I feel every deck list is the same it's so dull see that is a good segue actually into a discussion I wanted to have with you guys we are kind of in a weird spot right now I feel like when it comes to uh the TCG right and I want to talk about ways how we as a community that includes you guys that's why I want to do this live on stream and have a discussion how we enjoy the game during a a format like this one right it doesn't necessarily have to be a tier zero format but like any given time you don't enjoy a format how do we avoid getting quote unquote bored by it right because I do feel that way at the moment a little bit right like I don't particularly hate the current format I also don't love it and I definitely understand if someone isn't a fan of tier zero snake ey format that's completely fine but that's not what this discussion is meant to be about I don't want to discuss is this format good or bad I want to discuss how do you deal with the fact that maybe you don't like a certain format right what do you you do if you don't like a certain format I want to preface this by saying that the ability to even try and enjoy a format that you kind of get bored of is something that is pretty cool to have because I'm experiencing this honestly for the first time in a long time actually I've said this before in the past I don't have to try hard because I think from my perspective that is the worst part whenever I don't enjoy a format I always play right to me personally not playing the game is not an alternative right I know for some people it is and that's okay for me personally if there is Big tournaments happening and stuff that is important to me on on another level I will still play right if there was a ycs right now even if I completely hate the format I go right if I'm grinding for world's points I play yeah good example in chat right now the format for last year's Master duel worlds qualifier I didn't enjoy it that much right but I still did it right and so like those are the hardest times for me as a Yu-Gi-Oh player is when I don't want to try hard because maybe I don't like the best decks in the format like I don't enjoy what they do or whatever but I still feel forced to play them because I need to perform right or I want to perform rather I mean I'm never technically forced to perform but like if I'm in the worlds grind and a new tier zero deck comes out and I really hate the mirror match but it is the best deck by far then I kind of have to do it right like in the current situation Snake Eyes is a deck that if I was collecting worlds points right now I would be going to a lot of regionals and I would play Pure snake eye all day every day right I would be playing I don't know 15 18 hat traps and we would be uh comparing opening hands throughout the entire Regional right because I'm not doing that at the moment right I'm not collecting world's points I haven't been doing that the past two regionals I've gone to I have played the board breaker Sky striker snake eye which was a lot of fun the week after or two weeks after I brought the Paleo pile to Regionals which was also a lot of fun fun and I didn't win those regionals but I still did uh well for my understanding and uh I had a lot of fun this is kind of like my way of enjoying a format that I'm getting quote unquote bored of and I'm I'm never really bored of Yu-Gi-Oh but it's like when the same deck is popular for a long period of time it feels a little bit stale even though it never is completely stale there's always some development and there's always something you can improve on but I felt the same way during tier liament format tier liament mirror matches were interesting and good there was good Yu-Gi-Oh being played but after a while it just felt kind of obnoxious to to keep thinking about ishizu tier liament in the current format the the way I deal with it if I'm playing tournaments which there aren't that many we don't have a ycs at the moment but like if I'm going to Regionals I'm just like messing around you know because I just like I like trying stuff and that sort of thing I feel like is a little bit easier in a tier zero format I don't know I feel like from my perspective whenever I'm trying to mess around with a rogue deck I feel like that's easier when there is only like one main deck that I need to counter on the other hand in a very diverse format if you want to try something new you have a better chance of succeeding because if there's a lot of different decks I think it's usually easier for your deck to be viable as well you know like just make it like decent so I wanted to hear from you guys what you guys are doing at the moment are you running Snake Eyes cuz you just want to play the best deck or because you have to because you're try Harding for points or something or are you just like playing Rogue decks are you playing like the same Rogue decks are you trying different stuff I'm try Harding with my lab deck because not enough money for Snake Eyes you see I think that if you are not that attached to doing well at every single event I find this process also very interesting of like taking one specific deck right that is not the best deck in the format and just making it like your thing throughout the format trying to improve that one strategy right like to have like your pet deck in a tier zero format that isn't the tier zero deck so you just try to play that one and do as well as you can over multiple events and try to improve it and make it good against the best detick in the format I think that's also interesting do you think Rogue decks are underexplored because none of the good players play those that is something I have mentioned in the past to an extent I do believe in that I believe with how many different decks there are in Yu-Gi-Oh and how many different cards there are there's definitely a case of decks that go under the radar a lot you can see this in time wizard Yu-Gi-Oh because very often when a format is being played people don't discover a lot of the stuff people have discovered countless Decks that are better than what people played during Edison format because Edison format is a super popular time wizard format people play it a lot people still innovate in it the same is true for like hat format right hat format I think is now pretty much being dominated by uh I think it's like infernity which is a deck that wasn't that popular back in the day there's other examples of this too and that just is because there's always a time constraint right you only have so much time to figure out what's actually good you also only have so many events to prove it because maybe someone has figured out the perfect solution to snake eye format and it's some random rogue deck right if they bring that to the next