Analysis of common patterns in the
banlists of Trading Card Games
Master-Thesis
zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades M.A.
Jacob Heindorf
Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Hamburg
Fakultät Design, Medien und Information
Department Medientechnik
Erstprüfer: Prof. Gunther Rehfeld
Zweitprüfer: Prof. Dr. Eike Langbehn
Hamburg, 1. 4. 2024
Contents
1 Introduction to the thesis 6
1.1 Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2 Research Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2 A brief introduction to TCGs 8
2.1 The games in detail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.1.1 YuGiOh! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.1.2 Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.1.3 A tale of Suns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2 TCG concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.2.1 Card Advantage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2.2 Tempo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.2.3 Removal and Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2.4 Resource Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.2.5 Playsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.2.6 Archetypes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.2.7 Banishing, Exile, and Graveyards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3 Designing a TCG 20
3.1 Resource System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.2 Damage System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4 Banlist analysis 22
4.1 Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.2 Evaluating Cards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.3 1st Banlist Yugioh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.3.1 Draw and Search effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.3.2 Removal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4.3.3 Hand Removal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.3.4 Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4.4 2nd Banlist Yugioh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4.4.1 Floodgates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.4.2 Alternate Win Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4.4.3 Cheating Game Mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2
Contents
4.5 3rd Banlist Yugioh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4.5.1 Extra deck cards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4.5.2 Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4.6 Predictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4.7 1st Banlist Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4.7.1 Resource Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4.7.2 Affinity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.8 2nd Banlist Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.8.1 Companions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.8.2 Repeatable Removal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.9 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
5 Revisiting AtoS 54
5.1 Structural differences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
5.2 Analysing existing cards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
5.2.1 Resource Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
5.2.2 Consistency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
5.2.3 Alternate Win Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
5.2.4 Circumventing Game Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5.2.5 Lockout effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5.2.6 Inherent Accessibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5.2.7 Synergy Pieces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
5.3 Adding new cards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
5.3.1 Resource Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
5.3.2 Consistency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
5.3.3 Circumventing Game Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
5.3.4 Lockout effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
5.3.5 Synergy Pieces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
6 Testing and analysis of my game 63
6.1 Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
6.2 Testing results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
6.2.1 Focus Cards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
6.2.2 Player Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
6.2.3 Unexpected entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
6.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
7 Conclusions 71
A Appendix 72
A.1 Additional documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
A.2 Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
3
Abstract
Form and layout of this L
A
T
E
X-template incorporate the guidelines for theses in the
Media Technology Department „Richtlinien zur Erstellung schriftlicher Arbeiten, vor-
rangig Bachelor-Thesis (BA) und Master-Thesis (MA) im Department Medientechnik
in der Fakultät DMI an der HAW Hamburg“ in the version of December 6, 2012 by
Prof. Wolfgang Willaschek.
The thesis should be printed single-sided (simplex). The binding correction (loss
at the left aper edge due to binding) might be adjusted, according to the type of
binding. This template incorporates a binding correction as BCOR=1mm (suitable
for adhesive binding) in the L
A
T
E
X document header.
This is the english version of the opening abstract (don’t forget to set
L
A
T
E
X’s language setting back to ngerman after the english text).
Zusammenfassung
Diese L
A
T
E
X-Vorlage berücksichtigt in Form und Layout die Vorgaben für Abschluss-
arbeiten im Department Medientechnik „Richtlinien zur Erstellung schriftlicher Ar-
beiten, vorrangig Bachelor-Thesis (BA) und Master-Thesis (MA) im Department Me-
dientechnik in der Fakultät DMI an der HAW Hamburg“, Fassung vom 6. Dezember
2012 von Prof. Wolfgang Willaschek.
Der Ausdruck soll einseitig erfolgen (Simplex). Je nach Bindung ist ggf. die Bin-
dekorrektur (Verlust am linken Seitenrand durch die Bindung) noch anzupassen. In
dieser Vorlage ist eine Bindekorrektur im header der L
A
T
E
X-Datei mit BCOR=1mm
für Klebebindung eingestellt.
