Originally posted by Masuo15:

I am curious how you guys had feelt regarding YGO and the way the game has evolved; Im not sure how I feel myself with the amount of hand traps and some duels being decided in literally a couple of interacctions or boards being unbrekeable on Turn1.

The game has been largely this chaotic since the 5Ds era.

Just ramped up.

I mean, I qualify as a "yugi boomer", but to be honest, I don't mind how the game has shifted and evolved. I think a lot of it is a frame of mind. If you've been playing since 10+ years ago, there is some "rules" that get stuck in your mind.

One of the biggest and difficult to grasp is probably "my turn/your turn" is now "our turn". The game is still the same head games, bluffs, counters, its always been, but now the game is decided within 1-3 turns instead of 8-15. When you consider hand traps are just that: traps, and that "denying your opponents" plays are just what has always been, it becomes much easier to accept the pace of the game.

And I am not gonna lie. The design, the lore, even the mechanics how links, synchros, xyz all work together is really fun for me. Pendulums too, but that still is kind of its own thing.

Anyway, without digressing anymore, the game is all about out thinking and maneuvering your opponent. People complain about the spam and "10 minute combos" but in reality, that's usually one's own fault. If you're letting your opponent pop off to all that, that one turn is not "one turn" its several turns. You should be interacting with your opponent from the moment you both draw your hands. That's how the game is, and it's really not that bad.

There is a lot of fun in dismantling a board, there is a skill about knowing when to stop your opponent; It feels good to do those "long combos", so of course I won't begrudge my opponents for doing that. There is fun in pouncing on peoples misplays because people forget basic fundamentals of over extending and dealing with backrow. The game is more diverse and interactive than its ever been, but some people just are still stuck in that old mentality. Cus that's how it was ingrained in us. "40 cards good, anything more bad, life points are a resource, solemns are good, beat down is good, chain burn sucks, etc.". All of those concepts still exist, but in 1 turn now, that is like the equivalent to 3-5 turns. I really can't begrudge that.

Originally posted by e-dood:

The game has been largely this chaotic since the 5Ds era.

Just ramped up.

Oh I was forced to stop playing before the "shyncro spam" was a thing; I believe that was prominent when Lavals came and I did played a bit of that deck back in the day online. But the game legit goes into turbo speed; is not a complain per say, just an obersvation.

You live long enough to see all games and such evolve, and is up to the players to decide if they also want to evolve with it or move away from it. For me was the later for online game until the temptation for Sky Strikers finally won over.

Originally posted by Raven:

I mean, I qualify as a "yugi boomer", but to be honest, I don't mind how the game has shifted and evolved. I think a lot of it is a frame of mind. If you've been playing since 10+ years ago, there is some "rules" that get stuck in your mind.

One of the biggest and difficult to grasp is probably "my turn/your turn" is now "our turn". The game is still the same head games, bluffs, counters, its always been, but now the game is decided within 1-3 turns instead of 8-15. When you consider hand traps are just that: traps, and that "denying your opponents" plays are just what has always been, it becomes much easier to accept the pace of the game.

And I am not gonna lie. The design, the lore, even the mechanics how links, synchros, xyz all work together is really fun for me. Pendulums too, but that still is kind of its own thing.

Anyway, without digressing anymore, the game is all about out thinking and maneuvering your opponent. People complain about the spam and "10 minute combos" but in reality, that's usually one's own fault. If you're letting your opponent pop off to all that, that one turn is not "one turn" its several turns. You should be interacting with your opponent from the moment you both draw your hands. That's how the game is, and it's really not that bad.

There is a lot of fun in dismantling a board, there is a skill about knowing when to stop your opponent; It feels good to do those "long combos", so of course I won't begrudge my opponents for doing that. There is fun in pouncing on peoples misplays because people forget basic fundamentals of over extending and dealing with backrow. The game is more diverse and interactive than its ever been, but some people just are still stuck in that old mentality. Cus that's how it was ingrained in us. "40 cards good, anything more bad, life points are a resource, solemns are good, beat down is good, chain burn sucks, etc.". All of those concepts still exist, but in 1 turn now, that is like the equivalent to 3-5 turns. I really can't begrudge that.

All respect for sticking to the game, adapt and evolve with it this long, I did forgot to menttion I played a bit of Duel Links few years ago,

I do like the fact there is more back and forth and mind games; missplays are also much easier to commit. There is a ton of decks to learn from and how to play against; even the ones I knew from back then had evolved a ton throught the years with support, strategys, and hybrid decks.