ycs which might as well be maybe the last ycs of tier zero snake eye format who knows even if it's the best deck in the room and a crazy solution to the format they might have a bad day they might misplay they might have some bad luck we might never see it because they don't talk I do believe that there is a lot of unexplored potential in Yu-Gi-Oh at all times which I think is what makes it so interesting right but also frustrating at the same time because I very often feel like I have ideas that I just don't get to explore enough and there's definitely a paradox as well that you mentioned where a rogue deck could potentially perform a lot better if the good players played it right because it's not only a about the deck that you play it's also about who plays it let's just say Pro players right whatever that means to you Pro players are more inclined to play the best decks in the format cuz they're the tryhards they want to perform well they play what's considered good right that makes it even less likely for rogue decks or non-popular decks to perform to shine because the the people that are willing to play Rogue decks maybe don't have the means to build them properly or like to build them to their maximum potential I don't want this to sound so negative it's not like everyone who's playing a rogue deck is incapable of building a good deck or anything like that it's just that the majority of the people that are very capable of building and piloting decks to their maximum potential they play the best decks in the format right most of the time it's very rare that people mess around with Rogue decks at the very high level right yeah a lot more brain power goes into playing and building those and developing those right and so like Snake Eyes For example is for sure developing at a much more rapid pace and a and has a bigger curve in terms of improvement opposed to Rogue decks as of now I'm playing runic variant especially the goie version I want to master that deck I'm using this period to become a good player rather than an average one that is a very good mindset because even if you dislike the snake eye format or whatever there's still a lot of lessons to be learned in any given format because different formats teach you different skill sets maybe you liked Unchained format a lot and you learned a lot about breaking boards and figuring out your lines going second without drawing too many hand traps just like good use of of board Breakers right very important skill set and now you're going into this format so your skill set doesn't really carry over and uh you don't enjoy the hand trap Wars cuz you were just like I don't know you loved Unchained and so you you don't enjoy this one in comparison right and so what you maybe don't see or what you don't like recognize is that it's a great opportunity from a player perspective to improve in areas that you haven't improved in the past format because during Unchained format you didn't really need to learn how to use your hand traps because maybe you didn't play any right or because it maybe it was much simpler cuz you played less there are other lessons to be learned in the current format than they were during Unchained format and that's always the case no two Yu-Gi-Oh formats are the same and there's always skills that you can develop or or learn that you haven't learned yet and I find that very interesting and that is also part of what keeps me playing during formats that maybe I don't enjoy as much right because one other thing that I find very important to say is that especially during the formats where I don't enjoy the gaml portion like I don't know I didn't enjoy gouki mirrors or spiral mirrors or whatever like ad emancipator mirrors especially during those periods where you don't enjoy the gameplay portion of the game is typically the time where you can really look into deck building deck building is usually more important in those kind of formats the complete opposite of an example is tier liament format in tier liament format deck building was almost irrelevant but the gamep play was super complicated and so that was a good format for people that maybe they were already good at deck building but they needed to learn some more like interaction based thinking you know like all that kind of stuff that would have been a good format to play the thing is that people very often they tend to dislike what they are not good at if there's a format where deck building is irrelevant but gameplay is really important and you're good at deck building and your gameplay isn't the best you're inclined to not like that format right because your skills are not represented in that format and rather than seeing it as an opportunity to improve those things that they're missing people just end up not liking the format and that makes them not motivated to play The Format and all that kind of stuff right it's just like a big cycle of if you are able to overcome those sort of things you can greatly improve in those formats that you don't like and I'm convinced that I have probably missed some of those opportunities in the past because I didn't enjoy I don't know maybe spiral format and because of that I didn't spend enough time on deck building during that period of time and maybe uh could have improved a lot at it you know who knows that's why I liked your comment a lot when you said you're just trying to focus on becoming a good player in general rather than just like performing or focusing on this particular format right I think that's a very good point how do you get good at deck building h that's a very hard question to answer you learn a lot of small lessons over time there's no one thing I can tell you right now that makes you good at deck building cuz like I said in the one format maybe this thing matters in the other format maybe this thing matters and like learning how to approach different formats in deck building is super important you have a lot of these mini learnings over time and then I think the most important rule or the Only Rule that you need to learn when it comes to deck building is that there are no rules essentially for deck building which might sound counterintuitive but I can tell you from my I don't know 20 plus years of playing this game I have not encountered a single rule quote unquote for deck building that always holds up you could think like oh always play 40 cards or less cards is better or always play the Good cards at three all these things are not always true even play 3 Max season Master duel is not always true and that is very important to understand these things are very good to start with when you have no idea how to build a deck yet they are good like groundworks make it 40 make it consist play three ofes those are solid