Das ist die deutsche Version der vorangestellten Zusammenfassung. Bei-
de Versionen – englisch und deutsch – sind verbindlich!
1 Introduction to the thesis
1.1 Abstract
This thesis is an analysis of various balancing issues in Trading Card Games (TCGs),
based on the lists of banned cards they have developed over the years. Two such
games were analysed, and several recurring categories of banned cards were found.
A new TCG was then developed and tested to verify the results.
While rule variations resulted in slight deviations, the results mostly matched expec-
tations, suggesting that the basic patterns are likely a commonality between most
TCGs. Overall this research should give designers a suggestion for what to consider
when developing a TCG, or even a similar game, as some of these concepts can be ex-
tended to other genres. It should also serve as a foundation for further research on the
development of such games and how balance shifts with the introduction of new cards.
1.2 Research Question
With many TCGs being physical card games, retroactively changing cards for
balance reasons is very difficult. Due to this, all long running card games, such as
Magic: The Gathering (Magic) or Yu-Gi-Oh! (Yugioh) have built up a substantial
list of cards that have been banned from official play, mostly for balance reasons.
This leads to the question: Are there any patterns in what cards are banned? and
unbanned, and can these help designers to better understand potentially problematic
mechanics?
1.3 Methodology
This thesis can be separated into three major sections. The first section aims to give
a brief overview on Magic and Yugioh, as well as some important design concepts
common to them. Additionally, a TCG similar to them called "A tale of Suns"
(AtoS) was developed as part of this thesis in order to verify the results of the later
analysis. The basic mechanics of AtoS will also be introduced in the first section.
The second section will consist of a theoretical analysis of banned or limited cards
from various periods in Yugioh and Magic, both in terms of general trends and
6
1 Introduction to the thesis
individual cards.
Finally, the results of this analysis will be tested by designing cards that would likely
cause problems, then playing several games of AtoS in order to verify these theories.
This thesis uses the book "Game Balance" by Ian Schreiber and Brenda Romero
as its primary theoretical foundation for assessing the balance issues in the various
cards Schreiber; Romero (2022).
Additionally the master thesis of Alexander Schiffke on various metas in TCGs is
used to assess the desirable state of a TCG, and what cards should be avoided to
achieve this state Schiffke (2020).
7
2 A brief introduction to TCGs
The following is a brief introduction to Yugioh, Magic and AtoS. Considering the
complexity of these games, this chapter will only briefly outline the way these games
are played. The subsections of this chapter will go into further detail on certain
concepts or systems, and individual rules may be explained when they are needed to
understand individual cards in later sections of this thesis.
All three TCGs have two players
1
battling one another, using a deck of cards
that they construct from a personal collection. Players use various creature cards,
that, once played to the battlefield, can attack the opponents creatures, or the
opponent themselves. Landing enough of these direct attacks with sufficiently
powerful creatures is the most common win condition in these games. In addition to
creatures there are also various support cards, that provide temporary or permanent
benefits, such as augmenting creatures, generating more resources, removing the
opponent’s cards from play or preventing the opponent from executing their strategy.
2.1 The games in detail
This section will go into a little more detail on the individual games.
2.1.1 YuGiOh!
Each player begins a game of Yugioh with 8000 lifepoints. Reducing the enemies
lifepoints to 0 is the primary method of winning the game. Players can summon
monster cards to their field which can attack the opponent and usually have
additional effects. One low level monster can be summoned as a normal summon
per turn, but card effects may allow additional summons called special summons,
which are not limited.
In addition to their 40 to 60 card main deck, players may also have a so called extra
deck with up to 15 cards. The extra deck contains monsters that can usually be
special summoned by sacrificing one or more other monsters that are already on the
field. This is one of Yugioh’s most notable mechanics, as it effectively gives players
access to 15 additional cards at all time, even if they require additional resources to
1
Magic also has an alternative format called "Commander" which is usually played with four player,
but this thesis will not focus on it.
8
2 A brief introduction to TCGs
use.
