I have over 1200 hours in MD and I think I enjoyed some of them. I even know a group of friends who play modern yugioh. However, I cannot see myself ever buying a yugioh deck. Believe me, I have been tempted. Then I remember that I'm considering buying a yugioh deck. Here are my reasons.

  1. Free to play is free: So why exactly would I pay money to play a game I could play for free whenever I want? Yeah. I didn’t have a good answer for that either.

  2. The Meta Game Rotates: These little squares of cardboard are expensive. I could make a deck. I could make a meta deck. And it would be meta, until it isn’t. The experience of anyone not playing every new meta is watching as your deck becomes more and more unplayable until you are basically a punching bag for the newest decks. Frankly I don’t want to watch that happen to a deck I put time, effect and love into learning. I’d rather it live in glory, even if it was no longer legal to play.

  3. Casual Yugioh doesn’t exist: You might say that you don’t need a meta deck and could just play casually with friends. But I want you to think for a moment the decks that your yugioh friends would pull out if you challenged them to a game. I bet that deck is designed to compete with the meta. Even if you do arrange a casual game. I bet the decks are not balanced. You are more likely to find an opponent around the same level by just playing your deck on the ladder until you end up in the right rank.

  4. Yugioh might just be a bad game: I feel like over half the games I play of yugioh are won or lost by “The Out” with little to no impact from the player. They won the coinflip and set skill drain GG. Your perfect hand loses to exactly Droll, well that happens. Going 1st people often play out their entire hand. It’s pretty easy to count the interactions. Sometimes you know before your 1st turn starts that you lost and there is no possible way to out the board. Other times you have that red-reboot for that backrow deck.

  5. I feel rude scooping in person: On Master Duel I have 0 issues with surrendering at the first sign that I am going to lose the game. I have things to do and frankly I get board of watching someone combo off on their turn, then combo off on my stand-by. Sometime I even have the out like the evenly matched or whatever, I just don’t feel like waiting for my main phase to play it. In person I would feel like I jerk if I was resigning every game all the time.

6. I feel bad always reading everyone’s cards: For me to play the game even remotely competently I need to know what my opponent’s deck does. I find it really nice to be able to scroll through the game log and review their cards while they are combing. Sure I could ask to read them in person. They would probably let me. But I be they would stop combing while I read the cards. If I when to local I wouldn’t even finish the first game because I would still be reading their cards.

7. Tracking the game state is a mess: I have in fact played modern yugioh in person. I've borrowed decks. And every time I played it, the game was mess. Even the most experienced players I know got confused about minor wording differences. They forgot about lingering effects and once per turn effects that happened at some point earlier in the turn. I’m still not entirely sure when I can flip floodgate traphole and when I cannot. I know people cheat left and right. They don't even cheat intentionally. People just cannot keep track of yugioh's game state. I very much prefer that the computer simply manages all of the crazy. Its like a referee that doesn't make mistakes.

8. Decks I like to play are not good: I am not a combo deck player. I like decks that have a strong toolboxy feel, but that don’t require 50 steps just to summon on monster. I also generally prefer archetype pure decks over piles. But more than anything else I prefer decks with a high floor even if the ceiling it low. I’d rather do something rather than be completely shutdown. The yugioh meta game is dominated and probably will continue to be dominated by these decks that win on the spot if X resolves. That’s just not how I play. I take a turn or two to kill the other player which generally just means my archetypes are worse.

9. I wouldn't play it enough: Whenever I’ve gone to a casual yugioh night with my buddies, they spend about 50% of the time talking about yugioh, about 30% of the time looking at the same trade binders from the previous time. Then maybe if we choose not to go get food, then someone actually plays a game. So I make a deck and play it what, once a month? I suppose I could go to locals, but that doesn’t really work with my work schedule and I don’t want to get smacked by meta decks every round.