You're absolutely correct, but I also think you need to consider the flow of gameplay. Something like D Shifter is live only so often, but the gameplay that randomly-drawn-in-your-first 5-cards card creates turn 1 is absolutely toxic. Hand traps are definitely bad en masse for a card game IMO, but they have become a necessary inclusion to a game full of 1 card combos.
There are some hand traps that I believe aren't healthy for the game, but I think on the whole they are a good concept.
I think rather than the issue lying with hand traps it's how cards are designed and how power and consistency is on a constant incline.
I do think we have too many at this point that are generic, they're clearly better than playing any other kind of removal spells/traps (other than board breakers but decks rarely top with only going 2nd options, HTs are good always). A rotating format would allow better game/card design, but once again: not going to happen.
I completely agree with your point that they are too generic. I think that's an issue with the game. If there were minimal generic cards the ban list would be much smaller.
100%
Cards like Herald, Multifaker, Havnis are actually fine if they're some of the only ways your deck can interact going second, but pile that in with X amount of other hand traps and it's just a different kind of game.
The problem is that 1 card combos are the ones that benefit the most from hand traps. For example, if you draw both SEash and Diabellestar(and aren't playing Synchro) your turn 1 endboard probably won't change much if at all(Maybe you get Silvera If you use it I guess) more starters/extenders don't do anything if you can use all your resources with a single card unless hand traps exist.
Maybe they playes 40 card decks with 36-starters, that would eliminate RNG.
Also the same can be set about board breakers. You either draw the answer or you don't. You either draw a good hand or you brick.
Shifter probably should get banned but that is only because it is also a floodgate. Most handtraps are fair 1 for 1 trades that dont always remove the card, so in many cases monsters that were negated still can be used as material for extra deck summons, ritual or tribute.
I mean i can understand that some people don't like handtraps, like in a more casual settings they can shut down entire turns with just 1 interaction. But they are just abnatural evolution of notmal trap cards and most of them are rather tame compared to some traps that do exist.
I agree but this is randomness to a degree that makes the game unfun. It’s randomness to where if you are going second and you open 0 hand traps you just concede and it makes the game super toxic. That kind of randomness is way different then the randomness of opening different hands in your archetype because almost every archetype has ways to play with most hands they will get. Opening 0 hand traps especially going second is just and automatic loss most of the time
I understand what you are saying, but I don't think it's hand traps that are the problem here. It's the consistency of decks, especially ones with one card starters.
I think hand traps like ash and nibiru are a positive for the game. They could have been designed better, but it's good that you can interrupt your opponent on their opening turn in my opinion. Even if they could have been designed a little better.
But why are hand traps the problem when the scenario you presented is because you drew 0 hand traps. If we dial back the hand traps it just makes the scenario you presented worse.
Well yeah, but that's not a problem caused by handtraps existing. That's because Yugioh doesn't have a resource system that would stop your turn even when unoposed.
MBT (a YouTuber) held a tournament where they banned I think it was the top 20% most used cards from tournament results, and outside of a handful of niche decks like fluffal which had on theme hand traps in the form of edge-imp scythe or decks that could run herald of orange light, none of the decks really had hand traps.
And the matchups became incredibly dependent on winning the coin toss. Decks could just go nuts because there was little to no ways to interrupt going second, and board breakers can only do so much.
Without hand traps available, you basically have zero chance of playing through your opponents setup turn one.
That's not to say things are automatically fine *with* hand traps, but they're definitely worse without them. There's a lot of card design elements that are only fine because of the presence of hand traps. Like, a lot of ocg decks are only good because of Maxx "c", so when they come to the TCG, they either do worse because they can't use the leverage that c provides, or they end up functioning entirely differently.
Blaming solely hand traps essentially means you're only looking at part of the problem, as opposed to the current design philosophies as a whole for the game.
Honestly it'd take a ginormous overhaul to revert the game to a state that'll be functional without hand traps. We're talking gutting most modern combo decks, demolishing anything that nearly looks like burn damage... Most current staples wouldn't survive either. While it could be done in theory, it'd take lots of time, and a massive bomb on the secondary market after that 200-card banlist is announced
Pretty sure that's part of why they made rush duel. The anime makers were like "we can't keep making these crazy combos anymore..."
Now if we could get a western release, we'd have that alternate format people want.
