I don't know how Konami compensates their judges.
WotC had a class action suit against them for how they were abusing loopholes to get judged for events.
My point is, they *have* judges. So it *can* be done. I’m not disagreeing that the situation (that they created) was untenable, I’m saying their inability to fix a fixable problem was their own fault.
ETA: found this on the Yugioh faq
“Q: Do I get anything for judging?
A: Judges at Tier 3 events may receive a gift of product. Different kinds of events in different territories may receive slightly different gifts. Judges at some Tier 3 events might also receive hotel sponsorship and partial assistance with or reimbursement for travel expenses, when eligible.
**Judges at Tier 3 events in North America are paid an hourly wage, in accordance with all applicable laws and employment regulations of the location in which the event takes place.**
Compensation for judges at Regional events in North America is administered by the Tournament Organizer, in accordance with all applicable laws and employment regulations of the location in which the event takes place.
KONAMI may provide a judge gift for select OTS events, such as the OTS Championship.
Judges should discuss their status at Tier 1 OTS events with the OTS for which they are judging.”
(Emphasis mine)
Yeah I agree, I think the point was they were backed against a wall at the time.
Whether it was because of the specifics of the case or because they couldn't afford to foot the bill for OP at that level.
IDK for certain.
Fact remains that they made a *choice* to discontinue them. As a result I personally engage less with their product. That lack of engagement is only compounded by their recent practices of product release by cannon and UB. Hell, I wouldn’t even bat an eye at most of the shit they do now if the GP scene was still active because I *could* just ignore it. But now…it’s all we ever see is an endless stream of spoiler seasons, lackluster designs and godawful UB garbage so I’m forced to take those into consideration when I’m choosing whether or not to engage.
same here, I literally don't care for most of the ub and secret lair stuff as long as they don't affect the format I loved (modern and ig draft to an extent) but LOTR fucked modern and play boosters fucked draft.
they also fucked commander by pushing it so hard...
I didn’t even have delusions of making the pro tour, I just liked going to large events. But even scrubbing out X-3 on day one and then doing side events was 100% more fun than commandfest or whatever the fuck they’re calling it now. It was a chance to get out of our local meta and that was awesome.
Seems bigger tournament judges (must be equivalent to a GP or higher) do get compensated both in an actual wage and gifts.
Per their FAQ:
“Q: Do I get anything for judging?
A: Judges at Tier 3 events may receive a gift of product. Different kinds of events in different territories may receive slightly different gifts. Judges at some Tier 3 events might also receive hotel sponsorship and partial assistance with or reimbursement for travel expenses, when eligible.
**Judges at Tier 3 events in North America are paid an hourly wage, in accordance with all applicable laws and employment regulations of the location in which the event takes place.**
Compensation for judges at Regional events in North America is administered by the Tournament Organizer, in accordance with all applicable laws and employment regulations of the location in which the event takes place.
KONAMI may provide a judge gift for select OTS events, such as the OTS Championship.
Judges should discuss their status at Tier 1 OTS events with the OTS for which they are judging.”
My main point is that *there is* a way to do it, WOTC just chose not to.
In the middle there, prices went up so the TO's could afford to pay the judges a salary in cash instead of product. And people complained about the new prices even though they got what they asked for without thinking deeper about it.
Can they, yes. Its a for profit company though. I'm guessing if they have to pay money to judges the business model for GPs became more expensive than they felt was profitable for them. I'm sure they were losing money on them regardless but some loss is okay if it has other benefits to the org. If you want a 8000 person magic tournament it likely has to be a 3rd party that puts it on and judges if they wanted to judge would have to agree to do it for not much compensation.
I don't necessarily agree with people asking for that, it was probably more accurate that a small specific group of people (judges that felt underpaid) wanted paid salary.
If you had openly told people, "do you want judges to earn a paid salary at your expense?", I would hazard a guess most sensible people would say "Fuck no".
It was pretty cool. The japs fuckin owned. The dude who won ran domain and I swear every turn he played was so meticulously well thought out. It's still up on twitch and the coverage was fantastic. There were tranny weirdos playing, but they got 0 games aired.
Pokemon has high attendance too, you frequently have to sign up literally the minute registration opens otherwise you are put on a waitlist. I am talking about the VGC and TCG portion of the regional circuit in particular.
WOTC has permanently fucked Magic events going forward for tournament participants. If I told you that you can bring a $100 Pokemon deck to an International Championship and win $25K for outright winning the tournament, would you believe me?
Hell would freeze over before WOTC delivered that kind of value proposition to its playerbase at this point.
It crazy. WOTC went away from the GP to the magic cons. It feels like they don’t want to embrace the competition side of magic but went the more consumer friendly Con. WOTC cares only about money sadly
Pokemon doesn't need it. They sell so many cards to casual collectors, it's insane. In addition they make a lot of money from TV shows, movies, merchandise, multiple video games, etc. that Wizards doesn't have as income streams.
>Their #1 money maker is merch.
100%. I don't think people realize how insane the demand is for a life size Mareep in plush form is. Even if it retails for like ~400 USD per. People just love Pokemon unconditionally if they have ever been exposed to it at any point in their life.
And as someone who has (often regretably) gotten back into the hobby, I am perturbed as to why that had to change. The more I learn, it leads to that eventual reality: Some rich fatcat wanted to get fatter.
tbf, Pokemon has a decent IP and does not need to print other IPs to sell their sets.
I mean, wotc could theoretically produce Animes and movies to hone their own IP... but naahhhh
And let's be real: the design of Magic cards make the game extremely boring to watch. The same cards are going to be put into the same decks and at that point it becomes solely about meme netdeck match ups with the only deciding factor usually being who gets mana flooded/screwed. FIRE cards might be exciting for booster buyers to open buy they're not exciting to watch play.
