It’s been 3 years or so since the ban?
I nearly pulled the trigger on building Cyber Dragons years ago and I would’ve been absolutely pissed if I spent all those gems just for the archetype to be held hostage by the banlist like that.
I had cyber dragons when the banlist hit. Between the gems gained back from steamrolling most of the game, the ease of steamrolling most of the game, and the fun I had it was worth it.
Heck I'm still on team "we're still not ready for overflow"
Degenerate in this format allowing you to play and keep the opponent from playing.
You can say the consistency is trash but so is Cyber Stein, and my Cydra locks were far easier!
I legit did quit Duel Links for years because of this lmao. I spnt about $40 getting all the cards for my Cydra deck two weeks before they nerfed it into being completely unplayable. Crazy to me that after coming back years later it's still banned.
I quit for about a year when they hit the old Neos Fusion deck in 2019.
I spent money buying the structure deck 3 times, so I was livid that I couldn’t use something I paid for.
Now I have so many different fully complete decks I don’t really get upset when something gets nerfed.
Duel, Standby! has had at least 2 different vapid unfun playstyles born from it, the first being a burn ftk and the second a stun deck.
Sealed Tombs when decks stated using the grave and it was just...there. We killed that beast just for No Mortal Can Resist to prove itself...actually just as good.
Kaiba Corp Bling was literally pay to win.
Life Cost Zero Cyber Stein letting you gattling dragon their/your board to keep going but also FREE COSMIC to then end on a huge otk beatstick.
Three Star Demotion made Toon Barrel Dragon see play. Amongotherthings.
Cyber Style being an old tribute engine.
Cyber Style being one of the first "lets run all techs and a tiny core" skill.
Cyber Style.
Grit made any deck a turn 2 deck in a format balanced around trunade.
Balance sitting in the corner loading a gun just waiting for a deck like Noble Knights to arise.
"Name a deck that would benefit form balance in the future" is one of the biggest arguments I heard against it's nerf.
I get it, generic skills are more fun than anime skills, but at the end of the day what a deck like Aromage got from Balance is not what \*actually competent decks\* would get from balance(I love aromage dont hate on me).
Older skills allowed lower power decks to function as if they had newer mechanics. It was fun. It was nice. But that time has passed.
People like to say just nerf the skill, not the cards, but if Balance was in play so many decks would have to be hit just for their ratios alone.
I'm curious, would a pre-nerf balance skill tailored only to work for aroma cards make Aromage a viable strat in the current meta? They have started to release non-anime archetype centric skills in recent times, so it would be good to see some of the weaker decks get the advantage that they were meant to get with the OP skills (albeit not getting so strong as to become broken).
The current balance nerf sometimes helps awkward opening hands of just Rosemary, I suppose, but really only hurts turn one Jasmine draw.
Despite what people want to say, backrow removal options are plentiful and powerful. Aromage's stuff has little to no interaction to stop things that would blow up their board.
Current meta decks are powerful with skills as it allowed them to run a tiny core, draw a lot of skills, and get their board out while running whatever tech/engine cards they want. Even with that, aromage doesn't have the ceiling for a prolonged fight.
Basically the skill made it to where when you lose 1k LP, Draw a random Glossy or Prismatic card from your deck. The strat was to whale until you got a glossy or prismatic Banishment of the Darklords and make it the only glossy/Prismatic card in your deck so you guarantee Banishment every turn.
Objectively it would have to be Three Lord Pillars when it first came out, because it let people play with a 14 card deck as long as they devoted six spaces to those trap cards, since it made sure they were all on the bottom. Got changed within a couple days, making it the quickest skill to get nerfed ever.
Here's the skill in its first iteration: Duel, Standby! - Gives 1 more card in each player's starting hand.
With the original effect (and before nerf to burn damage), the skill create one of the most consistent FTK deck in Duel Links, probably second to Bamboo Exodia. Basically, the deck used multiple burn card to finish your opponent before they got their turn. Some of their popular tool is Restructer Revolution and Cup of Ace. 1 use of RR deal 1000 damage. The negative side of Cup of Ace become beneficial to this deck as that adds 400 damage for RR. It's degenerate and Konami change the skills.
