Are Trap Cards A Failed Yu-Gi-Oh! Mechanic? The Backrow Deep Dive! | Heart of the Cast #5

hello and welcome back everyone to another episode of the heart of the cast today hell we should be live on the Apple Pro uh platform we finally got that started out didn't we [ __ ] yes starting from last weekend we are now also available on Apple podcast so if that's your preferred platform to listen to podcasts then you're welcome you can now enjoy uh also past episodes are all they're all up to date um on Apple now and uh for anyone who's going to complain about it uh at this point just cry about okay because three platforms is more than enough if you don't use Spotify Apple or Google like listen we don't need to be on Soundcloud we don't need to be on any of that stuff all right so uh just enjoy these for now anyway uh today is yet another hot controversial topic we've got trap cards people love them or people hate them and some people hate them but for the wrong reasons but yeah interesting interesting we'll get into that so we're g to go through the history and the principal direction of trap cards over the years since the beginning of the game cuz we are two old men who have experienced trap cards for a long time uh we'll be talking about traps today and how they've developed and evolved and mechanically how they've changed we be talking about lingering trap cards quote unquote floodgates uh we don't want to spend too much time on this because that is going to be yeah FL floodgates is an entire topic on its own we just can't go through an episode of talking about trap cards without mentioning floodgates but we're have a dedicated Floodgate discussion cuz uh I think we both have a thing or two to say about those things got a thing or two got a bone to pick floodgates uh but yeah it's uh the cousin of trap cards usually so we have to talk about floodgates a little bit today uh the talking about about the modern trap card design issues that there is why do trap cards seem to have fallen off compared to how they have been over the years what's wrong with them today and where can we take trap cards in the future yeah first of all before begin um let's uh talk a little bit about the new juicy news we just going probably send like a couple of minutes on this there's a new battles of Legends set out there some reprints there's uh I don't think any Imports but yeah thoughts on your uh thoughts on the product uh I mean there technically is I think One Import cuz that Synchro promo Time Lord thingy at least for Europe is new for us because it used to be a jump promo but yeah for the most part it's just reprints um I just assume that thing was like a reprint it's it's it's very irr to be fair it may as well be because it's not very relevant I don't think so it's it's just technically it's worth noting it's new for us Europeans but in an it was already out the yeah no it's got mostly it's it's it's it's weird because it's split between like it's got some viable reprints that were like necessary you know I'm thinking cards like Galaxy Photon Lord which was like a generic rank eight that used to be very expensive uh the same thing is true for chaos Emperor king of Armageddon uh that thing was also very expensive because it's only had like one reprint beforehand or something like that after being a ycs promo H is that the pendulum chaos Emperor exactly the the pendulum chaos Emperor was uh it was in a previous battles of Legends and I think that thing was like 60 bucks at some point when I last looked at not much as it used to be I suppose before I mean yeah the the promo card is more than that but the the one from battles of Legends used to be very expensive last time I checked um so it's got that it's got some competitive cards in it it's also got a decent amount of like time wizard reprints especially in the comment section uh talk about time wizard there's one relevant one that we saw got reprinted that was a bit of a jump scare we saw the gimmick puppet oh right right right which is extra funny cuz I heard that that thing was bought out recently in like on on like the American Market where like literally two days before this the openings for battles of Legends thingy dropped uh I saw memes on like Twitter posting how the cheapest gimmick puppet Nightmare on TCG player was like a th000 bucks um because they bought out all the other ones and then it got buying out really mean d it's is it like just a joke that some people do like they put it in their basket but they don't actually buy out cuz I remember my Discord uh during like Co at some point they they made vion Cube Spike to like 20,000 okay that probably didn't really Spike no I think I think there's both I think there is I think there is instances where like people just do it for fun just put them all into the basket and make it seem like oh my God there's no ancient Le left you get yours now quick for 20 bucks a piece but I think um I think it can be a real thing where some vendors just decide to hey we're going to like quote unquote attack this one card because we think it's got potential we're just going to get all of them off of the market and then resell them with profit which is this like I don't know you can think of that whatever you think I don't think it's the coolest thing ever to do but I think it does happen and I think that is something that uh was maybe attempted with gimmick puppet Nightmare and didn't quite work out cuz it got a reprint announced two days later which is very funny so in case you did uh go through the motion of purchasing every single gimmick poppet Nightmare on TCG player now um enjoy your like 2,000 play sets I think the set is like a good $10 to $15 range card reprint set right like there's a bunch of cards that exact yeah problem that one or two Kaiju that were like kind of expensive as well mhm so it's some good stuff there the problem with that I feel like is that uh you rarely the the reprints even though they are necessary they're not going to be that expensive as the you the original card was right like the the chaos Emperor Dragon reprint is not going to be 60 bucks like the the previous one was so sorry I'm just laughing at the guy in chat who says I want pop like yeah they're going to reprint pop where's bonfire magicami okay Fara has been one guide sorry so the question is like how how worth opening is it cuz like I mean people are talking like hey I need that one card from the set and I'm just going to am I going to buy boxes until I pull the chaos Emperor or am I just going to pick up the one card that I need from it it's like a overall arcing discussion of product in general and it's like why do people buy product why do people go out to purchase boxes and stuff is it because they actually are looking for the card is it just because of the enjoyment of pulling I think it's got to be a mix of the two at least for me personally there's like um there needs to be enough stuff that I'm happy to get from a set for me to want to open it if if there's only like one specific card that I need from it then I'm just not going to enjoy opening the product that much right yeah I think reprint sets are always like the most fun to open um Rarity collection was like really enjoyable this set is like okay I think like it just depends like how much people trade which I don't really see happen that often anymore don't when I've last traded a card I'm going to be honest with you it's a little sad to think about but it's been a while since I've traded a card in this trading card game but I think the idea is that like all right here's like a couple cards I want to I want uh I'm going to buy like a couple boxes and then anything extra I can throw into a binder and then trade with people yeah uh I suppose is like the ideal kind of approach to it it might happen more frequently for people that regularly go to locals cuz I don't I unfortunately don't have that where I go to locals like every week I feel like if I was going every week I might I might throw up a binder and like see if I can get some trades going for me personally like I've I've been to locals I go to locals every week um I don't see people trading personally okay fair enough okay it might be the it might be the type of locals I go to cuz it's very competitive and I think competitive players in general don't trade as much they just kind of I mean they have what they need right they know what they need in advance they like they just go there yeah I see well anyway um any final points about the Box before we move into the main topic uh no I think it's all right overall not I'm not super hyped about it but I'm happy that those cards that needed reprints got reprints so I'm happy on that end yeah why orale is no longer a $15 reason but y go players I guess all right let's get into it today we're talking about trap cards trap cards the purple pink whatever you want to call it magenta set cards that you leave on the field that frustrate and anger your opponents today uh we've seen a big sort of shift in how trap cards have been played over the years from the very beginning of the game from the very onset of the game I'd say one of the most interesting things uh at least like in terms of the icon iconicism uh of trap cards is that the main thing is if you ask any Normie person just any like non- Yu-Gi player not even a trading card player you ask them like some like iconic things that you know what do you know about Yu-Gi-Oh right they'll say like Exodia obliterate right they'll say like dark magician and one thing I hear very often is ha you activated my trap card oh yeah trap cards are so what's the word culturally relevant they're so like part and parcel of the game and so fundamental to Yu-Gi-Oh um especially back in the day um over the years we've seen that trap cards have gotten a little bit different I suppose so uh do you want to tell us a little bit about how trap cards initially started and what their purpose was and how you played the Trap cards at the very of the game it's funny that we even have to do this that like we have to like in order to see how trap cards were