Breaking the Game

Having been around the game since it's inception in the US, I have experienced a lot of truly broken cards and trends. That being said, I don't believe many players today fully understand what it means for a card to be truly imbalanced. Before we can explore what is and isn't a broken or imbalanced card, we really need to define what makes a card broken.

Restriction
In general, most of the truly broken cards in the modern game have been completely banned in the advanced format, making them for the most part irrelevant. Being broken is for the most part an extremely subjective thing. For example, there was a time where Breaker, The Magical Warrior was considered a staple in pretty much every deck. He became a walking 1900 Mystical Space Typhoon in a meta when a 1900 monster was pretty serious business. Over time, much to my surprise when I would later return to the game, he was completely unrestricted, and for the most part today he's completely ignored as a monster slot. Now, I'm not relaying this story because I believe that he was a broken card, or is a broken card today. My point is more that as cards become more powerful, older cards become obsolete. Breaker did not become weaker, other cards became stronger, and he became obsolete. A truly broken card is always good-- and furthermore, a broken card simply CAN NOT be unrestricted in any meta, because it would cause severe disruptions in the game as a whole. Not every card on the restricted list or banned list is a broken card, however, to be truly broken, a card can not become semi-limited.

Dependency
A truly broken card can not be strategy dependent. Many of my opponents get frustrated when I drop Master Hyperion for the third time in one game and cry "IMBA!" but the reality of the matter is Master Hyperion is one of the cards that makes Agents what they are. To understand that, we must first understand that trading card games are not designed to be balanced. That's right, you heard me. Trading card games are NOT designed to be balanced.

Having played World of Warcraft since it's inception as well and playing a rogue the entire time, I have seen both ends of the balance spectrum-- from being able to infinitely stun lock players to not being able to defeat even the wimpiest of spell casters. Blizzard corrects this by releasing patches and constantly tweaking every class and build to achieve an appearance of balance. What generally happens, is that there are a lot of classes who become homogenized to look like other classes. Hunters gain stealth, Rogues can teleport, Shamans can defensively dispel. A lot of the things that made those classes unique were lost, and the games be boiled down to "You're playing one of these three archetypes" and the class you pick is really just your flavor of bubble gum. This is not necessarily a bad thing, up until I quit playing I felt the game was fairly balanced, and Blizzard did what they had to do to keep things from spiraling into a world filled with nothing but rogues and hunters.

How does this apply to Yu-gi-oh? Well to put it simply, Konami can not simply patch their cards. Some cards are errata'd for clarification, but in doing so they need to reprint the card and make it massively available to the general public, judges need to be educated about changes and huge amounts of time and money are spent correcting old content. Instead, they have the ban list to work that out. However, what this means is they cannot change XX-Saber Faultroll to banish an X-Saber monster to destroy a card your opponent controls to mimic Master Hyperion's ability.

Instead of attempting to homogenize the game and create a slew of "different" decks that all pretty much have the same cards, they try to create strategies that are unique to themselves. Does dark world have a card like Archlord Kristya to completely shut down and opponent's special summons? No. Do Six Samurai's have the ability to tag out bigger samurai's from their deck like Gladiator beasts? No. The game isn't designed to completely balance every strategy. The game isn't about deck flavor. You can put a lot of strategy and creativity into your deck, but you should never completely mimic the powers of a deck that happens to dominate your deck all the time. The game is more interesting with tons of different archetypes with strategies unique to their own builds. I don't want to play in a game where every deck is the same with different art.

Being imbalanced is not being broken if it's strategy dependent. You can't splash Master Hyperion into plants, you can't throw Grapha, Dragon Lord of the Dark World into x-sabers, and you can't throw Red Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon into Karakuri. These cards all have amazing effects, generate awesome field presence, but outside of their own domain they are not much more than two tribute beat sticks.