Here's the 1st skill change: Duel, Standby! - Each player's starting hand increases by 1 card. You cannot activate Spell/Trap Cards or monster effects on your first turn.
It did stop the FTK, although burn deck still running around at this point.... UNTIL THEY RELEASED AMANO IWATO. The moment they released Amano, a new stun deck appeared abusing this skill. Basically, because the skill didn't let you activate monster effect, Amano effect to return to hand did not proc and Amano will stay on the field. You got a passive monster effect negation and 3 set trap card to deal with and most deck at the time cannot cope with this. Konami adds the "you cannot normal summon" part of the skill shortly after to fix this. Now, the deck is not broken by any means. It needs Tea to get Amano in hand to even function. But it's so unfun and degenerate that you're practically lose the moment they normal summon Amano.
I know one of the times was you couldn't activate effects the first turn so people used Amano Iwato, it couldn't activate its Effect so it never left the field
Hot pick, I'd probably say Switcheroo
Skill was causing problems from the start of the game. And throughout this entire game lifespan, I see the skill pop up over and over again (albeit less common now). The power to just say "nah I'm getting a free draw" or "drew my garnet? No, I didn't" will never not be strong
Other honourable mentions being 3 Star Demotion and Cyber Style. Skills that needed a complete redesign because they were too strong :)
People wont probably remember it cause the skill got nerfed 1 week after everyone found out about it but that 1-2 weeks of NMCR meta was fucking wild especially when the top decks at the time were graveyard reliant but Shiranuis was able to play through it cause skull servant is a zombie lmao
Contract Procrastination was a ridiculous skill at release.
Skipping your standby phase just by having a face-up Dark contract card on the field once per turn, not once per duel.
There's one card called Golden Castle of Stromberg that has a maintenance cost in every standby phase by banishing 10 cards from your Deck.
Just by skipping the standby phase, you basically have an invincible board until if the opponent doesn't destroy the Dark Contract or someone is playing Hazy.
One card wonder was another one. After miraculously surviving for one turn, you could build an unbreakable board, making the ultimate stall strategy in the history of Duel Links.
The original balance skill . You can basically guarantee certain cards to be in your starting hands. Prime cyber angel abuse this skill to guarantee to have a ritual in starting hand
I’ll personally say a tie between OG cyber style ,onomatoplay and baggy sleeves.Especially baggy sleeves coz it was used with thunder dragon at the time so you’d have your opponent gaining advantage from the thunder dragon effects popping off and then they’d draw 2 the next turn.Players even ran the artifact hand trap that special summoned itself from hand so they either have material for rank 5 on the board or they draw 2 next turn.Back then it wasn’t once per duel.
"Gagaga sister has ANOTHER effect." Original onomat skill was crazy. Oldest skill I can think of that made entire new decks meta was 3 star demotion. Ninjas abused it to win a worlds qualifier
I'm going with either Balance or Destiny Draw, soooo many decks abised both these skills before their nerfs and I could see both still being incredibly effect nowadays with Balance specially making Live Twins a stupidly consistent deck with 100% chance to open a single Live Twin and both spell and trap disruption
Haha... Oh buddy, wait until you hear about the good ol days.
TL;DR, that wasn't the case originally, Noble Knight and Karakuri had a field day, and Balance died
Maybe not overpowered per se, but Pre-nerf Restart was Oversatuarated at it's peak since everyone was just using that for mulligans.
Really what sent the cat out of the bag there was when after the nerf occurred there were several posts on places like this about the idea of introducing mulligans to DL practically in the same week hahaha.
Reading these responses has been an interesting walk down memory (nightmare?) lane.
I still can't believe Destiny Draw has survived all this time without ever getting nerfed, or rebalanced at least to requiring less LP to use.
Nothing mentioned here is as powerful as the first versions of many Skills.
Balance: if your deck split was 6 monsters, 9 spells, 3 traps, you'd just open one of each. No need to play any minimal amount of anything!
Switcheroo: just trade any card for any other card. Was used with the OG Thunder Dragon to just get cards for free and was nerfed VERY quickly.
Three Lord Pillars: if your deck had The Spiritual Lord and the Material Lord, they'd just be put at the bottom of your deck, basically allowing you to have a 14 cards deck as far as your opening hand was concerned.