Funfact, hand traps exist since 2002 with Kuriboh. I agree some hand trap are problematic but you can't put it on the sole fact that they are hand trap
>The rng nature of hand traps makes the game super unfun
you say HTs have a rng nature but i disagree. you just have to play the statistics and honestly ever since i began doing this it's improved the quality of games for me
but to argue against the overarching point, i'm not sure what the alternatives are. Yugioh's unqiue concept is interacting while it's not even your turn and it's been this way for awhile now (since Veiler, Trag, Gorz etc). what would be the alternative? nothing? becuase watching other card games with zero interactions is incredibly boring (one of the reasons why I refuse to touch any other TCG)
from my surface level knowledge of a few games (Magic, Pokemon, Lorcana, One Piece) the interactions are extremely basic though. like something triggering on your Magic board and summoning a creature token etc
Flesh and Blood has illusionists and wizards making plays on their opponent's turn, and there are also defense reactions and instants that allow you to disrupt or mitigate their plays.
Sometimes these plays involve navigating the stack very intentionally.
Pretty sure that blue in magic have plenty on instant to interact with the opponent but i not really play magic. One piece and lorcana are pretty new that don't have decades of power creep and i have Zero information about pokemon
It’s should be both players interacting with each other not one person stoping the other person from interacting at all. I shouldn’t lose the dice roll open 0 hand traps and just lose because I couldn’t interact and he could or vice versa. There should be back and forth
>I shouldn’t lose the dice roll open 0 hand traps
need to up that HT count then. it's a bit of a deckbuilding diff, or if your deck can't play much non-engine it sounds like you don't like how a part of your deck plays
I run a good amount. I think my count is at 11-14 hand traps and a couple board breakers but that doesn’t stop rng not to mention running more means running less of my archetype which is the whole reason I chose to play the decks I do because I like that archetype and want play those cards
if you're running 14 then you have a 90% chance of opening at least 1 HT. and if you get on an unlucky streak of not then by the law of statistics a good streak should be right around the corner
> "if you get on an unlucky streak of not then by the law of statistics a good streak should be right around the corner"
This is the Gambler's Fallacy. Having a bad streak does not make it more likely to have a good streak soon. If you lose a coin toss 10 times in a row, it's still 50/50 whether you'll win the next coin toss.
But sure, if you've been getting unlucky, it is likely that you will do better soon. Going from "worse than average" to "average" is an improvement.
(Maybe by "good streak" you did mean "getting average results" and you're already well aware of Gambler's Fallacy and all that. I just feel the need to point this out because it is a worryingly common mistake.)
>If you lose a coin toss 10 times in a row, it's still 50/50 whether you'll win the next coin toss.
a 90% chance is not equal to gambler's fallacy of a 50/50 lol. by statistical law with a large enough sample size it's impossible to consistently not open a HT when you're sitting at 90% odds; stats correct themselves
Let me rephrase to make what I'm saying more clear. If you have a 90% chance of opening a hand trap, and you do not open one ten times in a row, your chance of opening one next time is still 90%.
Having a bad streak isn't going to make a good streak more likely to come soon. You're just going to have the same probability you always had.
Some people will intuitively feel like their probability of a good streak increases after having a bad streak. It doesn't, it's just the same probability as before your bad streak.
Just say you want to play without opponent interaction.
Konamis whole point to making Maxx C was to discourage six sam spam that led to "you cant play" boards (never mind whether it was an effective approach or not).
Well six Sam is the one deck that gets around maxx c since they summon infinitely so they deck your opponent out. Also I do not mind interaction if I get to interact as well but if I’m going second and open 0 hand traps then my opponent gets to play and I don’t which is super toxic
Look at the winners of last Nationals in Europe.
Italian Nats: First and second place to Snake-Eye, no HT in Main deck (exact same list for both players).
UK Nats: First place Branded with no HT and second to Plants with one each of every HT just to play triple Crossout.
German Nats: First place Plants that played just 3 Impermanence in Main deck.
All these decks took the boardbreakers route and won, cause few boards are really unbreakable in this format.
The real problem is that the best decks play a lot of extenders and one card combo, so just 1 HT sometimes is not enough to stop your opponent, and most people tend to play as much HT as possible for this reason.