intended to work we have to go back 20 years uh but I mean you've made some really good points it's a very iconic thing and I feel like it is one of the things that used to set Yu-Gi-Oh apart from other card games um was the the functionality of trap cards like the the idea of interacting with your opponent uh on their turn right by by setting up some cards and your opponent would your opponent would have the ability to see how many possible interactions you had right it wasn't like where you were hiding them in your hand and your opponent didn't know you know do they have like now do they have a hand trap or do they not now it's like this okay I see my opponent has two or three set cards on the board most likely those are trap cards um and I need to maneuver through that right and it was a it was a thing where you would have all kinds of things you would have like things that trigger on summon so like one big deal in older formats was playing around cards like torrential tribute which would destroy the entire field when you uh got hit with it but you needed to summon to to hit into it or you had I mean two of the most iconic cards when you talk at all literal every single time wizard format between like the very beginning and 2010 or 11 it's like Mira fors and torrential tribute like everyone who's ever played any sort of competitive Yu-Gi-Oh format back in the day will know how impactful it was to be able to play around those cards uh they were both limited throughout the the first like I don't know 10 maybe longer years of of Yu-Gi-Oh's history so like seeing those cards in your opponent's graveyard they had been used freed up your entire decision uh making process um but yeah just in general the idea of trap cards used to be um you just you just set them from your hand you wait until it's your opponent's turn and then if your opponent ever triggers your trap card you know you find a good spot for your trap card to use it you can interact with your opponent uh just so your opponent wouldn't be able to just you know do whatever they want to do on their turn without having any sort of interaction uh and I think that that c Concept in itself is is pretty healthy like it's pretty good it used to be very um iconic and almost exclusive to Yu-Gi-Oh to be able to uh interact with your opponent in in their turn right which is something that other card games are sometimes lacking I know magic has interaction on the opponent's turn but Pokemon has very little for example which are kind of like the big three especially back in the day and so I think one literally I don't think it's physically possible in Pokemon I had some at some point they had like a card that did it but I I don't remember what it was called but like in in theory the Pokemon trading card came just doesn't have it at all like in from the rule book like per per the rules I don't think they have it um but yeah so I think that um one thing that's always really intrigued me and fascinated me the most is whenever you look at historical deck lists um even the most combo brained heavy like reasoning gate in 2005 or just any sort of combo Wombo deck throughout the history of this game has still played the Trap cards yeah uh one thing that I've always found uh really odd is like even something like injectors which is like literally an explosive you know otk deck um yeah you still played like a couple of trap cards because you needed to wait you needed to uh set up your turn you needed to you know you you didn't just have in instant access to your extra and Main deck at any one time with any singular pearly quick play spell for example like in Yu-Gi-Oh right and I think that's always something that's been interesting ever since the beginning of the game it's like it was completely reasonable to just play trap stun in a combo deck like you could just sit and wait and then fire off trap stun and then next turn you just you just pop off um that was like a standard way to play the game this is like a it's a it's a a segue to what we're going to talk about later because obviously we're going to talk talk about the role of trap cards in the modern era so and that's obviously very different from what you've described and so at some point there's a there there's this sort of shift from uh back in the day every single deck well not every single there was a few exceptions but let's say 90 plus% of the decks would always consist of like 10 trap cards maybe just so you would like always have the option to like set one or two in case you obviously didn't win the game on your turn like that and that that's what it really comes back to is that the time where that true by the way cuz I'm just C like let's say like pre-dragon ruler yeah I'm trying to think like has there ever been a deck that wouldn't play a trap card like at least like a dust shoot a judgment or two I mean there's been there's been ftk uh at some points in time is different uh you would like you would look at something like frog Monarch which had inherent Synergy with not having back row so those would like maybe play only one or two um but there you go that's the thing right like still you could just play one or two you would sometimes still see like th Sho torrential or something like that in that sort of deck yeah so B basically what I'm trying to say you needed specific reasoning to not be playing trap cards before that time period right like it was very specific examples of hey I'm playing an ftk deck so I'm trying to win on the first turn so what do I need trap cards for or I'm playing a deck that has negative Synergy with trap cards right uh or there were decks like lightsworn which were just so heavily focused on like milling and having as many monsters as possible that they rarely played more than one or two trap cards it was like maybe beckoning light torrential tribute maybe Royal Decree even because you didn't play any traps um but but yeah it's I think it goes back to the um the entire issue of back in the day the way Yu-Gi-Oh was being played it was always meant to be over multiple turns a longer like period of turns it wasn't like um there wasn't that many actions condensed into One Singular turn right which means that if you draw a trap card you have more time to use it if you go second and your opponent doesn't set up an incredibly powerful ful board you have the time to set the Trap card and pass and see how it develops and also if if decks don't do as many things in a single turn then having a trap card to interact with like let's say let's say your opponent's deck is capable of doing like two or three things in a turn as opposed to like 10 now uh if you have a trap card that interacts with one of those things that severely limits how many things they can even do right like if if your opponent's deck is meant to summon twice and you bottomless one of those summons then you know you've cut you've cut your opponent things that they can do in half right something twice oh getting a bit crazy here in 2008 huh I mean nowadays if you have a like nowadays if you have a even if you go first and you have a trap cart like that like your opponent's probably going to be able to extend through it anyways which is a whole another you know uh issue but yeah I feel like when we talk about like we we'll talk about how it is now in just a second I just want to say one more thing the first the first actual ual thing that I remember when I think of this shift away from Trap cards I don't know if that was exactly the one that I've started it and I'm I'm I'm curious if you remember this but there used to be um this goes back to like the the ARG kind of days of Yu-Gi-Oh the Patrick hobin writing articles to for like ARG sort of days you probably remember those you may have already played yeah yeah those I those are like my golden ER days man I love I don't know if it's one particular article that I'm referring to but I definitely remember reading about like this thing that Patrick called turn too late syndrome okay I don't know if it's something you remember but he that's that's how he phrased why he thought trap cards were about to be outdated and I think he was one of the the first people to actually put it into words like everyone noticed this like people were starting to play less and less of the Trap cards going from like 2011 to 2012 to 2013 right you would have like mermail was for example the deck that I remember playing like maybe six traps incl including like Abyss sphere and then you would go on to um Dragon rulers where it was maybe like it was like three emptiness at some point and that was it um and so it was it got progressively less and less and less and then I remember I remember Patrick put it into the words of traps just have this thing where you just draw them off the top of your deck and they don't do anything to the situation that is current on the board right because a trap card at the time you're playing your own turn is a blank right which is a concept that we all understand now like we all get it in modern days right but back in the day that was not how people thought of it like that was not what people were used to from the previous days um because it you it didn't it didn't really it wasn't really an issue right people people cut uh traps at some point I don't think they really realized why the traps were performing so much worse but then it was like this thing that made a lot of sense where people started realizing hey more and more things is happening in one turn which means if my opponent goes first and I draw a trap card that is just it is a turn too late I needed that last turn before my opponent had done anything which isn't possible like you can't set a trap card on turn zero um so and that's where traps how we used to know them I feel like faded out um over I want to bring up one uh sort of maybe an exception to the rule but I think that you know that's obviously very well and true but I think that the biggest issue um is like just I guess to paraphrase is that uh trap cars don't immediately deal with the current situation at hand however we've seen like some things and