#i just…. i wonder what tcg only people think. just in general about the card game

[ectoplasmer]

sorry it’s early and i’m brushing my teeth while the sun is rising since I passed out last night before I got the chance to, and we’re getting genuine sunlight for the first time in weeks, and I’m busy contemplating just how ridiculous this series is

[upchuckedgaming]

Sharing Hermitcraft with the Person I Love

Growing up, I never really thought about the person that I would potentially spend the rest of my life with; how our separate interests would interact and coexist. And probably, it was because I didn't think I'd meet someone with those interests or someone who would accept me for who I am. So that just never really crossed my mind, until I met my partner.

Ever since the middle of high school and into college, I always felt my interests were a little 'childish', not necessarily because they were specifically made for children, but rather that it wasn't the 'standard, main-stream' things to like. One of those interest that have been with me for a long time and is very dear to me is the Minecraft SMP server Hermitcraft. As someone who grew up with series like Minecrack and watching some veterans of the Minecraft YouTube space (SethBling, Ethoslab, GenerikB, etc), when I was introduced to Hermitcraft back in Season 2, it was something that I truly felt like I was missing before then. I had seen Minecrack, The Cube, and many other servers rise and fall over my time watching Minecraft content, but no server had ever felt so special to me and, obviously, so many others.

As such, I was hesitant to share Hermitcraft with my partner, who I knew was never in the Minecraft YouTube space much (but likes playing Minecraft), because I was scared. What if my partner thinks this is dumb? What if they think that I need to focus on other things? In retrospect, this is dumb. My partner loves me and supports me every second of every day, but that's beside the point.

At the start of Season 9 of Hermitcraft, I decided to introduced my partner to GeminiTay, one of the newer Hermitcraft players at the time, and started watching her episodes together at the start of the season so they could have a fresh start. And I am so happy I did. We have watched all of Gem's videos this season as they came out, and over the course of the season, we started watching more creators from Hermitcraft and that general Traffic SMP sphere together, and I cannot imagine enjoying this content without my partner at this point. From the start of Beef's development on Hermitcraft TCG to the depths of the Frost Citadel and Decked Out 2, we watched this world develop and I cannot be happier.

What really kicked off this post, however, was the release of the physical version of Hermitcraft TCG. Now, this was actually something that my partner bought for me first, as they ordered me the combo booster box and playbox they had on sale. But within the day or two after they bought a set for me, I decided to get my partner a set as well. So after months of waiting, they finally got delivered about a week ago. My package came a day before theirs, so we waited until we unboxed them together. Since we got the combo, we each received a special slabbed card with the potential for a signed card. As my partner opened theirs, they saw that they received a signed Bdubs card, and they were so shocked and surprised! They knew that I had been watching him for years, but also, he has become a favorite for them (both with the Hermitcraft series, but also Building with Bdubs), and it just made me so happy that they got someone that they knew and enjoyed (for those wondering: I got a signed foil XB card, aww yeah)!

And as we opened up the packs that came in the booster box, my partner was so excited to pull rare Gem, Cleo, and Scar cards (some of their faves) and already started thinking about making a deck with them. I cannot tell you how much happiness I felt in that moment as we shared our mutual love for this silly Minecraft SMP and the people that contribute to it. We joked that we initially were only going to get a single set, but getting one for each of us was so incredibly worth it. Heck, my partner even said, "Well, now we have cards for Hermits to sign if we meet!"

Now, is there really a point to this post? Not really, more so just wanted to both put my experience into perspective for myself, but also to thank all those creators in the Hermitcraft/Traffic SMP sphere for creating a space where sharing my interest of the server not only helped me grow closer with my partner, but also spawned a new fan at the same time! Sorry for the rambling!

