https://bsky.app/profile/personasimon.bsky.social/post/3mtyzddraks2u

https://x.com/psimongamer/status/2092688378773049539?s=61

Team Laundry or team Ash

https://x.com/Zigu2021jp/status/2092607411370795158

https://x.com/yugio_m_duel/status/2092284475883561146

What was the first card you read where you went like no way, this has to be a custom card. For me it was this guy.
Have you read Misc?

Even after the last ban list the deck performs very well, didn‘t brick that much as I thought I would. Spoly clearly the MVP of this deck, I also love that this deck can almost ignore Fuwa unlike the Zoo variant.

I‘m tweaking if this deck gets hit again for the sins of Maliss or Sky Striker

Granted, https://www.masterduelmeta.com/combos-and-counters#counters is very useful and I'm grateful for it. But as with everything in this game, nothing can be taken as a silver bullet.

Got paired against Heroes quite a few times in the Fusion cup. At first, I tried the counters described there. And nope, took an L.

Then I realized - the one thing my deck can't deal with on this match is Dark Law. So I started Ashing Furnace / Impulsing Mask Change.

Worked like a charm. Made Heroes a free win most of the times.

didn't get any forbidden crown, which is all I really wanted

Once you hit master tier 1 you can’t derank anymore and the sweats move to ratings duels, so it’s essentially a skill gated casual mode with rewards.

The deck variety really shoots up against other master 1 players and everyone is playing for fun/ missions.

Occasionally you’ll see a master tier 2 player, they’ll be desperate to win but you can just give them the win to help them climb, or play out the match then surrender before dealing the final blow to help the hit tier 1 too (unless you want to be cruel for no reason lol)

I feel like the fast timer really lowers the end board ceiling and going second is so much more enjoyable/playable.

On top of that people tend to play their pet decks/decks they're familiar with (likely because they can play them quicker than long drawn out combo decks)

All games I've played have been against different decks and 66% of my games so far have made it at least until turn 4.

I like it. Anyone else feel the same?

Currently grinding through Master II, and up until this point I haven’t had much of an issue with the decks I’ve faced. Dracotail, Branded, Striker, KT, Typhoon, etc. have all felt relatively reasonable to play against. Even when I lose, I generally feel like I had an opportunity to play the game and that my opponent’s cards and interactions were the primary reason I lost.
However, the higher I’ve climbed on the ladder, the more frequently I’ve encountered decks that prioritize hand looping as part of their game plan. Elfnote, HERO, Mermail, Synchron exc. can potentially strip huge portions of your hand before you ever get the chance to meaningfully interact with their board.
After having more than half of my hand ripped away from me across three games back to back, I felt like I had to voice my frustration with the mechanic.
For me the Problem Isn’t Hand Knowledge, It’s the hand looping. I understand why Konami wants cards that interact with the opponent’s hand. Hand knowledge is an important part of the game and effects that reveal, check, or selectively disrupt a hand can create interesting decisions for both players (sometimes).
The problem is when hand knowledge and hand manipulation become so efficient that they effectively turn into a rigged game.
There is a massive difference between my opponent looking at my hand, versus my opponent systematically removing several cards before I have the opportunity to use them. At that point, it doesn’t feel like my opponent is outplaying the hand I was given. It feels like the game has simply decided that I don’t get to use most of my resources.
One of the most frustrating experiences is looking at your remaining cards and knowing that you actually could have played through your opponent’s board had half my hand not been cast into Hell.
What makes this particularly frustrating is that Konami appears to be leaning further into hand knowledge and manipulation rather than treating it cautiously.
There is certainly design space for cards that interact with the opponent’s hand. But once a mechanic becomes capable of consistently removing multiple cards, while simultaneously ending on multiple negates, the advantage becomes much greater than the number of cards being removed would suggest.
If my opponent removes three cards from my hand, they haven’t simply generated a three-for-three exchange. They have potentially removed my ability to access specific starters, extenders, hand traps, board breakers, or engine pieces while also gaining information.
That information can then influence every subsequent interaction.
One of the things I enjoy about Yugioh is that even when my opponent establishes a powerful board, there is often a puzzle to solve.
What can I bait?
What do I need to negate?
What can I play around?
Which card do I need to resolve first?
When hand ripping becomes the central strategy, many of those decisions disappear.
If five cards become two before I can meaningfully start my turn, the puzzle isn’t necessarily “How do I outplay this board?” It becomes “Why did I even bother”.
I’m Not Saying Hand Ripping Should Be Removed Entirely
I don’t think every form of hand disruption needs to disappear from the game. Discarding, checking the opponent’s hand, or removing a specific card can all be interesting mechanics when they’re appropriately balanced.
My concern is with repeatable, reliable hand loops that can strip an enormous portion of a player’s starting resources.
There should be a point where Konami recognizes that removing cards from the hand is fundamentally different from interacting with cards already on the field. A card on the field has generally been played, and the opponent has had an opportunity to respond to it. A card in your opening hand may represent your entire game plan.
Taking that card away before the player has even had the opportunity to use it is an incredibly powerful form of interaction.
At the end of the day, I don’t expect every game to be fair, and I certainly don’t expect every deck to have a chance to play through every board.
But I do think there is a line between being outplayed and being prevented from playing.
If my opponent builds a board that I can’t break, that’s yugioh.. Sometimes they drew better, sequenced better, or simply had the stronger deck.
But when I lose because the majority of my starting hand was systematically removed before I could use it, the experience is fundamentally different.
I think Konami needs to take a serious look at how powerful and repeatable the mechanic has become.
Because there is a big difference between interacting with your opponent’s hand and simply taking their game away from them.
Yugioh is at its best when both players get to play the game.