I I would see it it might really just be one single card that that this that this works with but its torrential tribute I think has really held up when you think about how relevant a card is in terms of today like even today still people uh who play control decks and trap decks like torrential is still a massive uh important part of the strategy um and I think that's because you know it does deal with the situation perhaps are there are very very few trap cards that have this quality of being good going first and going second in particular scenarios right like I mean torrential is not a popular card by any means you have to basically design your deck around it um but like cards like torrential or even the rumac carac canon in that sense I mean not a not an old um not an old trap but something designed with the same idea I feel like where um if you draw that card going second it can out an existing board but it can also be a strong defensive option and that I think is one way how they could make trap cards work in in modern days but why don't we take a quick um like dive into how traps are even being played nowadays when we're talking like okay torrential is maybe in your trap ba deck in 2024 but for the most part it would be more common to see um to see cards think the easiest way to approach this is we have sort of two categories here right yeah because I think there's um there's a huge difference between okay I'm playing a control SL uh even like stun deck uh I'm going to play like torrential strikes duranon needle ceiling um whatever you know ice dragon prison I think is a very good example of like a good generic trap card but that's a very big difference from like I don't know if you do this but whenever I read the new archetype on yorg this is just a new deck that comes out and it has a trap card my instant instantaneous um thought is is it searchable because archetypal trap cards yeah I think are awful and just unplayable um I'm sure there's plenty of examples of decks that have archetypal trap cards uh but aren't searchable that just makes them unusable like in my in my mind generally those those tend to be like complet that is just a that is just legitimately a thing of in any normal quote unquote modern Yu-Gi-Oh deck that aims to to do whether it's mid-range or combo or whatever you want to Define it as let's just say like a your your average modern Yu-Gi-Oh deck um trap cards are just bad in general right the only exception is if a trap card if you get it for free basically in your first turn setup and you can just play like exactly one copy which gives you the minimum odds of drawing it going second but when you go first you can access it for free so it's it's simply like and even then sometimes it's it's even like Decks that forego these like for example manum reframing is a searchable counter trap for manum but it's not it's a lot of people do play it for when they go first and they can set it up but some people forego it even still because they're like if I go first my deck's already good and if I go second I don't want I want a 0% chance of drawing that card that's how bad trap cards in general like can be in modern Yu-Gi-Oh that like even if you have a searchable omn negate trap basically a searchable solemn judgment uh with recursion in the grave it's it's it's a good card but it is something that not everyone is playing it's not a staple in the deck right um so I think the best way to uh bring it together is to say that it really is just defined by the speed the speed of the game is so fast and so quick that unless your trap card is doing something immediately now to like handle the situation or can do something very high impact on the following turn on your opponent's turn to justify the weight MH um then it's going to basically be not very good right I think is really the defining point is the speed of the cards uh yeah I've talked about this before but like the the fact that the game has gotten a lot faster is something that it's it's hard to I mean it's definitely true uh it's not necessarily a bad thing for the game itself right you can there's still a lot of action being taken even though it's in less turns and there's still a lot of skill involved but the fact that the game has evolved into a game that is more actions in less turns just makes it so that especially some old Concepts they don't translate well into this sort of modern way that we play Yu-Gi-Oh um uh that that applies to specific cards right that for examp that's one of the reasons why cards like um Maxi or anti- spell have gotten progressively more powerful because they basically essentially they act like turn skips right which in Old Yu-Gi-Oh wasn't that big of a deal cuz the you your decks were built to play over whatever 10 turns anyway so skipping one of 10 turns is not as big whereas in modern Yu-Gi-Oh if you skip one of two turns that's like half of the game that your opponent isn't taking part in so like those sort of Concepts just haven't aged well um and what applies to you know singular cards also applies to the entire trap archetype essentially the entire um like a third of the Yu-Gi-Oh card pool essentially hasn't aged well simply because the the game has gotten faster and trap cards are inherently better if the game is slow there's another point I feel that also um is another determining factor for why trap cards aren't very good even if we were to say that trap cards you know you can sacrifice the speed of being able to use them as fine the issue is that you have to set and wait but the problem is that you're now vulnerable and so many decks will see you set five and they'll just have like a bunch of like end of main phase activations right they'll go like end of main uh IP mascar Anda spin one of your back row or banish one of your back row right etc etc right so even if your trap cards are really good you to the waiting a turn we can maybe like deal with that right cuz now they're alive and active on your opponent's turn you have five disruptions for your opponent's turn the issue is like a lot of a lot of decks just have a bunch of end of main end phase interactions that just make them that just completely nullify them um and if they don't even get a chance to be live then that's just another Factor as to why they're not good yeah uh it's also just that I feel like a lot of the a lot of the normal traps that they make these days um I don't know if it's good to talk about this now but I feel like the power level that normal traps have or the power creep that normal traps have incre have have received is not really proportional to the power creep that the rest of the game has experienced I don't feel like normal trap cards have gotten the same level of power creep that for example spell cards have or monsters in in their ability to um to spam the board have if you were to name a bunch of trap cards that have been released in let's say The Last 5 Years you would be very hard pressed to find like more than like a handful of trap cards over the last 5 years that aren't floodgates right like I'm thinking I think this is where this is I think where we have to talk about some exceptions just just to put it into context because there are there's plenty of exceptions uh but just if you compare it to the number of monsters generic St cards right that's that's kind of the the point you're bringing up here right um you know just in terms of like a handful of good trap cards over the last 5 years like there's um you know solemn strike I think was like the big sort of defining kind of said last five years and then said solemn strike that's funny no no what what I'm saying is like that thing is eight years old my dude it's crazy I know right we're getting old so so solemn strike really put like a milestone in the sand for power creep right and then ever since trap cards I don't think have kept up because even like control decks will still potentially play things like strike right there so we've had like you know U ice dragon we've had um DaRuMa Cannon uh and it's hard to find more than that that aren't just straight floodgates right I think uh I think punishment dogmatica punishment is a good one as well that is a good one yeah um but again that comes with like a heavy cost right like that's uh you can't access your extra deck right for the next turn which is like you very this isn't something that is even worth putting in a in like a mid-range or a control deck but you're you're definitely right that like especially for and this is especially true for generic trap cards I feel like most of the Trap cards that I can think of as playable cards from the last couple years they're mostly archetype bound trap cards that they would play as a one of like reframing like sorts old blackout like uh virtual world you know chuchi or whatever it was called like a lot of these were only playable because there was one archetype that was able to get it for free and then it would usually attempt to not play Too Many of it because you didn't want to actually draw it you wanted to get it for free off of your Searchers and it begs the question why are trap cards not keeping up with the same power level and Pace as archetypes and stuff like that yeah I I think it's a design philosophy question like cuz I mean they have made relevant trap cards so let's talk about some of them that have maybe avoided being not powerful enough and I think that's because the only traps that were actually good enough are the cards that don't work like classic trap cards right because the way I look at Classic trap cards the way we've talked about all of them now they're kind of like these one-on-one interactions type of things right something happens you flip the Trap card it does something like removes a card from the field or whatever else right and then it goes to the graveyard and then it's done right and that's uh like in response to something your opponent does and most of the Trap cards that have seen play don't work like this right the were like I think two very popular exceptions um that are trap cards but feel they feel nothing like like trap