https://9gag.com/gag/aQEGbNw#comment

And of course the muh abelism whiner has posts like

and

ufo turtle couldnt save him

Blue-Eyes winning a World Championship sounds like a RETVRN moment. But it wasn't as pretty in practice as it was in a headline. Let me recap.

Worlds is the biggest Yugioh tournament. You qualify for the event by winning enough points in other events. But it doesn't define the meta as much as regionals or nationals, because it has its own card pool and banlist.

Yugioh has two main formats, OCG and TCG. OCG is the original format played in Japan and other Asian countries. TCG is the USA import, which the rest of the world follows -LATAM and Europe-. Sets, card pools, bans and some rulings diverted here, and are still different today.

Worlds participants are taken from all regions, so it follows a hybrid ruling. Only cards that are in both formats can be played, and banlists are fused and rounded down. If a card is limited to 1 copy in America and unlimited in Japan, it will be limited to 1 in the Worlds.

In mid 2016, Pendulum wasn't just a trigger word for boomers, the dedicated players were sick of the mechanic as well. This wasn't long after a tier 0 Pendulum format and Konami had 2 big projects coming up both banking on original anime nostalgia. First a movie and then a mobile game. So they gave Kaiba shiny new cards then printed them for the game.

So they banned cards for every top contender, Majespecter, Phantom Knights, Burning Abyss and Monarchs. All the while Blue-Eyes were given busted support, none of which were banned.

One of them is noteworthy for being the most pushed card in the game's history, Blue-Eyes Spirit Dragon.

This card has two effects, each just targeted hate for the current meta. The effect to disable multiple summons at once is only relevant against Pendulums, and the graveyard lock was to stop Burning Abyss and Phantom Knights.

Konami was trying to prop up Blue-Eyes for positive media attention and shill their new movie. And it worked. As torturous as it was Blue-Eyes was played by 7 out of 22 participants and won.

The ensuing mirror match wasnt fun

first game the mutt has only a single playable card in his hand and the jap cucks it out with a hand trap. he spends the following 3 turns holding his limp peepee in hand then dies.

second game the mutt barely draws any monsters and sits on 4 set spells and traps for 3 turns. after he doesn't draw anything good he kamikazes his monster to activate its graveyard effect but the jap banishes it. then he dies.

While the stars aligned to make Blue-Eyes playable in this instance, its still a very top heavy deck suspectible to bricking. Most cards work in tandem with each other so there are no single card starters, you need to draw in pairs. no summoning a bunch of monsters in 1 turn shenanigans either.

I tried to keep this concise because i just wanted to show a funny moment in history. I dont want to make effortposts like the last time but this required some context

There's something rotten in the state of Warhammer 40k. Even as Games Workshop's most successful creation continues to grow, recruiting new fans and breaking sales records left, right, and center, it still suffers from an old wound that refuses to heal, and re-opens every few months to gout foul, toxified blood once again.

If you've ever spent more than five minutes in Warhammer 40k's online communities -- especially within the last few months -- you won't need me to tell you that this open, festering wound is gender. Specifically, it's manifested in the question of whether Games Workshop should introduce female Space Marines (FSMs) into official 40k canon.

A bit of background: during 40k's formative years (the late 80s and early 90s) GW didn't feel the need to market to women by including them in its #1 favorite army -- and women fans weren't in much of a position to tell GW they wanted to be included -- so the game's power armored poster children stayed exclusively big, beefy boys.

Today, after 36 years of self-reinforcing lore inertia and corporate risk-aversion, Space Marines are still front and center of every major 40k product, and they're still 100% men.

Naturally, some fans already build their own FSMs at home with third-party components, and headcanon is forever -- but, in the official models, Warhammer 40k books, and 40k games, all Space Marines are male. Some folks want to change that, mostly so that female fans feel more represented. Others really, really, seriously don't want it changed, and they're oh, so keen to make sure everyone knows it.

Living in these spaces every day, I admit I'm so tired of the whole darned business that mostly I just hope it'll go away -- but then I remember two things. First: staying neutral is always a vote for the status quo, which currently is a cesspit of bilge. And, second: when you turn your back on cesspits, unpleasant things start to grow from them.