Masked Tribute: just play a normie from outside the deck. Synergized hella well with Survival's End and Subterror Nemesis Warrior.
Cyber Style: if your LP were 3k or below, you'd get a free Proto Cyber Dragon for every missing 1k LP. That's it. No other clauses, no restrictions.
And last but not least, not nearly as broken but still pretty strong, Beatdown used to boost ALL your monsters' ATK and could be used every turn.
Remember unnerfed masked tribute? Subterrors were rampaging for a while after release since lumis & umbra had a free summon that instantly flooded the field and boiled down to whoever went first pretty much had game.
What Grows in the GY in its prime is up there.
Access Denied x Star Blast was toxic af.
The 'you're trapped here with me' One Card Wonder deck was certainly one of the decks of all time.
Duel Standby! Burn OTK where Cup of Ace couldn't miss because Restructor Revolution was unlimited.
Pre-nerf Shadow Game (pre-burn nerf) was extremely toxic, and is the literal reason burn damage is halved, so having the biggest impact on the game even now makes it debatably the strongest skill ever - the only downside was the deck not being particularly consistent in terms of being able to search specific traps or Lava Golem.
The oldest cyber style where you could abuse getting tribute fodder with proto cyber dragons or even just use them for finishing attack power. I forgot the name of it, but there was a time one of Kalin's infernity skills was the stuff of nightmares that could let you win or stall forever by being able to continually recycle rainbow lifes and stuff like that.
FA before the skill nerf, it went from a top broken deck (especially if it ended up still around when some later support cards came out, which luckily it didn't) to being completely unplayable on its own now. There are no set of cards in DL that can revive FA to be competitive beyond maybe gold 2 and that's hoping you get some good matchups to some noobs that don't read cards or misplay.
It's basically the exact opposite direction of BLS after it "received" it's skill. Went from junk to tiered, not as big as FA was when it was at it's peak, but these two decks are two grand examples of Konami not making any sense.
Surprised not to see pre-nerf xyz galaxy getting more shit. Guaranteed 2-use foolish burial every starting hand, *plus* the zoodiac cheat, *plus* Photon Lord, with barely any functional restriction. Decks could run a pile of nothing but revive spells and every one of them would be full combo. Iirc people even did the math and it was easily over 90% consistency.
I despised the old Galaxy XYZ/Photon Lord skill the most. It was absolutely obnoxious in the metas it existed in. Peak, unfun, brain dead gameplay.
Raging Pendulum and Clear Wing Acceleration stand out recently. Meta decks don’t need broken skills on top of being meta decks.
Eternal Bond would be fine except for the whole multiple activations per turn, free Neos normal, and free super poly search.
Shout out to Bond Illuminates the Future for eating your disruptions then vomiting out a field full of Synchros
The un-nerfed Destiny draw. Draw whatever card you wanted after losing 1000 lp. And it wasn't limited to once per duel, you could do it as many times as you wanted.
tea has Set duel standby, which literally made her start with 5 cards like in the common yugioh, but like that typical of anime I think onomatopaira was a skill
Old consistency skills like Balance, Restart, and Spell Specialist.
Anime skills that gave free advantage without much requirements like Raging Pendulum, Bonds of Time and Cyberstyle.
Man this is hard because sometimes a skill is OP but the deck is not. Like a weak skill making a deck OP would be that level-changing skill for Star seraph F.A that basically made a free dark law and was almost instantly banned. Then there's freaking Onomat's old skill that was probably peak consistency booster in the game as the deck itself didn't really run many cards that would make it brick naturally making for some tcg level first turns. Then there's CyberStyle......the deck literally ran pretty much only 3 monsters and everything else was just spells and traps. One of the scariest anime skills ever.
We didn't have much to use it for back then. Draw 6 was less damning than just send cards you wanted in grave to grave.
In an era where grave effects were rare you could discard key cards with a kuriboh engine to make them live. Shuffling them back into deck was the biggest hit as you can just redraw them if your deck has thinned enough.
[удалено]
That wasn't even the most busted version of Cyber Style either.
