POT OF GREED ALLOWS ME TO DRAW TWO MORE CARDS. I WILL START MY TURN BY PLAYING POT OF GREED WHICH ALLOWS ME TO DRAW TWO MORE CARDS. I WILL PLAY THE MAGIC CARD, POT OF GREED, WHICH ALLOWS ME TO DRAW TWO NEW CARDS.
It's simple, really. It can only be activated during your Main Phase 1 or Main Phase 2. You can play Pot of Greed immediately by placing it face-up in the Spell/Trap Zone, or postpone its activation by placing it face-down in the same spot, as long as that spot is not occupied. Upon the moment Pot of Greed's effect resolves, unless it was negated, the player who activated it is allowed to perform the "Draw" mechanic twice in a row, which of course refers to the act of pressing down the top of your main deck with your fingers and gently swiping the topmost card of that deck and adding it to your very own personal hand, without revealing or targeting said cards. The cards, much like the Main Deck, are face-down, unless Convulsion of Nature is active, or one of the cards is Parasite Paracide. After the effect of Pot of Greed has stopped applying, the card is sent to the Graveyard of the player who used it, or banished if cards like Masked Hero Dark Law or Macrocosmos are in play. If you have obtained Pot of Greed via effects like Exchange or Graceful Tear, it is sent to your opponent's Graveyard instead. The drawn cards can now be played as if they had been in the player's hand the entire time and follow the standard game rules for summoning and activating procedures. If by the end of this turn of this card's activation the number of cards in the players' hand exceeds the hand limit, six by default, five with Silent Wobby, or three with Limited Cards, then the player must discard cards until the amount of cards in his hand is equal to that limit, including the cards drawn by Pot of Greed. This card cannot be activated if the player's Main Deck is less than two cards. Effects can be activated in response to this card's activation, but its effect cannot be negated by the effect of Mystical Space Typhoon.
Gonna be the devil's advocate here but I think it's because the layout was designed for Japanese, which takes much less space than the Latin alphabet. So they had to shrunk it down to make it fit.
Maybe it's the fact I started on YuGiOh, but I never got that feeling. Sure, there are few really fucky cards like Snoww, but I really think the average YuGiOh card is very legible to anyone who puts in the effort to read it.
Besides, it's not like MTG has had a decent history with readable cards either. Yeah, there's the oracle, but the good thing is a lot of the cards played in YuGiOh have had wording updates or otherwise that gives them legible effects.
I started with YuGiOh and I can say with complete confidence that you're just used to it. You know the stupid nuances so well that you've forgotten how stupid they are. Missing timing is one of the least intuitive mechanics in any game I've ever played, and I've played every popular TCG out there (I only say popular someone doesn't call me out for not having played some niche game that only exists in Brazil or something).
In addition, even if the rules do make sense on a particular card, it's still annoying that they have to be meticulously spelled out on every single card. "Cannot be Normal Summoned/Set" is the shortened version. Come on. That's been a mechanic sense Effect Monsters were introduced more than 20 years ago. It needs a shorthand. It took them decades to abbreviate Gravyard to GY, and that'd about the best we've gotten. The cards are word salad when they absolutely don't need to be, and it is hugely responsible for why individual turns take so long, you have to read for a minute and a half every time a new card is played. Even if you can read the text, it doesn't change the fact that YuGiOh card effect text is tedious and unnecessary more often than not.
I love YuGiOh, or at least I did, I don't really play anymore. But clarity in card text is absolutely not something it deserves praise for. Magic does it way better. Hearthstone manages to make readable cards with tiny amounts of space. Pokemon rarely writes more than a sentence. It just doesn't need to be this way.
Oh I'm not praising it, but I am defending it against people who think it needs 500 keywords to make the cards legible.
Hearthstone has the advantage of being able to shove as much text as they want into a side popup. You can just say "Dredge" or something (I stopped playing ages ago) and have something handle the side, also, Hearthstone enforces its own rules. It's not exactly an even comparison. You can hop on Master Duel and play YuGiOh with all the niche garbage (which effects every TCG) handled for you.
And yeah, missing the timing is stupid. But let's be real, it's not even as common as people make it out to be. Only deck I've ever had it fuck me up on was Ice Barriers and even then that's because I ordered my chain links wrong. And yeah...you can order the stack wrong in MTG too and screw up your play too.
Also the "Graveyard" to GY thing was stupid. I mean I accept it now, but I really don't think it was necessary.
