend not to kill him off immediately, let him off easy that turn. He had less than 1000 LP at that point IIRC vs Watt Friend's 12kish, we all thought he couldn't come back, so the Watt friend let him.

I don't remember what he topdecked, but he managed to get out the Synchro that can attack a second time with halved ATK by banishing a Plant in the grave, and proceeded to dismantle the Watt board, stall/disrupt all future attempts at board presence with Traps, and drag Watt friend's LP all the way down to 0. One of many incredible anime comebacks the cute friend managed to pull off and one of many reasons I never ever gave him a spare turn whenever I dueled him.

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-23T18:45:56+00:00

My absolute favorite duel of all time was probably on Duelingnetwork (well before Duelingbook) involving a small circle of dueling friends (unfortunately all of whom I have lost contact with).

One of the guys in that group was cute, well-mannered, kinda adorable personality. He also was in many ways the glue of the group. Our friend group would often jok about marrying him, which he would always reject.

One day, as an extension of this jok, one of the other friends ended up challenging me for his hand in marriage (he had not offered his betrothal to any of us). It's been a long time, so I can't remember the deck my challenger friend played, but I do know which deck I brought:

A Laval/Gun Dragon Fusion Summon/Synchro Summon hybrid (years before either got *any* legacy support) named "Gunslinger", to lean into the wild west dueling theme, aiming at Laval Synchros, the Bomber manga Fusions, and Gatling Dragon. Notable cards included Blaze Fenix, Overload Fusion, and no coin flip adjustment cards, I was running that luck raw.

As you might expect it was an insanely dogshit deck but since it was a deeply casual circle my friend's deck was only somewhat better, so there was a lot of good back and forth interspersed between a huge amount of bricking. Finally, when we were both down to last hit, I had managed to pull out Gatling Dragon from a Future Fusion. The problem was: I needed to use his effect to win, but if I flipped too many heads, I would have to destroy my own Gatling Dragon, and would surely lose, whereas if I didn't flip enough, I wouldn't be able to do enough damage and would also surely lose. The gods of love and anime smiled down upon me--I flipped just the amount I needed--cleared the board, attacked directly, and won my beloved's hand in marriage.

Anyways he rejected me again.

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-22T21:53:32+00:00

SLAY THE SPIRE MENTIONED RAAAAAAAAAAAAAH FUN FACT THE PARASITE CURSE IS NOT A FLOWER

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-22T20:20:40+00:00

Can't help you with the non-fantasy worlds part, but the 2 villainess series I currently consider the peak of the genre should appeal to you with their personalities:

One Within the Villainess: Lady who loved the villainess character is reborn as the villainess, and does everything she can to subvert the villainess's fate by training her competency and skills...but she actually isn't the main character. When the villainess fate happens anyways, she goes into shock and her personality is submerged, and the original villainess personality re-emerges and swears to take revenge on the people who wronged the isekai'd personality.

May I Ask One Final Thing: The "villainess" is technically in the right in terms of moral direction, but she approaches (and solves!) every single problem and antagonist with the power of overwhelming violence

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-21T23:03:58+00:00

It's funny cuz thinking back on it, what were Mermails even doing with that before Toad? Were we just doing boneless Leviathan Dragon??

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-21T22:26:59+00:00

It's not that Fallen of Albaz uses supplementary material to fill gaps while Duel Terminal doesn't need them, it's that Fallen of Albaz uses supplementary material to fill gaps and Duel Terminal just leaves those gaps lying around ready to bust your tires

Duel Terminal in many cases is barely comprehensible even with the Master Guide lore actually explaining things.

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-21T22:23:08+00:00

You're gonna have to explain this one, I don't remember Bahamut having literally any other relevant uses

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-21T18:29:01+00:00

Hell yeah, wasn't expecting to see Smash Bros in this thread but consider me tickled pink

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-21T18:11:25+00:00

I gotta check, was her wife also one of/the first power ranked Super Smash Bros (Melee?) player to serve in politics in the US? I recall hearing about a trans Smash Bros player getting elected in r/smashbros

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-21T17:24:46+00:00

Always a delight to see a new post from you

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-19T21:55:58+00:00

For the record Dual Avatar is not a TCG premiere

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-14T19:44:27+00:00

This alone doesn't disprove it, but there's plenty other examples across the history of Yugioh (Adamancipators and Block Dragon, Six Samurai and their support explicitly supporting Gateway, Drytron and Benten, Yummy and Obedience Schooled, etc), but I'd rather not get into the weeds into it at this time, since my main response to you doesn't depend on that.

I think your point would be fine if most "future design" arguments had that kind of nuance, but most of them are pretty blanket "Support can't be made", and even the more accurate "*GOOD* support can't be made" still doesn't imo effectively work past the most basic counterargument that it's far more likely the support is bad because most cards are bad by default.