So it's time we had a little chat about this whole sorry situation -- what's going on, why it sucks, why it matters, and what's to be done about it. Strap in, nerds -- this is going to be a long and bumpy ride.

Don't mention the g-word

Before we get started, it's worth remarking -- with some regret -- how hesitant I was to even broach this subject in print. Not because it's not important or appropriate, mind you; politics, including gender politics, are everywhere in fiction because they permeate every facet of human existence in the world, including our hobbies, games, and stories -- whether you want them to or not.

At the risk of stating the obvious: anyone who berates you for trying to 'insert' politics into 'their' hobby is either woefully uninformed; dogmatically ignorant; cynically pushing their own politics under the guise of apolitical 'gatekeeping'; or else some combination of those three. Such people deserve your sympathy and support, because they're probably going through some stuff -- but their views don't amount to a hill of beans.

No, I'd usually avoid it because it feels like constructive discussion on the matter has simply ground to an intractable halt. In 2024, meaningful discourse about gender in Warhammer 40k spaces has been almost entirely drowned out by never-ending, bad faith arguments about female Space Marines. It's been going on for years, it's exhausting, it's dispiriting, and it's so, so boring

It's a shame, really. At one time, the debates around gender in Warhammer 40k were, if not drastically more intelligent and courteous, at least more varied. I remember explorations of gender roles among soldiers and civilians from all the weird and wonderful Warhammer 40k factions, and the imaginative diversity sci-fi allowed for in such things.

We considered all the regular human psychology -- including gendered psychology -- that's buried deep inside Space Marines' heads, sublimated to their warlike programming but still there, threaded through their personalities.

We marked the apparent Astartesian tendency to ponder and discuss baseline human experiences and impulses supposedly expunged from their brains -- like love, s*x, and family -- and we wondered who these transhuman 'men' would be, if they were ever allowed to lead a human life of their own.

We wondered who the heck Slaanesh was, whether he was a he or a she or a they, and why. Come to that, we wondered why Slaanesh was thought of as having a different gender from the other Chaos gods at all. These were interesting, meaningful, nerdy questions.

Now the chat is all 'female Space Marines Y/N', all the time, and it blows.

Some fans argue it'd be an easily acceptable new idea to fold into 40k's timeline, far from the weirdest thing in the setting, and would help move 40k away from feeling like it's still designed for 14-year-old boys.

"No", other fans say, "that's stupid and wrong; only boy-children can survive the transformation into a Space Marine, it says so in an old lore text that I don't own and have never read, but I'm sure I saw quoted somewhere.

"There are women in the other factions, why do you need to mess with the Space Marines? And anyway, if you're so bothered about representation, why don't you go and play Sisters of Battle? They're women, aren't they?"

Tell an AI to generate 30 slightly differently worded versions of that exact exchange, then post them online in a continuous loop for years, and you'll create something remarkably close to what 40k spaces are like at the moment.

It's true that -- between 40k, its fantasy twin Age of Sigmar, and their respective spinoffs -- Warhammer actually has a heck of a lot more great female characters and miniatures these days than it had in 1987, and some respectable LGBT+ representation too. Modern 40k feels noticeably less for the straight, male gaze, and all the better for it.

For some, though, progress in those other areas of the hobby only accentuates the fact that girls are still not allowed in the Space Marine treehouse, after decades of missed opportunities for GW to update the made-up rules of its fictional world and let them in.

Personally, like I said, I don't care that much either way. I'm not very interested in arguing for or against female Space Marines.

They're a relatively minor discussion point in a bigger conversation about inclusivity and representation in our hobby. On the long list of Warhammer priorities, I'd say they're much less pressing than things like making sure LGBT people feel safe at community events.

So, you may well ask: why are we several hundred words into an article about them? Well, this is where things get a bit yucky.

It's those guys again

FSMs aren't inherently a very big deal -- but, in my estimation, they've been made into a battleground issue by the behavior, motivations, and sheer fury of the people railing against them.

Because you and I both know what happens when fans of a fictional thing start sharing dangerous notions about updating it to make it friendlier to more groups of people. Those guys are going to start turning up.

Using words like 'inclusivity', 'representation', or 'gender' draws them to you like hungry carrion birds to a fresh corpse. Wherever real people are trying to be kind to other real people, at the cost of amending -- or even simply criticizing -- some elements of a shared, imaginary world, they sense an opportunity for performative outrage.