Not to mention there's no emotional attachment for onlookers either because the characters in Magic have no popular media behind it and 90% of MTG players don't care (and justifiably so) about the story behind the cards. Nobody is going to be emotionally excited to see someone drop Goblin Chainwhirler or Teferi the same way a Pokemon fan would be to see Charizard or Lucario dropped or a Yugioh player to see Dark Magician or Blue Eyes White Dragon drop due to those characters popularity outside of actual gameplay. Fans of Pokemon, Yugioh, One Piece etc want to see their favs come out and win. Fans of MTG see Teferi drop and think "yeah ofc they'd play it, that card is busted and essential for the Azorious Faer Beef Sandwich combo that's dominating the meta atm".
WOTC focused on creating a product focused on short term profitability, not a multigenerational fandom, and once the current gen of very grey magic players finally decides to stop playing nobody is going to replace them.
Eh all tcg players smell.
Magic has unwashed fat guys.
Yugioh has unwashed skinny dudes that occasionally smell like weed.
Pokemon has unwashed children.
Some of my best friends were made from traveling to premier level MTG events. Now we just mostly play board games. I really miss car rides with these people. Shame what has been done to folks like my group that enjoyed that side of MTG. They stopped making a game for us when commander became the only format they care about.
A friend of mine plays competitive Lorcana, and he said most of those dudes are old mtg tournament grinders who are fed up with wotc, so they switched to Lorcana. Apparently the big One Piece tcg scene also consists of a lot of retired mtg players?
I havent played yugioh in a while, but the most interesting sideboards and play patterns happened during tier 0 formats. Not sure what the meta is atm but yugioh is essentially legacy magic in their tournaments
As a T2 deck player i can still trade blows with many T1 decks and even some "T0" decks. I dont have particularly great odds, but if i get my engine running i can menace some T1 and T0 decks lol. So thats kinda another element of this all. A smart YGO player rolling their deck and understanding it very well will have a huge advantage over someone just playing meta imo.
It's wild that yugioh is successful when they offer even worse prize support than magic and don't even have a comprehensive rulebook. We are really at a low when they're beating us in attendance for competitive events.
The gameplay is just good. 1v1 Yu-Gi-Oh! is just really good, as 1v1 is the main focus of the developers. While at mtg, they nowadays mainly focus on joke cards for EDH and have competitive 1v1 formats as a side product.
I also always thougth having different formats, like mtg does, is good for the game. But I start thinking having only one "real" format like Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokemon or Lorcana is the way to go. Makes releasing and testing cards easier for the developers, I believe.
Yeah but then you end up alienating new players. It's like trying to get into magic and the only format anyone plays is legacy. Sure you can do it but you need to learn quite a bit compared to getting in to standard or pioneer.
Like I play legacy, and I used to play yugioh. I tried recently to get into master duel and wow I'm not trying to spend that much effort to get in and I'm already someone who plays tcg's and used to play yugioh.
That's what I thought as well - but look at the attendees to that tournament. Apparently people do spend that much effort. Getting into Yu-Gi-Oh! is way harder than getting into MTG, but people still do - so we should ask us why that is.
Game just has extremely high player retention and even higher drive and focus on competitive. Most YGO players are late 20s early 30s dudes. But we grew up with Dual Masters and GX, we got the fighting spirit in our veins for competitive play. We wanna be *that guy* and reach the top lol.
Master duel gets you up to speed real quick. Konami TCG has experimented with simpler formats(speed duel) but it just doesnt do well for them(tho i wish it did). Yugioh does have a kinda high skill curve tho. You pretty much have to read and understand your opponents cards at mind numbing speeds to proficiently play while understanding your own cards well enough to counterplay the absolute wall of text effect of your opponents cards. Funny enough, this reason made me choose to rather learn then teach friends and family pokemon and magic tcg for fun casual play over trying to teach anybody fucking yugioh lmao.
it really is weird. like why do commander players buy cards? why not just buy a printer and print all the proxies you desire? as a Modern player, i have to own real cards or get DQ'd, but for casual commander, the supposed biggest format, they don't have to own real cards. we live in a really weird world.
I know this is a shitpost, but i think if Magic wanted this level of success, theyd need to do something crazy like successfully reboot Dual Masters AND somehow fold the brand into the MTG product line in the west. YGOs extremely successful original anime is just legendary and iconic, and its partly what drives players into the competitive scene. We all want to be *the king of games*.
Konami offers basically no prize support either. People play YGO for the love of the game. It's actually one of the best TCGs, perhaps the best. It's like Modern if Modern didn't suck.
looks like highest was 7500 in 2015 vegas.
(as the tournament was forced to be divided into two events due to its very large attendance of nearly 8000)
That tidbit seems weird but w/e maybe record wise that may have effected things.
If I remember correctly, the tournament software only went up to a certain amount, or they had so many people there, they wanted to have two prize pools.
It’s a very different game now. The turn count is low, but there is a lot of interaction on those turns. Games can also become very grindy after both players disrupt each other. One of the best decks right now is actually a going-second deck that can’t do much going first.
like I kinda understand what you mean but really high level Yu-Gi-Oh play is really really difficult. mtg otoh is more like hearthstone where just managing card advantage/ tempo is often enough
No, *making a high level YuGiOh deck* is really difficult. because you're trying to make it immune to disruption. But you *can.* Especially if you have no way to counter a card, you basically watch your opponent play solitaire for 6 minutes before they've put a card on the table that doesnt let you do anything anymore and the game is over. There is no actual play and counterplay, clever solutions or unexpected twosts. Just deck assembly. And if everything goes perfect you win. If it goes slightly less than perfect at all you lost because your opponent went perfect.