[in2thenewworld]

hi hi! i was wondering if i could have a romantic matchup for Genshin Impact?

i’m an ISFP 9w1 Virgo if that helps

i’m not entirely sure what my gender or sexuality is :,> (all i know is that i have a preference for men)

i really like sleeping when i can, drawing and writing are thing i also like to do! i also like ranting about random things-

i tend to stay by myself though i do like hanging out with my friends whenever i can! i’m very sensitive emotionally and i tend to be able to empathize with people easily, though it tends to take a toll on me. having anger issues doesn’t help either- though i rarely take my emotions out on people

i’m very physically affectionate and i tend to show my love through actions rather than words. i tend to get overstimulated/overwhelmed whenever there’s too much noise or people around me. i’m also super loyal to my friends and tend to be a bit protective over them (and just the people i love in general)

i tend to stay up VERY late at night because it’s pretty calming and it’s when i have the most energy. i tend to stay at home a lot but i do like going on walks or randomly exploring my area.

i love moths to death and could talk for hours about them tbh- though i love listening to people i like talk about the things they like too!

thank you for your time and i hope you have a great new year!

loading your match! ପ( •̤ᴗ•̤ )੭ु⁾⁾.｡.:✽・ﾟ＋

…

your match is…

CYNO!

omigod this was such an easy decision. perfect pair!!

the first thing I thought was that i think although your circumstances are not exactly the same, you’d be able to relate to one another emotionally. a lot of people see cyno as angry, intimidating figure because of his approach to work, and that’s the side most people see to him. however, he’s not mean at all, and it is instead only a reflection of how much he cares.

he wouldn’t be used to such affection at first but he will warm to it pretty soon. he had no idea of what he had been missing, tbh.

plus, this also lines up with cyno in the sense that he too values people’s actions over their words in the greater span of things.

cyno is protective and loyal, just like yourself. you always look out for each other. although you’re both capable of independence and doing your own thing, you’re attached at the hip in spirit!

you’re an introvert, and cyno, although he can be talkative, chooses to keep his circle on the small side. you’ll get to know a few new people but you won’t be thrown into any overwhelming crowds or anything like that on his watch.

if you do get overwhelmed in any place you can always signal to him and he’ll get you guys out of there asap

you like exploring? he’s so down to come with you. he’s out a lot on the job but it’s always the same sort of places. show him somewhere new or a hidden gem! he’ll love you all the more for it.

you love listening to people talk about things they love; get ready to be introduced to a little card game called tcg! he’s competitive even with you, so don’t expect him to go easy. bring your all so you can totally tease him about it if he loses! ;D

he’ll listen to you for hours, too. nice little trade off about both being mostly introverts with a bit of a talkative side. sometimes you’ll even sit in comfortable silence, and it’s calming, especially after a long or hard day.

if he’s around and not too tired, he’ll stay up late with you just to indulge in your company. his job is demanding of his time and effort but you are his peace c:

[wavering-eyes]

The Three Goals of the F&L List

The TCG got a banlist a couple of weeks ago which went into effect on the 14th. I haven’t posted about it (or any banlist in the past year+...) because I feel it’s the kind of discussion I don’t have much to add to anymore. You can go anywhere and get a banlist analysis because the intent of the banlist is pretty clear to anyone who’s extensively interacted with the metagame. It’s for this reason I think the banlist is sort of self-explanatory, at least when it’s doing its’ job, and as a result, I have little desire to see Konami try to explain it themselves (also because their previous attempts didn’t satisfy anyone). I had pretty much the same feelings with this one.

With that said, there’s still an obvious demand for banlist analysis out there, so I figure it might be helpful to elaborate on my perspective in hopes it saves you, the reader, some time in trying to decode future banlists when they come around. To this end, I have isolated three primary factors that influence which cards end up on the banlist.

First off, as you probably know, the banlist is a tool used to balance the metagame. If a card or deck starts dominating the game at a high level to the point where other decks become unviable or warp around it, that deck will usually be addressed in some major form in the following list. Until recently, SPYRAL had four different cards (Drone, Quik-Fix, Master Plan, and Resort) on the banlist for this reason; the deck is simply too strong at combo-ing off with any more copies of these cards.