I mean, take in consideration, back then for TCG I used to run a light deck focuse mostly on banishing and using Return From The Different Dimension and Dimension Fusion as a win condittion. Then for online I played Lavals for Shyncros and Dark Magician and Magician Girls on Duel Links.

I remember back then the deck build idea was more about creating a deck that could adapt to multiple circunstances while still working for your win condittion. Now is about the consistency of your win condittion and how your deck already opts to face its challenges and how you can command that for your adventage or what stapples support said deck best. Is not a dislike but a new sensation.

Originally posted by Raven:

I mean, I qualify as a "yugi boomer", but to be honest, I don't mind how the game has shifted and evolved. I think a lot of it is a frame of mind. If you've been playing since 10+ years ago, there is some "rules" that get stuck in your mind.

I think one of my biggest gripe is that Konami creates overly powerful ED monsters that outshine archetypal boss monsters and that's rather annoying.

Like, there isn't a good reason Appo's monster negate isn't a hard once per turn.

And I am not gonna lie. The design, the lore, even the mechanics how links, synchros, xyz all work together is really fun for me. Pendulums too, but that still is kind of its own thing.

Once I got used to the newer stuff after not playing the game for almost two decades, I found myself rather liking the newer ED stuff. Just took some learning and a revision of MR4.

I will say, the generic ED bosses do really put a damper on things. It wouldn't hurt konami to errata some of the more splashy ones to be xenophobic, ESPECIALLY if they were supposed to work with a specific archetype. Poor Fleurs, imagine how they might've shines if Baronne was exclusively their's.

It took a lot of time and effort to catch up to how the game was after a good 15 or so years of not playing it (and it's debatable whether "playing" as a kid even counted), but I don't dislike it. I do have a bit of a grudge against post-AGOV yugioh having so many decks like snake-eyes, horus, fiendsmith, azamina, etc. that provide oppressive boards on top of also having literally infinite recursion if left uninterrupted. Having a strong grind game used to be a reason to consider playing decks, now it's just a bonus stapled onto the best decks of the format on top of whatever else they do

Originally posted by Masuo15:

Originally posted by e-dood:

The game has been largely this chaotic since the 5Ds era.

Just ramped up.

Oh I was forced to stop playing before the "shyncro spam" was a thing; I believe that was prominent when Lavals came and I did played a bit of that deck back in the day online. But the game legit goes into turbo speed; is not a complain per say, just an obersvation.

You live long enough to see all games and such evolve, and is up to the players to decide if they also want to evolve with it or move away from it. For me was the later for online game until the temptation for Sky Strikers finally won over.

Sucks to hear that your deck got taken from you. I can understand that'd kill someone's drive to play for a while.

And yeah, game's change and I do have my criticisms of the game. But there are a lot of fun archetypes that I do like to play.

Good luck with Sky Striker. I'm still fiddling around with a decklist.

been playing since metal raiders first came out in NA myself. I enjoy the way the game has evolved overall. There's been some slumps and highs during those years but the direction this game has went in I do think is good, wouldn't still be playing it overall if I didn't. Definitely agree with you that sometimes duels do feel like they are determined from opening hands and if you have the hand trap to make their end board more manageable or stop them all together, compared to the extenders needed to play through handtraps.

While I do enjoy this format we are currently in more than the previous with Tenpai being super dominant and every match feeling like an actual coinflip, this one has it's own set of issues too. Even aside from the Fiendsmith engine being so splashable it ends up being played in almost every competitive deck, it has the issue that even if you manage to stop some of their plays, they can just bridge any 2 monsters into Closed Heaven which leads into that line. You can go so wide and bridge into so many things with that engine it's caused a resurgence of the worst aspects of yugioh to be more common. More people than ever are using Droll & Lock bird and stun is becoming even more prominent than before.

The matches where these things aren't present are really great and interactive because both players have a ton of options to extend and also stop the extension if they play correctly and I think that leads to the most fun matches of yugioh, but it also leads people feeling the need to play super hard counters to it, which fair tbh. That's just the fact of the matter in super high powered formats like we have right now.

I abandoned the game around 2007 or so, both because of disgust at Chaos Format and because my LGS stopped hosting events due to lack of interest. I returned to the game around 2014-2015, in the latter half of the XYZ era and had no clue about either the white or black cards that had cropped up in my absence. Perhaps a year and a half later Pendulumn format occured, and anyone that played in that time can tell you what a joy that was.

