Yu-Gi-Oh! (Tabletop Game)/YMMV

• And the Fandom Rejoiced: Legal Slifer. And oh, look, legal HORAKHTY, too...
  • Tour Guide of the Underworld is getting re-released. That's all that needs to be said.
• Author's Saving Throw: To say Master Rule 4 and its "Extra Monster Zone" were unpopular was an understatement. Many older decks that relied on getting out multiple extra deck monsters found themselves hamstrung by being forced to find room in the ED's notoriously limited space for Link Monsters, else they would be crippled by only having one at a time on the field (And some cards, like Goyo Defender or the Duston archetype, were rendered nearly useless by the rule change). Master Rule 5 re-allows Fusion, Synchro, and XYZ monsters to be summoned to the Main Monster Zone without removing the Extra Zone, giving duelists and their decks much needed breathing room without invalidating the cards released that capitalize on the Zone, like Chimeratech Megafleet Dragon.
• Base Breaker - The very announcement of a Forbidden List for the game caused a huge uproar in the community. Some saw it as a much needed change to the game as several recently released cards forced players to play one type of deck to stand a chance at tournaments, while others became rabid at the thought that their expensive cards would now become utterly worthless. This is the sole reason why there is a Traditional and an Advanced Format in the English TCG.
  • Xyz monsters, for being even easier to summon than Synchros (with high stats and great effects to boot!), made quite a rift.
  • During the Vrains era, Link Monsters probably took the cake. Not only are about as-if-not easier still to summon as Xyzs, the Master Rule 4 they came with (which only allowed 1 Extra Deck monster at a time unless summoned to zones Link Monsters point to) drew accusations of Character Select Forcing people to buy Links if they want their decks to continue on business as usual.
• Complete Monster: Gishki Noelia, in the metaplot. Fuses her own daughter, Gishki Emilia, and Gusto Falco into a Humanoid Abomination (this is, incidentally, basically the same thing the infamous Shou Tucker did for his Moral Event Horizon crossing) so she could be able to fight better. If that weren't enough, she later sells out the planet to the Verz/Evilswarm because she wants to be on the winning side, resurrecting Steelswarm Hercules and the Dragons of the Ice Barrier to fight for them. There's good news, though: if Dia or Ptolemys Messier 7 didn't get her, Sophia certainly did.
• Ensemble Darkhorse - Early on in the game, Jinzo was extremely popular. It helped that he became one of Joey Wheeler's signature cards on the show, and that he provided a way to bypass some of the more powerful Trap Cards at the time (such as Imperial Order.)
  • Tour Guide From the Underworld, for being a Cute Monster Girl, making Xyz summoning really easy, and possessing one of the most broken effects in the game when teamed with Sangan....until Konami ruled otherwise. For a while, her card was commanding $200, more than twice the price for a box of the expansion itself!
  • The fanart for the Charmers is immense, especially in Japan. For example, take Pixiv. Red-Eyes, one of the most well-known archetypes in the game, has 9 pages of artwork. The Charmers, on the other hand, have at least 60 pages.
• Fan Service - Averted. Cards which seem to gear towards this are edited for the TCG.
• Fetish Retardant - One of the more justified reasons for editing card art.
• Game Breaker - All cards placed the Forbidden List, for one.
  • The Chaos monsters (Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End, Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning), which took over the game until they joined their rightful place on the "Forbidden list" that was made for such gamebreaking cards. Additionally, some cards based on the TV show had to be nerfed from their original effects to the point of being near unplayable (Card of Sanctity being a more famous example). In their time, Synchros were seen as this for being comparatively easier to summon than Fusion monsters for about the same punch. And in turn, XYZ monsters for being easier still. It comes part and parcel with Power Creep.
  • The Wicked God Cards are seen as this by many a player who has faced even one.
  • Bad Reaction to Simochi + Gift Card
  • Butterfly Dagger - Elma + Gearfried The Iron Knight + Magical Marionette. The dagger returns to your hand any time it's destroyed, Gearfried instantly destroys any spells equipped to it, and Magical Marionette gains a spell counter each time a spell is played: the counters increase his attack and can be sacrificed to destroy any one card on the field. By repeatedly playing the Dagger on Gearfried, one can build up effectively infinite amounts of Spell Counters to destroy everything on the opponent's field and gain effectively infinite Attack power. The Dagger was eventually banned because of this. (incidentally, this makes the relatively harmless Guardian Elma nearly useless, as the only way to get her on the field without the dagger is to set her face-down.
    • A more efficient and consistent combo (and the actual reason why Dagger is banned) is to replace Magical Marionette with Royal Magical Library, which gains a spell counter (max 3) when a spell is played and you can remove 3 counters from it to draw a card. With unlimited draw power, all you had to do was include Exodia and you had a very fast, very consistent F/OTK.
  • Everyone who play the game during the start of synchro era wil always remember the terror that is Dark Strike Fighter
  • Six Samurai decks before March 2011 are considered very crazy. After the new banlist, it started to calm down