cards most of the cards we're going to talk about now feel nothing like actual trap cards at least to someone who's played Yu-Gi-Oh back in the day uh the first two are obviously evenly and imperm right because we like whenever I make a video of like traps are unplayable nowadays people are in the comments like hey but what about evenly like okay great argument my man the so I think imperm is really interesting because in my opinion I think it's one of the most perfectly designed modern trap cards it's something that gives you value and use on your opponent's turn without having to go uh first but if you do go first and you have imperm it does have a bonus effect um a lot of people have gotten used to not playing into that bonus effect but it is something that has uh given the given it a bit of utility right like setting it into the same column as a Floodgate or as a continuous spell and trap to stop your opponent and negating something in the process I think that's really good designer and I think one of the uh I hope maybe something that they continue on which if you really think about is quite old now and I don't think they've done a bunch of cards like that which is kind of a shame no really not I mean it's what you're saying is true I agree with it they have found a way to make a trap card viable which is imp impressive uh and it is a trap card that isn't just you know lock the opponent out of the game right they've they've made an actual like Fair quote unquote trap card interactive trap card that that is playable up until this day but I would argue that that is just because imperm practically is just a hand trap right I I would I would argue that the bonus effect when when you go first is hardly relevant for the viability of imperm right I mean I would argue going first the bonus effect is not even I I wouldn't say that it's a bonus effect even because I think the fact that you have to set the card and make it visible to your opponent that you have a sort because when my opponent plays a modern Yu-Gi-Oh deck and sets a card I'm like okay that's imp or called by you like 99% of the decks right and so it's very telegraphed so I think in that sense it's even worse than like an actual hand trap when you go first cuz your opponent doesn't see that you have effect veiler but they can see that you probably have imperm um but generally but that I think that kind of goes back to the point right and that's kind of the problem it's like why is it so easy to Telegraph right because it's it's like one of the only no other trap cards playable that's the thing exactly right like it's it's like that's kind of the the problem and that's kind of a shame uh with the mechanic itself yeah yeah no I agree talking about evenly matched I wanted to mention um I think evenly matched is an interesting uh sort of way to look at trap cards but I I I think it's on the opposite side so I I said that imper I think is one of like the a really welld designed modern trap card I think evenly matched is I would say badly designed I think it is kind of a necessary card for the metag game but that that color could be anything like that's the thing I I I don't mind even Le's design space or whatever like evenly is in my book an okay card to exist it's just it's just not a trap card let's be real that thing is not trap that thing could be they could make that thing like rainbow colored and it wouldn't matter like they could have made a new card even it doesn't matter it doesn't need to be a trap it could be a monster that you put onto the field at the end of the battle phase it could be a quick play spell it could be whatever it does not matter that this thing is a trap card and it doesn't really feel like a trap card either when you play it so the the the Trap effect of evenly is that you can use at the end of your battle phase I've played evenly a decent amount over the last few years I I can honestly tell you in the amount of times that I've played evenly the Trap effect of evenly whereas where you actually wait and use it on your and on your opponent's end of battle phase has come up like I I literally like would say like single digits that it's just I don't I don't even know if I've done it a single time and even if if I have I would still use it from my hand usually like you would just pass on an open board and then evenly them like you wouldn't set it and do it um so yeah I don't know maybe they should have given evenly a different on Field Effect maybe that could have been interesting right but maybe that would have made it way too powerful as well like if if that thing had a good effect when you go first uh then it maybe would be way too broken um on another note though I think the the core design of evenly is just against everything that trap cards stand for right because that thing is designed to be used on your turn like that's just not a trap card like a trap card is meant to be used on my opponent's turn um they and and evenly just never is good when when your when it's your opponent's turn cuz at the end of your opponent's battle phase you're probably dead tell you that much uh so talking a little bit more about the um modern trap cards and designed this uh directions we've taken um a sort of overlooked card with Phantom nightmare cuz we're all focused on snake ey we did bring it up during the Phantom nightmare episode um but I think this is probably a good example of like trap cards that are slowly developing into um uh the Modern Age and that's something like the black goat laughs MH uh so for anyone who might not be aware of what it is uh it is declare a monster card name bring it up by AC technology for that now hold up oh do you have it on the screen okay uh this turn neither player can special monsters with that original name except from the graveyard so you can essentially lock your opponent out of summoning a specific monster for the turn which going first against some Decks that could just be like a vanities in and of itself that's that's really strong uh but on top of that it also has a bonus grave effect you can banish this and declare a monster card name and Nei player can activate the effects of that with the original name so you have a trap here that has two different card effects um that are both pretty strong and really really powerful and potentially turn ending um potentially maybe on the level of a Floodgate you know I I would say like depending on your deck this could be really disgusting uh but I think it goes hand inand with something like uh Labyrinth which I think is probably the standard for good trap deck in modern Yu-Gi-Oh yeah uh because you get to use this turn one uh by using your furniture cards you can discard this and then you get to use it immediately so cards like this and transaction roll back are kind of like I suppose a new chapter in in trap design that Konami seems to be taking yeah and there's we're touching on a couple other things that that like that are definitely relevant here like we haven't even necessarily talked about floodgates yet but black goat laughs definitely is one of those lingering kind of floodgates and that's what I meant when I said earlier they have kind of they haven't designed a lot of trap cards that that that are good that work as trap cards were intended to work as these kind of one-on-one interactions with your opponent the exceptions that they have found the ways that they have found to make powerful trap cards is to just make them more powerful but in a different way like because they lock out the opponent for the entire turn or maybe even the entire freaking um game like if if there's a if there's a Floodgate on the board uh that like like anti-spell fragrance which is I I guess that's not a very modern design but like you you look at others like tikaboo or whatever like those those are like yeah they're trap cards but they also don't really feel like what trap cards are supposed to feel like because I mean you're not really responding to anything your opponent does you're not interacting with your opponent you're just uh flipping up the thing that your opponent can't deal with for the rest of the game and uh you know good job right um and that is certainly one way how they can make traps viable I guess if it's a if if that one is good for the game or not is a whole different discussion that we're probably going to have at some point uh I personally don't enjoy that sort of you know I I I really um enjoy trap cards back in the day you know interactive stuff but the the the The Floodgate and lingering Floodgate sort of traps I I don't enjoy very much and and blackout laughs certainly falls into that category right it's it's got multiple things it's useful on your opponent's first turn which otherwise it probably wouldn't see play um and that's why it also only sees play in Labyrinth um but it's also a Floodgate so that's the two reasons why that card is like seeing play in modern Yu-Gi-Oh yeah and I think like um in principle when you design trap cards and why black go seems to fall into that exact category specifically is because when you have um you know touching on like the the concept of the speed of the game you have to bring your opponent's deck down to your level uh if you had to wait a turn then the only way that you're going to have a chance in that duel is to you know make them be at the same level that you're at so you slow them down and that just has to buy proxy be a Floodgate that's the only way you can slow I mean unless they printed more powerful normal trap cars like they would have to genuinely print like normal traps that say um you know I can't be negated just in case your opponent sets up an omni negate and then I need to do a lot to an established board board right and I feel like they just haven't done that they've tried they've given like I don't know they've given us cards like the Ruma or whatever but there's just no value to building a deck that's dedicated around trap cards anymore unless you play specific Arch types that that's the way they do it right they they build archetypes that are focused around trap cards like we