At first it was overwhelming, lots to learn that everyone else took for granted as common knowledge and generally made me feel like an idiot for not knowing. I lost, at lot at first, and was too stubborn to fully abandon my old deck type (Blue-Eyes), regardless of how badly it preformed. And I realized I was deliberately handicapping myself, no matter how annoying the new and unfamiliar stuff was it was self-inflicted because I refused to move on and adapt.

So at some point I did start adapting. I learned how Synchro summoning and XYZ summoning worked, looked up modern lists of my preferred deck (Didn't even know Eyes of Blue was a thing at the time), and experimented to see what I could integrate and what I didn't like the feel of. I studied my opponents decks, seeing what they were doing and learning their own combos until I could predict the full line from the first card played, and then take that inside-out knowledge to determine the best ways of shutting down that combo line. Most importantly, I stopped wasting effort playing the blame game and focused on figuring out what I did wrong or could have done better.

Eventually I became a better player. It took a very long time, but I ended up playing on an even level with people that never left the game in the first place. I'm still not a "Great" player by any means and I never will be. I don't have to be, because after putting in the time to learn what does and doesn't work and realizing what it takes to compete in today's game, I manage to have exactly the same amount of fun I remember having back in the old 2006-2007 days. More fun even, because now I'm not gate-kept out of contention by budget and limited card pools and can actually work towards building any deck I want to without committing a dime to the game.

That's my story. Answer your question, OP?

Yugioh 2 as some have started calling it is considered by some to have started with Infernity back during MR1. Others point towards Dragon Rulers as the harbingers of the end times. As for Pendulums; they just get blamed for everything cause some of them have alot of text and some people don't know how to gleam keywords/key phrases.

It isn't that bad honestly. I actually like the speed and consistency of the game as a whole. I just wish they would use the ban list a bit better. There are some cards and decks that just need to be nuked out of existence. Also 100% less Cancer would be GREATLY appreciated.

Also maybe a few less UR's. U are basically forced to download the game to get the new player starting bonuses if u want to build some of these new archetype. I have around 4 decks currently around 90% done but I am missing UR cards specifically: including Sky Strikers which are currently unplayable cause I am missing all 3 Engage and 2 Kagari cause even after spending 4,000+ gems on the stage and special pack I only pulled 1 Kagari. Also don't have Shizuku, but I only need 2 of her and she is SR, which I can easily afford. I also need Azalea and Camilla. Both are UR, because ofc they are.

For those curious I pulled 7 different UR's in the big pack. 6 of them were not Striker related, though I pulled 2 of the alt art Reinforcement of the Army, a Royal Dracossack & a foiled Hallowed Azamina. I have the craziest pulls sometimes, but this is why I basically have 4 decks that are so close to being playable.

I really wouldn't mind some of these packs cutting down on the out of pack UR's, so we can have a realistic chance of pulling the cards we want, since acquiring UR dust is an effort in futility. Idky I am the only one in these forums who seems to be constantly screwed over by these things. Maybe everybody else just cheats or something nowadays.

A lot of deck can be so competitive now. Since you already start your resources with Sky Strikers and Branded, I suggest you should stick to improving with them and at the same time learning your opponent deck's weaknesses or choke points and the way to break their board as you play. At least you know the basics, take your time. Collecting resources is definitely slow if you don't want to spend money on the game but you 100% can complete any deck that you wanted to.

Thanks everyone for your replys, its nice to see I wasn't the only one who felt like, jumping back into YGO was rough, but the learning experience and curve is fun; challenging tho!, but fun.

Originally posted by e-dood:

It sucks, but in retrospective, I probabbly wouldn't had been able to keep up with the meta, I always ran my own "Light Attribute" deck; when archetypes were slowly start to form and be known as such (even if Heros and Cyber Dragons already existed).

Thx for the good wishes, Im legit having fun learning and messing around with Sky Strikers, may not be meta or top but I never play games for that, as long as I have my own interest and fun with it, its all I care about.

Originally posted by Papa Shekels:

Now I am on that grind to catch up; you do name pretty descent archetypes but I still remember the initials of "infinite recursion" decks like Shadolls when they were introduced.

I do try to form some decks for the missions, even so Im just using variations of the free decks they give you throught solo mode. Getting bugs for xyz, End Of The World for Rituals, Branded for Fusions, Sky Striker for Xyz and whatever bunch of Pendulum cards I have that have the highest scales and allow me to summon any generic monster....F2P life...

Originally posted by Soji:

Sounds like the game at higher ranks is very lineal for the most part given the meta; Im Gold V but mostly because Im not trying to really climb that much but rather focuse more on the grind; so I do see more variety decks and cards to learn from at least.