  • The major criticism by players against Exceed monsters is the sheer number of cards that will be rendered Game Breakers by it - Gravity Bind, Level Limit, Ultimate Offering, virtually any monster that allows you to special summon copies of itself from the deck...
• Genius Bonus - Quite a few of the archetypes fall into this. For example, all Karakuris are required to attack if able and automatically switched to defense mode when attacked. Real-life karakuri were 17th to 19th century Japanese automatons that could only move in a predetermined pattern until interrupted or switched off.
• Memetic Badass: SHAPESNATCH!
• Moral Event Horizon: If not crossed before, the Gishki's attempt to genocide the Gusto with chemical weapons. This was the event which angered the Gem-Knights. Noelia pretty much spends her time dancing on the line.
• Player Gender Confusion - Dharc the Dark Charmer, the Helios line, and others.
• The Scrappy - A lot of players dislike the Elemental Hero archetype because, being the archetype of choice of Jaden Yuki, they pretty much took over the game for several booster packs, they dominate the fusion mechanic, and have more support and numbers than actual types. This is by contrast with Yugi, who used monsters that were pretty much all over the place in terms of their theme, and Yusei, who does mostly rely on the Synchron and Warrior archetypes, but many of the cards involved are useful for other things besides supporting their own archetype.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap - Elemental Hero builds are becoming a bit more popular these days, in particular: The Neos Alius/Gemini Spark, Elemental Hero Absolute Zero and Masked Hero builds are potent and are seeing quite a bit of play.
• Scrappy Mechanic - Missing the timing. Gah!
  • The "easy" (that's hilarious to call this easy) part about learning "missing the timing" is learning the rundown in that article. The hard part is learning how to recognize which optional effects "can't miss the timing" because they "don't have a timing to miss." Let's just say that the differences between "When" and "If" just got a lot more important.
  • "Destroy doesn't negate", too...
  • What about "destroyed and sent to the Graveyard"? specially when you forgot that it had to be "as a result of battle", or "by a card effect"? "controlled by your opponent"?
    • That was especially annoying with cards that already had a high enough attack so that the only way to destroy them was by card effect. Yeah, I'm really worried about a 5000 attack monster being destroyed in battle.
      • Especially since it doesn't protect against Light monsters, which are the most likely to gain the necessary ATK to take it down (Master of Dragon Knight, Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon+equip card and Maha Vailo+multiple equip cards are the most likely means of winding up with an ATK in excess of 5000, and all of them are Light monsters).
  • Also, the "Harpie rule"^[1] for those who use them.
  • Japanese naming and naming changes. Consider Harpie's Brother. He does not count towards the Harpie's Dragon cards, because in the OCG, his name does not contain the word 'Harpie'.
    • The most well known example of this are the Archfiend cards. Archfiend Cards are known as 'Demon' in the OCG (Not the Type Demon), but since the TCG just couldn't print that, they changed it. A few years later Demons became an Archetype, with cards that support them as such. In the end: All old Demon cards (such as Summoned Skull) became Archfiends, but couldn't have their names changed and while they are treated as such in official games there is nothing on the card that actually says they are Archfiends, so the only way to know that is to look it up on the Internet.
• Tastes Like Diabetes: The Naturia. Which is mostly because of their cutesy artstyle.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks - About a number of things. Some argue about changing the original, dark artwork from early packs to lighter, more anime-esque, to the game originally having few Effect Monsters and a ton of Normal Monsters with now-banned Spell Cards being the only salvation against them, to most decks having nothing but Effect Monsters.
  • Another variation is people who preferred the pre-5D's generations, before things like Synchros and Tuners were introduced.
  • There are also quite a few people who hate the new Xyz monsters.
  • The new format of writing card text. Though intended to make things simpler, it ends up making some cards being a cross between Captain Obvious and Colon Cancer. Here's an example for the card Mystical Space Typhoon:

Old Text: Destroy 1 Spell or Trap Card on the field.
New Text: Target 1 Spell/Trap Card on the field; destroy that target.

• • • Other cards can wind up ambiguous and confusing as well. Here's a comparison with Magic Drain.

Old Text: When your opponent activates a Spell Card: Negate the activation and destroy it. Your opponent can discard 1 Spell Card to negate this card's effect.
New Text: When your opponent activates a Spell Card: They can discard 1 Spell Card to negate this card's effect, otherwise negate the activation of their Spell Card, and if you do, destroy it.

• Tier-Induced Scrappy: Any deck seen as overpowered and "cookie-cutter" can be this. Examples include Samurais, Inzektors, and so on.
• Woolseyism: "Des Frog" may have been a transliteration, but it set up the fusion between three of them to be called "D.3.S. Frog" in the English translation.

1. ↑ The Harpie Lady 1, 2, and 3 cards all have the effect of being treated as having the name Harpie Lady--including for deck construction, meaning you can only have a maximum of three of any of them instead of three of each.