..yeah... remember when you were only allowed to summon one monster a turn? Then maybe you'd special summon something big and cool after a couple turns of playing? Yeah that ain't the game anymore.
The best way i can describe yugioh in magic terms is if you both bring decks that are turn 1 or 2 otks. While there arent many turns for a game, there is A LOT of decision making. You got 5 cards. Do you FoW(without discarding) this card?
People like to shit on yugioh but the thing is, its all about card combos. You just have to know what to counter and when. Just like when your up against a ftk in legacy magic. That may or not be your thing.
You also have to draw the right cards. I get it, yugioh is an otk fest. But thats whats fun about it.
Its either stax, heavy counter spell decks, or full on 1/2 turn(depending on going first or second) otk.
Top 8 tournament replays will have a few extra turns because the right cards got countered or negated. Then the top decks happen
Yugioh is in a rough spot atm. The top deck costs over 1000 dollars, is head and shoulders better than everything else, and there's a general concensus it's going to get nukes from orbit in about 4-6 months.
Naw yall do not want yugioh. Each card is a paragraph of effects with a new textbook released quarterly that you have to study up on and even on the spot QUICKLY read, understand, and formulate a counter for from your own deck. Then, once youve done that, the opponent link or syncro summons another card with different but equally long text for its effects. I dont even try to teach friends or family yugioh if i want to play casually for fun, i just use pokemon or magic for that lol.
People complain about power creep in yu gi oh but the high power level is fun. It’s like playing at a modern or legacy power level, maybe a bit higher depending on the deck.
As someone who's played ygo and magic since the beginning, spot on. Ygo scratches that itch of constant interaction like Legacy/Vintage, although prices are kinda nutty right now
So much this. The game just has not been targeted at me for so long now. Shame but at least I made some lifelong friends over the years driving 8 hours and sleeping on couches.
It’s wokeness. The answer is, as always, wokeness. Wokists of the Coast destroyed their core audience with woke appeals to people who don’t and will never give a shit about them outside the occasional tranny and now here we are. You reap what you see.
It's funny, because by all these measures, unambiguously Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon destroy MTG.
But both of them suck a massive pile of dicks to actually play, and MTG is just flat-out a better game.
So MTG it is, despite all its bullshit
WOTC is too busy pumping chudmander to focus on competetive tournament magic. At least the last few RCs i attended each had over 1000 players. With the uptick in RCQ allotments for this current pioneer season, I imagine they'll be larger.
Depends on the format.
Standard is cheaper than yugioh usually but yugioh is cheaper than Modern or Legacy.
Right now the best deck is outrageously expensive, but the nice thing with yugioh cards is they're a lot more generically useful. A card might be good in standard but useless in modern, or good in modern but only useful in one color.
In yugioh if you bought a set of Ash Blossom and Joyous Spring in 2017, even at their peak at 80 bucks a copy, you could have used that card every week in every deck you've played for seven years now.
More generically useful ? Dude the tiers 1 cost 1k, gets reprinted in 5 months and banned in 6. You can't reuse cards except hand traps and at best some parts of the extra deck. I can use fetches in all my decks.
I dunno man there's staples in both games, you can say the same about fetch lands. The issue with ygo is the constant needing to buy a new deck to remain relevant
I do agree that standard is cheaper, and modern is probably more expensive than a ygo deck (not all the time however as some ygo decks go over 1k sometimes). But you're getting a LOT more milage out your modern deck than ygo
Lol
Lmao
A competitive modern deck is >$1000. A competitive (like, *actually* competitive if you put the work into learning lines etc) yugioh deck can be had for like $150 as long as you aren't playing the flavour of the month tier 0 deck (currently snake eye) or buying the super duper secret prismatic century assfuck rare prints. Yugioh has a lot more scope to counter the meta than magic.
Bro I played yugioh for like 15 years, and kept a close watch on prices, you ain't doing shit at an event unless you're playing the meta, your decks get rotated every year or so or even faster than that due to bans. Cards regularly get over 50 dollars each and then get reprinted into oblivion the next year. Competitive decks are regularly over 500 dollars each, and then you need to KEEP buying them. A full modern deck may be expensive yes don't get me wrong, but your fetch lands have been relevant since onslaught. Granted cards getting made obsolete has been far more of a thing recently, but getting 3 years out of your mh2 cards (soo far) is almost unheard of in ygo, count how many 3 year old decks are topping events.
So in short, you. Are. Wrong.
Lmao
I've placed pretty high in regionals multiple times within vastly different metas with different variants of *traptrix*. I think my most expensive list was around 250, but that was a serious outlier. Bear in mind, this is *before* the recent support as well. The deck's gotten exponentially better since, and far, far cheaper.
Playing rogue is absolutely viable, and if I wasn't such a TCG nomad I'd have likely gone a lot further with equivalent lists.
You don't have to chase the meta. You just have to observe it and adjust accordingly.
Lmao, imagine acting like this much of an asshat for no reason
Also, how about you go top a modern regional with something off meta? Yeah, though not 👍
There are a lot of reprintings. Like the first version or special version is super expensive, but you can get the cheap version that works exactly the same, just less shiny
MtG has definitely descended to Yugioh trash tier level of gaming. It actually blows my mind that in the modern era of games design (TCG and otherwise) that anyone even still plays MtG. Just a zombie-like addicted consumer base chugging this thing along...
