I want to discuss a curious Yu-Gi-Oh! card design decision today. This decision has made a certain set of cards unplayable at a premier event. Let’s start with a riddle:
What is the main drawback of playing small monsters?
…. ……………………………………….. (take your time).
If you said “low attack scores,” please e-mail me your address and I will FedEx you a scrumptious cookie.
Most players find this drawback perfectly fair. If you have a good effect, you can have a lower attack score. This means your smaller monsters will generally lose in battle frequently and require spell or trap support to remain on the field. This historic balance between strong effect and low ATK score has always been present in Yu-Gi-Oh! strategy and relatively well balanced.
A Very Puzzling Design Decision
It’s not clear whether the card designers for Yu-Gi-Oh! (who presumably work in Japan for Konami) are entirely aware of a lot of the ramifications of the cards they print. I do not mean this in an insulting manner; as many players of TCG’s and even video games (such as World of Warcraft) know, it’s very difficult to introduce new mechanics/abilities to a game and foresee every single interaction on the macro scale.
There are numerous examples of this in Yu-Gi-Oh! lore. From my time at Upper Deck/Metagame, I heard through the grapevine that the Metamorphosis into Thousand Eyes Restrict (through Scapegoat/Sinister Serpent) was never anticipated. Or that Yata-Garasu was made a Spirit because the “drawback” of a Spirit monster would weaken its powerful effect. These types of oversights are understandable when creating thousands of cards.
Go-YGO.com will always take the (perhaps optimistic) view that the designers know what they’re doing. I see too much hope in certain card design to simply write them off as incompetent. The stewards of Yu-Gi-Oh! must constantly balance fiscal concerns (selling new sets) with tournament balance (not a big priority) because tournament players are simply not the only consumers of product.
Relegating Entire Classes of Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards to Obscurity
While smaller scale blunders are fixable, I tend to be more critical of decisions that destroy entire groups of cards. Two examples are Cyber Dragon and Gale. Cyber Dragon, upon release, basically removed every sub-2100 attack non-recruiter or floater to obscurity. Playable cards such as Skilled Dark Magician, Vampire Lord, and Enraged Battle Ox were instantly erased from the game.
Gale, upon release (before the limit), also removed every sub-2700 attack non-recruiter or floater from competitive play. Having a level 3 tuner instantly erase cards like Spirit Reaper, Stardust Dragon, and Monarchs was clearly terrible by any measure of Yu-Gi-Oh! card design.
Which brings us to this modern era. The card design of Blackwing- Shura the Blue Flame and Flamvell Firedog, has completely destroyed the viability of smaller attack monsters.
While these small monsters have always had a balanced drawback, the effects of Shura and Firedog further amplify this loss of field advantage by generating further field presence and card advantage. Let’s take a look:
Pre-Shura/Firedog: Your opponent attacks a face-down monster. You lose a normal summon and card in hand. Gain an effect.
Shura/Firedog: Your opponent attacks. Same interaction but your opponent now gains another monster, deals more damage, and creates a powerful Synchro monster for free.
By simply having the gall to run a small monster, you have lost immense amounts of tempo, field presence, and card advantage.
Deeper Ramifications of Shura/Firedog
Throw in the incredibly untuned Gladiator Beast War Chariot (completely unnecessary for the theme) and you have a metagame where every small monster that does not destroy its attacker is completely unviable.
If you choose to devote elements of your strategy to themed-staples or tech: from Masked Dragon to Apprentice Magician to Mystic Tomato to Shining Angel to Goblin Zombie to Magical Merchant to Elemental Hero Stratos and so on and so forth… you will lose consistently.
This entire class of monsters are very dangerous to play due to Firedog and Shura comprising two of the top tier archetypes in this format. You must adjust by taking a long, hard look at every Yu-Gi-Oh! monster you are using. If it can be destroyed by Firedog for advantage, you should probably not run it.
I predict most (if not all) of the duelists that place well in SJC New Jersey will only run monsters such as Gravekeeper’s Spy and Ryko that do not suffer from the Firedog/Shura syndrome. The designers have given players no other choice.
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As always, great insight and it’s great to see you doing articles again. I’m hoping this time you’ll stick around for a little while longer, seems like you’ve had a trend of having lots of motivation and doing lots of articles and then getting burnt out/too busy with something and disappearing for a long period of time. Rinse and repeat. Can’t blame you though I’d do the same thing but anyways this site is back in my bookmarks now
Have you considered making a youtube channel?
Good analysis. Seems like I should start maining 3x hoplomus in GBs to prevent Firedog/Shura plays.
As for relegating an entire class of cards to obscurity, it seems like that is exactly how Konami makes its money: by continuously encouraging players to buy new packs. If more older cards were playable (i.e., not rendered worthless by the newer cards, like the once-banned-now-unlimited breaker), people would buy less packs to try to pull emmersblade, krystia, etc. Good business requires Konami to leave old archetypes behind and create new ones.