Second, the banlist is also used to ensure the game is enjoyable to play irrespective of game balance. The “fun” associated with the game is a really complex topic, but generally, this is meant to explain when cards are hit due to negative experiences with their mechanics. Yata-garasu is a solid example of this. I can personally guarantee you that Yata-garasu could be unbanned next list and see zero competitive success. The reward of denying your opponent a draw is simply too low for it to be worth finding a way to Normal Summon a 200 ATK bird and then hit your opponent with it, given that this absolutely requires you to either go second and break a board, or slow down the game going first without shutting your opponent out entirely. Any combo deck seriously capable of doing this would be infinitely better off going for an FTK or OTK, and any control deck capable of this would be better off just winning traditionally. And yet Yata-garasu remains banned, because at more casual levels of play, this card is about as fun as a root canal. If you’re looking at the banlist and spot a card that doesn’t seem to fit into any particular archetype and doesn’t seem too strong, this is probably the reason why that card is there.

Furthermore, this is also why occasional banlists will come out and indiscriminately nuke every deck relevant to the metagame: players tend to enjoy the game less when the metagame is stale, even if it’s balanced. January 2020 is the most recent example of this: the top four decks at the 2019 WCQ were unquestionably Danger! Thunder, Sky Striker, Salamangreat, and Orcust. These decks had very solid matchup spreads against each other and represented a wide variety of playstyles. Most TCG formats would kill to be this diverse. Nonetheless, once January rolled around, the banlist hit key cards in all of them, because people had grown tired of seeing the same few decks everywhere, and the only one that really managed to survive was Salamangreat.

Third, on a more cynical note: the banlist is also a tool meant to sell a product. If you’re looking at the banlist and can’t discern that a certain card was hit as the result of one of the prior two reasons, it is probably because of this. While there’s something to be said about the play experiences and power levels of Called by the Grave and Red Reboot, I’m going to keep it real with you: I am firmly of the belief that these cards were hit to sell Triple Tactics Talent and Evenly Matched, respectively. Why’s that?

Red Reboot was limited in January 2020 in a format where the premier backrow deck was virtually all spells. A few tiers below the main four of that format were True Draco, which lost Demise and Diagram at the same time, and promptly dropped off the face of the earth; Altergeist with 1 Multifaker, still played only by Doug Zeeff; Guru Control, which was never that good, and had handtraps as backup in the case of Red Reboot anyways; and Traptrix, which saw fringe play at best. Red Reboot obviously saw no play in this format, but Evenly Matched did. So what’s the difference? Why is the less relevant of these cards Limited while the more popular, and arguably powerful one, isn’t?

Yes, Evenly takes your battle phase, and yes, it’s not a Counter Trap so it can still be negated without Solemn Judgment, but once again, let me be real with you: Red Reboot was a Super Rare worth like a dollar on release, and Evenly Matched was reprinted in a premium set three months later, rebounding to around $20 at the time of writing. Money is the motivator here.

Same with Called. Called was a $5 common for the longest time. Handtrap design literally shifted around it (Infinite Impermanence, Nibiru, the Primal Being, and Fantastical Dragon Phantazmay all don’t interact with the card), and as a result, it hadn’t seen much play at all in the previous few months, as the combo decks still remaining shifted towards playing as many extenders as possible, or putting out a negate in under 5 summons. Called was already made irrelevant by the decks that would normally want to play it becoming so powerful that they no longer have to rely on drawing it at all, so why was it hit again?

Triple Tactics Talent goes for nearly $100 a copy right now, that’s why. Why play the card that just counters some hand traps instead of the better going-second card that activates a card from the banlist if your opponent tries to interact with you at all? Called wasn’t much better if you didn’t have to use it, anyways. It’s a bit of a wonder why Konami felt they needed to limit a bad card in order to sell a good one, but let’s consider a few things about the format and world right now:

In-person events have been canceled since March.

The format has become incredibly expensive to play in since then. A 9-card side deck containing a set each of Forbidden Droplet, Lightning Storm, and Infinite Impermanence will cost you like, >$700.

