The Yugioh Genesys ban list recently published it’s March 5th points adjustment, which hit a variety of performing decks, as well as decks with high usage but failures to convert to topping records. It also neglected new emerging strategies and cards like Illusion Gate and Magnet Warriors, as well as long-time (for Genesys, that’s 2 months)problematic cards like Dimensional Fissure and Gravity Collapse. These are all interesting talking points worth discussion, but there was an especially interesting pair of changes I’d like to touch on:
Reinforcement of the Army 35->33
Fossil Dig 35->33
I found these changes very interesting, because they signify a particular unwillingness to budge on a specific concept the Genesys Design team thinks will be a big problem should it be allowed to go un-pointed in the format: Consistency.
I’m writing this post with the expectation you already know about Yugioh and by extension: card games, and by extension of that: consistency. I’ll spend little time on explaining it and just say consistency is how you make your opening hand start to do what you want to do in as many matches as possible.
All decks thrive on getting to do their combos, the several Snake-Eyes formats of Advanced 2024 were notorious for their “Go-Fish” gameplay between the turn 1 player wanting upwards of 5 cards that do their entire combo, and the opposing player wanting as many hand traps as their opponent had one card starters, and then more 1 card starters than their resultant opponent had interruptions after their turn. I’m not going to comment on whether this was a good format or not; there were many reasons to both enjoy and dislike it, but undeniably this, and the greater game of Yugioh, is defined by being able to play as often as possible.
We move with this concept into Genesys, where a lot of the powerful end board pieces seen across advanced have high point values that require a lot of commitment to play. Baronne De Fleur is 80 points, Hope Harbinger is 20, and Apollousa and IP: Masquerana are simply unable to be played because they are Link Monsters and change Yugioh’s gameplay so drastically. Borelload Savage Dragon is 0 points, but I’ll leave you to understand why it’s effectively unusable.
This is where the choice to hit both consistency and endboard pieces results in a clash for decks that will want to have both, and room for non-engine like hand traps or the recently pointed board breaker cards. Should Fossil Dig(33pt) really cost so much when its two best search targets are Miscellaneousaurus(67pt) and Souleating Oviraptor(0pt), who is strong because it searches misc? Sure, if these cards are already in your hand, you can use fossil dig to get another piece of your two-card combo through Babycerasaurus(0pt) or adjacent cards. And the potential for a dinosaur endboard is nothing to turn your nose to, with cards like Evolzar Laggia, Evolzar Dolkka, Ultimate Conductor Tyranno, and Jurrac Astero all costing 0 points. They’re not great into common breakers like Dark Ruler No More(2pt) and Ultimate Slayer(1pt), sure, but those have earned points now which may prove to fewer usage. Besides, I’ve seen worse Artmage endboards win matches with these breakers at 0 points.
More importantly, it implies the design team has decided that the dinosaur endboard is fine to reach, but it is not allowed to be able to reach it every game. Therefore Misc and Fossil Dig were pointed so that you could not play both in a deck, but the recent adjustment gives you the big consistency boost of playing both in your deck! So long as you forgo any other pointed cards (you don’t even get a pity point to side a Mind Master(1pt)).
This context lets me pose the key question of this article: If you create a format where you can tailor exactly what an end-board can consist of, and if one of those end board pieces pushes it over the edge to become too oppressing or unfair, why then is the solution implemented by the design team to lower the probability of a given hand reaching that end-board, rather than lowering the power level of the end-board through higher point costs? It’s contradictory to put some points on end board pieces and other points on consistency pieces, when each categorise a different pillar of design. Genesys should be a lower power format, not a lower consistency format.
We’ve focused mostly on Fossil Dig so far, but the same sentiment applies for Reinforcement of the Army too. There is no world where the end-board from Rescue-Ace Air Lifter(5pt) is the same as the end-board from U.A. Libero Spiker(0pt). So why is playing extra copies of each after 3 bring the same cost at 33 per additional copy? Does it seem right that five libero spikers cost 66, and five air lifters cost 81? Is the difference between those cards, at five copies each, really 15 points?
If we look at every level 1-4 warrior with points, we can actually diagnose which ones, if any, would be a problem if you could play 6:
Tearlaments Reinoheart(50): The Tearlaments deck needs less points, simply. This card is not even in current iterations of the deck, falling to the side over Supreme Sea Mare(0pt). A consistency boost to this deck with a 0 cost ROTA would be much appreciated, and there’s further argument to lower the cost on Reinoheart himself alongside other cards.