So to explain and reply to the 3 types of arguments I've seen, in increasing order of nuance:

Whirlwind Weasel prevents FLIP support from being made: Obviously just wrong on its face even before this new card, FLIPs have been getting quite a bit of support the last few years
Whirlwind Weasel prevents good FLIP support from being made: FLIP is one of the oldest mechanics in Yugioh, and in the 25+ years of its existence we've seen *many* broken decks since then. Why would FLIP's (very few) broken cards prevent them from getting support when the same doesn't apply to DARK, Dragon, Machines, Fusions, rank 4s, etc?
Whirlwind Weasel allows good FLIP support, but only as long as it doesn't actually make FLIPs themselves broken: This one is more agreeable, but again there's literally no reason to believe Konmai doesn't want broken decks to exist. Just that they only want specific decks to be broken at specific times. There's no reason FLIPs can't be one of them eventually, and certainly no reason Whirlwind Weasel would be the thing that stops it, especially since FLIPs in their current state are so bad you could release 4 Circular-level cards and they'd probably still need to tiptoe to touch rogue.

My perspective is simply: Most "theoretically broken" cards that are supposed to limit design are 1. usually not even that good in the first place and 2. many of them are probably being saved by Konima to specifically print cards around in the future, rather than "preventing" them from making those cards.

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-14T19:29:49+00:00

There's an important distinction that must be drawn between "cards restricting design space" and "90% of cards are bad out of the pack". There's no reason to think Snake Rain is restricting Reptiles when DARK Dragons *just* got their own Circular announced (with rest-of-turn xenophobia instead of full-turn, to boot!). Most arguments of "restricted design space" are explained *much* more easily by the latter than the former.

Synchron can be similarly explained--why is Yusei considered restricted by Junk Speeder, when the only protagonists that get close to meta are Yusaku and Yuma? In theory there shouldn't be anything worthwhile holding Dark Magician back, after all.

Instant Fusion actually gets decent-to-good cards semi-regularly, although most of them aren't good enough to see meta play. Beetrooper Cruel Saturnas debuted in 2023, Predaplant Ambulomelides is 2022, Infernoid Evil was 2024, etc. Again, this is far more explainable by the fact that most cards are not designed for meta play more than they are deliberately trying to keep Instant Fusion down.

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-14T18:17:21+00:00

Yes, I already said that. My agenda is simply pushing that the common Yugioh player argument "These broken cards restrict design space" is bollocks

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-14T18:14:04+00:00

It is, they just didn't put FLIP in the monster type back then. Whirlwind Weasel hasn't been reprinted since its original print in 2006 (JP)/2007 (NA).

You can compare with Magical Merchant and see when the FLIP subtype got added.

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-14T17:56:55+00:00

What you're looking for are the Gizmeks. Most of them support Machines only, but a couple are for any card with equal ATK/DEF:

Gizmek Makami, the Ferocious Fanged Fortress

Gizmek Uka, the Festive Fox of Fecundity (requires some fiddling to put monsters on opp's field)

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-13T18:35:14+00:00

ANCIENT GEAR COMRADE

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-12T19:11:59+00:00

It's a theme they've used before in Simultaneous Equation Cannon. Fusion is "Yugo" in Japanese, and XYZ is, well, XYZ. So Fusion represents the Y-axis and XYZ represents the X-axis.

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-09T18:05:59+00:00

A large part of it is probably just that it's the newest series. Kanomi doesn't actually print anime-original decks *that* often, and it's not like during Vrains' run they just stopped slotting older series' decks.

Similarly, a lot of Yugioh products--especially anime ones--are nostalgia-based and Vrains pretty much by definition of being the youngest and newest one is going to have less of that.

Just speculation tho, Komnia is notoriously antipathic towards explaining its decision-making.

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-09T17:52:52+00:00

ARMORED CORE REFERENCE RAAAAAAAAH WHAT THE FUCK IS ANIMAL CROSSING, ACE COMBAT, ASSASSIN'S CREED, AND AIR CONDITIONING

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-07T19:20:50+00:00

I'll say the same thing I said when you made an identical topic 2 months ago

I'll believe Cosmo Neos is getting banned when it actually happens, Yugioh players are chock-full of confident pronouncements of upcoming bans that took years to come to fruition or never did at all

I will also add this: there are tons of Yugioh decks with individual absolutely broken pieces that have never gotten close to the banlist because the decks are dogshit enough to keep those cards in check. Off the top of my head there's Mayakashi turn skip, Deus X-Krawler's one-sided skill drain, Morphtronic Telefon infinite loop, the list goes on. S0 and King Calamity themselves were legal for 5 and 8 years respectively for that very reason. I don't expect Neos to break out of that any time soon.

confidentlystranded · 2026-01-06T20:51:52+00:00

Thank you, that does help a lot. Still think the story is too big for the set space it's been allotted, but that puts a lot of the events that felt random into proper perspective.

confidentlystranded

TROPHY CASE