Events since then have mostly been held in simulators.

You do not need to buy cards to play simulators.

You need cards to enter Remote Duel tournaments, but Remote Duels are a total joke and Konami knows it.

Once events reopen, people will probably be searching for budget versions of expensive staples. Called fits that perfectly.

Finally, I’d like to mention that this is also meant to explain why Konami is less willing to hit new cards as opposed to old ones. It is generally not a great look for your company to sell people cards only to tell them they’re not allowed to play those cards. If the time between release and banning is short enough, it raises questions as to why the card was printed in the first place.

So, to recap, consider cards on the banlist with the following questions in the following order:

Did, or would, this card contribute to an unbalanced metagame?

Is this card enjoyable to play against?

Is there a really expensive card that fills the same role as this one?

And if you answer “no” to all three, Konami might just be off their shits. Cannahawk was Limited for like 5 years, after all.

Thanks for reading. After one round of editing, this seems ready for release, but it’s possible there’s something I wanted to express but forgot to. If that happens, or if I come up with an example that demonstrates a possible fourth major factor, I’ll make a followup post.

[tymime]

I generally consider Gen IV the last good generation of the Pokémon franchise, but really only up to a certain point. I’ve played a bit of Platinum, and it’s... okay. Doesn’t inspire me with wonder like Gens I and II do. And I pretty much gave up entirely on the anime after the Battle Frontier arc.

And looking at the Pokémon introduced then, I really only like Bidoof/Bibarel, Buizel/Floatzel and Riolu/Lucario. Buneary/Lopunny is pretty good, and Gible etc. is okay, but almost all of the rest of them I can’t stand their designs at all.

Of course, I really like HeartGold and SoulSilver, but I guess I’m biased.

Back when I was growing up, the anime was the most important to me, and it still is. I hardly ever played the TCG, as I was more of a collector, and I didn’t even play the games that much because I was so bad at it (although I did complete Silver). I remember that when it came to Pokémon, the online fandom in the early 2000s was mostly concerned with the anime as well, whereas you mostly heard about the glitches and rumors in the games and schools banning the cards. The main reason I preferred the anime was because of the characters. Ash, Brock, and Misty made a great trio, and Jesse, James, and Meowth are among the greatest sympathetic villain characters of all time, imo. Nowadays you hardly ever hear anybody discuss the anime.

But ultimately the reason anybody becomes a fan of Pokémon is because of the cool monsters. I think sometimes fans forget this, incredibly- too much focus is given to gameplay mechanics and metagaming and competitive gaming, which I really couldn’t care less about. I remember one of my first interactions with a Pokémon fan, way back in 1999 or so, was when somebody asked what my favorite Pokémon was. I told him it was Charmander. And why not? He’s a cute, fire-breathing dragon-lizard thing! His reaction was “But Charmander is weak!”, and all I could do was stare at him incredulously. I didn’t care if he was “weak”, which is an exaggeration anyway. Must I quote Karen?

That’s actually the entire point of Pokémon. Lots of PETA-types didn’t understand this: We’re not forcing them to fight as slaves, we’re making friends with all these creatures. The early episodes of the anime especially emphasized this, culminating in the movie Mewtwo Strikes Back, and it’s message of peace, sacrifice, and love still makes me misty-eyed to this day.

The anime started going downhill as soon as Ash left Kanto for the Orange Islands. We all remember how incredibly dull and pointless Tracy was, and how repetitive and formulaic the Johto episodes were. This was despite how amazingly good the G/S/C games were. It was around this time that the fandom was diminishing, and people who weren’t all that in love with it in the first place started sneering at it and saying it was “for little kids” and “uncool”. I remember Digimon fans were especially obnoxious about it. Here’s the thing: It might sound a bit shallow, but I don’t think I would’ve become interested in Pokémon if the monsters didn’t look cute or cool. I’m very keenly aware of what kind of character designs I like, and if I don’t like the way a cartoon looks, there’s absolutely no way I can get into it. Lots of people are gonna hate me for this, but I find the vast majority of Digimon to be downright butt-ugly. They’re mostly wrinkled and lumpy and look as though they’re made up of leftover puppet parts. There’s a tiny amount of them that I actually think look decent, but not nearly enough to make me want to watch the show.

