I Spent 4+ Hours Ranking Every Retro Format

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0:00 – Intro
2:29 – DM Era Formats
29:20 – GX Era Formats
1:00:04 – 5Ds Era Formats
1:28:18 – Zexal Era Formats
1:55:04 – Arc-V Era Formats
2:23:07 – Vrains Era Formats
2:30:32 – Sevens Era Formats

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34 thoughts on “I Spent 4+ Hours Ranking Every Retro Format”

  2. Glad you put the tear mirror haters in their place. Never got to experience it in the TCG so it's a little different but the month that I got to play ishizu tear mirrors in MD was some of the most fun I had. Both players playing during each other's turns and trying desperately to stop each other from setting up or getting to Dweller. Shit would get to chain link 10+ regularly

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  3. Strongly disagree about Goat being solved, but do appreciate your comments about Stein and Cat not being a problem in Goat. A lot of people are used to hearing “X card wasn’t played at the time, but got played later, then became a game-breaking staple in retro play that everyone plays at the maximum copies,” which is often hyperbolic. A lot of people who’ve only heard other Yugitibers talk about Goats overestimate the power or universality of cards like Upstart or Solemn in Goats, for example. It’s nice to hear someone push back on that way of thinking.

    Even Last Warrior, which you mention by name, sees little play in Goats.

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  5. There’s no way Frog FTK format isn’t in the bottom of unplayable. And for the reasons you mentioned about Gravekeeper it has to be DREV>Starstrike

    March 2012 format is also hot garbage. The wind up hand loop is why retro formats even emerged in the first place. The revival of Goat format came about because people hated the meta at the time.

    Lastly I'm sure if Meadowlands was heavily played, I can't see a world where full power Mermail isn't definitively the best deck. I think one of the other closer Zexal formats like Fire-Water or Vegas might be the best one for the era. Agreed with you that HAT is overrated; Soul Charge is a card that shouldn't exist let alone at 3 and I don't find playing with/against the hyper control Artifact deck to be particularly fun.

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  9. I never understood why people love HAT, unless you were also playing HAT then it was incredibly unfun to play against. The OCG had Chronomally and Heraldic Beast around that time and I remember being sad that we didn’t get Nebra Disk and the heraldic xyz until much later. I also think everyone greatly overvalued shock master post hunter hit. Any handtrap stopped the windup combo and there were sooo many fun decks that were playable like Grandsoil and Piper. Sure windup was clearly the best deck but not by a lot, and it had some poor matchups notably hero beat

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  10. Me personally im having a TON of fun with the NECH format (november 2014) but with emptiness at 0, it's something completely different and fun, it's a continuous back and forth on both sides of the field. Amazinf

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  11. I feel like the main problem with a lot of Historic Formats is a small bit of problem cards that just mess up the whole thing, but if you remove those things then you're just changing it into a Custom Format. I personally don't have a problem with that, but purists who want to explore a format to its fullest potential are going to be up in arms over those kinds of changes.

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  17. Couple of comments:

    STBL format is hugely underexplored and was incredibly diverse at the time. There were also other fantastic lists like Karakuri Machina Plant that were floating around too. The big turn off that format was the lack of heavy storm, but otherwise great. The only danger here I think is a runaway GK format, but I'm not sure about that, it's Saber MU wasn't great, frognarch might have been an issue , etc. It's one of my favorite formats honestly. Games ended up being pretty grindy due to the lack of heavy storm. I think it steps on Edison's toes too much to ever gain mainstream popularity, but I think it's actually a little better than Edison in a lot of ways.

    STOR Six Sams were not tier 0 in the TCG, even with 3 gateway. Tier .5 ish. The format was awful, but it was a two deck format. Six Sams were the best deck, but GKs could keep pace, had a couple of advantages vs them, and could be built to anti-meta Six Sams. What ends up happening in that match up is a dick measure contest of who gets to stop the other person from playing, and whoever goes first wins like 80% of the time, but GKs could absolutely blow Six Sams out with a turn 1 Royal Tribute, and in general Six Sams had a hard time going second into GKs. The deck often struggled to get over a Necrovalley pumped spy, and Descendant was one of the few reliable outs to Shien. Everything else was meme tier against triple gateway six sams, but this works in GK's favor given that it bumped off a lot of GK's bad match ups. GKs could play the Spellbooks to Six Sam's Dragon Rulers – one is clearly a way stronger deck, but the one dumb thing the other deck does is just good enough to anti-meta the big dog.

    Dino Rabbit/Chaos Dragons/Full Power Inzektors/WU hand loop was a horrifically bad format. Easily one of the worst in the games history. The diversity was the only thing somewhat redeeming, but it was immediately negated by all of the big decks being completely miserable to play against. Every single deck in that format was not trying to play yugioh at all. Chaos Dragons were trying to OTK you if you couldn't interact with them, WUs were trying to FTK you with the hand loop, Dino Rabbit was trying to stop you from playing at all, Inzektors were the closest thing to a fair deck, and that was a super, super messed up fair deck that turned one dragonfly in to leveling your whole board and generating xyzs.

    WU Format is a hugely underrated format. Lots of cool stuff going on with the WU deck in general, and Dino Rabbit/Inzektors were much more interesting to deal with.

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  21. I know the whole thing is "play things as they were."
    But: So many of these are one change away from being way way better… why not do it?
    Edit: 2:01:15 So apparently some do…

    Resume original comment.
    I.e. play revised Cyber format where you just ban Cyberstein, which everyone agrees is a problem, and that the format would be better without it.

    At least in non Konami events, there is nothing stopping people. Just label events extremely clearly:

    "Insert format, X card banned"

    Like, on Smogon, retro pokemon formats get banlist changes.

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  24. Ruler formats are just top tier. Or rather, either top tier or unplayable, depending on what you like. But I without a doubt have played the most Yu-Gi-Oh around Tachyon and it was awesome and I assume it's even better now. I do feel like it has the perfect balance between 5DS and current metas, can do a lot of cool stuff and it doesn't take 20 minutes to do a combo, and as mentioned, very skill intensive

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  25. >Meadowlands over Tengu for "big 3" consideration
    THANK YOU. Its not just BLS either, Dark Hole is also a washout card I loathe in TP. Meadowlands is the most balanced and open that Zexal has to offer and a true representation of XYZs.

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  28. Teledad format is better than Edison from a modern perspective. Depth of field of decks is a representation of a bad format, not a good one. Still like Edison btw, but from any bit of competitive standpoint it's so annoying to play.

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  30. Tear 0 format was so bad it made me quit the game may be skillful but god it was sooo boring, link zoo was one of my favourites formats it actually had a very skillful mirror match but most importantly it was reeaaally fun to play

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