saw elich that was a way you could play trap cards in The Meta right like that that deck was meta because it was so synergistic with certain floodgates and the trap cards also had in insane Grind game on top of that right like all that was necessary to win the game with elage was like flip one Floodgate that your opponent couldn't deal with and then your whole El trap engine would do the rest for you like it would play itself in that in that instance um and now we have Labyrinth like a more evolved version which to give them some credit the modern Labyrinth deck actually isn't super focused around floodgates it can be because it's a trap deck you know some some versions of the deck do play um you know skill drain and dimensional barrier that is searchable and all that kind of stuff which is obviously one aspect of it that I personally don't like but Labyrinth is like the only example I can think of in modern days of how they have made trap decks um like able to grind with the the the real decks in the format the the modern decks yeah I think um the uh the sort of other example of like good trap decks like you mentioned that was eldl and then before that there was like um altergeist I want to say was like probably like a good trap deck that didn't heavily rely on floodgates right still it still definitely was able to play some but yeah alsoo I almost forgot about paleo how could I but that's the thing right we're going even further back in time right like also the only reason why paleo was even viable was because the top deck at the time was actually slower than usual that was zodiac which wasn't like in in any different environment where the turn where the best deck in the format does more than summon two monsters on turn one then you're in trouble I wanted to bring up like uh a couple of trap cards as examples for why um and I'm trying it's trying to like really understand what is wrong with these cards and like why aren't they good right because I I I think if you read some of these cards like on paper you just think to yourself like that's crazy right like uh one example was like I read uh get out it's just a normal trap card that returns two extra deck monsters your opponent controls back to the extra um which in some ways like that's really good going second as well right because it it deals with an established field Maybe not immediately like something like r geki u but you know one of the most annoying things like a lot of monsters are uh they're destruction proof uh they have some sort of floating ability but I thought a this card would be would definitely see play um and it hasn't at all and I wonder why that is I actually I actually had the same hopes for this card and I picked it up at some point because I thought it was maybe one of those cards that could be good enough even into an established board if you play a deck like that's slow enough and you can just go second set a bunch of cards if your opponent already has a board well I'm just going to bounce two of them I think it's another issue with for some reason when they make these trap cards they make them just barely not good enough for some reason they're hesitant to actually give us good normal interactive trap cards that aren't like they have no problem printing there can be only one and making it as broken as it possibly could have been but then for this card they couldn't even have made it like just why does it have to be extra deck monsters cuz so often there's like one extra Deck monster and one thing that's like from the graveyard and I can't bounce with this card I like there's no there's not two Targets like they they they even include in inherent ways to play around this card by just summoning one from the extra day so like it's not even this thing is not even a strictly better compulsory evacuation device which is a card from 2003 they were like no we can't we can't power creep compulse you can't do that yeah I it's it's crazy that I think this should have just been pulse too right cuz they're more than exactly and that would probably still not be that great but they were like no we can't do that no no no that's crazy who said that um another example I think is a Apex predation I think it's called oh I don't have that one prepared I need to look at that one hold up the hell is an apex you were just bringing this up on like the Wiki page or something like you just had that prepared okay that's interesting uh what is that card called again Chad the um it's it's it's like weird needle ceiling style card um well I found Apex predation if that's what you are referring to actually called predation called there is a trap called Apex predation if you control a normal Summit or set monster destroy all special Summit monsters on the field until the end of your next turn after this card is activated you cannot normal summon or set you can only activate one Apex predation per turn yeah so I think like when I first read this on your typical U you know y org reaction stream I read it and I thought to myself like this card's really good mhm uh it it seems like it could be potentially something that helps you know trap decks going second and I don't think I've seen this in a deck list I did not know this card existed you know honest I don't remember when this came out I don't I don't I didn't I've never seen it I and I mean that speaks volumes to its competitive viability I feel like yeah um another card is uh I think it's a really good card uh it's ice dragon's prison oh yeah I have ready that one's ready hold up ice dragons prison is one of the best just singular generic normal trap cards in the game uh it's really good going first um it deals with established Fields going second uh but even then you could argue that ice dragon is maybe just um slowly getting power CP like today uh this year is going to be four years later and it's just you know it it it's um I haven't seen play that often even even these kind of cards that we're mentioning right now that are like in theory good cards they are still not really seeing consistent meta play and if even they are usually being side decked for when you know you can go first which is only like a workaround for how bad traps are when you go second right it's not like they have actually made trap cards that are good enough functional enough going first and second because those ones you could actually feasibly main deck and we could maybe that could even make a huge contribution to slowing the game down in some ways if they made interactive trap cards that were good going first and second right it would it would put a lot it would remove a lot of weight from the first turn in the game because if your opponent goes first and does a lot of things and you have a trap card that can potentially deal with it um then uh maybe that slows the game down but these cards don't do that these cards are only good enough to be sided in when you know you can go first yeah um I think that uh you know some of the uh some of the direction that they've taken with uh with trap cards are kind of in the step in the right direction I think the black goat is like a pretty good example although they did kind of just have to make it a Floodgate exactly um transaction roll back I think is a really cool one but the thing is like these feel almost kind of like Band-Aid fixes because they only very specifically work in one deck exactly and that's Labyrinth right yeah um like the idea of transaction roll back being set onto the field like when are you going to do that like in the mirror match going the thing is the thing on the field it copies your opponent's trap card so like when are you ever going to do that in Mar and Yu-Gi-Oh like it basically doesn't have a Field Effect unless you're playing like a lab mirror match I think if we're going to uh design trap cards in the future going forward I think they have to be either some kind of like cross between infinite and permanence um or I think what they would have to potentially do and I I don't think I've I've seen too many people people talk about this but for me personally other than the obvious like trap cards are too slow um one of the biggest problems that I think that trap cards have is that they're just too vulnerable and what I mean by that is like the example I gave earlier which is like okay even if you do want to just set like a powerful trap card going uh second to deal with an established field there's so many things going on on your opponent's turn with the power creep of the game that your backrow is just vulnerable you know some extreme examples obviously just like cuga just end phase destroy all your card with like modern raid Raptors um you know Labyrinth can like pop a set Etc it's funny cuz that's another trap card IP Mas into SP there's there's so much vulnerability to your field and I think that I don't know what they would have to do um probably some kind of cross between like making every trap cards have like a a waking the dragon style effect and and like its own good effect right um I think you're definitely on to something with giving traps bonus effects um I think one other problem that I have is that I think it would be very hard to ever um go back I mean you no necess have to go back in time but like go back to a style where people play some amount of traps right because what you really see nowadays is a lot of decks either Play No traps or a ton of traps because your game plan going second cannot really be to just use like if you draw a bunch of dead trap cards your game plan can never really be to just play with into your opponent's board with three or four cards right like you just have a couple blanks in your hand um and one well okay I didn't manage to break your board I guess I'm going to set my last trap card in hand surely that's going to be enough to stop the entire clapback like it's just not how it works um so I think one way they could go about it which is a design philosophy that I I typically really like whenever they do it is I like giving cards either like two different effects whether based on whether you're going first or second or