They'll sniff out simple human compassion from a thousand miles away, and eagerly swoop in to mock it as ‘virtue signalling', as loudly and derisively as they possibly can.

Who are ‘they'? For the most part, it seems, conservative-minded men and boys, apparently angry and afraid that men's privileged status in our social and cultural systems is being eroded, who've constructed a personal identity and purpose around their favorite ‘manly' hobbies, and therefore find it validating to imagine they're nobly protecting those hobbies from external, corrupting forces.

They're right -- but, more importantly, they'rewrong

Let's be clear: when those guys tell you there aren't any female Space Marines, they're absolutely correct. There aren't any. Not one. GW accidentally, passively, set a precedent shortly before I was born (1992, if you want to know), the social world changed around it, and now it's up an inclusivity tree without a gene-crafting paddle. FSMs that exist = 0.

The cracks start showing when they have to argue why there shouldn't be. When you call upon them to show not merely that case A is true now, but that case A must always be true, and that all alternatives are definitely worse, probably impossible, and (for bonus points) immoral.

The evidence base on which they must build this ironclad case against change? A 36-year-old, crazy-paving patchwork of science fiction stories and blurbs from the back of model kit boxes, with only marginally more internal consistency than the Bible.

If there exists a rigorous, critical argument explaining why all Adeptus Astartes must *always *have exclusively male s*x-physiology and gender characteristics -- and, more importantly, why this peculiar red line of in-universe lore is so fantastically important that it's worth alienating half the planet and venomously abusing strangers online to defend -- then I confess I've yet to encounter it.

Much more common, in my experience, are fallacious screeds against a poorly defined ‘wokeism' that, ironically, seem far more interested in hawking real-world political theories than they are in a serious discussion about Warhammer 40k itself.

None of these rhetorical tactics or rancid vibes are new. This same ramshackle, reactionary movement, steeped in in-group/out-group social pressures and masculine identity politics, has been at work in our culture for well over a decade. It weaponizes people's feelings of powerlessness, disenfranchisement, and digital isolation in a fatalistic crusade to reverse the liberalizing social changes of the last 50 years or so.

It's been a driving force behind G*merGate, the Alt-Right, and the Trump presidency, and it's still very much alive in Warhammer, videogames, and throughout western public life.

Of course, 40k has been dealing with far-right foxes inside the hen-house for many years, simply because the hellish, bloodthirsty, xenophobic, totalitarian dystopia that is the setting's central faction -- the Imperium of Man -- is practically tailor made to give teenage fascists a hard-on.

For every thousand fans, 999 appreciate the grotesque, multi-leveled parody of 40k's appalling, dark fantasy world, and one becomes enamored with it at face value, despising our blandly egalitarian, neoliberal reality, and longing for a big, strong, gold-armored daddy to tell them what to do. Genuinely, it's unsettling the adoration these people have for someone as abhorrent as the Emperor of Mankind.

That's only one in a thousand -- but 0.1% of a fandom as big as Warhammer 40k's makes for a sizable extremist fringe. As 40k sales climb and influxes of new hobbyists join the game's community, the club keeps getting bigger and more diverse -- which causes the fringe to become more frantic and militant in its desperate, misguided 'gatekeeping' mission -- and FSMs are its favorite subject.

So why are you bringing this up now?

Like news, precipitation, or bowel movements, this stuff goes through cycles. 'The Discourse' on FSMs tends to hit a rolling boil for a month or so, then die away for a couple of months in favor of more interesting topics, before inevitably bubbling to the surface again.

And the recent waves of FSM posting have me more worried than usual because of the attention they're attracting. You see, recently I noticed Alt-right YouTube influencer Carl Benjamin, a.k.a. Sargon of Akkad, weighing in on the subject.

It isn't the first time, mind; Benjamin says he's been into 40k for about 30 years, and I totally believe him. I hate to say it, but his Magnus the Red paintjob is pretty rad.

From what I can tell, though, most of his online presence these days focuses on fearmongering about immigration taking over England, demonizing non-white migrants, and fanboying over Elon Musk and Nigel Farage. I'd thoroughly recommend avoiding him; I try to.