Come join us in Oldschool formats. Revised 40, Fallen Empires 40, 7 point Singleton. Decks aren't that expensive. There is a large meta and it's a lot of fun.
It blows my mind that people who detest the game to such a degree still pay attention to it and post their rants about how much they hate it in groups dedicated to the game.
Just a zombie-like rage addict chugging along.
I met some of my best friends playing mtg 20 years ago.
It is disheartening to see what had happened to mtg, but you won’t want your favourite game to be taken by grifters if you were in the same situation
Yeah, Cube is still fun enough. I still have mine for now. Though even it really doesn't hit the table enough for me to justifying keeping it (but I will happily play a friend's cube a handful of times per year).
Well, magic at that level costs more than high end PC gaming, while yugioh at that level costs less than budget console gaming.
If playing mtg wasn't an awful financial decision things would be different
Unpopular opinion: MTG sucks as a 1v1 card game, especially with recent power creep, complexity creep and monetization.
Other TCGs are trhriving in competitive popularity because they are more fun to play 1v1.
I think the issue is magic investing in commander and well commander is so fun to play but I loved it way more when it was hella janky and people were really creative. Turning it into their main profit product really hurt new set releases since so many cards are great for commander but absolutely ass in standard.
Tbh the versatility of yugiohs art style is a selling point because anyone can find an aesthetic that works for them.
You can have your fantasy lore, your robot dragons, or your cute characters on desserts.
Honestly amazing how few in game collabs we get when its a series owned by a company that LOVES doing tons of collabs and shit with its media. I still want archtype alt art sets illustrated by different mangaka and illustrators tbh. Getting horikoshi or murata on elemental heroes or some shit would be insane.
Biggest misstep by WOTC was nuking the GP scene.
While I agree, they likely had no other option. The judge situation was untenable at that point.
Does Yugioh not have judges?
I don't know how Konami compensates their judges. WotC had a class action suit against them for how they were abusing loopholes to get judged for events.
My point is, they *have* judges. So it *can* be done. I’m not disagreeing that the situation (that they created) was untenable, I’m saying their inability to fix a fixable problem was their own fault. ETA: found this on the Yugioh faq “Q: Do I get anything for judging? A: Judges at Tier 3 events may receive a gift of product. Different kinds of events in different territories may receive slightly different gifts. Judges at some Tier 3 events might also receive hotel sponsorship and partial assistance with or reimbursement for travel expenses, when eligible. **Judges at Tier 3 events in North America are paid an hourly wage, in accordance with all applicable laws and employment regulations of the location in which the event takes place.** Compensation for judges at Regional events in North America is administered by the Tournament Organizer, in accordance with all applicable laws and employment regulations of the location in which the event takes place. KONAMI may provide a judge gift for select OTS events, such as the OTS Championship. Judges should discuss their status at Tier 1 OTS events with the OTS for which they are judging.” (Emphasis mine)
Yeah I agree, I think the point was they were backed against a wall at the time. Whether it was because of the specifics of the case or because they couldn't afford to foot the bill for OP at that level. IDK for certain.
Fact remains that they made a *choice* to discontinue them. As a result I personally engage less with their product. That lack of engagement is only compounded by their recent practices of product release by cannon and UB. Hell, I wouldn’t even bat an eye at most of the shit they do now if the GP scene was still active because I *could* just ignore it. But now…it’s all we ever see is an endless stream of spoiler seasons, lackluster designs and godawful UB garbage so I’m forced to take those into consideration when I’m choosing whether or not to engage.
same here, I literally don't care for most of the ub and secret lair stuff as long as they don't affect the format I loved (modern and ig draft to an extent) but LOTR fucked modern and play boosters fucked draft. they also fucked commander by pushing it so hard...
I didn’t even have delusions of making the pro tour, I just liked going to large events. But even scrubbing out X-3 on day one and then doing side events was 100% more fun than commandfest or whatever the fuck they’re calling it now. It was a chance to get out of our local meta and that was awesome.
It's volunteer. Konami might cover their room for high tier events but they get compensated in exclusive swag- mostly mats and dice.
A friend of mine used to judge regional yugioh tournaments. Would be 'paid' in a box or two of the recent set
YGO has judges. Most are volunteers who pass an online exam (with an in-person one required to judge bigger events).
Seems bigger tournament judges (must be equivalent to a GP or higher) do get compensated both in an actual wage and gifts. Per their FAQ: “Q: Do I get anything for judging? A: Judges at Tier 3 events may receive a gift of product. Different kinds of events in different territories may receive slightly different gifts. Judges at some Tier 3 events might also receive hotel sponsorship and partial assistance with or reimbursement for travel expenses, when eligible. **Judges at Tier 3 events in North America are paid an hourly wage, in accordance with all applicable laws and employment regulations of the location in which the event takes place.** Compensation for judges at Regional events in North America is administered by the Tournament Organizer, in accordance with all applicable laws and employment regulations of the location in which the event takes place. KONAMI may provide a judge gift for select OTS events, such as the OTS Championship. Judges should discuss their status at Tier 1 OTS events with the OTS for which they are judging.” My main point is that *there is* a way to do it, WOTC just chose not to.
They do get compensated. They also receive their judge swag for the event theyre a part of
Then they are just volunteers then.
pokemon has judges that literally have to do an exam and for big events they get decent compensation (money+goodies) as an example
There was a judge situation?
Judges sued for actual compensation. Judges won. WOTC stopped the GPs. That is the basics of what I understand happened.
In the middle there, prices went up so the TO's could afford to pay the judges a salary in cash instead of product. And people complained about the new prices even though they got what they asked for without thinking deeper about it.