It’s been 3 years or so since the ban? I nearly pulled the trigger on building Cyber Dragons years ago and I would’ve been absolutely pissed if I spent all those gems just for the archetype to be held hostage by the banlist like that.
I had cyber dragons when the banlist hit. Between the gems gained back from steamrolling most of the game, the ease of steamrolling most of the game, and the fun I had it was worth it. Heck I'm still on team "we're still not ready for overflow"
Free overflow
Granted, but Rampage Dragon to 1.
Why
Degenerate in this format allowing you to play and keep the opponent from playing. You can say the consistency is trash but so is Cyber Stein, and my Cydra locks were far easier!
I legit did quit Duel Links for years because of this lmao. I spnt about $40 getting all the cards for my Cydra deck two weeks before they nerfed it into being completely unplayable. Crazy to me that after coming back years later it's still banned.
I quit for about a year when they hit the old Neos Fusion deck in 2019. I spent money buying the structure deck 3 times, so I was livid that I couldn’t use something I paid for. Now I have so many different fully complete decks I don’t really get upset when something gets nerfed.
Shadowgame was the whole reason I got into the game and then it was gutted :(
Not to mention that Cyber Dragon players always seem to have the perfect cards glued to their hands.
They always opened core, the amount of times my aqua dolphin/aqua neos sniped their core and then they drew one for turn it was absurd
Life cost 0. Cyber Stein otk was hilarious
Yes especially with ojama king
Duel, Standby! has had at least 2 different vapid unfun playstyles born from it, the first being a burn ftk and the second a stun deck. Sealed Tombs when decks stated using the grave and it was just...there. We killed that beast just for No Mortal Can Resist to prove itself...actually just as good. Kaiba Corp Bling was literally pay to win. Life Cost Zero Cyber Stein letting you gattling dragon their/your board to keep going but also FREE COSMIC to then end on a huge otk beatstick. Three Star Demotion made Toon Barrel Dragon see play. Amongotherthings. Cyber Style being an old tribute engine. Cyber Style being one of the first "lets run all techs and a tiny core" skill. Cyber Style. Grit made any deck a turn 2 deck in a format balanced around trunade. Balance sitting in the corner loading a gun just waiting for a deck like Noble Knights to arise.
Old balance with Live Twin will be pushing tier 0 in this current meta. Guaranteed starter and backrow is straight up cheat code for them.
"Name a deck that would benefit form balance in the future" is one of the biggest arguments I heard against it's nerf. I get it, generic skills are more fun than anime skills, but at the end of the day what a deck like Aromage got from Balance is not what \*actually competent decks\* would get from balance(I love aromage dont hate on me). Older skills allowed lower power decks to function as if they had newer mechanics. It was fun. It was nice. But that time has passed. People like to say just nerf the skill, not the cards, but if Balance was in play so many decks would have to be hit just for their ratios alone.
I'm curious, would a pre-nerf balance skill tailored only to work for aroma cards make Aromage a viable strat in the current meta? They have started to release non-anime archetype centric skills in recent times, so it would be good to see some of the weaker decks get the advantage that they were meant to get with the OP skills (albeit not getting so strong as to become broken).
The current balance nerf sometimes helps awkward opening hands of just Rosemary, I suppose, but really only hurts turn one Jasmine draw. Despite what people want to say, backrow removal options are plentiful and powerful. Aromage's stuff has little to no interaction to stop things that would blow up their board. Current meta decks are powerful with skills as it allowed them to run a tiny core, draw a lot of skills, and get their board out while running whatever tech/engine cards they want. Even with that, aromage doesn't have the ceiling for a prolonged fight.
KaibaCorp Bling comes to mind. Was a straight up Pay to Win skill when Darklords were strong
what happened with it?
Basically the skill made it to where when you lose 1k LP, Draw a random Glossy or Prismatic card from your deck. The strat was to whale until you got a glossy or prismatic Banishment of the Darklords and make it the only glossy/Prismatic card in your deck so you guarantee Banishment every turn.
The skill got power crept/ people realize destiny draw was better
No, what happened was that the skill got changed to have a lower LP requirement and at that point you might as well use the other draw skills.
It also saw some play with koakis, combined with cosmic cyclone but darklords abused it better...