Vanquish Soul Razen(11): Vanquish Soul Razen could easily cost 44 itself and the deck would take a much-needed hit in power after not being able to play multiple copies to summon with Hollie Sue(33). It’s not like the deck is lacking access to Razen anyway, with other cards taking ROTA’s place in that deck currently.
Rescue-Ace Impulse(5): This card was pointed for the sins of Vanquish Soul using it with Fire Attacker(0pt). Searching this card kills a lot of its strength as a hand trap to help sculpt your hand when going second alongside putting a body on the field. This card dropped off the earth when it got pointed and 3 ROTA to search it won’t change that.
Rescue-Ace Air Lifter(5): Air Lifter is a mini-example of this entire discussion, where both the searcher of it and the powerful card itself, Emergency(33), cost points, instead of one or the other. This is because the powerful card is also a consistency card. Who is secretly the powerful R-ACE card that needs points and how much has he paid the design team to point everyone else in his archetype? It’s certainly not Quick Attacker(0pt).
Regardless, the card air lifter exists to go through also costs 33, so there’s no reason to point Air Lifter further, through him or his searchers. The Rescue-Ace endboard is strong in Genesys, but without Link monsters, and with it being so expensive already, it’s already quite difficult to make work. It could use a little consistency boost with ROTA. Truthfully, the entire archetype here could do with point renovation, but that’s for another time.
Steel-Stringed Sacrifice(3): This was a recent mistake in the design team not understanding what makes monarch decks powerful; this card is not very good and doesn’t deserve its 3 points at all, and searching it to hand doesn’t make it any better; it’s already super searchable as an 800/1000 for the monarch deck, and it’s certainly not finding relevant applications anywhere else.
Those are all the pointed search targets for ROTA; cards deemed worth pointing because of their potential power. The only really powerful one here is Razen, who has a hefty cost already, and is better as a copy of itself than as a search card because of the archetype’s want for particular attributes to reveal in hand as well as summon from deck with Hollie Sue.
If ROTA was at 0, all it would do for Vanquish Soul lists is replace the already free Seventh Tachyon(0), which can search a whole host of different monsters at the cost of 1 card and locking you into Xyz monsters from the Extra Deck. That sounds like a real cost, but the archetypes we’ve already covered with ROTA and Fossil Dig don’t need to go into the ED for mostly anything but Xyz monsters. On top of that, most players would agree that to forgo a card in hand for the guarantee of full combo is a cost well worth paying. However, I choose to ask: why is this a cost only some decks must pay to even be in the duel from turn 1?
Seventh Tachyon is also itself searchable with Seventh Ascension(0), making it 6 extra copies of any of the aforementioned cards, instead of just 3! Some pessimists might argue this decision to not point Seventh Tachyon is only to be able to sell the newer chase cards from recent sets. I’m not denying that inherently, but I’m also posing that Small World(0) is also around at the same minus-one cost, and doesn’t even have an Extra deck restriction on it like Seventh. It takes a little thinking, but that’s never stopped a card being viable.
We’ve found that the Design Team are a little conflicted on how they want to truly limit decks’ power levels. They likely made a safe choice to point generic searchers to prevent any unexpected explosion in a consistent strategy that could result in an FTK or unbeatable, resilient deck. We’ve also found that this has conflicted with their choice to point powerful end board pieces. Its resulted in three point pillars for decks to choose from: Power, Consistency, and Non-Engine. Decks that want consistency from generic options for a powerful end board now have to forgo all non-engine. And with the costs they have now, they don’t even get much consistency.
I would love to see Fossil Dig and ROTA take their turn in the 0 point spotlight in the next list, and breath some life into a few decks that have been really struggling to get off the ground on account of simply not being able to play enough turn 1. The worst case scenario? The Sun explodes. The feasible worst case scenario? An FTK deck runs rampant for a few weeks, and gets overpointed to adjust in the next list, which can be before any major tournaments, since the points list doesn’t have any hard schedule. The middle case? The cards don’t change the metagame in any way, and we learn they didn’t need points at all, a la Ninjas. The best case? A new deck or two pops up and diversifies the metagame further.
Regardless, it will give every player a stronger consistency boost to help them play in most games. People like to play their deck in Yugioh and consistency cards have never opposed that philosophy, but endboard pieces have by preventing the other player from playing their deck. If a deck is too consistent and powerful, its issue should be the power, and not the consistency, lest you create often frustrating matches like with Dracotail in Genesys, where the outcome of the match falls on whether the Dracotail player could actually perform a fusion summon that game.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this article, whether you agreed with my points or have your own to share, be sure to share this online with the tag #YGOGenesys, so I can see if I’m really speaking Into the Void(7pts) after all, or if someone is listening.
Comments
Post a Comment