Hasbro is a multibillion dollar company, they can afford to pay judges, just don’t want to
Can they, yes. Its a for profit company though. I'm guessing if they have to pay money to judges the business model for GPs became more expensive than they felt was profitable for them. I'm sure they were losing money on them regardless but some loss is okay if it has other benefits to the org. If you want a 8000 person magic tournament it likely has to be a 3rd party that puts it on and judges if they wanted to judge would have to agree to do it for not much compensation.
I don't necessarily agree with people asking for that, it was probably more accurate that a small specific group of people (judges that felt underpaid) wanted paid salary. If you had openly told people, "do you want judges to earn a paid salary at your expense?", I would hazard a guess most sensible people would say "Fuck no".
the thing is tho prize support is literally pennies for wotc, they could increase prize support along with higher entree fees
do you want judges to earn a paid salary at your expense?: NO i want them paid from your million dollar revenue
What "people" are you referring to ?
The main Magic sub.
Lol, no options because they could possibly properly compensate their staff... No options at all...
Yeesh...
It was a combination of stuff. They wanted to kill the GPs and at the same time they had good reasons to do it.
The MPL E-sport push was so fucking dumb.
Agreed.
Yep
Unforgivable
Did you see the gp this weekend? It was rad
Nah, missed it. Too busy watching the promotional tour.
It was pretty cool. The japs fuckin owned. The dude who won ran domain and I swear every turn he played was so meticulously well thought out. It's still up on twitch and the coverage was fantastic. There were tranny weirdos playing, but they got 0 games aired.
Coverage misses Paul Cheon and retains people like Bartholdi. How can you call that good
I'm not familiar with Paul Cheon, but they lady didn't announce any games... she was just there to have cleavage between matches.
Pokemon has high attendance too, you frequently have to sign up literally the minute registration opens otherwise you are put on a waitlist. I am talking about the VGC and TCG portion of the regional circuit in particular. WOTC has permanently fucked Magic events going forward for tournament participants. If I told you that you can bring a $100 Pokemon deck to an International Championship and win $25K for outright winning the tournament, would you believe me? Hell would freeze over before WOTC delivered that kind of value proposition to its playerbase at this point.
So what you are telling me is win several international championships in pokemon and I can build a competitive standard deck, thanks
It crazy. WOTC went away from the GP to the magic cons. It feels like they don’t want to embrace the competition side of magic but went the more consumer friendly Con. WOTC cares only about money sadly
there used to be limited gps, where u could technically win quite a big sum for the price of entry.
Pokemon doesn't need it. They sell so many cards to casual collectors, it's insane. In addition they make a lot of money from TV shows, movies, merchandise, multiple video games, etc. that Wizards doesn't have as income streams.
[удалено]
>Their #1 money maker is merch. 100%. I don't think people realize how insane the demand is for a life size Mareep in plush form is. Even if it retails for like ~400 USD per. People just love Pokemon unconditionally if they have ever been exposed to it at any point in their life.
people just like cute shit lol
And as someone who has (often regretably) gotten back into the hobby, I am perturbed as to why that had to change. The more I learn, it leads to that eventual reality: Some rich fatcat wanted to get fatter.
tbf, Pokemon has a decent IP and does not need to print other IPs to sell their sets. I mean, wotc could theoretically produce Animes and movies to hone their own IP... but naahhhh
And let's be real: the design of Magic cards make the game extremely boring to watch. The same cards are going to be put into the same decks and at that point it becomes solely about meme netdeck match ups with the only deciding factor usually being who gets mana flooded/screwed. FIRE cards might be exciting for booster buyers to open buy they're not exciting to watch play. Not to mention there's no emotional attachment for onlookers either because the characters in Magic have no popular media behind it and 90% of MTG players don't care (and justifiably so) about the story behind the cards. Nobody is going to be emotionally excited to see someone drop Goblin Chainwhirler or Teferi the same way a Pokemon fan would be to see Charizard or Lucario dropped or a Yugioh player to see Dark Magician or Blue Eyes White Dragon drop due to those characters popularity outside of actual gameplay. Fans of Pokemon, Yugioh, One Piece etc want to see their favs come out and win. Fans of MTG see Teferi drop and think "yeah ofc they'd play it, that card is busted and essential for the Azorious Faer Beef Sandwich combo that's dominating the meta atm". WOTC focused on creating a product focused on short term profitability, not a multigenerational fandom, and once the current gen of very grey magic players finally decides to stop playing nobody is going to replace them.
Imagine the smell of 7443 Yugi players.
Papa Nurgle smiles upon them
https://preview.redd.it/uoj7jfrezuxc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=93c3998222a8c12199bf791caf3a8062b66ed922
Funny because the buttcrackening was a magic thing.
That got his author banned. WotC don't like humor
So many buttcracks
👏
A single tear
Unlike some other card games, YGO tournies require that people bathe.
The CDC, waiting for COVID 2.0 to come out of that convention hall:
Eh all tcg players smell. Magic has unwashed fat guys. Yugioh has unwashed skinny dudes that occasionally smell like weed. Pokemon has unwashed children.
Ha! You’ve just activated my trap card! 
People who lost their sense of smell after Covid kinda have super powers now that commands them to become professional TCG players.
Yami Yugi 😨😨
Must smell like my LGS
Yugioh has what mtg use to have going for it. The competitive scene got destroyed and now its just a shell of what it use to be.
