I’ve been playing a lot of card games, mainly Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel and Shadowverse. It’s been a long time since I’ve played card games like that, so I decided to go ahead and ramble about em.
The Heart of The Cards
Like a lot of folks my age, I grew up on the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime. I have so many fond memories of watching Yugi and company go through Duelist Kingdom and Battle City, Jaden and his pals rep the Slifer Red dorm, and Yusei and his buds play card games on motorcycles. Seriously, it’s been years since I’ve actually watched any of the anime, but I have the character’s voices ingrained in my mind and treasure my memories of the series. My history with seriously playing the card game is mostly limited. I got a dragon deck from my brother when I graduated elementary school, but I wouldn’t actually meet other people who played YGO until I went to college, where I played my roommate and another buddy of ours in the dorm. And even then, because of how expensive competent/competitive real life card games are, we were just playing with structure decks. There’s nothing wrong with that, and we had a lot of fun, but I’m just pointing out that the fun we were having was far and away from the meta of the game. The only other sort of experience I have is playing Tag Force 5 on my PSP, which is where I learned to love the Infernity Archetype.
And so steps in Master Duel. Released at the beginning of this year, it finally gives Yu-Gi-Oh! an official online simulator where you can collect cards and play against people online. Playing this game has been my first real step at playing “competent” YGO since the game gives you enough resources to make like 2-3 decks you want perfectly free so long as you start out knowing you want to play those decks. I’ve made Infernity, Red Eyes, Felgrand, Cyber DRagons, Black Luster Soldier, and Gaia The Fierce Knight decks. Now, just because I built these decks, it in no way means they’re good. I have fun playing these decks, but they’re not meta in the slightest, which is unfortunate. YGO has so a bunch of cool archetypes, but the majority of them are not competitive in the meta at the moment. Of course, that’s card games in general. It just sucks because these are the archetypes I have fun with and have the most attachment too. I still have fun, and I’m perfectly fine with not winning all the time, but it’s kinda unfortunate none of the things I have fun with are the consistent winning strategies.
YGO’s not necessarily bad these days, but I do have my gripes with the game and its power creep. It’s 20 years old at this point, so it makes sense power creep has gotten so bad, but it still sucks. But I enjoy what I play. The game package itself is good, I have fun cards, I have some homies playing the game, and most importantly, I have not dropped a single dime on this game. I would be a thousand times saltier if I dropped 300+ bucks on these cards irl and spent money traveling just so some pasty motherfucker can do his 15 minute combo on turn 1 and then I brick when I draw for my turn.
As far as what I’m actually using, I love using Infernity because I liked Kalin’s character in the 5D’s anime and I honestly just ended up enjoying the challenge of keeping no cards in my hand & the rewards the cards gave me for it. Felgrand is an archetype I have sentimental attachment to - The deck my brother gave me when i was younger was a Felgrand deck, and I have always loved them since. Summoning high level dragons from the graveyard is pretty fun, too. I ended up making Red Eyes purely off the strength of Black Skull Dragon, which is my favorite card of all time. Cyber Dragons are just cool(and probably the most practical option out of all of these, tbh). Finally, I just think Black Luster Soldier and Gaia are sick.
Evolving Cards
I got into Shadowverse during my Sophomore year of college. One day, I saw it on steam, thought it looked godlike, and downloaded it. The rest is kinda history.
Shadowverse was my first experience properly getting into a card game. I played casual matches on a daily basis, watched videos, netdecked, etc. I was still mostly casual because I liked fighting games more, but it was the first card game I was able to keep up with and play on a regular basis. I experienced the highs of my archetype being and good and the lows of it sucking. I’ve praised cards and called them straight bullshit.
Gameplay-wise, the game was so different from what I knew of card games from YGO. You steadily accumulated play points that you used to play cards, there were no traps or things you activated during your opponent’s turn, and the Evolve mechanic was unique.
Shadowverse has 8 classes, and within those 8 classes are even more types of decks you can build. I started out as a Runecraft player because 1). Isabelle looked hot and 2) Spellboosting looked really cool to me. I eventually got around to trying Portalcraft and fell in love with both Artifact and Puppet Portalcraft decks. Somewhere along the way, I picked up Swordcraft because I did like board focus and it was cheap to make at the time. I’m currently still maining Swordcraft.
Shadowverse has been around for about 6 years, and power creep has hit it in its own way. The game always had bullshit, but the turn the bullshit came on was usually the turn where someone got to like 9 play points. it wasn’t weird to see a game go to 9-10 play point turns. Nowadays, that turn where the bullshit pops off is around 7pp. A combination of this, Swordcraft being bad at the time, and the uninteractive win conditions running around were what lead to me taking a break from the game for like a year. I came back to the game after playing Master Duel because I realized YGO is way more bullshit than anything I experienced in SV, so if i can put up with YGO, I can put up with SV. Coming back to SV has honestly been a breath of fresh air after damn near no lifing Master Duel for about a month. Thanks to how generous SV is with free things, it’s been really easy to make a decent deck and start playing again.
I also just love SV as a game package. I genuinely enjoy the music, aesthetic, and the story mode. The game has produced some wonderful characters and story arcs that I look forward to seeing more of every time we get an update. The game is very generous with free stuff, with daily free packs and money, free tickets for budget decks that last until the next expansion releases, and a lot of money for doing story mode battles. You also get a lot of stuff from doing the events, win or lose.
Wrapping It Up
I have my gripes with how volatile things are these days, but I do love card games. I love building decks. I love playing my decks. I love playing with my friends. Some of my favorite designs come from card games like these. They’re a really fun hobby to invest time into besides fighting games. Honestly, the bullshit in them makes me appreciate fighting games a lot more.
But that’s it for my rambling. I’m probably gonna be playing a lot more card games this year. I can play Shadowverse on the regular and play Yu-Gi-Oh! with the homies. Sounds like a fun time to me.