But, over the holiday break, he still found time in his busy schedule for several tweets about why one particular type of toy soldiers can't be girls, because, in his opinion, Space Marines are "representation for men, and not women".

Curious, you might think, that a supposedly serious far-right talking head (and, er, respected podcast host) would a) apparently care about gender representation in fiction, or b) spend his valuable time opining publicly about the gender politics of a miniature wargame, even one he loves with all his heart.

Active political figures of all stripes are perfectly allowed to like Warhammer; the UK Home Secretary and Conservative Party MP James Cleverly is an avowed fan, for instance. But, oddly enough, public-facing political operators don't often openly participate in online arguments over Warhammer lore, suspecting perhaps that it might lead people to think them superficial, unserious, or naïve.

Old Carl has no such concerns, though. He's happy to join us nerds at the toy soldiers table -- but not, I think, because he's superficial, unserious, or naïve. No, it seems to me he's caught the whiff of potential in the air. The Warhammer 40k community is going through another phase of growing pains, and it could become an increasingly fertile recruiting ground for anti-woke, alt-right acolytes, if they can properly cultivate it.

This, above all, is what's putting a bee in my proverbial bonnet.

In principle, I completely understand Games Workshop's desire to feign ignorance on the FSM question, leave the mess to sort itself out in the wider 40k community's 'free market of ideas', and avoid alienating any customers. It's cowardly, but it's commercially prudent.

In practice, it's resulted in a permanent, toxic, stifling stalemate, in which one side (Sargon and pals) can leverage the implied support of the IP owner purely because they're defending the status quo.

Again, I don't care whether or not they prevent female Space Marines becoming a thing. That's not important. What is important is that this vacuum of authority could give Warhammer 40k's G*merGate rump a free run at flogging all their political ideas to incoming generations of fans.

The longer GW refuses to comment, the longer the self-described anti-‘woke' crowd can spuriously claim FSMs are leftist propaganda being forced down the throats of ordinary, right thinking Warhammer fans. The longer those claims go unchallenged by GW, the more new joiners to the hobby will be entering a Warhammer community twisted and malformed by alt-right ideology.

And the tragedy is, Warhammer 40k didn't start out like this; it got sick over time. The current shitshow is almost certainly as distressing and depressing for 40k's real creators as it is an appetizing opportunity for the likes of Sargon.

How did it come to this?

Warhammer 40,000 isn't a fundamentally conservative, misogynist, or illiberal entity, either in its fiction, its philosophies, or its operation. Its earliest incarnations were chock full of satirical jokes at the expense of real-world conservatives, and its greatest creative luminaries have been subversive, anti-establishment, left-wing arty types.

Its central conceit -- a future human empire full of misery, pain, and fear, governed via theocratic fascism and pathetically obsessed with exterminating its enemies -- is an explosively unsubtle and, frankly, unmistakeable cautionary tale about the dangers of far-right thinking.

It's a grand parody that explores just how profoundly low humanity could sink if freedom, equality, and democracy gave way to xenophobic authoritarianism on a species-wide scale -- and invites us to reflect on what that means for our real-world political ideas and actions. There are other, greyer layers to it, but this is the deepest; this is the spine of its world.

But, over three decades of commodification, diversification, and occasional simplification of the source material, that nuanced political context has become more easily separable from the hobby's iconic, recognizable, meme-able concepts, forces, and symbols.

Eternal war; an immortal God Emperor; the lionization of soldiers and their bonds of brotherhood; 40k's fixation on such things was supposed to inspire distrust, skepticism, and a thrill of fear. Yes, they were interesting and complex ideas, with shades of grey -- but ultimately they were the artifacts of dystopia, undesirable things to be vigilantly avoided.

The problem is that, divorced from their proper, parodic context, those same ideas can be emotive, seductive, and even subtly radicalizing in their own right. In other words: ironic fictional Nazism looks, sounds, and acts a lot like regular Nazism. And, if you don't get the joke, you're just as vulnerable to its poisonous ideas in a sci-fi wargame forum as you would be at a party meeting.

So what should we do about it?

In recent years, GW has made some limited -- but welcome -- public statements in an effort to align itself against bigoted or intolerant fans, under the banner phrase "Warhammer is for everyone".

