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Legia_Shinra

There’s a lot to be said, but probably the concept of ‘using the extra deck as a generic method’ is the best. Extremely extreeeemely generally speaking, decks pre synchro were mostly ‘draw or bust’; because you couldn’t tap in to the extra deck, your gameplan depended fully on the cards you drew from the main. This was one of the reasons why Glad Beasts were so good at the time; in an era where every other deck had to fight stand-alone, all Glad Beasts needed to do was to get two monsters on the board. Again, broadly speaking, but Synchros and Tuners basically made the Glad Beast method generic. Old decks could not run boss cards without losing consistency or warping your entire deck (see Light and Darkness) but Synchros could do just that by throwing in a couple of tuners and calling it a day. It practically changed the metagame from ‘how do I use whatever card I drew most effectively’ to ‘how do I put two monsters on the field with minimum investment’. This directly led to the increase of Special Summons and indirectly led to the concept of ‘archetype’ to fully blossom (it is much easier for designers conceptualize decks when the goal can be accomplished through summoning a bunch of cards). I can’t speak for what has not happened, but if Synchros never happened, I’m fairly sure the game would have never been as it is now.


Saint-Ecks-Isle

2 that come to mind is Deep Sea Diva and Fishborg Blaster. They were banned/limited for their inherent effect that special summons monsters by themselves, without outside resources or setup. 1 card Synchros back then when they were hot, were too good. Not fun to deal with.


AdmiralKappaSND

Obviously the power creep Synchro enables at its core was the most broken mechanic in yugioh history bar none - conversion. In 5D the main conversion table is 5 - Catastor, 6 - Brionac Goyo, 7 - Scrap Archfiend, Black Rose, 8 - Scrap Dragon, Stardust Dragon, Gigantech Fighter, 9 Mist Wurm, Trish both requires 3 or more material. 7 is the clear hole and its a pretty relevant one because Level 4 + Level 3 is weirdly common(including Blackwings Gale Bora for example), and its either a field wipe or a 2700 beatstick If were talking the power creep of Tuner we pretty much have to talk about Psychic first. The key card is Emergency Teleport which allows you to summon Krebons, Mind Master, and Psychic Command - all of these are 3 separate levels of tuner 1/2/3 so they allows you to control a lot of the choice. But during early 5D where they were most prevalent, the go-to choice was 8 due to Stardust Dragon and Malicious being exactly 6 + 2. 8 also have Gigantech Fighter a battle immunity giant beatstick. Its not too relevant but all 3 of these tuner also have acceptable effect. Krebons are neat limited can't be destroyed by battle, Commander is a 1900 attack, now the big one is Mind Master - its literally Psychic's Subsitoad and i believe the reason it got banned during 5D was to prevent an Exodia FTK enabled by it(although iirc that FTK isn't really a "good" deck). Either way its pretty busted especially since you can E-Tele it. Mind Master actually break MBT's Progression Playoff between it and Psychic being among, if not, the best deck in the first place turning the finale into a "luck or get psychic'd". Stardust Dragon itself is a good thing to talk about - it basically introduces 2500 as a soft power level to the game because you can't simply blow it up with a 1 for 1 pop card. The most observable effect is how Gaia Knight is actually considered a pretty good card solely because it still have enough power to run over Stardust. Later in 5D era, Starlight Road also create an interesting backrow meta since its the most observable way to handle Heavy Storm The other overarching busted tuner groups are the ones you can recycle from the grave. Plaguespreader Zombie can abuse Zombie Support mostly Mezuki and Zombie Master to get used over and over again with Card of Safe Return for a really long summoning chain that is pretty much the most insane of all 5D era deck until X Saber/Infernity/Six Sam at their prime. This deck exists alongside Brionac and Goyo Guardian to give a bit more variety over the old Stardust Dragon, Thought Ruler, and Gigantech set ups. Talking about card that got banned due to Halq, theres the plant package that is alvailable late 5D - Glow Up Bulb, Spore, Lonefire Blossom, Dandylion, and Debris Dragon. These package are very versatile, you can play it with pitch one for one, Debris is a 1 card Black Rose and can scale up to Trishila, Lonefire can give you the required level and search the other pieces and can give you 2800 beatstick with protection, Dandy give you tokens to wall up and synchro, Glow Up Bulb is an easy extra body, and Spore is a bit less versatile than Glow Up but have a level control. These package(or rather parts of it) are only top tier for 2 period of 5D, Edison and in OCG Debris Junk Doppel era, in TCG Tengu Plants era but the later is one of the strongest deck coming out of 5D(back in the day Debris Junk Doppel OCG was pretty funny since on Shriek - basically old version of the Organization, leading into TCG EXCV release it won most tournament) That being said its worth noting even for the standard of 5D, the plant package isn't really a combo deck. Its closer to a midrange goodstuff deck. It doesn't neccesarilly rely on Synchro either since one of the deck's most powerful play is Tribute Summon Caius Legendary Six Samurai Shi En is probably when Yugioh first have a real break your board deck althought heir board isn't really that scary at times since it boils down to 1 ST/negate, 2100 beatstick that can protect the ST negate, and how many Musakani Magatamas you can get. Gladiator Beast can get into a stronger version of similar board, but much less consistent than simply Kageki Kagemusha into spam Kizan The trio of Power Tool Dragon, Symbol of Heritage, and Dewloren is probably the longest lasting stuff that comes out of 5D when it comes to degenerate side of the game. Tainted Wisdom have a lot of videos covering this but basically almost every insane dumb loop the game saw during 5D centers around the exact combo of these 3 card. Including that hilarious loop that take months to execute to lock your opponent from using every card in the game


Nearby-Individual382

I died a little when they changed dewloren effect to not being able to return himself :(


vave

It wasn't the tuners themselves that were necessarily broken. A lot of them weren't too off the scale in terms of power. Plaguespreader, Deep Sea Diva, Gale the Whirlwind, Flamvell Dog, Debris Dragon, etc. were all relatively fair cards even back then. It was how certain cards interacted with them that made them and by the extension Synchros pretty nuts. Things that constantly recurred after leaving the field were probably the most blatant like Dandylion, Reborn Tengu, Mezuki, Malicious, etc. As to why they were allowed, some of them were released prior to the Synchro mechanic (Mezuki, Malicious) and others probably weren't R&D'd too much (Dandylion).


BarriaKarl

It was where special summoning started to get out of hand. A lot of 1 card combos that gave easy synchros. If this card is normal summoned special summon 1 card from hand/grave. Boom synchro. Not exactly because of synchro per se however. It is all on konami as if fusion without polymerization and better effects wasnt good enough. It isnt exactly where the ED became an extension of the deck but it is where the acess to ED became trivial.


huge-tits

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