I had heard Fiendsmith is dominant, youtube keeps recommending videos of "Fiendsmith + "X" is the best deck ever guuuuys". And I got to participate in the Anthology event but I had to use a Loaner deck...picked Exodia becasue it seemed the easiest to understand...but legit all duels just felt like "if is a mirror Exodia match, as long as I go first or pull this 1 card and my opponent dont, I will win...". So I assume the high ranks feel similar. Just gotta learn and adapt.

Originally posted by Silyon:

It does answer my question, in the sense that comming back to the new changes to YGO was weird and you just wanted to be true to your formula; Blue-Eyes being a deck I know well for my time playing online; not understanding Shyncros was indeed a big handicap for you. Shyncros are extremelly good for Blue-Eyes and even some generic Rank 8 monsters enhance the deck quite a lot.

I do feel ya on the learning curve and with all present in the game now, Im now on that grind but Im sure I will find more fun in the game once I get a better hold of whats being played rather than having to catch up on reading like 15 cards per turn and pray my timmer dont run out (while also not upsetting my opponent for reading the cards that much...).

I simply try to play my best; every time I do a missplay I dont feel bad for it, becasue I will learn from it, I just feel bad my opponent may think idk how to even play my deck to a basic level (and they would be right..), but if I can play my deck to a descent level, I wont grow as a player, neither my opponent until they play a better player who better uses the deck.

Originally posted by itzRiceKrispies:

I would personally say YGO 1.5 was around Heros and Cyber Dragons; to me those are the first true archetypes to be included into the game, to the point Heros created the Master Ruling for the Extra Deck to be locked at 15 cards. From there we started to see more archetypes afterwards with actual support.

Pendulums...I still cant over the idea they had, literally a summon mechanic that lets you go "yolo, I summon all of them again for free if you dont have an out for one or both of my scales". In retrospective, the initial introduction of Pendulums feelt like what Rush Duel is.

I did spend a bunch of my gems on the Sky Striker Bundle (due the BGM) and on the packs; after a lot of pulls I did got 3 Kagaris, 3 Engage, 3 Shizukus, no Reinforcement Of The Army, 2 Hayate and only 1 Raye. I was going to spend even more, when I realize Raye isnt as rare outside the alt card; same with Hayate; so I crafted them. I spend all my URs on few stapples that seem to hard to get and a couple of win cons from Sky Striker.

I was going to wait for Azalea and Camila packs to show up or return (I heard they may or may not return...someday...I have a Fire King friend telling me how painfull the wait for packs to return is); so I finally decided to just craft both of them for my Sky Striker Deck.

Im genuinely BAFFLED how manny random URs are on the alt art for Sky Striker pack; so I already gave up on getting 2 more alt art Rayes and 1 alt art Reinforcement Of The Army. At least I got 1 alt art Engage but I honestly prefer the blue animation for the card.

Originally posted by IsZ:

I did stick all my resources entirely on Strikers, the Branded deck is my current sub deck and Im working with it with the stapples I made for Strikers; I do want to focuse finish and be satisfied with my main deck before investing on other decks.

Like my mind is set mostly on Sky Strikers 1st, Branded maybe 2nd, but definitelly build an ExoSister deck aswell (since its a light deck, and I do want to go back and try a light deck that isn't neccesarly front/top of the meta; and that one seem to be what Im looking for later on).

Just going to say, Sky Strikers is a high skill ceiling/reward deck. It rewards you for playing well and understanding your opponents, but if you screw up the punishment is pretty steep. Every season, some version of sky strikers tends to make it to M1, and its more viable than ever since its at full power.

The thing about it is its probably in a perpetual T2ish status. It's not the top contender, but under the right circumstances it can top.

Originally posted by Raven:

Just going to say, Sky Strikers is a high skill ceiling/reward deck. It rewards you for playing well and understanding your opponents, but if you screw up the punishment is pretty steep. Every season, some version of sky strikers tends to make it to M1, and its more viable than ever since its at full power.

The thing about it is its probably in a perpetual T2ish status. It's not the top contender, but under the right circumstances it can top.

The deck sure is, but Im still learning and Im kind of an idiot; tho this is before I spended my like 200 URs for the Sky Striker monsters that have no real pack currently and another win con:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg50J6UT9zw

Yugioh is fundamentally a silly game, and they've been leaning hard into what the lack of a real resource system makes them uniquely capable of. It's been like this more or less since you stopped, if not earlier.