But that ties into what happened next- when the Gen III games were coming out, I was looking forward to it, but I was disappointed in how unappealing some of the Pokémon designs were, especially the legendaries. I thought they looked more like Digimon. I don’t see anybody else who has this view. Sure, occasionally I see someone complain “They don’t look like Pokémon anymore!” but they’re always shot down with the rationalization “Who says what Pokémon look like is set in stone?” It’s not a good idea to slowly drift the art direction of an ongoing franchise with an established look and continuity. It’s what makes for a TV series suffer from Early Installment Weirdness and Seasonal Rot, among other things. Things like Mickey Mouse and Looney Tunes can get away with this because they don’t have an established canon, but a series like Pokémon shouldn’t start looking weirder and weirder. I remember having high hopes for the Hoenn episodes of the anime, hoping that the fresher, more sophisticated animation would bring the series out of its doldrums and return to the more heartwarming, personality-driven stories of it’s golden age. For a while it seemed like this would be the case- Ash seemed wiser and more experienced at first and the Pokémon were showing more personality. But it slowly but surely entered a long string of indistinguishable contests for May to compete in. Another thing I wish there was more of in the anime is the Pokémon themselves having more personality. Too often they’re just used as battling tools and have few chances to show emotion or interact with the other characters. The Hoenn episodes also made one thing clear: Ash was going to replace his battling team pretty much every region from now on.

This trend flies in the face of the early franchise’s message of friendship. Ash’s Pokémon from yesteryear are hardly ever seen again once they get sent to Prof. Oak or to some other place.

I suspect this new attitude towards the Pokémon is why they’re becoming uglier and uglier. It doesn’t matter what they look like, you just want to train something NEW, right? Something with good stats and EVs?

I've never seen anybody who shares my view about the Pokémon designs from Gen IV and onward. There was a brief period when older fans were saying the new Pokémon were dumb ideas- ice cream cones and garbage bags and key rings aren’t my idea of a cool concept. But then came the whole “Genwunner” backlash. “But Gen I has inanimate objects too! Dont’cha think Voltorb and Grimer are dumb??” people would say. My answer is this: A living Pokéball and a pile of toxic sludge are cooler than keys and garbage. And just because Gen I had a dumb idea like a bunch of eggs doesn’t mean you should repeat it. And of course there’s an excess of foxes, cats, bats, small electric rodents, and cutesy legendaries that look vaguely like Mew. When the Pokémon aren’t stupid or ugly, they’re redundant. And now it seems like older fans are almost entirely silent about their opinions.

I don’t understand why this isn’t a more common opinion. A Pokémon’s visual appeal is absolutely crucial and yet they still continue to look inorganic, cluttered, and awkward looking with every new generation. There’s only a handful of recent Pokémon that ever get fanart, and 100% of the time the fanart is better drawn than the official version.

This seemingly coincided with the American dubbers having the brilliant idea of replacing the entire voice cast of the anime to “celebrate” the tenth anniversary. It was difficult watching the anime after that, and I only stuck around because they were revisiting Kanto. After that, I stopped watching it entirely. It got worse, of course- Ash was redesigned and looked almost entirely different. The eyes are the windows to the soul- if you ask me, by changing Ash��s windows, they changed his soul.

The Pokémon franchise was dead to me by then. As far as I’m concerned the whole series is a shambling zombie, a shell of its former self. And with the anime using retconning flashbacks and remaking the first episode and Mewtwo Strikes Back, the anime has split into two different continuities anyhow. And yet people still try to defend it, even older fans, which boggles my mind.