But a brief trundle through 40k Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, and Groomercord communities is enough to demonstrate just how far there is still to go before it can turn that mission statement into a practical reality.

Any suggestion that the envelope of Warhammer 40k products, media, or events be widened in any way to better accommodate and affirm non white straight cis male fans can confidently expect a wave of downmarseys, mockery, and derision (and that's if you're lucky). This article will no doubt get its share of hate, too.

There's a lot of work to do to ensure Warhammer 40k's grim, horrible fictional worlds, and the very real social world experienced by the people building, painting, playing, watching, and reading them, remain completely separate -- and we community members will always need to do our part of it. A growing cadre of dedicated creators is already fighting the good fight -- YouTuber Arbitor Ian's cracking video below is just one example of many.

But here's my plea: Games Workshop, you have to do more, too. You don't just get to be a neutral, noncommittal, catch-all corporation any more; you need to be more responsible than that. One single black-and-white social media statement every three years isn't going to cut it any more.

Business is booming; the Warhammer 40k 10th edition launch landed you record monthly sales; and, at long last, you're finally going to get your own proper TV and movies with Henry Cavill. In the next three years, your Warhammer 40k community could get inordinately bigger.

It's your responsibility to help protect that growing community from being dragged into the mud by bad actors who not only don't get 40k, but want to dictate their gross, perverted version of it to everyone else.

I am not asking for you to introduce female Space Marines. I do not care if you introduce female Space Marines or not. I'm just asking for you to take responsibility for their absence. Talk to your community about the subject; let us know you understand and care about the consternation it continues to generate.

Let us know -- above all -- that, when so-called '40k fans' online preach their tiresome, male chauvinist dogmas and shout people down for daring to suggest that nerds could be kinder to each other, they do not speak with your voice, and that they, as you once claimed, "will not be missed".

The longer you remain silent, the worse things get -- and the worse things get, the less I can respect you.

This fantasy setting is literally like my IRL POLITICS!

"which definition of fascist you are using here, exactly?"

"Yes. Like my dude, I'm gonna start questioning your ability to engage with any media in a second. Like the game spells it out specifically. I like regill but it's because he's unique and kinda funny sometimes. At no point is he fricking normal and anything but an evil fascist bastard

Basically

there's been slapfights in /r/baldursgate (the subreddit for the original 2 games from 20 years ago) that BG3 doesn't actually have any bearing for the overall health of the cRPG sector of the industry

The common pro-BG3 and pro-Larian belief is that BG3's stunning success will leak into the rest of the cRPG ecosystem in the gaming-spheres, but others do not hold this belief.

It's said that BG3's peerless success is effectively completely isolated to BG3 itself, and will not leak over to the rest of cRPG genre at all, and may even detract from it because BG3 raised the bar to high heaven and back.

The fricking /r/baldursgate mods deleted like all 3 of these threads so now i have to go by memory; death to jannies

But the summary was that BG3 had the largest budget and development time of any crpg to date, and that it was very accessible to normies because it was 100% voice acted AND cinematically greenscreened, thus enabling normies to bypass reading, and it would be that the largest barrier to normies getting into cRPGs would be the amount of reading required in most cRPGs, not ironically enough the turbo-neurodivergent mechanics, at least according to the consensus of the /r/baldursgate strags

Combined with 5E being the least complex system would make it the most accessible cRPG ever for people who dont want to watch 45minute build videos (wimps)

But this also meant that the people drawn into BG3 would not leak over to games like BG1/BG2 - there had been a flurry of posts by people whom had played B3, and subequently tried BG1/2 got wrecked and disappointed and came bitching to the subreddit, which caused endless sneed so the mods banned the topic and removed it also

Other /r/baldursgate regulars also went turbo-neurodivergent mode and checked the steam review frequency both before and after the release of BG3 after 3/4 months, and determined there was like zero change in frequency in all major cRPGs, inlcuding Pillars, dragon age, neverwinter ect (because sales figures are not known)

This also caused which the mods also deleted, holy frick death to jannies

DO ANY DRAMATARDS KNOW HOW TO DO THAT THING WHERE YOU CAN VIEW DELETED THREADS? OR IS THAT GONE FOREVER AND EVER?