Eventually in the future a point will be reached where beating the opposite board will become the main approach, because It will not be convenient anymore to try to stop their combo.
Listen, I'm a rogue deck fan, I haven't played a no.1 deck in my entire 15 year tenure with the game. So take it from me - If your deck is losing to one handtrap, your deck is not good enough.
Even mediocre decks should bare minimum be able to play through an Imperm or an Ash Blossom. It's your job as a pilot and a deckbuilder to figure out how to make that happen. Offmeta handtraps like D.D. Crow, oddities like Shifter, sure, those can be frustrating.
If you're consistently losing to the most common staple handtraps, that's not a failure of the format, or a failure of luck, that's a failure of your skill as a pilot and a deckbuilder.
It’s not that my deck can’t play through hand traps it definitely can hell it can it’s when I go second open 0 hand traps and my opponent gets to do whatever he wants and still has a hand trap in his hand for my turn with his board that makes the game super unfun
I agree, hand traps are a solution to stopping the opponent from building an impenetrable board. But if we take away the tools that make that end board impenetrable (such as things like Apollousa or Baronne, which thankfully they banned the latter), then we don’t need hand traps nearly as much (if at all) anymore, we can just go back to board breakers
I agree, super poly and evenly (especially evenly) are some of the worst designed cards ever in my opinion.
Other board breakers aren’t nearly as bad though.
Super poly is stupid because it says your opponent can’t respond and I think all the your opponent can’t respond cards are unhealthy for the game but some board breakers are fine.
you are wrong, accesible omni negates are what made game worst, that way you can stop anything you dont like and thats why hand traps start to to go, game go full rampage to the point only omni nagates could stop it and then when hand traps started too
Honestly, I get where you are coming from. But right now it’s a bandaid solution to the power creep problem that we have, and to slowly go away from hts would take a while. Main thing is that I would try to make new archetypes more interactive with how they play, and potentially take longer to kill, both changes would make board breakers more viable and wouldn’t require insane ones that deal with the entire board outright
We have this talk every other day my god. Hand traps are good in some cases like ash and veiler but ones like dimension shifter isn’t because it’s doing too much by itself
Just had a random idea. Each handtrap is limited to 1, but the format and banlist is balanced as though they were at zero and cannot actually be counted on.
Hand traps are the most interactive part of this game. It’s what stops you from watching your opponent play by themself for 10 minutes.
I’m with you on banning many generic boss monsters. In archetype is a way better way to build the bosses.
I want archetypal boss monsters to be worth it or at least have options
https://preview.redd.it/0mkdfg85079d1.jpeg?width=660&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c38cd216c5cbd01d68e2493d4df71d610803d375
I play laval and exlord is the only archetypal synchro (of a synchro deck) that is even remotely worth ending on in the archetype. I think his design is fair, a non negating punish with a burn as a bonus and a float into 200def's if synchrod into
I would be glad with one that pops a spell/trap activation and burns who floats into 2 guys and maybe a third guy who can in a non negating response book of moon opponent's monsters up to lavals i control, like anything
I just want to use rekindling to end on a fire attribite board that is on theme with the deck.
It doesnt help that there are like 13 or so playable at all FIRE synchros in total and most of them archetypal extenders
exepct that If the boss monster is good people would still complain. I am arrived at a point where I believe that if barrone was xeno locked in any competent deck people would still ask the ban. Some people just flat out hate disruption period.
I agree. Shifter and Droll are too strong. Rarely a healthy format when they're at the forefront. Though they do keep a lot of degenerate deck's in check, so they would have to maybe cap the amount of summons per turn alongside the hits. Alternatively they could bring called by back to semi limited or better yet introduce a new quick play spell that hits hand traps only.
Randomness is a corner stone in TCGs. If there was no randomness there wouldn't be very much fun.
You're absolutely correct, but I also think you need to consider the flow of gameplay. Something like D Shifter is live only so often, but the gameplay that randomly-drawn-in-your-first 5-cards card creates turn 1 is absolutely toxic. Hand traps are definitely bad en masse for a card game IMO, but they have become a necessary inclusion to a game full of 1 card combos.
There are some hand traps that I believe aren't healthy for the game, but I think on the whole they are a good concept. I think rather than the issue lying with hand traps it's how cards are designed and how power and consistency is on a constant incline.