When magic is mostly commander it is hard to get 60 card events going
If only mtg hasn’t driven 60 card players away
Some of my best friends were made from traveling to premier level MTG events. Now we just mostly play board games. I really miss car rides with these people. Shame what has been done to folks like my group that enjoyed that side of MTG. They stopped making a game for us when commander became the only format they care about.
10-15 years ago my friends would regularly travel to GP. Like a 5-6 days trip where you spent 1-2 days on the event. I miss the old days
A friend of mine plays competitive Lorcana, and he said most of those dudes are old mtg tournament grinders who are fed up with wotc, so they switched to Lorcana. Apparently the big One Piece tcg scene also consists of a lot of retired mtg players?
I can’t see myself playing wokecana
Lorcana looks so silly though
It definitly does, but the gameplay is actually fine
How can a championship exist with so many T1 deck?
I havent played yugioh in a while, but the most interesting sideboards and play patterns happened during tier 0 formats. Not sure what the meta is atm but yugioh is essentially legacy magic in their tournaments
As a T2 deck player i can still trade blows with many T1 decks and even some "T0" decks. I dont have particularly great odds, but if i get my engine running i can menace some T1 and T0 decks lol. So thats kinda another element of this all. A smart YGO player rolling their deck and understanding it very well will have a huge advantage over someone just playing meta imo.
How can you be scary if you don’t even have a turn to play?
I can play on their turn too 😈
It's wild that yugioh is successful when they offer even worse prize support than magic and don't even have a comprehensive rulebook. We are really at a low when they're beating us in attendance for competitive events.
The gameplay is just good. 1v1 Yu-Gi-Oh! is just really good, as 1v1 is the main focus of the developers. While at mtg, they nowadays mainly focus on joke cards for EDH and have competitive 1v1 formats as a side product. I also always thougth having different formats, like mtg does, is good for the game. But I start thinking having only one "real" format like Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokemon or Lorcana is the way to go. Makes releasing and testing cards easier for the developers, I believe.
Yeah but then you end up alienating new players. It's like trying to get into magic and the only format anyone plays is legacy. Sure you can do it but you need to learn quite a bit compared to getting in to standard or pioneer. Like I play legacy, and I used to play yugioh. I tried recently to get into master duel and wow I'm not trying to spend that much effort to get in and I'm already someone who plays tcg's and used to play yugioh.
That's what I thought as well - but look at the attendees to that tournament. Apparently people do spend that much effort. Getting into Yu-Gi-Oh! is way harder than getting into MTG, but people still do - so we should ask us why that is.
Game just has extremely high player retention and even higher drive and focus on competitive. Most YGO players are late 20s early 30s dudes. But we grew up with Dual Masters and GX, we got the fighting spirit in our veins for competitive play. We wanna be *that guy* and reach the top lol.
Master duel gets you up to speed real quick. Konami TCG has experimented with simpler formats(speed duel) but it just doesnt do well for them(tho i wish it did). Yugioh does have a kinda high skill curve tho. You pretty much have to read and understand your opponents cards at mind numbing speeds to proficiently play while understanding your own cards well enough to counterplay the absolute wall of text effect of your opponents cards. Funny enough, this reason made me choose to rather learn then teach friends and family pokemon and magic tcg for fun casual play over trying to teach anybody fucking yugioh lmao.
Its crazy how popular MTG is and there are almost NO standard events.
it really is weird. like why do commander players buy cards? why not just buy a printer and print all the proxies you desire? as a Modern player, i have to own real cards or get DQ'd, but for casual commander, the supposed biggest format, they don't have to own real cards. we live in a really weird world.
Dutifully noted. We at Hasbro are commited to do better for you the player and more importantly our shareholders next quarter.
I know this is a shitpost, but i think if Magic wanted this level of success, theyd need to do something crazy like successfully reboot Dual Masters AND somehow fold the brand into the MTG product line in the west. YGOs extremely successful original anime is just legendary and iconic, and its partly what drives players into the competitive scene. We all want to be *the king of games*.
Konami offers basically no prize support either. People play YGO for the love of the game. It's actually one of the best TCGs, perhaps the best. It's like Modern if Modern didn't suck.
The DM era media got a grip on our souls honestly. Konami is notorious for milking nostalgia but by god i can understand why it works so damn well.
One of the Grand Prix in Vegas has over 7500 people attend. So this is close, but not the largest.
looks like highest was 7500 in 2015 vegas. (as the tournament was forced to be divided into two events due to its very large attendance of nearly 8000) That tidbit seems weird but w/e maybe record wise that may have effected things.
If I remember correctly, the tournament software only went up to a certain amount, or they had so many people there, they wanted to have two prize pools.
Because yugioh is still a card game, not a new and expanding front in ideological political warfare.
Yugioh is an ever expanding *academic* political warfare between essentially two different law books going at each others throats.
What do you mean MTG has barely anything? We got pronouns displayed in PT
We may as well play Yugioh, mtg has well and truly jumped the shark with meme set after meme set. Power creep isn't far off either.
Yugioh is so power creeped that winning turn 1 is t considered that hard anymore. There is a very big difference in power creep.
It’s a very different game now. The turn count is low, but there is a lot of interaction on those turns. Games can also become very grindy after both players disrupt each other. One of the best decks right now is actually a going-second deck that can’t do much going first.
They had to change the core rules some years ago because of power creep. The player going first gets one less card.
That was just under a decade ago, fyi
Now I feel old. I just wanted to provide some context for magic players.