[mantis-lizbian]

long rant about card games below the cut

so, one of my biggest pasttimes growing up was CCGs. i honestly can’t remember whether i got into the Pokemon card game or video games first, either way i was in kindergarten at the oldest. then when Yu-Gi-Oh! came out, i was into that for about a year (just the card game tho, never watched the show) before going back to Pokemon (the problem primarily being that back in 2002, there was basically no strategy once you understood the basic principles; half the cards that existed were literally useless because monsters with at least 1000 ATK were common enough that any playground deck would always have better options than Firegrass or Kurama, and half of any deck that had a ghost of chance in even local competitions were the same cards as were in every other deck at the competition, even though there were no land/energy resource cards; and don't even get me started on fusions and rituals...). and then there was a brief stint (well, i say brief, but it lasted longer than Yu-Gi-Oh! did for me) when i collected Pirates of the Spanish Main. i could at least get my family to play, so this actually grew to be a pretty sizeable collection for me (at least, proportional to the game's full sets, compared to others i played). even though the game as written is easy to cheese just by having more ships of any quality than your opponent, we came up with a variety of alternate playstyles that allowed for more interesting matches. i'd also stumbled across some cards from the Digimon and DBZ card games, but i honestly have no recollection how, and i was the only person i knew who had any, so they just kinda sat in my room for me to look at...

then i found MtG, but rarely had anyone to play with and couldn't afford to get more than a couple boosters a year, so the bulk of my collection was pre-Modern commons. still, even among those, MtG offered strategic depth to rival any other card game i'd played up to that point. i built and rebuilt all sorts of decks, experimenting with different styles and strategies. with the help of a program called Lackey, i even started essentially theorycrafting decks (including what remains to this day to be my favourite: the Suicide Squad deck, a Kamigawa block deck built around getting as many Zubera on the field as possible and playing Devouring Greed). but none were even remotely competitive against much simpler strategies...

and then there was Hearthstone, and for a full year, i was playing it daily. but then it introduced its Standard format, and once again my vigorous but casual enjoyment of the game was left in the dust. which... i get why they needed to introduce it. but i still miss the days when it seemed like it would be potentially possible for me to get a complete collection... honestly, it was removing the ability to purchase older adventures (though i had already bought them all at the time) and sets that killed it for me more than the format changes. shortly after, i also found Eternal, which i enjoyed but... still felt was a bit limiting... the other thing is that i've never really been satisfied with the rarity system since it's borderline meaningless to deckbuilding. a rare card is - in general theory, and usually in practice - borderline broken compared to a common one. this is, ostensibly, why it's rare. but given that it's entirely possible to buy rare cards directly - or even just buy enough packs that you're statistically likely to get the rare card you're looking for - there's nothing mechanical stopping a player from just filling their deck with all the rarest and best cards, completely locking out players who simply can't afford to spend as much from any sort of competitive play. it seems to me that the rarity system implies that a deck is expected to have rare cards in proportions roughly corresponding to the frequency they show up in packs. presumably, this is the appeal of sealed and draft formats. but for someone like me who most enjoys coming up with oddball strategies, draft formats don't allow for that sort of freedom.

then i got hit by a wave of nostalgia. lacking any of my old collections, not to mention people to play them with, i dug out the old Pokemon TCG game for GameBoy Colour. then curious, because i hadn't really gotten into it the first time around, i looked around for some Yu-Gi-Oh! video games to see if there actually was more depth to it than i remembered (since i was only an elementary schooler at the time, so i could easily have missed something). while it seems i was, indeed, correct in my assessment the first time around, i came across a game called Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories (to any pedants, this is the US/EU title of Tri-Holy God Advent, not the original DDS). now, while the game has a lot of problems like an atrocious UI and unclear rules/actions (it took me four whole duels of wondering what effect Hane-Hane had that was allowing it to kill all my best monsters before i learned of the type system), one thing that i do really like is its progression system.