Basics right to start with so that you're going to make a solid deck from the get-go right but in order to optimize deck building I think it's important to learn when to make exceptions to these things it's very very important to understand why people say this rather than just following it every single time people say these things with solid reasoning right but if you don't understand what that reasoning is you also won't know when to deviate from it if that makes sense as an example this sort of Holy Grail of a rule that people make of like hey you should play 4D cards right the reason why you want to play 40 cards at a basic level is because out of all the cards in the in the universe you pick the ones that are the best for your deck right the idea is what people mean by consistency you want to make your deck do the same thing most of the time right you want to make sure your deck does what it does every game if possible so the idea behind playing 40 cards is if you were playing more cards than 40 let's say it's a 45 card deck you can point to five cards and say like oh these five cards are not essential to my core strategy if I just eliminate those five cards I'm going to see the important cards to my core strategy more often right I'm going to make it more likely for my deck to do what it does best or what it wants to do if I take out some of these cards that are less important to the core strategy of the deck and that makes the deck quote unquote more consistent right chances still work the same way in 60 cards it's just depends on the possible number of starters versus deck size see this is where it's important to just understand the the basic thing yeah so like in theory in a completely hypothetical Universe where all the cards in your deck are the same quality and you have more cards available in the card pool that are the exact same card quality yeah you could play more you could play 45 if you add five cards that are the exact same quality than the existing cards in your deck sure the reality of things is that most of the time there is a difference in quality between almost every card in the game right I used to follow this a lot if you check most of my ycs deck profiles especially from back in the day I would be surprised if not most of them were 40 cards and ironically most of the time if you see a deck of mine from the past that's over 40 the reason was probably I didn't know what to cut cuz that is a legitimate reason and people hate to say it this way like people hate to admit that but it is a legitimate reason to play over 40 if your reason is yeah I think something should be cut here but I just don't know what but most most of my successful decks from back in the day are 40 card decks and I would say as a basic rule I think it still is fair to say that a lot of the time your deck should probably have 40 cards you guys are right when you say uh but it's just a very small percentages if you add one or two cards to your deck that is true it's not going to matter immensely right but deck building is all about optimization when you're trying to optimize something the argument of oh it's just a couple of percentage points or it's only like5 5% less to open a starter or whatever if I add one card to my 40 card deck that still goes against what you're trying to do with optimization but the thing is most of the time nowadays in deck building making these decisions is not just a net positive or a net negative or like only just positive just negative there's always a trade-off right like for example people have been mentioning side decking patterns in chat which is a fair point if you play more cards in your deck it is easier to identify the cards that you can side out you know it's easier to maybe side in more cards for a specific matchup because you have like some cards in your main deck that you intend to take out after siding Fair Point that's a benefit the downside on the other hand is if you're siding in a really important card for a matchup in a deck that has more than 40 cards you have a smaller chance of drawing it right and so you're making trade-offs and I think that's what people don't look at more often than not right because every decision that you make during deck building does not only have positives it it also has negatives and vice versa right and the same is true with just straight up going over 40 cards right because we've been talking a lot about consistency one other thing that you could mention is if you add more cards to your deck it also does different things one example it goes back a couple years during necros format I often thought about playing like random copies of MST or whatever in my deck and going over 40 with it because your 40 card necros deck can be incredibly consistent but if your opponent opens a Floodgate which was how a lot of the Rogue decks were trying to beat necros during necros format they would like flip mistake or anti- spell or whatever right your 40 card hyper consistent necros deck might have a 0% chance of outing mistake so you just lose in theory a 401 card necros deck that has one MST in it is slightly less consistent than the 40 card version on the tradeoff you go from 0% of outing a Floodgate to like I don't know 16 or something which is like a very notable increase right what I'm trying to say is you lose some consistency but you get some flexibility in what your cards do 6% there's no way it's 6% hold up I'm fact checking you on this I'm being one guide 12.2 going first but it's floodgates so going second it's 15 you get what I'm saying the reality is you do want your deck to be consistent you do want your deck to be able to do what it does to follow its game plan every single time but the reality is also that your game plan is not enough in every single game there are games where your opponent's cards beat your game plan for example I can draw a super consistent combo hand but my opponent flips a Floodgate if I don't play an out I lose so there are some upsides to deviating from this my deck needs to be as consistent as possible right and the important part is to be able to understand when to make these exceptions when is it actually worth it to go off of what you normally would do or what you inclined to do make it Max consistent or whatever right and another great example on this these decks nowadays that play a lot of engine requirements SL bricks SL garnets whatever you want to call it this wasn't always the case but nowadays there's a lot of decks that play certain cards because you need them for other cards and therefore you only play one copy that you don't really want to see gem Knight Garner DDD king requium or whatever it's called you know Unchained soul of shyama flamb bur dragon snake eye Oak original sinful