The concept of hand trap started in 2002 with Kuriboh, they always were a part of the game
I'm not sure what that has to do with what I just said.
It was to add that the concept were part of the game since the beginning. To add argument on the fact that the concept of hand trap isn't the problem
Ah, right. Yeah, they've been a thing since practically the beginning.
I do think we have too many at this point that are generic, they're clearly better than playing any other kind of removal spells/traps (other than board breakers but decks rarely top with only going 2nd options, HTs are good always). A rotating format would allow better game/card design, but once again: not going to happen.
I completely agree with your point that they are too generic. I think that's an issue with the game. If there were minimal generic cards the ban list would be much smaller.
100% Cards like Herald, Multifaker, Havnis are actually fine if they're some of the only ways your deck can interact going second, but pile that in with X amount of other hand traps and it's just a different kind of game.
The problem is that 1 card combos are the ones that benefit the most from hand traps. For example, if you draw both SEash and Diabellestar(and aren't playing Synchro) your turn 1 endboard probably won't change much if at all(Maybe you get Silvera If you use it I guess) more starters/extenders don't do anything if you can use all your resources with a single card unless hand traps exist.
thats part of my point as well
Maybe they playes 40 card decks with 36-starters, that would eliminate RNG. Also the same can be set about board breakers. You either draw the answer or you don't. You either draw a good hand or you brick. Shifter probably should get banned but that is only because it is also a floodgate. Most handtraps are fair 1 for 1 trades that dont always remove the card, so in many cases monsters that were negated still can be used as material for extra deck summons, ritual or tribute. I mean i can understand that some people don't like handtraps, like in a more casual settings they can shut down entire turns with just 1 interaction. But they are just abnatural evolution of notmal trap cards and most of them are rather tame compared to some traps that do exist.
Between the RNG of draws and pack pulls. We’re just playing a convoluted gambling simulator
I agree but this is randomness to a degree that makes the game unfun. It’s randomness to where if you are going second and you open 0 hand traps you just concede and it makes the game super toxic. That kind of randomness is way different then the randomness of opening different hands in your archetype because almost every archetype has ways to play with most hands they will get. Opening 0 hand traps especially going second is just and automatic loss most of the time
I understand what you are saying, but I don't think it's hand traps that are the problem here. It's the consistency of decks, especially ones with one card starters. I think hand traps like ash and nibiru are a positive for the game. They could have been designed better, but it's good that you can interrupt your opponent on their opening turn in my opinion. Even if they could have been designed a little better.
But why are hand traps the problem when the scenario you presented is because you drew 0 hand traps. If we dial back the hand traps it just makes the scenario you presented worse.
Well yeah, but that's not a problem caused by handtraps existing. That's because Yugioh doesn't have a resource system that would stop your turn even when unoposed.
MBT (a YouTuber) held a tournament where they banned I think it was the top 20% most used cards from tournament results, and outside of a handful of niche decks like fluffal which had on theme hand traps in the form of edge-imp scythe or decks that could run herald of orange light, none of the decks really had hand traps. And the matchups became incredibly dependent on winning the coin toss. Decks could just go nuts because there was little to no ways to interrupt going second, and board breakers can only do so much. Without hand traps available, you basically have zero chance of playing through your opponents setup turn one. That's not to say things are automatically fine *with* hand traps, but they're definitely worse without them. There's a lot of card design elements that are only fine because of the presence of hand traps. Like, a lot of ocg decks are only good because of Maxx "c", so when they come to the TCG, they either do worse because they can't use the leverage that c provides, or they end up functioning entirely differently. Blaming solely hand traps essentially means you're only looking at part of the problem, as opposed to the current design philosophies as a whole for the game.
Honestly it'd take a ginormous overhaul to revert the game to a state that'll be functional without hand traps. We're talking gutting most modern combo decks, demolishing anything that nearly looks like burn damage... Most current staples wouldn't survive either. While it could be done in theory, it'd take lots of time, and a massive bomb on the secondary market after that 200-card banlist is announced
Pretty sure that's part of why they made rush duel. The anime makers were like "we can't keep making these crazy combos anymore..." Now if we could get a western release, we'd have that alternate format people want.