so in most digital card games (including digitized version of card games like Duels of the Planeswalkers), the only real way there is to increase difficulty is for opponents to have decks with better cards. but if you have randomized card packs, and allow players to freely build their decks, this could lead to players getting a lucky pack or two and allowing them to steamroll through several opponents with ease. this is especially true of later Yu-Gi-Oh! games, especially if you import your real world collection like i did (as best as i could remember it being...) and are therefore able to make real world competitive decks to mercilessly crush the first five opponents without even having to vary your strategy in the slightest (probably the next five as well, but i haven't tried it yet). in DDS, however, each card has a value, and you have a duelist rank that determines the highest value card you can include in your deck, as well as what the total point value of your deck can be. while it's low, if you use a particularly powerful card, you might have to accompany it with a number of weaker ones in order to stay under the deck's value cap. or you might not even be able to include it at all yet. ...which i can acknowledge has some potential problems since you don't want a player to end up with too many cards that they can't use, and you definitely don't want those cards to be too far beyond their current level. a few that are a few levels away can add some excitement to leveling up since you're closer and closer to being able to use it, but in principle i think this is pretty ingenious.

since your duelist level goes up every single match, your freedom in building decks also increases. so in combination with getting new cards, after every single match, win or lose, you're able to retool your deck in ways you couldn't before the match. this makes it so that A) you are always progressing (which i consider important in any game where a streak of bad luck can cause you to lose without it really being your fault), B) until you reach max level (or near enough), you will always have reason to adjust your playstyle, and C) even "weak" cards are potentially useful since they can fill out your deck to allow you to use a much more powerful card. like, honestly, when was the last time anyone chose to put Wisp in their Hearthstone deck? or even Magma Rager? seriously, these cards are the Firegrass and Kurama of Hearthstone. the combination of these three encourages exploration, experimentation, and an evolving playstyle. and you could even include options in PvP play for setting the deck value.

[flamecladconqueror-blog]

TCGs - My return to them, and why they made me appreciate sports

I’m not really a sports person. I don’t like being physically active at all, and even getting out of bed is a dreadful activity that I’d rather just forget about and never do again. As a result of that, I’ve never really paid any attention to sports throughout my life. You don’t think about things you dislike that often, and eventually learn to ignore them completely.

But games, that’s something I love. Among all those different types of games out there, Trading Card Games (or TCGs) are easily among my favourites. I’m a sucker for shiny things and cool artwork, so naturally, as a child most of my spending money went towards booster packs of various TCGs. The one I poured most of my money into was, like for many others, the game of Yu-Gi-Oh! which I had been playing since its release here in [redacted country of origin and current residence].

Unfortunately I grew up with a mother who didn’t understand why her children enjoy playing with coloured cardboard - or anything at all really, she was and continues to be no fun - and who viewed our hobby as a waste of both money and space (those cards have to be stored somewhere). And as is usual for children of any age, there came a time when we looked at other things to pursue as hobbies, and our cards saw less and less use, until we stopped playing with them altogether and were told to dispose of them. Not sell them or anything, just throw them in the trash. It’s just a bunch of cards, right? Sometimes I still get a bit emotional over that moment, but it’s in the past now, and it’s time to move on.

And move on I did! Over the course of several years my attention wandered from genre to genre of games, taking a dive into the wonderful but expensive world of wargaming, until settling for video games. I still enjoy video games, but part of me always wanted to get back to TCGs, and when I saw an episode of Yu-Gi-Oh! on TV 3 years ago, I decided to get back into that game.

It started with a simple structure deck - a pre constructed deck of cards that often (read: always) revolve around a common theme, mostly an archetype of cards that directly support each other. While that deck was nice, it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. It didn’t feel like it did back then, when I was younger. I wanted that feeling of excitement I got when I opened a pack of cards and pulled something amazing.

So I made the only reasonable decision one could make when all he has is 30€. I spent all of it on packs of the newly released set Duelist Alliance.

You see, in 2014 a new era of Yu-Gi-Oh! started, introducing a new mechanic, accompanied by a new series (which I loved, but that’s a topic for another day). I figured if I really wanted to get back into the game, I might as well start with something brand new. I had my eyes on several archetypes that debuted in this set. Superheavy Samurai looked fun and were used by cool character in the anime, Tellarknights had a really neat playstyle of swarming the field to make big guys, and Yang Zing were a completely new type of monsters (Wyrm-type) that was bound to get better with future generic support.