just giving cards like more bonus effects when you go second like um one card that it's not a trap card but one card I do like in that instance and I bring up a lot is a card like uh incredible Ecclesia this the sword Soul one where like it's a completely fine going first card but then going second it becomes better because it it basically turns into a free special summon um I don't see why they wouldn't be able to do these sort of things for for trap cards necessarily like they could they could make it so like one thing that just popped up in my head is like make a trap card have it have a completely reasonable effect when you go first but give it like a when you go second uh like give it an effect of like you can discard this card to draw a card so like I don't draw it dead in my hand when I go second right it's a reasonable trap card when I go first but going second I can just ignore the fact that it's a trap and I just pitch it and draw draw a new card for example um well following on that thought of Ecclesia you could just be something as simple as like if your opponent controls a monster you can use it you can use this this turn something like that or that no exactly like you just make it a reasonable trap card um when you go first but then going second you can maybe immediately use it to interact with your opponent's board to maybe force a negation or something like that you know like I don't know a trap that says take control of one of your opponent's monsters or something and then when you go second you can immediately use it maybe that' be even I mean that's going second that's basically just change of for which is not even that broken because it would Target in that sense but it'd be a good disruption as well um yeah so things like that would definitely be interesting design space right I think that um either we are just uh perhaps not creative or smart enough but one thing that you guys are probably noticing when it comes to us trying to like pinpoint the main problems and fix trap cards for going uh for going forward in the future basically what we're doing is we're just getting rid of the conventional means of how trap cards are are used I don't think there is a real someone in chat just said this is the same as a quick play I mean that's another inherent problem is that tra cards are just worse quick play spells that's the thing whenever you're trying to design a good trap card you're like well if this was just on a quick play it'd just be better you know like and I think this is like the the fundamental yes or no question are trap cards out a point where we need to throw out the old way of Designing them do we just have to rethink trap cards completely will there ever be a way to like make trap cards good in the conventional sense of set a card wait do it on your opponent's turn do we think that that type of design is just gone now and move on I think the whole quick play thing is a very good point I do think I do and I do like quick plays for exactly that reason I'm very happy whenever quick plays are like playable in modern Yu-Gi-Oh because they offer exactly that they offer you like utility going first and second and that is particularly also the reason why super old spell cards quickplay spell cards have kept up a lot better with modern Yu-Gi-Oh than old school trap cards have like you see book of moon enemy controller still even forbidden chalice every once in a while like Cosmic Cyclone cards like that they still see play to this day they're still completely fine because they go around this problem of I'm only good going first I'm not useful going second at all um so maybe it's just a matter of hey this sort of modern this sort of old school trap Vibe we just don't get that from Trap cards anymore because it's just not possible because Yu-Gi-Oh has evolved in a way where that just doesn't fit anymore they just need to make more generically good quickplay spell cards which I'd also be down for hey that gives me essentially the same feeling because hey I can use it going first as a disruption on my opponent's turn and when I go second it's still useful in my hand so like by all means just make more powerful uh quickplay spells like generically good quickplay spells I'd be down for that too like that's that's also fine I just want that interactivity I just don't want them to go out of their way to make a trap card viable by giving it some stupid Floodgate effect like that's not that's not giv giving me that interactive feeling from back in the day anyways like it's I don't gain anything from that's not very fun in my book anyways so I think that uh one card that really does give me hope for um keeping trap cards as a conventional means of playing is torrential tribute uh because that card has held up so well uh over the years and I think that if they were to just to make like just more trap cards that were just way more impactful you know um we we gave some of those examples ear earlier where like they just restricted some of those cards into the ground right like there was just no need for get out to have that many restrictions there was um there's no need for um what was the other one we talking about predation for example to have like the activation requirement of like a normal summon monster right yeah um and I think it really will just be a case of like I don't know do we just straight up just print a trap card that says activate this card destroy all cards your opponent controls right I would not be opposed to that it might be an incredibly I mean yeah I don't know that's the thing they've been very careful with it um I think is the right way to put it it's very easy quote unquote to design a Floodgate um and just make it viable uh and just tell people hey if you don't like how this card plays just draw the out right um if they were trying to make super powerful normal trap cards you know like it's you make one of those way too powerful and then suddenly it becomes a problem that no one can play around it and stuff like that but I have a hard time even imagining like a a trap card that says destroy all cards on the field maybe like maybe you'd have to make it all cards on the field and not just your opponent's cards cuz then the card would be super broken going first like if if that card is good enough to be played going second then I mean people would put it into their main decks and then if they go first they also have it so how do you play around that card in everyone's main deck when they go first right cuz then I mean that's say you have the same card right and then you set it to combat your opponent's board and then end phase your opponent flips the same card to kill your back row and you're like all well um I'm not going to be that's assuming your opponent would even play it right because like we're trying to get trap cards actually being set conventionally here so if we do try and get them set onto the field right like the fact that your opponent's even playing it like would suggest that maybe that's a success in a way right because now they're also playing I'm just saying I'm just saying there's Nuance to it I do understand that they are careful with it because only because the Trap cards that we currently have aren't good to play normal trap cards doesn't mean that you couldn't break the game by including some of these um at the same time they definitely have they definitely have shot under what we would need to make these playable by a long shot like they they have missed the mark in terms of power level even with cards like and I'm including cards like ice dragon prison in this discussion like ice dragon prison is not a bad card but the power creep that other types of cards have experienced like it doesn't justify ice dragon prison like that card is not good enough for modern Yu-Gi-Oh but like no it's just not I think like a control players like dream uh setup going second with like a bunch of trap cards right has typically over the years been like something like torrential strike right like just comboing those two together is uh is like really strong um and I think one of like the strongest aspects there isn't really that strike negates per se well obviously is but um something that people I think maybe Overlook is that it's a counter trap right um and I think that if there were more powerful counter traps that weren't sort of these searchable archetypal based omnis might potentially help as well right cuz I don't I can't actually think of any good generic counter traps we've had over the years right um all the solns essentially yeah which like that's a long time ago yeah um so things that can't be responded to are generally are like very powerful um but that's the thing right like you would have to make it unresponsible I think to be good right because going second you you activate something like ice dragon or get out or whatever right your opponent can just negate it right because they're all quick effects um so if you had a bunch of trap cards that were counter traps uh or unresponded that would be potentially another way you know to uh to buff them and I think like you know to summarize how do you make trap cards viable how do you fix trap cards going forward uh they have to have a combination of all of the things we've talked about which is um give them some sort of protection style when they're on the field give them bonus effects going second essentially making them quick plays give them grave effects and hand effects things like that these are these four to five different like um additions to trap cards I think is probably like the future because I just don't really see how you make set pass be good yeah I just I I think there's so much possible design space even just like we've started talking about it just for a couple minutes and there's already a lot of like potential ideas is uh that you how you could maybe reinvent uh the wheel on trap cards a little bit and it's just a little bit disappointing to see that the most common ways how they've tried it is like they haven't really experiments with all the they haven't really experimented with all the