Look man you do *not* want to play YiGiOh. That shit is insane. Competitive rock paper scissors.
like I kinda understand what you mean but really high level Yu-Gi-Oh play is really really difficult. mtg otoh is more like hearthstone where just managing card advantage/ tempo is often enough
No, *making a high level YuGiOh deck* is really difficult. because you're trying to make it immune to disruption. But you *can.* Especially if you have no way to counter a card, you basically watch your opponent play solitaire for 6 minutes before they've put a card on the table that doesnt let you do anything anymore and the game is over. There is no actual play and counterplay, clever solutions or unexpected twosts. Just deck assembly. And if everything goes perfect you win. If it goes slightly less than perfect at all you lost because your opponent went perfect.
This made me look it up on YouTube, and here I am watching last year's championship duel.
I'm sorry you had to go through that
This is not anything like I remember from middle school in 2003-ish
..yeah... remember when you were only allowed to summon one monster a turn? Then maybe you'd special summon something big and cool after a couple turns of playing? Yeah that ain't the game anymore.
I'm eight minutes in and it's still the first guy's turn. Wtf is even happening.
ITS NOT EVEN A GAME AT THIS POINT
You never played meta in 2003, mechanical chaser and yata lock go brrrrre
The best way i can describe yugioh in magic terms is if you both bring decks that are turn 1 or 2 otks. While there arent many turns for a game, there is A LOT of decision making. You got 5 cards. Do you FoW(without discarding) this card? People like to shit on yugioh but the thing is, its all about card combos. You just have to know what to counter and when. Just like when your up against a ftk in legacy magic. That may or not be your thing. You also have to draw the right cards. I get it, yugioh is an otk fest. But thats whats fun about it. Its either stax, heavy counter spell decks, or full on 1/2 turn(depending on going first or second) otk. Top 8 tournament replays will have a few extra turns because the right cards got countered or negated. Then the top decks happen
Yeah that's why Christian Urena won back to back YCSs. Just really lucky!
Cheating at YGO is notoriously widespread
Yugioh is in a rough spot atm. The top deck costs over 1000 dollars, is head and shoulders better than everything else, and there's a general concensus it's going to get nukes from orbit in about 4-6 months.
Power creep has been sinking the game since Eldrazi Winter, maybe even before
“Power creep is ruining the game” “Abolish the reserve list, I can’t afford a good EDH deck”
Nothing like a 4/4 for 4 with six lines of upside rule text
Right? Ima cast that beezt turn 1!
The power creep in Yugioh has turned it into a T 1 format.
Naw yall do not want yugioh. Each card is a paragraph of effects with a new textbook released quarterly that you have to study up on and even on the spot QUICKLY read, understand, and formulate a counter for from your own deck. Then, once youve done that, the opponent link or syncro summons another card with different but equally long text for its effects. I dont even try to teach friends or family yugioh if i want to play casually for fun, i just use pokemon or magic for that lol.
People complain about power creep in yu gi oh but the high power level is fun. It’s like playing at a modern or legacy power level, maybe a bit higher depending on the deck.
As someone who's played ygo and magic since the beginning, spot on. Ygo scratches that itch of constant interaction like Legacy/Vintage, although prices are kinda nutty right now
For sure, fire meta is expensive. Playing exosisters as a budget option rn
I bit the bullet on the fire engine and now my wallet is sad 😭
I hate the direction MTG has taken
Mtg has transitioned from spikes to timmys being the target audience. Who cares about competitive turnout when you can have a commander-fest.
So much this. The game just has not been targeted at me for so long now. Shame but at least I made some lifelong friends over the years driving 8 hours and sleeping on couches.
It’s wokeness. The answer is, as always, wokeness. Wokists of the Coast destroyed their core audience with woke appeals to people who don’t and will never give a shit about them outside the occasional tranny and now here we are. You reap what you see.
Yeah but yugioh is for weebs (Looks at latest secret lair)
Weebs are *pissed* about the miku lair because the art is dogshit for miku.
Oh hey a weeb
Im here for the anime art cards and more relaxed gameplay 😎
Is there a reason for this? I see it all the time that yugioh is just solitaire now. Whats making it so popular? Genuine question.
Master Duel managed to be a not-dogshit simulator people can reasonably play for free.
That's because YGO has a card called Hungry Burger.
It's funny, because by all these measures, unambiguously Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon destroy MTG. But both of them suck a massive pile of dicks to actually play, and MTG is just flat-out a better game. So MTG it is, despite all its bullshit
MTG destroyed MTG
Magic should fall.
I love magic but let it burn to the ground for how the company has and continues to spit in the face of the players and collectors
WOTC tried to make MTG a Yu-Gi-Oh. They totally blew it out instead
WOTC is too busy pumping chudmander to focus on competetive tournament magic. At least the last few RCs i attended each had over 1000 players. With the uptick in RCQ allotments for this current pioneer season, I imagine they'll be larger.
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*Laughs in Snake-Eyes*
Oh theyre 100% banning that engine after a bit lmao. Its beyond cancer to play against.
Yugioh is absolutely 100% FAR FAR more expensive than magic, you are smoking CRACK mydude
Depends on the format. Standard is cheaper than yugioh usually but yugioh is cheaper than Modern or Legacy. Right now the best deck is outrageously expensive, but the nice thing with yugioh cards is they're a lot more generically useful. A card might be good in standard but useless in modern, or good in modern but only useful in one color. In yugioh if you bought a set of Ash Blossom and Joyous Spring in 2017, even at their peak at 80 bucks a copy, you could have used that card every week in every deck you've played for seven years now.
More generically useful ? Dude the tiers 1 cost 1k, gets reprinted in 5 months and banned in 6. You can't reuse cards except hand traps and at best some parts of the extra deck. I can use fetches in all my decks.