Funfact, hand traps exist since 2002 with Kuriboh. I agree some hand trap are problematic but you can't put it on the sole fact that they are hand trap
>The rng nature of hand traps makes the game super unfun you say HTs have a rng nature but i disagree. you just have to play the statistics and honestly ever since i began doing this it's improved the quality of games for me but to argue against the overarching point, i'm not sure what the alternatives are. Yugioh's unqiue concept is interacting while it's not even your turn and it's been this way for awhile now (since Veiler, Trag, Gorz etc). what would be the alternative? nothing? becuase watching other card games with zero interactions is incredibly boring (one of the reasons why I refuse to touch any other TCG)
Is not a unique concept stacks and chain exist in other cards games to the idea that enemy can't play in your turn is really outaded
from my surface level knowledge of a few games (Magic, Pokemon, Lorcana, One Piece) the interactions are extremely basic though. like something triggering on your Magic board and summoning a creature token etc
Flesh and Blood has illusionists and wizards making plays on their opponent's turn, and there are also defense reactions and instants that allow you to disrupt or mitigate their plays. Sometimes these plays involve navigating the stack very intentionally.
Pretty sure that blue in magic have plenty on instant to interact with the opponent but i not really play magic. One piece and lorcana are pretty new that don't have decades of power creep and i have Zero information about pokemon
It’s should be both players interacting with each other not one person stoping the other person from interacting at all. I shouldn’t lose the dice roll open 0 hand traps and just lose because I couldn’t interact and he could or vice versa. There should be back and forth
>I shouldn’t lose the dice roll open 0 hand traps need to up that HT count then. it's a bit of a deckbuilding diff, or if your deck can't play much non-engine it sounds like you don't like how a part of your deck plays
I run a good amount. I think my count is at 11-14 hand traps and a couple board breakers but that doesn’t stop rng not to mention running more means running less of my archetype which is the whole reason I chose to play the decks I do because I like that archetype and want play those cards
if you're running 14 then you have a 90% chance of opening at least 1 HT. and if you get on an unlucky streak of not then by the law of statistics a good streak should be right around the corner
> "if you get on an unlucky streak of not then by the law of statistics a good streak should be right around the corner" This is the Gambler's Fallacy. Having a bad streak does not make it more likely to have a good streak soon. If you lose a coin toss 10 times in a row, it's still 50/50 whether you'll win the next coin toss. But sure, if you've been getting unlucky, it is likely that you will do better soon. Going from "worse than average" to "average" is an improvement. (Maybe by "good streak" you did mean "getting average results" and you're already well aware of Gambler's Fallacy and all that. I just feel the need to point this out because it is a worryingly common mistake.)
>If you lose a coin toss 10 times in a row, it's still 50/50 whether you'll win the next coin toss. a 90% chance is not equal to gambler's fallacy of a 50/50 lol. by statistical law with a large enough sample size it's impossible to consistently not open a HT when you're sitting at 90% odds; stats correct themselves
Let me rephrase to make what I'm saying more clear. If you have a 90% chance of opening a hand trap, and you do not open one ten times in a row, your chance of opening one next time is still 90%. Having a bad streak isn't going to make a good streak more likely to come soon. You're just going to have the same probability you always had. Some people will intuitively feel like their probability of a good streak increases after having a bad streak. It doesn't, it's just the same probability as before your bad streak.
Just say you want to play without opponent interaction. Konamis whole point to making Maxx C was to discourage six sam spam that led to "you cant play" boards (never mind whether it was an effective approach or not).
Well six Sam is the one deck that gets around maxx c since they summon infinitely so they deck your opponent out. Also I do not mind interaction if I get to interact as well but if I’m going second and open 0 hand traps then my opponent gets to play and I don’t which is super toxic
Look at the winners of last Nationals in Europe. Italian Nats: First and second place to Snake-Eye, no HT in Main deck (exact same list for both players). UK Nats: First place Branded with no HT and second to Plants with one each of every HT just to play triple Crossout. German Nats: First place Plants that played just 3 Impermanence in Main deck. All these decks took the boardbreakers route and won, cause few boards are really unbreakable in this format. The real problem is that the best decks play a lot of extenders and one card combo, so just 1 HT sometimes is not enough to stop your opponent, and most people tend to play as much HT as possible for this reason. Eventually in the future a point will be reached where beating the opposite board will become the main approach, because It will not be convenient anymore to try to stop their combo.