Anyways the steam review frequency thing seemed convincing to me, and i feel like that tracks, most people introduced to BG3 didn't obtain an appetite for cRPGs, they obtained an appetite for AAA fully voiced 3D rpg adventures

what do you strags think @Losercel

I'm lazy and tired so I'm not digging through drama. But it's an Alphabet thread a out bullying in 40k and how everyone's fascist. It's in there.

Women will never be space marines

This thread has some drama

https://old.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/194e7za/sending_death_threats_and_swatting_threats_to_a/khgkzqt/?context=8

Including someone who doesn't understand the lore at all. Space Marines have no sexual urges due to the transformation process.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/comments/194e7za/sending_death_threats_and_swatting_threats_to_a/khgy3hh/?context=8

someone specifically requested some more (sfw) of her so here you go

Modern YGO being hard is one of those lasting imprints the franchise left on the wider zeitgeist, along with draw 2 cards and le censored boobays

It's not exactly wrong. IDK if it's much harder than Magic because im not a boomer. But one of the boomerisms used often is ":klanjak: we have black cards now!?"

I'm going to go over the new summoning mechanics implemented over the years and then some actually unintuitive rulings.

New Monster Types

Most of this is set dressings. They aren't harder than the ol' reliable Fusion monsters, with one expection, which i'll get to.

Synchro

To Synchro summon, you just need monsters on the field whose total stars equal that of the Synchro monster, with one of them being a Tuner monster. One Tuner, any number of any monsters. You can see if a monster is Tuner by looking at it's tribes on top of the effect text box. They work like normal monsters in any other context.

To Syncro summon Stardust Dragon(8), you'd use Galaxy Serpent(2), a Level 6 monster, or two Level 3 monsters along with any other combination. It's just addition r-slur

Some of them can specify other materials, restrictions on how few monsters you can use and the like. But these are few and far between. It's also still just addition

XYZ

This is even more generic. To summon a Rank 4 XYZ monster, you need 2 Level 4 monsters. Simple. Do take note, you can't use an XYZ monster as a generic material for another XYZ monster, because they technically have Ranks instead of Levels. Which is mostly an arbitrary distinction and won't come up often.

The complicated thing about XYZ is what happens to their materials. They don't go to the Graveyard like Fusion or Synchro materials. You stack them under the XYZ card you summoned. XYZ monsters have effects that activate by taking out some of those materials and putting them into the Graveyard, but this doesn't activate effects of monsters that pop when they are sent to the Graveyard. Quite unintuitive, but just consider that a card is in the aether if it is under an XYZ card. Most cards can't interact with them, unless they have an effect specifically to do just that. This wasn't always the case, but it was changed several years ago to prevent some unintended interactions.

Links

Links just requires as many monsters on the field as their Link rating. You can see their Link rating on where their DEF stat would be, because Links can't be put on defense position.

When using Link monsters as material for a new Link summon, you can use their rating as how many monsters they count as. So, to Link Summon a Link 3, you can use 3 monsters, or a Link 2 + 1 monster.

They have as many arrows on their art border as their rating. If you have no Link monsters, you need to summon your first one on the Extra Monster Zone, which is the 2 extra Zones added with this mechanic. All subsequent Links must be summoned to a zone which is being pointed to by an existing Link monster.

This isn't complicated in execution, but does raise eyebrows by those who came back to the game. Since zone placements have not mattered much before Links came around. Also makes it hard to play without a mat if you aren't very careful with how you place your cards.

Pendulum

This is the start of complicated mechanics in this write up.

Okay, why do they look so weird? Because they are both monsters and spell cards. But not at the same time. If you summon them, they're monsters. If you play them on the spell & trap zone, they're spells. Only one effect text is in the works at any given time, depending on it's position. Top for spell, bottom for monster.

To Pendulum summon, you need to play 2 of them as spells, on the left-most and right-most zone of the S&T zone. These are called the Pendulum scales. They're numbers under the left and right arrows on the card. These are always the same number.

Once a turn, you can summon as many monsters as you want from your hand, whose levels are between the pendulum scales. If you played SG and TG magicians in your pendulum zone, your scales are 1-8. That means you can summon monsters whose levels are 2 to 7.