spoil s frame driver you name it there's an example of one or two of these cards in almost every single Yu-Gi-Oh deck these days right I like to call these engine requirements because you don't want to play those cards but the engine requires you to play them in your deck right and they ruin some of your hands you don't lose every time you draw a s frame driver but it certainly is a disadvantage and as a result there have been cases where you play these sort of decks that have a lot of these cards and it would actually be optimal to go over 40 Dragon link is a great example of this right because Dragon link was like a super combo oriented deck that was using some engine requirements like boot sector launch Dragon Ravine absor rouer Dragon red eyes darkness metal dragon all those kind of things they weren't the end of the world if you drew them but you would rather not you would rather have full gas every single hand you wouldn't really want those cards right Dragon link was a deck where it was relatively easy to add more cards into your deck that kind of do the same thing as all the other engine pieces in your deck right so what people did is they had this 40 card core of dragon link and they just added more starters to it and they added more hand traps to it so that it would kind of remain the same in terms of your odds of opening starters and opening certain hand trap or like not certain hand traps but hand traps in general right you end up with like a deck that follows almost the same math as what you started with but with a lower chance of seeing those engine requirements right which as a whole made the deck better all this to say I think it's important to understand where these basic rules for deck building come from because that helps you to understand when you don't need to follow them what you can do to take advantage of the ability to go over 40 the ability to go over 40 I think is something that people ignore a lot of the times in deck building because this idea of having to play 40 is so ingrained in their heads they think it's a set rule that needs to be followed which is just not true very often it's correct but it is not something that is always true and the same is true when when it comes to playing three ofs or two ofs or one ofs right like I've kind of changed my mind on that a little bit because the the basic idea behind that one is that if you decide to put a card into your deck you're basically saying hey this card is good in my deck this card is good this format I want to see this card so why would you only play one or two when the card is unlimited right if you think the card is good why wouldn't you play three and this especially comes into effect when you play multiple cards at one or two right like for example in my deck I'm playing two effect Bor and two ghost moers because I think those cards are good in this format I'm like okay well if you think effect veiler and ghost moner are both good this format and you're playing two and two don't you think one of them is better than the other in reality one of the two is better and you should be playing three of that one and less of the other right because technically one of them does take away space from the other right and I think most of the time that is also true most of the time when you're playing multiple two ofs you should probably think about which of these cards are better than the others because usually cards are not the same quality on the other hand I think it can be beneficial because let's say you have six slots for hand traps in your deck maybe there's one person that would play three Ash and three Nibiru in those slots right that's like the one where you you think those are the two best chant traps in the format so you play three Ash three Nibiru right and then there's another player who plays like I don't know two Ash two Nibiru two effect Bor which feels criminal at first glance but once again it's still important to recognize even something like this which goes against all your instincts in deck building does not only have downsides because for example if the player with three Ash three Nibiru goes second against the matchup that opens a hand where you would need three different hand traps they cannot win if your opponent plays manum and opens a hand that plays through two hand traps they have a 0% chance of winning it the other guy with two Ash two in the B two veiler their chance is not Z their deck might perform better because maybe you play a match up that requires you to draw in thebu plus Sailer the chances are not as good as if they were playing three Nibiru three veiler but they can beat the guy that requires you to draw Nibiru with effect veiler less odds of opening two of the same two yes and I think that's also something that people underestimate is like this chance of drawing two of the same hand trap people do the following thing when they think about these odds they go like okay I'm playing a 40 card deck I'm drawing a five card opening hand I don't know I play uh uh three Ash blossoms what's the odds that I'm throwing two oh it's only 3.64 that's incredibly low right is like one in every 30 games that's fine right the thing is if you build your entire deck religiously after these rules this applies to multiple cards right you you play so many it's found to happen multiple times throughout a tournament right the other thing is these individual stats they only account for one game if you go through a long event the big European ycs is to win one of those you go through 18 best of threes and most of these best of Threes go to three games right so let's say it's not quite the average but you can play up to 54 games and this sort of stuff it adds up and this is why optimization is so important even for small percentage points this calculation also includes chances of you drawing three yeah and I'm not saying you shouldn't be playing three ashes I'm just saying understand what you're doing is the most important thing understand what you're doing and understand what your reasoning is and this is also not a freebie to just go ahead and play two of everything without thinking about it and get oh Josh said it's okay also not what I said it's just understand what you're doing and act accordingly and if you have good reason for playing certain two ofs then that might be okay right also we're ignoring the fact that drawing two copies is not always bad especially if you start that's another point I I never said that I mean you don't lose every game you draw two ashes right and that's the thing for a lot of cards you accept the chance of drawing multiples because they are just that good right most of the hand traps are usually like this but maybe there are cards where you don't want to accept [Music] it