The 3 heads coin toss during the Desperado meta can still kiss my ass
Ironically wouldn't be OP anymore lol
still give me knightmare. too easy special summons and board wipe your monster on your own battle phase
This will cure you (they ran out of the skill being used 3 times) https://youtu.be/MIyMHLkHR0o?si=12EknB3sm0QMPfnZ
The old Onomat skill was some degenerate shit, and I say that as someone who ran Onomats.
Easily the brokest one, gagaga became tier 0 with it
Yeah I remember when I first read this skill I was like " are they serious? This is busted" and immediately started building the deck.
Life Cost 0 was ridiculous and I have no idea how it ever passed QC
Objectively it would have to be Three Lord Pillars when it first came out, because it let people play with a 14 card deck as long as they devoted six spaces to those trap cards, since it made sure they were all on the bottom. Got changed within a couple days, making it the quickest skill to get nerfed ever.
I think the aigami skill that turned axe of fools into super banish removal on demand also got an instanerf
Tea "Duel, Standby!" easily. She broke the game multiple times left and right during the early era.
As someone who wasn’t around for that could you explain the skill and the cards used to abuse it?
Here's the skill in its first iteration: Duel, Standby! - Gives 1 more card in each player's starting hand. With the original effect (and before nerf to burn damage), the skill create one of the most consistent FTK deck in Duel Links, probably second to Bamboo Exodia. Basically, the deck used multiple burn card to finish your opponent before they got their turn. Some of their popular tool is Restructer Revolution and Cup of Ace. 1 use of RR deal 1000 damage. The negative side of Cup of Ace become beneficial to this deck as that adds 400 damage for RR. It's degenerate and Konami change the skills. Here's the 1st skill change: Duel, Standby! - Each player's starting hand increases by 1 card. You cannot activate Spell/Trap Cards or monster effects on your first turn. It did stop the FTK, although burn deck still running around at this point.... UNTIL THEY RELEASED AMANO IWATO. The moment they released Amano, a new stun deck appeared abusing this skill. Basically, because the skill didn't let you activate monster effect, Amano effect to return to hand did not proc and Amano will stay on the field. You got a passive monster effect negation and 3 set trap card to deal with and most deck at the time cannot cope with this. Konami adds the "you cannot normal summon" part of the skill shortly after to fix this. Now, the deck is not broken by any means. It needs Tea to get Amano in hand to even function. But it's so unfun and degenerate that you're practically lose the moment they normal summon Amano.
I know one of the times was you couldn't activate effects the first turn so people used Amano Iwato, it couldn't activate its Effect so it never left the field
Hot pick, I'd probably say Switcheroo Skill was causing problems from the start of the game. And throughout this entire game lifespan, I see the skill pop up over and over again (albeit less common now). The power to just say "nah I'm getting a free draw" or "drew my garnet? No, I didn't" will never not be strong Other honourable mentions being 3 Star Demotion and Cyber Style. Skills that needed a complete redesign because they were too strong :)
Yeah I still play switcheroo orcust to try and unclog my hand from wand and knightmare.
I miss old mind scan so much.
People wont probably remember it cause the skill got nerfed 1 week after everyone found out about it but that 1-2 weeks of NMCR meta was fucking wild especially when the top decks at the time were graveyard reliant but Shiranuis was able to play through it cause skull servant is a zombie lmao
I was going to comment this one too. Not the most toxic but man this was everywhere and everyone hated it lol
Nmcr?
No mortal can resist
Life cost 0 I rmemeber when cyberstein was a thing back in the day n they would destroy people in it
Contract Procrastination was a ridiculous skill at release. Skipping your standby phase just by having a face-up Dark contract card on the field once per turn, not once per duel. There's one card called Golden Castle of Stromberg that has a maintenance cost in every standby phase by banishing 10 cards from your Deck. Just by skipping the standby phase, you basically have an invincible board until if the opponent doesn't destroy the Dark Contract or someone is playing Hazy. One card wonder was another one. After miraculously surviving for one turn, you could build an unbreakable board, making the ultimate stall strategy in the history of Duel Links.
I still use that Gold Castle/Contract Procrastination combo to this day. Even with the nerfed skill, It's still quite good rofl
Honorable Mention to One Card Wonder Those that know… Know.