Pendulum monsters also don't go to the Graveyard when destroyed. They go on top of the extra deck, face-up. You can summon one of these Pendulum monsters on your extra deck with your pendulum summon. They work like Link monsters, in that they have to either go into an Extra monster zone, or a zone a link arrow points to.

Even though these cards don't go into the GY when destroyed, they mechanically work like do. So if you had Banisher on the field, they would be banished instead of going to the extra deck.

Too much text

I might as well use Pendulums to segway into the most common complaint, cards have too much text.

Endymion here is the face of what was the one good Pendulum deck for years, so it's hardly a misplaced example for the problem.

As I said in the previous segment, at any given point only one of those text boxes is in effect, so you don't have to take it all in one go.

Problem Solving Card Text

PSCT is what Konami came up with to standardize card text and leave less things up to interpretation. Cards made before this have weird phrasing;

Under any condition? sounds foreboding.

But this format has a problem with verbosity.

Look at all the punctuation. Colons signify conditions for the effect, semi colons start chains, commas separate steps of the same effect, stops end an effect.

The original version played in Japan is a bit more readable. They separate different effects by numbered points. Konami America didn't chose to import this part of the game for some reason.

No Keywords

Unlike Magic, YGO doesn't have keywords. It was only a couple of years ago they abbreviated Graveyard to GY. This causes a lot of common effects creating text bloat.

Take Once Per Turn for example. This is a stipulation that is printed on most cards made in the last decade. The most common form, called Hard Once Per Turn, is signified by "You can only use each effect of "Card Name" once per turn". The use of the "Card Name" makes it so you can't use duplicate copies of the card either. But since YGO cards also have long names besides long effects, this contributes to the problem. If they got the point across by just writing HOPT at the end of the card, it would greatly improve readability.

Perhaps the most egregious example of this is writing rulings that are already implied.

This is a Gemini card, shown as a tribe on top of the effect box. But the gemini mechanic is still written beneath it. Anything preceding the point in this card text is also in every Gemini card. They can remove that paragraph and nothing of value would be lost. Geminis suck anyway, so

Confusing Mechanics

Targeting vs Non-Targeting

Can Dingirsu "Send 1 card your opponent controls to the GY." Obelisk, who is "Neither player can target this card with card effects."? Yes. The targeting mechanic requires the card to specifically use that term. The window to respond also opens when you target with a targeting effect, but if it doesn't target you can only respond as the effect is activated. On that note;

Destruction vs Non-Destruction

Can Dingirsu "Send 1 card your opponent controls to the GY." Cocytus, who is "Cannot be destroyed by your opponent's card effects."? Same. For an effect to be destruction, it has to say it verbatim. It also skirts by effects that pop when they're destroyed. But Banisher also banishes them, like it does with Pendulum monsters, because they were supposed to go to the GY.

Spell Speed

Spell Speed is a fan term to show which effects can be responded to by an effect. The slowest effects are Normal Spells and Ignition effects.

For example, Lonefire Blossom can "Once per turn: You can Tribute 1 face-up Plant monster; Special Summon 1 Plant monster from your Deck." You can only activate this effect during your Main Phases. It can't respond to your opponent's effects, nor can it be activated during your opponent's turn. Same is true for normal spells like Monster Reborn.

Traps and quick effects are faster, they can respond to the activation of other effects and can be used on your opponent's turn. Quick effects are signified by this logo on spells, and as text on monster effects:

But the fastest cards are Counter Traps, which can only be responded to by other Counter Traps

Inherent Summon

Question, Steelswarm Roach can;

when a Level 5 or higher monster would be Special Summoned: [Text]; negate the Special Summon, and if you do, destroy it.

Then which of these cards would it be able to negate the summon of, Cyber Dragon or Beat Bison?

It's Cyber Dragon. Why? Because it doesn't have a colon or semi-colon. Roach negates Summons, not effects to summon. Cyber Dragon's ability to summon itself from the hand is an effect, but it doesn't activate. It just happens. This is an Inherent Summon, which goes for Extra Deck summons too. Meanwhile, Beat Bison activates an effect that special summons itself. If you wanted to negate the summon of Beat Bison, you'd need an effect that negates monster effects.

Summons don't start chains, but the monster hitting the field does. Think of the summon as the game state immediately preceding it hitting the field.

