Yu-Gi-Oh used to be so simple. For the first few years it was a battle of who could bring out the strongest monster and blast the opponent's monsters to bits and win. I played the game a lot with my cousins and friends in middle school and had a freaking blast!
When the game first started, there were more normal monsters than anything; normal monsters being monsters with no effect. Monsters such as, what I like to call, The Big 3. The ones everyone knew from the most popular characters from the show: Red-Eyes Black Dragon, Dark Magician, and Blue-Eyes White Dragon.
THE BIG THREE.
There were also powered-up versions of those guys, like Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, Black Skull Dragon, or Magician of Black Chaos. Of course the game was a lot slower back then. Turns consisting of playing a monster, some cards face-down, and ending your turn. But back then, there were no quick effects, no hand traps, and no archetypes.
It seems like with each year that goes by, the game gets more and more complicated. New summoning methods are introduced every so often, like Synchro, XYZ, Pendulum, and Link. But those are pretty easy to learn and understand. It's the game as a whole that gets complicated. Some cards have more text than a Stephen King novel and have effects even more complicated than the plot of any Stephen King novel.
Straight-up paragraphs.
Gone are the days of playing face-down cards and baiting opponents into triggering your trap cards, flip effects, or just playing a spell to obliterate your opponent's monsters so that you can attack them directly and win the game.
"You've triggered my trap card!"
Back in those days, you could build a deck out of whatever bullshit you could scrape together. Most of us would just buy either the Kaiba or Yugi structure deck and just modify that and you'd do just fine.
I know that my whining about how complicated and frustrating the game is makes it seem like I don't enjoy the game. But it's the exact opposite! The game is so much more fun and much more intense!
If your deck is totally optimized and built with efficiency in mind, and you know your deck in-and-out and know its weaknesses, you can have a counter for anything! At any given moment during your duel, just when you think you've got an advantage, KA-BLAM. Your opponent busts out the Forbidden Droplet and completely devastates your boss monsters and your entire board. An absolute turn of the tables with the play of just one or more cards.
Big fuckin' board wipers
Let's talk about archetypes. Me being the sadist that I am, I refuse to play anything meta or popular. While the cool kids throughout the years decide to use Drytron, Runick, Zombies, or whatever, I chose to use lesser-known, arguably weaker decks like Gishki, Wind-Up, or Fossils.
The best bossy bois from my favorite underappreciated archetypes ❤️
The popular archetypes are popular for a reason: they're good. So of course the archetypes I choose to use are going to have less searchability, less protections, and less support. But generic support cards some in handy for stuff like that.
Well folks, my Yu-Gi-Oh rambling has finally come to an end. Hopefully this was even remotely entertaining to read and not as stupid as I think it is.
PEACE OUT. ✌️