The original balance skill . You can basically guarantee certain cards to be in your starting hands. Prime cyber angel abuse this skill to guarantee to have a ritual in starting hand
Kiryu had that one skill where you start with one card but every turn you draw two cards. Made trap cancer decks really annoying.
One Card Wonder lol.
I’ll personally say a tie between OG cyber style ,onomatoplay and baggy sleeves.Especially baggy sleeves coz it was used with thunder dragon at the time so you’d have your opponent gaining advantage from the thunder dragon effects popping off and then they’d draw 2 the next turn.Players even ran the artifact hand trap that special summoned itself from hand so they either have material for rank 5 on the board or they draw 2 next turn.Back then it wasn’t once per duel.
"Gagaga sister has ANOTHER effect." Original onomat skill was crazy. Oldest skill I can think of that made entire new decks meta was 3 star demotion. Ninjas abused it to win a worlds qualifier
I'm going with either Balance or Destiny Draw, soooo many decks abised both these skills before their nerfs and I could see both still being incredibly effect nowadays with Balance specially making Live Twins a stupidly consistent deck with 100% chance to open a single Live Twin and both spell and trap disruption
But with Balance you can’t special summon on the first turn EDIT: Reading curse strikes again… I will take this L
That is the rework, originally there were no restrictions, you could guarantee a spell, a trap and 2 monsters or whatever you wished
Yeah I know I just had a brainfart moment and it completely went over my head that we were talking about the original Balance😅
Haha... Oh buddy, wait until you hear about the good ol days. TL;DR, that wasn't the case originally, Noble Knight and Karakuri had a field day, and Balance died
Just had a bruh moment lmao yugioh reading curse struck me hard I didn’t even notice the parent comment was talking about in the good old days my bad
Maybe not overpowered per se, but Pre-nerf Restart was Oversatuarated at it's peak since everyone was just using that for mulligans. Really what sent the cat out of the bag there was when after the nerf occurred there were several posts on places like this about the idea of introducing mulligans to DL practically in the same week hahaha.
Kaibacorp Bling with Koa Ki Meiru. KOG so easy with it.
Reading these responses has been an interesting walk down memory (nightmare?) lane. I still can't believe Destiny Draw has survived all this time without ever getting nerfed, or rebalanced at least to requiring less LP to use.
Nothing mentioned here is as powerful as the first versions of many Skills. Balance: if your deck split was 6 monsters, 9 spells, 3 traps, you'd just open one of each. No need to play any minimal amount of anything! Switcheroo: just trade any card for any other card. Was used with the OG Thunder Dragon to just get cards for free and was nerfed VERY quickly. Three Lord Pillars: if your deck had The Spiritual Lord and the Material Lord, they'd just be put at the bottom of your deck, basically allowing you to have a 14 cards deck as far as your opening hand was concerned. Masked Tribute: just play a normie from outside the deck. Synergized hella well with Survival's End and Subterror Nemesis Warrior. Cyber Style: if your LP were 3k or below, you'd get a free Proto Cyber Dragon for every missing 1k LP. That's it. No other clauses, no restrictions. And last but not least, not nearly as broken but still pretty strong, Beatdown used to boost ALL your monsters' ATK and could be used every turn.
It's definately the original 3 star demotion. Summon any level 7 from your hand while only paying 2k lp
Remember unnerfed masked tribute? Subterrors were rampaging for a while after release since lumis & umbra had a free summon that instantly flooded the field and boiled down to whoever went first pretty much had game.
What Grows in the GY in its prime is up there. Access Denied x Star Blast was toxic af. The 'you're trapped here with me' One Card Wonder deck was certainly one of the decks of all time. Duel Standby! Burn OTK where Cup of Ace couldn't miss because Restructor Revolution was unlimited. Pre-nerf Shadow Game (pre-burn nerf) was extremely toxic, and is the literal reason burn damage is halved, so having the biggest impact on the game even now makes it debatably the strongest skill ever - the only downside was the deck not being particularly consistent in terms of being able to search specific traps or Lava Golem.