Summoning Conditions

Sky Fire is a strong monster with a hard summoning condition. But thankfully it has a support card that can summon it from the GY "ignoring its Summoning conditions". Now you can just mill it to the GY and resurrect it for easy access, right?

No, as it turns out. If a card has summoning conditions, it has to be summoned properly first before it can be cheated out with other cards. So, Flattop can revive a Sky Fire that was properly summoned but then sent to the GY, but can't revive a Sky Fire that was sent to the GY from the deck by Foolish Burial.

Fun fact, Sky Fire's groin missles were removed in the TCG because it was too phallic for the American audiences.

Missed Timing

This is a distinction of When and If. If the activation requirement for an effect is written as "If [thing] happens" then it will activate with no problem. But if it is "When [thing] happens" it will miss timing, and won't resolve.

An effect misses timing when it isn't resolved immediately after it's activation. This happens when an effect is chained to the when effect. Chains start resolving from last to first activation, so if a when effect is chained to; it will activate, another effect will activate and resolve, then the when effect will miss timing.

If you Synchro Summoned Whale, which can:

When this card is Synchro Summoned: You can destroy all your opponent's Attack Position monsters.

But your opponent chained a quick effect to it's activation, the effect won't go off.

Negate Activation vs Effect

When an effect is negated, the effect tries to resolve and then fizzles out. But some cards also negate the activation, which makes it so the effect can't even attempt to resolve.

This doesn't come up often, but if a card has a once per turn clause, if its activation was negated, a second copy can be used afterward. But if the effect is negated, you can't activate any more of that card, since the once per turn effect has already attempted to resolve. Even more of an edge case; while cards that can only be "activated" OPT can be reused if their activation was negated, cards that can only be "used" OPT can't. Because you already used them, even though they were negated.

Negating at the point of resolution

This is an amendment to an amendment of the previous point, but this is another form of effect negation. Cards that negate at resolution don't have colons or semicolons in their text, meaning they don't start chains. Unlike other forms of negation, here the card activates like it's going to resolve, then just fizzles.

Normally, negation that is not continuous are applied as a reaction to an effect, forming a chain over the effect that it will negate. With resolution negation, you choose to negate as the effect is going through, like if you are going to negate the chain 1 effect of a chain with 3 steps, you'd wait for the first 2 steps to resolve, then negate the final effect at it's resolution.

Funny interaction with this mechanic, Cerulean Skyfire is one of the only non continuous ways to negate Super Polymerization.

Fin

So yeah. This has been my compilation of 200iq rulings you won't find in your childhood rulebook. Tell me if you have any questions

In the past few months I've been browsing https://archived.moe/tg/catalog quite often and collecting terrible character art I've been finding there and now I'm dumping the stuff.

My new pfp is from there as well:

ms paint seems to be a frequent offender:

AI art also generally sucks I can't understand why anyone would use it (this one was from today, there was so much terrible ai art I haven't been saving because its so common):

Coomer art also is far too common to save but also sucks:

I don't even know what to say about this one old woman cat lover?:

Last, but not least, I found this weird (also ms paint) rendition of ukiyo-e art which is pretty terrible:

Post terrible character art !ttrpg

!chuds

the art in question: https://x.com/wizards_magic/status/1743014711820476536

Wizards doubled down and said it isn't AI. I don't really care either way I just think it's funny.

They're all from the first few sets circa 2002-05.

I also have about 250 lbs of Magic cards in boxes including some artist prints and revised duals etc worth a few thousand at least. No idea when I'll deal with that mess but I should cash out before WOTC ruins the game more.

!oldstrags

RIP king

https://old.reddit.com/r/freemagic/comments/15u6u9b/hear_that_guys_the_sexiest?sort=controversial

This is a lazy post to refresh the hole. Is Drama though so have fun.

tw : racism Throwaway account to stop any racists or freemagicers from spamming my main.

Every time I see this printing of Cultivate played in paper or on arena it makes me feel icky.

I don't like the depiction of a black man with large lips/nose, or of him as a farmer. The idea of him "farming" your mana for you feels wrong.

Maybe I'm overreacting but it feels like this should never have made it to print? I know it's a fantasy setting but it still feels ill advised and poorly thought out. It plays into so many terrible stereotypes and I wish WoTC had done better.