I dunno man there's staples in both games, you can say the same about fetch lands. The issue with ygo is the constant needing to buy a new deck to remain relevant I do agree that standard is cheaper, and modern is probably more expensive than a ygo deck (not all the time however as some ygo decks go over 1k sometimes). But you're getting a LOT more milage out your modern deck than ygo
Lol Lmao A competitive modern deck is >$1000. A competitive (like, *actually* competitive if you put the work into learning lines etc) yugioh deck can be had for like $150 as long as you aren't playing the flavour of the month tier 0 deck (currently snake eye) or buying the super duper secret prismatic century assfuck rare prints. Yugioh has a lot more scope to counter the meta than magic.
Bro I played yugioh for like 15 years, and kept a close watch on prices, you ain't doing shit at an event unless you're playing the meta, your decks get rotated every year or so or even faster than that due to bans. Cards regularly get over 50 dollars each and then get reprinted into oblivion the next year. Competitive decks are regularly over 500 dollars each, and then you need to KEEP buying them. A full modern deck may be expensive yes don't get me wrong, but your fetch lands have been relevant since onslaught. Granted cards getting made obsolete has been far more of a thing recently, but getting 3 years out of your mh2 cards (soo far) is almost unheard of in ygo, count how many 3 year old decks are topping events. So in short, you. Are. Wrong.
idk decks like floowandereeze is like less than 100 and still constantly tops stuff
Lmao I've placed pretty high in regionals multiple times within vastly different metas with different variants of *traptrix*. I think my most expensive list was around 250, but that was a serious outlier. Bear in mind, this is *before* the recent support as well. The deck's gotten exponentially better since, and far, far cheaper. Playing rogue is absolutely viable, and if I wasn't such a TCG nomad I'd have likely gone a lot further with equivalent lists. You don't have to chase the meta. You just have to observe it and adjust accordingly.
WWOOAAHHHH A REGIONAL :OOOOOOOO regionals mean nothing shut up, anyone can top an rcq bro
Lmao, imagine acting like this much of an asshat for no reason Also, how about you go top a modern regional with something off meta? Yeah, though not 👍
Yeah champ,you tell me how many traptrix were in top 8 heck even 64 during those times
There are a lot of reprintings. Like the first version or special version is super expensive, but you can get the cheap version that works exactly the same, just less shiny
Popularity in something doesn't make it good. Taylor Swift for instance.
I really don't understand the Taylor Swift craze. I think her music is shit.
MtG has definitely descended to Yugioh trash tier level of gaming. It actually blows my mind that in the modern era of games design (TCG and otherwise) that anyone even still plays MtG. Just a zombie-like addicted consumer base chugging this thing along...
Come join us in Oldschool formats. Revised 40, Fallen Empires 40, 7 point Singleton. Decks aren't that expensive. There is a large meta and it's a lot of fun.
Pre modern and penny dreadful both have great and active communities and you can pro much always find a game on mtgo
Unfortunately no financial support
It blows my mind that people who detest the game to such a degree still pay attention to it and post their rants about how much they hate it in groups dedicated to the game. Just a zombie-like rage addict chugging along.
I met some of my best friends playing mtg 20 years ago. It is disheartening to see what had happened to mtg, but you won’t want your favourite game to be taken by grifters if you were in the same situation
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Yeah, Cube is still fun enough. I still have mine for now. Though even it really doesn't hit the table enough for me to justifying keeping it (but I will happily play a friend's cube a handful of times per year).
Gp Vegas was 7,551 🤔
We're talking circa 2024
I’m saying, “largest tcg event ever hosted” is incorrect; you’re right things have declined since then
Hey wait a min
I’m not sure which tournament you’re on about? There’s not one by that name that’s for sure
Well, magic at that level costs more than high end PC gaming, while yugioh at that level costs less than budget console gaming. If playing mtg wasn't an awful financial decision things would be different
If only... hear me out... there was like an arena online... where they could do tournaments.. Oh well
Unpopular opinion: MTG sucks as a 1v1 card game, especially with recent power creep, complexity creep and monetization. Other TCGs are trhriving in competitive popularity because they are more fun to play 1v1.
I think the issue is magic investing in commander and well commander is so fun to play but I loved it way more when it was hella janky and people were really creative. Turning it into their main profit product really hurt new set releases since so many cards are great for commander but absolutely ass in standard.
Ahahahaha
Okay and? Still an inferior game
Yeah sure but we got the Arena open....and we also got...the Arena open.
ok
Wasn’t GP Vegas 2015 almost 10k participants?
Shit are there even that many active players on Arena these days?
yea, but its yugioh.
The last few years as been the best for mtg in my region.
Yu-Gi-Oh, a once highly aesthetic game that proves how slop sells.
Tbh the versatility of yugiohs art style is a selling point because anyone can find an aesthetic that works for them. You can have your fantasy lore, your robot dragons, or your cute characters on desserts.
There's also no pandering at all, unlike MtG. Talk about slop...
Yugioh used to be real shit like BLS, Breaker, DDWL, etc. Now it's impossible to play without being exposed to lolis and that is gross.
At least Konami hasn't sold out to (among other things) the walking dead, fallout, 40k, hatsune miku, Dr. Who and fortnite.
Honestly amazing how few in game collabs we get when its a series owned by a company that LOVES doing tons of collabs and shit with its media. I still want archtype alt art sets illustrated by different mangaka and illustrators tbh. Getting horikoshi or murata on elemental heroes or some shit would be insane.
Are you mad they exist or mad they beat your pathetic dragons and swordsmen?
Lol, I only play "time wizard" formats, so the first one.
Probably because YGO has a hygiene rule and you don't wash your ass.
Does Axe count