The Game Balance of Investment

 

We've been talking a lot about "investment" here. "Investment should equal output." is as close to a catchphrase as I have as a creator (perhaps other than "It's a fan deck so it's sh!t."), but what exactly does it mean?

Card Balance

This nice little combination of an adjective and a noun refers to the total number of cards in your hand and field, aka an indication of the number of moves you have left. Yugi might not have an official resource system like other games (for example mana for MTG and satanic RNG contracts for Hearthstone), but the vast majority of its big plays require a number of lesser cards to be used, either by being on the field together to act as a combo, or being sent to the GY as a cost.

For example a Link 4 monster will require a minimum of 4 maindeck cards to be summoned, directly or indirectly. Even if you break it up into smaller processes (for example 2 Link 2s), the initial number of maindeck cards required remains the same. Even if you "Monster Reborn" one of the previous Link Materials to reuse it, the total number of maindeck cards used is still 4. Therefore, if the opponent only has 2 non-Link monsters on the field and no cards in their hand, you know that it will not be easy for them to Summon a Link 4.

Total card balance change of this: -2 + 1 = -1, but your new monster is a Link 2, meaning in a Deck focusing on Links, your card balance might be considered the same in the end.

Now there are various ways this gets circumvented in Yugi. Graveyard effects are one of the most common ways. A card in the GY is technically not included in your card balance, yet it does increase the number of potential moves you have left, to the point that "D.D. Crow" and "Called by the Grave" are considered a good trade-off to cancel that out, despite essentially getting your card balance -1 without lowering the opponent's.

Appropriate setup is also a way to avoid card balance, though it still requires effort, in many cases, even more than simply lowering your card balance directly. One of my favourite examples of this is "Tri-Brigade Revolt", which, given the prexistence of setup, provides you with a Link 4 with zero change of card balance. I consider strong counters to be on the same category as plays based on setup. "Rebound" might negate an opponent's bounce effect and also ditch a card from their hand at the cost of only 1 of your own cards (so -2 for the opponent, -1 for you), but it requires predicting the opponent's plays and running a card with particularly little versatility. What I'm getting us, is that even if they ignore card balance, plays relying on careful setups are for the most part perfectly fair.

Despite the various tricks to ignore card balance and still achieve powerful plays though, the fact of the matter is that card balance will never stop mattering. "Pot of Greed" is never going to get out of the banlist, because it's simply a +1 to your card balance without any setup, effort or opponent interaction required. "Graceful Charity" will stay perpetually banned because it keeps your card balance the same (+3 cards, -2 cards, - "Graceful Charity" itself) while extending your plays.

If you can achieve powerful plays (mostly translated into boss monsters) without either lowering your card balance or going through extensive minor plays just so you don't have to lower your card balance, then that means that after finishing said plays you still  have an entire hand left to use. Even with arbitrary limitations like the typical "you cannot Special Summon for the rest of this turn" that most broken cards try to patch things up with, you can still set dangerous backrow, or otherwise keep your resources for the next turn.

Achieving the Most with the Least

Just a minor section before getting to the meat of the article, but going through competitive Yugi's history, you will see that the strongest monsters almost never see play. Instead, the most easily accessible ones, even if they are subpar, do. Even with the most meta decks out there, the end-boards never have one absurd boss, but rather an absurd number of mini-bosses.

This is "Ancient Gear Chaos Giant". It has 4500 ATK, is unaffected by the opponent's backrow, prevents Battle Phase effects, deals piercing and can attack everything. Despite coming out in 2017 and power creep very much being a thing in Yugi, you will still see him trample the vast majority of today's bosses 1 on 1. Why is he not seeing play then? Because, even if you use "Ancient Gear Hunting Hound", skipping the need for a Fusion Spell, he is at the very least a -3 in card balance. That's 3 cards that could have been used to summon 1-2 other mini-nosses (on average 2 cards = 1 mini-boss).

Those mini-bosses are usually separated in 2 categories: A)Minor negates or effect removal, in both cases preventing the opponent's plays one way or another. For example: "Masked Hero Dark Law" B)Play extenders, aka just stepping stones, usually held in the Extra Deck to reduce the card balance impact, for bigger plays. For example: "Dread Saryuja" (who is simply pathetic on his own when compared to literally any other Link 4). "D/D/D"s are famous for having a multitude of those, usually in their Fusions and Synchros. The "Borrel" dragons are one of the few series that actually saw play which were genuine bosses and not mini-bosses.

Achieving Something with Nothing

And here is the problem. The reason you see me b!tch so much about what Link 1s should be allowed to do, is that Link 1s are the only Extra Deck monsters that inherently require ZERO lowering of your card balance. You start with 1 monster, and end with 1 monster, with no inbetween, there is NO investment involved. If a Link 1 can increase your card balance in any way, it means that every single maindeck monster of your archetype is a +1 on its own. As far as I can tell, other than the "Marincess" one, every. single. Link 1 that could change card balance on its own saw immediate competitive play from its release to this day.

Just to be clear, this is not limited to Link 1s. I find both "Chimeratech Megafleet Dragon" and "Zoodiac Drident" disasters as far as design is concerned, and completely unfair. Curious as to how people would react with a more honest format for them, I ran a little experiment. The results bring tears to the eyes. People were far more ready to call them out on their bullsh!t as well, when the color of the frame changed to something new and therefore hostile.

Oh yeah, they ain't lookin' too fair, are they? A Link 1 with a minimum of 2400 ATK that can free-dispose of something in the EMZ and another one that Quick-Effect targeted-destroys at no real cost. People gave them a pass because they were in their beloved Fusion and Xyz forms, but when you see them for what they really are, they are simply broken.

"Red-Eyes Fusion" is the worst offender of the bunch, just straight up using materials from the Deck. Even if "Dragoon" wasn't as strong as he is, and we instead summoned something like "Black Skull Dragon", it would STILL be busted (ftr same goes for every other card that can use materials exclusively from the Deck, like "Neos Fusion", "Shaddoll Fusion", "Brilliant Fusion", etc).

The Floodgate Issue

Floodgates are quite easily the epitome of minimal investment, with the aim to restrict the opponent's plays as much as possible on their own. Usually taking the form of permanent Spells/Traps that prevent specific actions for both players, people are quite divided on them, especially given the utter plague to the game that is "Mystic Mine".

For me, floodgates are fine as long as they prevent specific stuff. "Royal Prison" is fine, "Necrovalley" is low-key broken, especially given how "Gravekeepers" don't play by their own rules. Usually, it's not an issue if a card single handedly ruins a specific deck, but it's usually another story if it f@cks the vast majority of decks out there. There's a reason "Power Filter" is still perfectly fine while "Vanity's Emptiness" is banned and is never coming out.

To be clear, I'm not saying that the ~frakly random~ amount of Decks that a specific card disrupts is an indicator of how strong it is, especially given the format changes. I am saying that for floodgate cards these usually overlap with how broken the cards are.

And specifically for "Mystic Mine": It single-handedly prevents all monster effects from being activated and all attacks from being declared, that's just bad design. Frankly it almost makes me wonder if they had not considered the possibility that it can be played when you have no monsters. In other words, the lockdown it causes is way too broad, with the only balancing mechanism being a frankly irrelevant self-destruction condition.

Epilogue

Where is this going? It's a lesson for Konami, and custom card creators out there: If neither your card balance changes nor effort (setup) is required to advance your plays, then you are probably breaking the game. Patching it afterwards with arbitrary limitations and pointless lockdowns does nothing.