This just in: Yugioh player wants his opponents to stop interacting with him.
No I want the interaction to be back and forth not I didnt open and hand traps and he did so I just lost
Listen, I'm a rogue deck fan, I haven't played a no.1 deck in my entire 15 year tenure with the game. So take it from me - If your deck is losing to one handtrap, your deck is not good enough. Even mediocre decks should bare minimum be able to play through an Imperm or an Ash Blossom. It's your job as a pilot and a deckbuilder to figure out how to make that happen. Offmeta handtraps like D.D. Crow, oddities like Shifter, sure, those can be frustrating. If you're consistently losing to the most common staple handtraps, that's not a failure of the format, or a failure of luck, that's a failure of your skill as a pilot and a deckbuilder.
It’s not that my deck can’t play through hand traps it definitely can hell it can it’s when I go second open 0 hand traps and my opponent gets to do whatever he wants and still has a hand trap in his hand for my turn with his board that makes the game super unfun
I agree, hand traps are a solution to stopping the opponent from building an impenetrable board. But if we take away the tools that make that end board impenetrable (such as things like Apollousa or Baronne, which thankfully they banned the latter), then we don’t need hand traps nearly as much (if at all) anymore, we can just go back to board breakers
Board breakers like super poly or evenly are infinitely worse than any hand trap minus lingering ones.
I agree, super poly and evenly (especially evenly) are some of the worst designed cards ever in my opinion. Other board breakers aren’t nearly as bad though.
Super poly is stupid because it says your opponent can’t respond and I think all the your opponent can’t respond cards are unhealthy for the game but some board breakers are fine.
you are wrong, accesible omni negates are what made game worst, that way you can stop anything you dont like and thats why hand traps start to to go, game go full rampage to the point only omni nagates could stop it and then when hand traps started too
"I recognize that hand traps are necessary...but they're ruining the game!" ok boomer
Honestly, I get where you are coming from. But right now it’s a bandaid solution to the power creep problem that we have, and to slowly go away from hts would take a while. Main thing is that I would try to make new archetypes more interactive with how they play, and potentially take longer to kill, both changes would make board breakers more viable and wouldn’t require insane ones that deal with the entire board outright
Well if they didn't exist every format will be an ftk format
We have this talk every other day my god. Hand traps are good in some cases like ash and veiler but ones like dimension shifter isn’t because it’s doing too much by itself
OP should imagine the chaos of a game without any at all.
Hand traps, really? They wouldn't be needed if it wasn't possible to make 20 min combo in a single turn that locks your opponent out of actions.
Just had a random idea. Each handtrap is limited to 1, but the format and banlist is balanced as though they were at zero and cannot actually be counted on.
100% though if they didn’t exist, how else would you be able to stand a fighting chance in today’s meta?
Handtraps are fine, what isn't fine is new decks that have small engines and 1 card combos fitting like 15+ hts in the main deck
Hand traps are the most interactive part of this game. It’s what stops you from watching your opponent play by themself for 10 minutes. I’m with you on banning many generic boss monsters. In archetype is a way better way to build the bosses.
I want archetypal boss monsters to be worth it or at least have options https://preview.redd.it/0mkdfg85079d1.jpeg?width=660&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c38cd216c5cbd01d68e2493d4df71d610803d375 I play laval and exlord is the only archetypal synchro (of a synchro deck) that is even remotely worth ending on in the archetype. I think his design is fair, a non negating punish with a burn as a bonus and a float into 200def's if synchrod into I would be glad with one that pops a spell/trap activation and burns who floats into 2 guys and maybe a third guy who can in a non negating response book of moon opponent's monsters up to lavals i control, like anything I just want to use rekindling to end on a fire attribite board that is on theme with the deck. It doesnt help that there are like 13 or so playable at all FIRE synchros in total and most of them archetypal extenders
exepct that If the boss monster is good people would still complain. I am arrived at a point where I believe that if barrone was xeno locked in any competent deck people would still ask the ban. Some people just flat out hate disruption period.
I agree. Shifter and Droll are too strong. Rarely a healthy format when they're at the forefront. Though they do keep a lot of degenerate deck's in check, so they would have to maybe cap the amount of summons per turn alongside the hits. Alternatively they could bring called by back to semi limited or better yet introduce a new quick play spell that hits hand traps only.