So I pulled a card that looked like this. It was...a sports dude. In my TCG. A card promoting something I hated, in something I loved. I wasn’t very happy with it at first, but little did I know that this card was the beginning of a new flame of passion burning up within my heart.

You see, this card was part of a new archetype that made its debut in the TCG (for those unaware, the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG is called Official Card Game, or OCG, in Asian regions, and some cards are exclusive to each of those regions for a time until they get ported over). There was no info about how these cards performed in Japan, because they did not exist there. People in the west shrugged them off as being gimmicky and strictly inferior to the other TCG exclusive archetype of the set, Burning Abyss (spoilers: they were right), but that flipped my little hipster switch. I just had to make this work, somehow.

I couldn’t make it work. Not with the first wave of support. With a total of 3 cards (2 Level 5 monsters and a Field Spell), there was no way you could build a proper deck around these sportsmen. But they were gonna get new toys to play with in sets to come, so I anxiously awaited the release of the U.A. cards. In the meantime, I also got two old schoolmates back into the game with me.

To skip all the boring stuff, more U.A. cards came, I built a proper U.A. deck, it wasn’t amazing but man did I love it. And here’s why:

It’s a masterpiece of thematic/mechanic consistency. For the sake of keeping this short (he said as he looked over the wall of text he just wrote), I won’t go into detail here, so let’s just look at three cards. We’ll start with the card above, the star of the deck, U.A. Mighty Slugger.

Those of you familiar with the world of sports will quickly realize that this guy plays baseball. What’s a good thing to happen in baseball? A homerun. Why is it good? Because the opposing team can’t do anything about it, you just score. Mighty Slugger is a homerun, preventing your opponent from responding to his attack with cards or effects, until the attack is completely resolved. Not even the effects of monsters he destroys in battle will activate upon entering the graveyard. Mighty Slugger is the baseball concept of a homerun in card form.

The next card on our list is U.A. Midfielder. He’s the other star of the show, being the only monster in the archetype that can be Normal Summoned without tributing a monster. He plays football (or soccer), and the midfielder in that sport is an important part of the team, tying offense and defense together. That’s just what this card does, too! He allows you to tag out other U.A. monsters during either player’s turn, giving you a massive boost in flexibility. I should probably also note at this point that, yes, every single monster in the archetype has the ability to tag out - to return a different U.A. monster from your field to your hand, to summon the new monster. It allows you to attack the opponent with your offense, and then tag out for your defense to guard against whatever your opponent throws at you. Midfielder here let’s you tag out even during the opponent’s turn, which can be quite a surprise.

But what would a sports team be without a stadium of their own? U.A. Stadium is the archetype’s Field Spell, and it’s the concept of home field advantage. If your team plays in their stadium, on their home turf, where they belong, they have the fans on their side. They cheer for them, giving the team a morale boost, that comes in the form of 500 ATK points when a U.A. monster is Special Summoned (think of it as subbing in a new player for one who got hurt, for example). And when the team enters the stadium (in this game, when you Normal Summon a U.A. monster), there won’t just be one of them coming in, there’s gonna be the whole team, so go ahead and search another U.A. monster of your choice.

The entirety of this archetype consists of cards that perfectly combine both the theme of sports and the mechanics of the game to create something that feels just right. Playing this deck will have you thinking you’re the manager of your very own sports team, and I honestly haven’t played any deck in any other game that I’ve enjoyed nearly as much! Well, now that the F.A. archetype is a thing, that might change...car racing? That’s another thing I dislike. But the cards look great.

This archetype depicting a theme I don’t care about at all rekindled my love for TCGs, and has brought me many hours of joy. Since building this deck I’ve played several other card games, and am glad to have done so. TCGs are a fun way to socialize with people who share your passion, and there’s gotta be one out there that you can enjoy.