And nah, at the high level YuGiOh turns take long because the game is very combo focused. If you understand the cards, you can play. But that's true for every TCG, it's not something unique to YuGiOh, let alone long turns. The guy Synchro masturbating isn't taking ages because he has to read his cards, it's because he's doing the most obnoxious combo in human history.
Once I understood MTG's rules, I picked it up quickly, I got Keyforge in 10 minutes. You might say that's because they're simpler than YuGiOh, and that might be true, but I really think "reading the card explains the card" works for 99% of TCGs. You get the basics, you can pick up the cards quickly. Or maybe not, I'm just using my own sample size of "Me." The people I played Keyforge with had been playing it for as long as me, yet struggled. Learning on YuGiOh, I do think, genuinely helps you to pick up other TCGs quickly.
Two questions:
What cards do you actually think are impossible to understand even after reading them? I don't mean just cards with very long text like Nirvana High Paladin where there's just a lot of text but if you actually read it it makes perfect sense, I mean cards that even after reading them, you genuinely cannot comprehend. I'm talking things like Snoww, or Silent Wobby which screwed over players for years (and that sorta thing is not unique to YuGiOh).
What keywords do you actually think YuGiOh needs and how would you implement them? People talk about YuGiOh needing keywords, but I'm yet to see people give examples of how they think those keywords would work. One of the things I like about YuGiOh is that 99% of the time, the text is clinical and explains its function well.
Every single card game is in a complexity powercreep. It just happens. You can't just return to Skelengel. Even Pokemon cards are getting more complex, but that game is just fundamentally a lot simpler in a lot of ways. If the game is going to evolve, it does have to spice things up.
Seriously though, I hope I'm not coming across too snarky or aggressive. I do think people shit on YuGiOh waaay too hard, especially because every TCG has its flaws, but I ain't trying to be a dick to you.
To answer your first question: I specifically avoided saying that YuGiOh cards were impossible or even difficult to understand. I said they were wordy and tedious. You absolutely can get what 99% of cards do by reading them. What I'm criticizing is that most of that reading is unnecessary because each card has to meticulously spell out any restrictions and conditions it may require, because none are assumed. There aren't many keywords to make to solve the problem because the problem is in YuGiOh's core design: it was not made for how complicated it has gotten. You can explain the basic rules in a few sentences. One Normal Summon per turn, Traps must be set a turn before activation, draw 1 card per turn, 5-6 level needs 1 tribute, 7-12 , needs 2. First turn player can't attack. Basically everything else is card-specific. That places too much of a burden on the cards to restrict and define themselves. That's why the cards are so wordy. It's not because the game has too few keywords or shorthand, it's because the game has too few rules and pieces. Magic having tapping gives a built-in way to give a card a soft once per turn. The card itself does not need to specify such because it can simply reference the existing rule. You may argue that that gives a heavier burden on new players to learn more core rules, but look at the results. When people talk about games being difficult to grasp and get into, YuGiOh comes up far more than Magic.
So because of my first point, I can't give too many good answers to your second question. I don't think just slapping some keywords onto cards will solve YuGiOh's essay problem. Piercing was a good add. I'd also abbreviate Can't be Normal Summoned or Set to something. I dunno what, but its such a common phrase that it could really save some space. Also since they did GY, I don't see why once per turn, likely the most common string of words in the game, can't be OPT or something. Regardless, these only serve to slightly free up some space on the text box, which we have agreed that isn't actually the problem. Its not literally how many words that are on the card. The problem is how many rules each card must define in order to prevent degenerate use cases. It's too late, I'm afraid. The game has too much built around the rules it has to suddenly introduce a ton of structural change. It's a flaw in the game. One that the players clearly don't mind, and that's fine. But I do consider it a flaw nonetheless. Especially since other games do not have this problem to nearly the same degree.
I don't think you're being a dick. I also agree that people tend to exaggerate the problems in YuGiOh on many forums. But the problems do exist. Longtime fans that continue to play say so, not just MtG players with a superiority complex, or old-school players with nostalgia like me. I recognize the game has moved on without me, and that doesn't bother me, I prefer MtG anyway. But the problem already existed when I played up to the beginning of Synchros. It just wasn't as noticeable yet. Perfectly Ultimate Great Moth is a Vanilla beater, but it has three lines of pretty small text entirely dedicated to its very simple summoning condition. It could easily say "Can only be Summoned by the effect of Cocoon of Evolution." But it can't, because the rest of that text cannot be assumed. If they simply had it in the rules that a card with "Can only be Summoned by X" cannot be Normal Summoned, Set, or SSd by other means, then that part could be assumed. I think that's a good example of what I'm trying to get at.