Not that I am agreeing with Konami’s tactics, but that is an objective view on the situation.
It’s not that relegating old themes is a bad idea.
But removing a complete class of cards i.e “small monsters, normal trap, quickplay spells” from competitive decks is just a bad idea overall. It restricts the card pool and future design.
Posted this over on my blog as well Jae.
I think you should kickstart this discussion on DGZ, I can see a decent debate coming from it.
Some old themes need to go the way of the dinosaurs. Granted I don’t play in a highly innovative area where teams gather and try to out do each other (or whatever actually happens in places like that), but I’ve seen the evolution of the game and I can safely say old archtypes dont fade away. They just wait for new blood.
Take plants for example. We regulated them to nothing more than a 3rd rank deck with 4th rank cards to support them and now they have the potential to be tier 1 with the Gigavise deck.
Yes right now Flamvell/Shura can produce powerful combos and feild altering presence but with some planning in deck design small monsters can overcome and concur. It may just take that one person who dares to try something different to bring them to their knees.
I don’t see Firedog as a real threat that will ‘restricted the card pool’. Most of the time the Magician is tuned in with Firedog so there’s no +1 there. Most of the time the smaller played monster will replace themselves anyway. Yes, you may lose the tempo but that can be solve with recruiter to maintain the field presence and tempo. There’s a lot way out of the so-called Stardust lock. The same story apply to Shura I believe except the BW player can take an advantage with Icarus. If not, he will tuned it with Shura which won’t generate +1.
What are your thoughts on this?
Firedog into anything, summon magician, synchro summon stardust, chain assault mode activate then GG
@chelzeyfans:
The issue isn’t so much the plus’s in those scenarios..it’s because they’re one-card synchros. The game has gotten to the point where all you need is 1 card to make a powerful monster. Firedog can be an instant 8-star. Shura can be an instant 5 or 7 star. Blizzard can be an instant 5 or 6 star. Look at monarchs, in order to get them out you usually need one other card to summon it. Now, all you need is a successful monster-kill or successful summon. Being able to spam 8-star synchros without a significant loss in card advantage is a big deal.
It’s sad but true, though it’s more on the Konami folks behind the anime series who are responsible for the stats and effects of cards like the Black Feather monsters; and I’ve been against there being 1900-ATK Effect monsters since after [Skilled Dark Magician] showed up. They really should’ve seen an obvious problem with Firedog since [Hydrogeddon] was the swarmer of choice, and obviously was a mistake letting it snag a Tuner. It seems like a mistake along the lines of [Emergency Teleport], which, as a Psychic-type fan, hurt when it got Limited to just 1 when it deserves 3′s in an all-Psychic deck.
In all honesty, they could just errata cards who have been a bit more powerful than anticipated in order to reduce their viability, like having [Dark Armed Dragon] not only needing exactly 3 DARKs in the grave, but needing them to be removed from play as well, or [Judgment Dragon] needing 6-7 differently-named “Lightsworn” monsters, and [Emergency Teleport] making it so that if the Special Summoned monster were to be used as Synchro Material, it could only be used for a Psychic-type Synchro Monster. A good one for Gale may just be to have it only affect Effect Monsters, AND can’t be used as Synchro Material on that same turn, no?
Konami just needs to take initiative like that, to keep proper control over the game, and fix any flubs in design they may have made.
There are a number of newer cards that have been preemptively watered down from the anime to being a real card, most of which are from the upcoming sets The Shining Darkness and Duelist Revolution. In the show, [Black-Feather Treasure] is literally a D-Draw for Blackwings, but the real card has you remove the Blackwing from play instead of discard, has it so you can’t Special Summon on the same turn AND says you can’t activate another copy of this card on the same turn. Same goes for the great card [Pot of Greederosity]. But a lot of the cards in Duelist Genesis make it unbelievably simple to Synchro Summon, because many have ridiculously simple summoning requirements, and focus on teaming with Beast-type monsters (which they almost completely are), so even if Firdog never existed, Synchro Cat would likely be making a comeback this summer.
nice article!
i do agree on firedog and shura killing the game but there is lots of way to solve this
main 2 bottomless trap like all player should do can stop that, and if necessary, like against bw, side in trap hole…
i just run a zombie monarch deck in a pretty competitive local and i think i have a solid opening hand too, simple set tomato or turtle, and set a book or a bottomless, with a caius or raiza in my hand, this is a powerful open play with few possible problem
ex: u heavy storm first then summon firedog, attack in to turtle, or tomato, umm may be i will summon another turtle… or fine i will get spirit reaper
my final round was against a rekindling necrovalley control deck, should have dominated my zombie but floaters saved me from his oppression by letting me summon monarch, and siding cyber dragon ( like u said) force him to use unnecessary card to protect his monster
Have faith !! small monster can come back, and floaters should have no problem against firedog or shura!