possibilities that are there they have just made like they've made floodgates they've made lingering floodgates they've made AR archetypal counter traps and they've made generic trap cards that are all way too like way too weak to to see play for the most part right the only real exceptions that come to mind are like imperm and evenly where on imperm I do like the design as a trap card on evenly it doesn't even feel like a trap card right I just want more of those sort of things um we have a decent amount of time left uh so I think like an interesting subject I don't know if you want to go into it would be talking about the ocg right um CU I think that ocg have like very different uh kind of situation to us and it might and it's something to that's worth talking about it because trap cards being relevant format to the format is definitely you know an important aspect of competitive Yugo right because if you look at ocg I think they have like heavy storm is legal double reboot I think is a thing in in ocg right so these are like for for over there um I don't know what it is why they seem to think that trap cards are more of a problem than here I I think this is a another like you're opening a huge uh sort of discussion in at that moment you've just triggered something but okay this this goes back to this whole like necessary evil thing right and we've gone back and forth about this whenever whenever I've talked about floodgates on stream for example we always get to this point of like um I don't like the existence of Parts like heavy storm or feather duster or red reboot um when it goes to countering trap decks for example I don't love the idea of a card that wins a matchup on its own in general like if I just draw this card going second I activate it against a specific deck and the game is just over because I have at that card um the obvious argumentation for or the obvious argument for why those cards are necessary is because of the amount of floodgates that they've printed they're like okay well if El gets to flip skill drain and win the game automatically I want to be able to flip Duster or activate duster to also get my fair share of auto wins which I I find it hard to argue with that I just think that both of both of those things shouldn't exist in the first place right I think trap card interaction should mostly be interaction and not just floodgates right uh and if that was the case in an ideal world where that was viable and that was the case where if if your opponent sets four you're expecting to actually play an interactive game of Yu-Gi-Oh instead of being flipped to Floodgate on um in that world I would also advise for cars like Duster or heavy storm or reboot to be banned because there's no need to have an autowin button against those to balance out their win rate or to have a punish for those decks right because those style of decks would be okay in my book I think it's interesting because the um the ocg has like a bunch of these like go second I win buttons against uh trap decks and to some extent You could argue like okay that's why trap decks aren't doing so well because trap decks can benefit mostly from the existence of Maxi um therefore they just have an inherent more sort of an advantageous position in that format but then they curb it by putting all of these like auto wins in the game which is kind of like a strange approach right cuz like essentially I feel like they're just adding a ton of variance into their format by doing it like that there are there are a lot of decisions being made in in the sense of uh they're just looking at sometimes I feel like they're just looking at um whether something is healthy or not by just looking at its win rate they're like are floodgates a problem or not uh no they're not because they don't win you the game often enough when you go second or you know we've added uh reboot into the game so the the overall win rate of of trap decks or Floodgate decks is is like fine you know like it's an it's an overall acceptable win rate for the balance of the game right and um it's from a from a game design perspective I think uh there's Arguments for and against this sort of thingy you know like um it's I think genuinely if there's people out there that enjoy playing with floodgates I I think there is some Merit to letting them have some as long as they're not running rampant with it I I personally I'm not one of those people but I have come to terms with the fact that you know different people enjoy Yu-Gi-Oh in different ways and if they want to cater to you know people that maybe don't have the time to keep up with the game at all times but still want to be able to beat some of the metad decks sometimes by flipping skill drain or something like that I don't like that it's not fun for me but I I if it's fun for others then you know I don't have to make the game exactly how I want it to be um but at the same when we get into that discussion on The Floodgate episode yeah no that's a that's a that's a whole like five-part uh five-part Series right there I think but yeah but what I will say is that I can say objectively that that is an incorrect way to play the game and I don't care if you enjoy it genuinely wrong I'm trying be as inclusive as possible but there's you there's your other way of going about it inclusivity for floodgates nice all right um so uh I think we've done a decent amount of uh discussion on this subject I think we've covered every base of uh trap C I don't think there's any we've kind of missed out right um uh ELR if you're missing the if you're missing the old school interactivity that trap cards would provide I think your best bet in modern Yu-Gi-Oh is to take a look at quick place bels which is pretty much the same thing but better yeah uh you're on that quick play spell uh train of uh trap cards personally I'm into the uh I quite like the graveyard aspect you know you want alternative like you want to rework the concept right yeah I think I I think personally I would like to see trap cards being like generally kept to set and wait um but I want to give them more protection right I want them to have things in the grave if your opponent like immediately deals with them when you said it um and I want them to have like potentially some protection effects like is it like crawlers I think that do something when they're targeted face down like things like that I think could be really funny right like I think big Shield gner ises that no yeah yeah so I think like if if you target my crop card it like immediately activates and does something like that' be interesting yeah or sort of like a witches strike punishment sort of thing but better yeah yeah which is weird cuz like I'm it's so odd to me that Witcher strike has uh not been a card that's seen any play you know you read that card and you think to yourself like wow this just wins you the game it's funny that witch strike can be negated yeah that's that's the hilar something they should unable it's like if you negate my thing I can destroy all of your cards but you can negate me so if you put two om negates up I do nothing it's very weird um yeah so who knows where uh where Konami will take this decision in a few years from now I'm very excited to see where uh where they go because well excited is maybe not the right word right because we've just seen like the black goat being printed and it's like that's kind of just like a soft D barrier style design they're trying to go for right you know and that's kind of like where a lot of normal trap cards can go in terms of their Direction uh let's uh side trap cards in Our Deck when we know we're going first and it's almost always like yeah let's side D barrier let's side anti- spell let side you know all of these different types of Floodgate interactions uh interactions quote unquote the the side deck in general which is probably another Evergreen Banger episode um but the the the the site deck does in some ways amplify this problem of trap cards only being good going first because let's let's think this through and like let's say they make more powerful trap cards that are actually viable post siding they could be like even more problematic because the more powerful a trap card would be like overall the more broken it would become if people just side deck it when they know they can go first right and so like it's this whole spiral of the the the fact that like modern Yu-Gi-Oh has become so fast for certain types of of cards or certain singular cards just creates this this spiral of problems like a card like anti- spell maybe in the overall win rate when when you look at it if you main deck anti-p spell the card isn't actually that good but then you side it for going first and suddenly your win rate goes through the roof if you open that card and it's just a whole another yeah it's just a whole another thing the side deck uh sometimes really makes balancing these sort of things very difficult all right uh is that a wrap you think I think that is a wrap and I think uh I think it's best we don't have a p Patron yet but we are going to soon TM surely uh and I think we're going to get like viewer or listener questions involved there it's always kind of tough to pick some out exactly on on screen but I mean uh if you want to and you have a little bit more time we can I guess get like one or two chat questions in uh how strong does a trap card have to be uh to be a viable main deck check when it is not a hand trap or an in archetypal searchable card mhm so I think um Point number one is that it's always going to be deck dependent right um because I think gone are the days where you can just Jam trap Cards into like any deck even if you're playing like tadad even if you're playing in zector right you can't just but I think that's what they're asking I think that's the question how strong like let's say I'm playing a modern mid-range deck how strong does a trap card need to be for me to consider main decking it right like what does it have to do what does it have to do going second so that I can accept the fact that I'm basically playing my first turn of the