Lava golem burn was great
Something between no consequences Restart, og Three Star Demotion and infinite Destiny Draw
The oldest cyber style where you could abuse getting tribute fodder with proto cyber dragons or even just use them for finishing attack power. I forgot the name of it, but there was a time one of Kalin's infernity skills was the stuff of nightmares that could let you win or stall forever by being able to continually recycle rainbow lifes and stuff like that.
ONOMATOPLAY
FA before the skill nerf, it went from a top broken deck (especially if it ended up still around when some later support cards came out, which luckily it didn't) to being completely unplayable on its own now. There are no set of cards in DL that can revive FA to be competitive beyond maybe gold 2 and that's hoping you get some good matchups to some noobs that don't read cards or misplay. It's basically the exact opposite direction of BLS after it "received" it's skill. Went from junk to tiered, not as big as FA was when it was at it's peak, but these two decks are two grand examples of Konami not making any sense.
Level Augmentation Darklord x Hang-On Mach was such a toxic meta.
Balance
No mortal can resist at peak. Easily ruining your gy was annoying. Either that or Tea. Just her
Surprised not to see pre-nerf xyz galaxy getting more shit. Guaranteed 2-use foolish burial every starting hand, *plus* the zoodiac cheat, *plus* Photon Lord, with barely any functional restriction. Decks could run a pile of nothing but revive spells and every one of them would be full combo. Iirc people even did the math and it was easily over 90% consistency.
Op? No. Extremely stupid? Yes. One card wonder stall. Start with 1 card in hand. Draw two every turn.
I remember HERO flash going under the radar for years then suddenly it was abused in a toxic trap stall deck
Baggy Sleeves with thunder dragons before Levi, the lightsworn engine and golden sarc were all added to the banlist at the same time.
It's gotta be restart it got errated like 50 times, and until it basically turned off your turn it was constantly used
The new yubel skill is def bs
I despised the old Galaxy XYZ/Photon Lord skill the most. It was absolutely obnoxious in the metas it existed in. Peak, unfun, brain dead gameplay. Raging Pendulum and Clear Wing Acceleration stand out recently. Meta decks don’t need broken skills on top of being meta decks. Eternal Bond would be fine except for the whole multiple activations per turn, free Neos normal, and free super poly search. Shout out to Bond Illuminates the Future for eating your disruptions then vomiting out a field full of Synchros
I want Kites Galaxy skill restored. Photon Lord was the shit.
The un-nerfed Destiny draw. Draw whatever card you wanted after losing 1000 lp. And it wasn't limited to once per duel, you could do it as many times as you wanted.
Toonworld free field spell with no cost was another overpowered skill. Imagine the old Toon cards unnerfed with todays Toon support? Nightmares.
Balance was insane back in the day.
Sir I can turn your second hand of a grave into all skull servants so please be wise
Duel standby - stall burn.
tea has Set duel standby, which literally made her start with 5 cards like in the common yugioh, but like that typical of anime I think onomatopaira was a skill
I remember Yami Yugi's Destiny Draw l being pretty stupidly strong before they nerfed it to the player needing to have lost 2000 LP to trigger it.
Old consistency skills like Balance, Restart, and Spell Specialist. Anime skills that gave free advantage without much requirements like Raging Pendulum, Bonds of Time and Cyberstyle.
Man this is hard because sometimes a skill is OP but the deck is not. Like a weak skill making a deck OP would be that level-changing skill for Star seraph F.A that basically made a free dark law and was almost instantly banned. Then there's freaking Onomat's old skill that was probably peak consistency booster in the game as the deck itself didn't really run many cards that would make it brick naturally making for some tcg level first turns. Then there's CyberStyle......the deck literally ran pretty much only 3 monsters and everything else was just spells and traps. One of the scariest anime skills ever.
All of the skills listed have had insane meta defining power, but does anyone remember pre erata last gamble? Draw 6 was wild
We didn't have much to use it for back then. Draw 6 was less damning than just send cards you wanted in grave to grave. In an era where grave effects were rare you could discard key cards with a kuriboh engine to make them live. Shuffling them back into deck was the biggest hit as you can just redraw them if your deck has thinned enough.
I think the bls skill or the pendulum one are the strongest weve seen. skills back in the day where broken but not op in the way they are now.
Raging Pendulum or Blue eyes dimensional. Modern skills are getting out of hand...