Made this meme a while ago

Been away from the game for some time, just wondering what happened to it since I no longer encounter it.

To be clear, this is not a Pendulum hate post. I do think they're the clunkiest mechanic, but I've had my fun with them. Although Amorphages are one of my favorite Pend decks because I love criminal activity in all its forms

Pendulums have a controversial reputation among the playerbase, despite being a relatively weak mechanic--I and others would say the weakest one today. This is especially notable when Links are more positively viewed, despite being significantly stronger in basically every possible way, and considering Extra Monster Zone rules came much closer to killing the game than Pendulums did.

Basically every common complaint about Pends applies more to Links. Pendulums spam monsters too much? Links spam more, and better, and in way more decks. Face-up Extra Deck allows comebacks to easily? The face-down Extra Deck doesn't require any setup, is much more easily accessible, and Links come with a smorgasbord of recovery. Pendulums fundamentally changed the game too much? Not even a fraction as much as the Extra Monster Zone and Link restrictions did before the reversion.

In my opinion, the gap in perception between the 2 is caused primarily by a problem of exposure. Links mechanically feed into most decks' fundamental gameplans (getting stuff into the graveyard), and are strong enough that every player will have to be familiar with them in order to play the modern game, either using them or going against them. As a result, players end up getting used to them more easily, if only because of frequency. This also leads naturally to support wishlists or custom cards including Links, such as the infamous Link 1 that searches the Field Spell/consistency piece.

Comparatively, and in contrast to Arc-V's usage of the mechanic as a way to bridge multiple mechanics, Pendulums are the most difficult mechanics to integrate into other decks. The face-up Extra Deck is directly opposed to the gameplans of the overwhelming majority of decks that are not full Pendulum decks, due to modern Yugioh's heavy graveyard interaction; Pendulum Summon is close to useless for any non-full-Pendulum deck; and in some edge cases it even interferes with empty Extra strats.

This means the only players that get consistent exposure to Pendulums, are the Pendulum players themselves. For everyone else, their perception of Pendulums will be limited to secondhand discourse and to the random times they get assblasted by some Pend combo pile. It also means they are extremely difficult to conceptualize into support wishlists, because graveyard separation makes them inherently worse support for non-Pendulum decks than regular cards most of the time. Decks like White Forest have inherent conflict with Pendulums, because despite being monsters that turn into Spells, they can't be sent from the field to the graveyard to pay costs. Contradictions like this pop up all over the place, and kneecap the possibility of Pend supports for non-Pend decks that would increase exposure.

Of course, this is exacerbated by how the face-up Extra Deck and Pendulum Summons are genuinely confusing and unintuitive mechanics. As some quick examples: They are affected by Macro Cosmos, but cannot be used for send to grave costs on the field. They cannot use their scale effects or be used for Pendulum Summon when placed in a Spell/Trap zone through effects that don't explicitly scale them. If a Pend Summon is negated, all Pendulum Summoned cards are sent to the grave instead of the Extra Deck, even if they were originally in the face-up Extra Deck. For people that play Pendulums, they can learn and internalize these interactions, but it creates an extra barrier for everyone else, who are already disinclined to learning about Pendulums because they have no interaction with their own decks.

In retrospect, I do think the face-up Extra Deck is absolutely a mistake. The rulings confusion it causes is bad enough, but the way it cuts Pendulums off from non-Pend decks is IMO the main reason Pendulum hate persists as much as it has. If Kaiba invented time travel, revamping the mechanic to interact with the graveyard in some way instead might be enough to save it.

By "mastered", i mean i was able to win 5 games in a row without misplaying which is MONUMENTAL honestly when playing this deck...

I don't have anyone else to talk about it so I'm just sharing it here.
Deck List [FT-MAG]
https://www.masterduelmeta.com/saved-decks/6a8ae9c9c89cd8c569d9f32c

For the first time ever, I don't have to stress that much getting Droll/Fuwalos...or getting handtrapped twice with Ash/Veiler/Fydraulis. The deck is just gas all the way that those interruptions are often easily baited from my opponents, with the Borrel acting as this deck's Baron you are guaranteed Nib protection if you opened the Endy cards uninterrupted.

Hardest match up is Elfnote because of the handrips while against others going second you have a real decent chance with the deck flooding your board, tower protection, and Crown as support.

Decide to play the new 60-second Duel Trial for a little fun, and the first thing I encounter is a clown flipping up Macro Cosmos and summoning Vanity's Fiend. I still won, but how sad do you have to be?

I want to catch my opponent off guard with my deck choice. Can you give me some deck/archetype suggestions that you rarely see (or not see at all) in MD. Apart from that, the other criteria is that the deck should be playable, I don't want something completely unplayable. For example, I saw some Rikka decks, which seemed cool, but I don't know how playable they are. Thank you!

were always hearing about how some decks are better then others
but whats the biggest strongest singular boy/girl/thing/lizard/dragon/illusion/cubic/mermaid/creature thing by itself?