Splashability
This is related to dependency, but on the other end of the spectrum. A truly broken card must be splashable. That means that nearly every single deck in the game is able to run said card, even if it contributes absolutely nothing to the actual strategy of the deck. A perfect example of this is Magical Scientist. This card was in every single deck. Why? Because you played scientist and you got out Dark Balter the Terrible and you eliminated monster effects at the cost of just 1000 life points. You could then Metamorphosis Balter to keep him in play until he's finally destroyed, all the while negating your opponents normal spell cards. This would be fine if you had specific scientist deck builds-- but Magical Scientist popped up everywhere. There was really no reason to not run him, and if he were around today he'd still be used in essentially every single deck out there. If too many splashable cards exist in the games, you essentially live in a world pre-banlist, where your spell line up was essentially pre-written and you are only subbing out about five to ten cards to make your deck "uniquely yours." It's an awful world to play in.

Popularity
This issue is not so much game related as it is meta related. A card can not really be broken until it is also insanely popular. There are good cards that are used or used sparsely that follow the above rules-- a perfect example is Mirror Force. If Mirror Force became unrestricted it would break the game as a whole as people would be too terrified to attack. It is not dependent on having a specific strategy or type of monster in play to activated it and for the most part it's usable in every deck out there. I do not, however, consider it a broken card. Many top level decks no longer run Mirror Force, simply because it's easy to play around. It's not chainable and by playing conservatively you can cut your losses against one of these. It really is a very good card, but lacks the popularity to really be broken.

Cost of Use
Not every cost matches the card. For example, Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End paid only 1000 life points. What does it do? Oh only destroy every single card in play and in both players hands and deal damage to your opponent for every cards sent to the graveyard that way. It also required a light and a dark monster to be banished from your graveyard to be summoned, and boasted 3000 ATK for that cost. This card should never see play again if there is anything sacred in the world. It's cost is too low for the benefit it gives you. Conversely, you see cards like Solemn Judgment which cost you half of your life points to counter any card. That is a hefty price throughout most of the games. Despite it's splashability, lack of dependency, popularity, and restriction requirement, it is by no means a broken card.

The WRA's Picks
I do believe there are cards in the game right now that are actually broken. No, they are not Tour Guide from the Underworld or Reborn Tengu. While I agree those cards follow most of the rules I put above, if they were both restricted they would be significantly weaker as cards.

Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning
Okay, I understand that there are actually a handful of decks that can not or do not use this card, and I will agree he is nowhere near as overpowered as Envoy of the End, but come on, this card simply wins games by the merit of being awesome. At the very minimum, if your opponent does not somehow negate his summon, he comes out and banishes any monster he wants. Not face up monsters, any monster face up or face down. On top of that, he is absurdly easy to bring out, and has more attack than anything in pretty much anyone's deck. Oh, and he combo's with Honest, by the way. This card is easily in the broken category in my book.






Dark Armed Dragon
Okay, I might get flamed for this. You might think it's hypocritical to call Dark Armed Dragon broken but not Master Hyperion. The fact that Dark Armed Dragon is a splashable version of Hyperion makes him fairly broken. Putting three darks in your graveyard is not a difficult task for almost every deck, whereas playing enough Agents to make Hyperion viable makes it so that only one strategy can use him. This guy is a beefy 2800 attacker that also has field removal an unrestricted amount of times every turn, and I'm simply surprised he's not played more often than he is in the TCG, especially with Tour Guide running around.






Monster Reborn
I don't think this needs explaining. I'm not sure this card needs to be banned, but its a special summon from either players graveyard at no cost. Very broken in a game where special summons are already super prevalent.

Heavy Storm and Dark Hole
Granted, these two cards do have set backs of also destroying your own cards, but they are extremely splahsable, non-dependant, ridiculously popular, and FREE field clearing. If these cards ever became semi or un-restricted the game would be a dangerous place.









I hope you folks enjoyed today's article. I welcome you to post your own opinion on what broken is in the comments below, or any cards that you think are broken that I did not list here and why. Thanks for your time, and as always if you like my work I welcome you to follow me through the "follow" button on the right side of the page, or via Twitter or Facebook. Have a great week!