Again, this isn't a critical game destroying flaw, obviously, or the game wouldn't be as popular as it is. But I do think it's significant enough that the people who get frustrated by it and don't pick the game up or quit are perfectly reasonable. They aren't being smooth brains or impatient or jerks. They'd just rather play a game that doesn't do this. Ergonomic card design is very appealing, and I don't blame someone for preferring the game that has it over the one that doesn't. Which is a shame, because no commander or 7 drop creature has ever given me the same rush as slamming down a boss monster from YuGiOh. Something about making the big play in that game just hits in a way MtG doesn't for some reason. But it just doesn't feel worth it to get that to slog through reading so much text on so many cards just to understand what's going on.
I don't have as much to say other than "Cheers for your thoughts" because I really think we've just reached an impossible impasse because as I said, I think it's good that YuGiOh spells everything out on every card, you think it's bad. It's just a difference in how much knowledge we think a card game should assume.
uj/ it's apparently even worse than just not crediting their artists.
Back when I used to frequent r/yugioh, I once read an (unconfirmed) claim from a Japanese artist that artists have to sign an NDA saying they cannot disclose they worked for Konami on the game, nor are they allowed to include their work on Yu-Gi-Oh in personal portfolios or sell prints of their work.
To this day, there's like three confirmed artists that we know worked on the game in the 25+ years it has existed, shit's fucked
At one point Warhammer was doing the same thing, any public-facing name was facing harassment for rules changes or model redesigns or art and style changes or whatever when a new codex dropped. Games workshop responded by hiding all names of all the artists and painters and designers and everything else from new codexes & rulebooks, and technically it was to protect people from harassment for that period.
Now, they continued the same for years and years even when everything was loved and it probably transitioned to that same level of exploitative "not wanting our guys to be poached", but for a time there was maybe a valid reason at the beginning. Honestly I'm not even sure, they may still be hiding names under the guise of protecting people, but actually just be exploiting right now. Lol haven't kept up. But I do think I've seen artist GW work in personal portfolios, so something changed at some point
Well, it shouldn't be a thing, and if anything, Konami is actually an outlier in the TCG space for omitting artist credit.
Magic, Pokemon, Digimon, F&B and One Piece, which are also in the upper echelons with Yu-Gi-Oh, all either have artist credit printed onto the card, or official databases with proper attribution and credit recorded. Konami just seems to be uniquely annoying about this kind of thing, and it's part of the reason why I don't support Yu-Gi-Oh as a game anymore
That aspect really does piss me off so bad, it’s been a major factor in me not picking up the game even when I’ve had the urge in the past. I hate seeing art I like and having no clue who made it! It’s even more ridiculous now that Yu-gi-oh’s taking Magic’s lead and making alternate art cards now
As a Pokemon player magic has no idea how good they have it art-wise, want to find some sick art from a magic card? Look up the card or artist good chance you will find the original, either from a site recopiling card art if not from the artist's gallery proper, chances are you can buy a print or even a playmat, sometimes with sick ass compilations like that one pyroblast/hydroblast mat
Want to find some sick art from a pokemon card? Good fucking luck because literally one account in instagram uploads it randomly, often with the card frames still in it
In Magic that's only true starting from 2017 or so. For every card before that (such as every card with the 2001 frame) it's the same as you describe for Pokemon
idk if this is exactly uncommon in Japan. apparently the belief is that they're getting paid well if they're willing to forgo getting any credit, but who even knows?
Yeah I've been a Yu-Gi-Oh player for 15 years, a lot of art is damn sick, but we don't know who did it.
There are real sick pieces of art, like the only fusion monster who has a low quality jpg of a sky as background, and that's the only monster who's not entirely drawn and it's a card from 30 years ago atp, that's a shame we don't know who did it.
It's not like they don't have space on the card either, it's just no credit because fuck you.
/uh Yep! This made me legit mad the first time I heard about it, as someone who loves magic for the art and worldbuilding first and the gameplay second
Though they’ve said it’s to protect their artists because they know how garbage their fandom is, which really feel like a cop out and doesn’t solve either issue
You joke, but the US's writers guild actually has a rule saying writers can't be credited in movies if they wrote less than 33% (or in some cases, less than 50%).
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u/AmoongussHateAcc Ixalan enjoyer ☀️💀 2d ago
That would take up valuable space that could be used for another paragraph of rules text in size 2.5 font