game after my opponent has set up a has set up a board with one less card like how strong does that trap card need to be and I think the answer is it has to be incredibly powerful yeah um I don't think we've ever seen a format with evenly in like the main right do we I mean I have main deck evenly before yeah it happens but like that's I I don't think that's what they're exactly asking because that's not really a classic trap card right cuz so what I'm thinking is I want to make the card so broken going second that I would feel like it need to it would need to have a different effect going first yeah like I'm thinking for me to accept a complete brick in my hand when I go second that I then said it needs to be like what you said earlier like you know uh I don't know blow up the entire board on my opponent's turn right like if uh but it would have to say something like if it's not the second turn of the game specifically which would be the one after you go first you set it and then it's your opponent's turn right on that specific turn where if you have gone first and set it it needs to be weaker than that yeah in a nutshell it has to be like absurd because like I want it to be like destroy all cards your opponent controls unless it's the second turn of the game which would be after you've gone first like if you go first and you set it and you pass then it needs to be weaker than that I don't think I've ever seen a card with like a turn activation requirement right like I mean there is there's cards that count turns though like you know you have you have cards that do it so theoretically it beable funny right you think of like they' they've designed more than 10,000 cards and they've never gone to the design space of hey if it's the first turn of the game I'm weaker than if it's the second turn or something like that like why not why not make a card that becomes more powerful the longer the game progresses to maybe encourage like uh longer games and stuff like that I don't know oh activate this uh deal 500 effect damage to your opponent multiplied by the turn count of the duel for example that card would be bad even like that card be terrible if you make it to turn what is that 16 you win congratulations that that would be kind of funny counting turns as well sounds like pretty troll to spare in a modern I think it would have to be I I yeah I think it would be significantly easier if it was like the like the earlier turns like if it referenced if this is the second turn of the game that's easy to keep track of I would argue for most people I think like 99% of the Yu-Gi-Oh Community would be able to figure out whether it's the second turn of the game right now um but yeah here's a good question what are your thoughts on trap support cards like trap trick trap track uh roll back backjack what do you think it would take to make cards like this be playable uh I just want to say like you know first of all backjack is one of my all-time favorite monsters I love that card no for no real uh relevant reasons you can think of but yeah we've seen we've seen trap trick played a decent amount over the years um just as a way to you know search other good trap cards but I'm going to be honest it feels like i' I've seen trap trick be played to search sanctum or search barrier exact that's the thing it's essentially just those cards are only as good as their targets and mostly they've only been used to search problematic cards which I don't think that's a problem of trap trick being badly designed that's just a problem of trap cards being badly designed in general I am a fan of trap trick and trap track I think they are they are cool ways to to like to like experiment with normal trap cards I just think that the targets for those cards have been problematic um in the uh in backjack backjack is like a much more Niche card as well because it's a monster you have to get into the graveyard um but in general I think normal trap card support I mean you can look at the entire archetype of Labyrinth as normal trap card support essentially and in that case it's worked out quite well I think that's one other way of how they can give you that feeling of interactive trap cards was when they made archetypes around normal trap cars like for example paleo and Labyrinth are two archetypes that have um they they don't have only their only trap their own trap cards they have generic Synergy with normal trap cards as well um and they were strong enough to see play in their respective eras so you know it's possible for them to make um to make those uh those kind of decks they just have to be careful to not make them too synergistic with floodgates I think nowadays CU then you very quickly you run into the problem of hey El cards in general cuz none of the El cards are problematic let's be clear here none of the elage cards are problematic cards they're actually quite cool the problem of the entire archetype is just it gets overshadowed by the fact that it has such great Synergy with floodgates I think that the uh the reason why these decks synergize so well with floodgates is that a lot of their interaction comes from Trap cards and not a lot of floodgates deal with trap cards right so you're always going to have like you know skill drain on the field with Labyrinth for example is like not really going to be as much of a problem for you is it is your opponent for example right and another big deal yeah go go uh I think the uh the biggest interesting factor for Labyrinth is that it's kind of like the modernday standard for for trap right like they they it it feels like they didn't start designing Labyrinth um cards they started looking at trap cards and thought do we make a deck around right so it it felt like they made that deck in res in reverse order um and I don't know if like I I mean like that in and of itself is is one way to address the modern problem of trap card viability it's like well we could just start in reverse and like make a deck around it right like previously you mentioned you know paleo was like probably a very good example of that I mean I can think of all kinds of actually just really dumb normal trap cards I used to play in paleo they made mirror Force playable in 2017 which is crazy yeah there was like forbidden Apocrypha there was like um what was that like Oasis card or something or like was it like a waterfall it was like uh you mean the voku for for Waters yeah I think it was like Aqua moners Aus of the it's Aus of the Sea Lord or something like that yeah just so many just dumb normal trap cards we played because they worked so well yeah that was in in paleo right like and maybe that's like a different type of uh design space going forward you know we talked about all of the different aspects they can give like targeting protection quick play effects um maybe that's another thing perhaps the the the the direction in the future is just design a whole archetype around normals like what if there was literally you know like the the the not lab what what they called layer monsters right like uh Lilith literally just says like reveal three traps and set one right like I don't know maybe we can have an archetype it just says just normal summon this monster add a normal trap from your deck to your hand um yeah I would like them to make really really broken trap card support but that only works with normal trap cards and kind of they would have to expand I think their wording a little bit on cards um but I would like um I would like one term that I would like to be included in the um basically the the library for yuio cards would be lingering like I would like I would love cards that remove lingering effects or maybe they could make a really broken trap card uh support card like maybe a normal trap itself or other cards that support normal traps but they say like for the rest of the turn or for the rest of the game you can't activate continuous straps and you can't apply lingering conditions to your opponent or something like that right which is you you'll notice throughout this entire podcast I'm I'm I'm thinking in all kinds of ways of how they could take design space and I just I I find it a shame they haven't experimented in those sort of things CU I think that would they could make cards that would be so good for normal trap cards and just make it not possible for people to abuse them with specifically freaking like skill drain and and D barrier and some other of these kind of decks uh these kind of cards and we'd be fine like we could play play these kind of cards all right I uh think we've got a a banger on our hands here all right so um thanks everyone for tuning in we're always taking feedback as always remember so if you have any comments and things you'd like to see more of in the future different subjects you want to see us explore um we definitely need to get a guest on at some point for sure oh yeah yeah some kind of expert I'm I'm thinking we will uh I'm really interested in getting maybe someone like roxen on or House of champs for like a product kind of style podcasting I think that that's something I I would really really looking forward to you want to discuss product design with House of Champs at some point thats something like that yeah that sounds like a good idea right so uh we'll see oh yeah raron yeah we could bring raron on for uh the Salomon grade episodes that that'll be the salom grade episode you mean like the new player experience one yeah that could be interesting yeah yeah I could see that drop your suggestions for uh for guests and what the topic of the episode could be um wherever you're watching or listening to this podcast we will be open to the feedback and we will definitely be looking into getting some guests onto the podcast soon all right take care everyone have a good uh weekend enjoy your Saturday and thank you for listening and we'll we'll see or hear each other next week

Channel: Heart of the Cast

Views: 23,189

Keywords: games, twitch, phni, format, yugioh, yu-gi-oh!

Id: D0kIeA4wJDM

Length: 77min 18sec (4638 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 17 2024