In addition to their monsters, players may also use spell and trap cards. These
usually have an immediate effect and are then sent to the graveyard, though both
have versions that instead remain on the field and apply periodic or continuous
effects. Spells can be activated during the players turn, while traps have to be set
facedown on the field and can only be activated once at least one turn has passed.
This makes them slower and more vulnerable to being destroyed, though once they
become available they can be used at any time, making their activation more flexible.
It is also notable that Yugioh does not feature a central resource mechanic. Monster
summoning is limited to one normal summon per turn, but spells and traps only
Figure 2.1: An example of a Yugioh field (screenshot)
9
2 A brief introduction to TCGs
require whatever cost is printed on the individual cards. Since players do not have to
build up resources over multiple turns, Yugioh games are very fast paced and combo
heavy, with games often being decided on the second or third turn. Additionally, as
a way to limit the potential of many cards, more modern Yugioh cards limit how
often their effects can be used per turn.
Once during their turn a player may enter their battle phase. During this phase
they can declare attacks with their monsters. Only monsters in attack position may
declare an attack. Monsters in defence position (indicated by the rotation of the
card) may not attack. Attacks target the opponent’s monsters, or the opponent
directly should they not control any. If two monsters battle the monster with
the higher battle stat wins, with the defeated player taking damage equal to the
difference in their battle stats and/or loosing their monster, based on the respective
battle position of the defender. A direct attack simply deals damage equal to the
attacking monsters attack points.
Yugioh is played on a limited board, with each player having 5 zones each for
their monsters and spell/trap cards respectively. Additionally there are zones for
fieldspells and the extra monster zones, in which monsters summoned from the extra
deck may be placed. These zones mostly serve as a limitation for how many cards
players may control at a time, though some cards do directly interact with positions
of cards on the board.
2.1.2 Magic
Players in Magic begin the game with 20 lifepoints, with the goal of the game being
to reduce the opponents lifepoints to 0. Unlike Yugioh, Magic has a central resource
system around which other mechanics of the game are built, called Mana. Mana is
a resource that is produced by certain land cards. Players may play one land per
turn without any additional costs. These lands can then be used once per turn to
produce mana, which is required to play other cards. Mana also usually has one of
five colours. Each card that requires mana to be played may specify that a certain
amount of that mana must be of the respective colour(s) to be played. Since lands
can usually only produce one or two different colours, this serves as a limitation to
deck design. Including cards with many different colours in a deck leaves the player
at the risk of not having the right mana to play their cards. This is made more inter-
esting with each colour having a distinct identity in their mechanics, meaning players
are likely to miss out on something if they do not use a certain colour. Examples of
these are card draw, which is usually blue, or creature destruction, which is usually
black. A more extensive list can be found here: Color (2007)
Magic features a battle phase just as Yugioh does, though there are some differences
in how combat plays out. Creatures can not attack the turn they are played, which
gives the defending player more time to prepare a response to them, and slows the
game down in general. Attacks are declared simultaneously, and always target a
10
2 A brief introduction to TCGs
player (or sometimes certain card types that can be attacked directly). The attacked
player can then choose to block attackers with one or more of their creatures, leading
to combat between them while keeping the player from taking damage. Rather than
just comparing stats, with the stronger creature winning the combat, creatures deal
damage to one another based on their power value. Each creature that takes more
damage than their toughness value is then destroyed.
Similarly to Yugioh, Magic features several card types beyond creatures that help
to supplement the players strategy. Instants and sorceries provide immediate effects
when played, with instants being usable during either turn. Artifacts and enchant-
ments are cards that remain on the battlefield and usually provide some continuous
or activated effect.
Magic has a 60 card minimum deck size, with no upper limit. A deck may contain
up to 4 copies of any given card, though basic lands which only provide one colour of
mana have no restriction on them and can be played at any number of copies. There
is also no limitation in how many cards a player may have on their board.
2.1.3 A tale of Suns
This section will briefly go over the basic mechanics of AtoS. Some mechanics that
are significantly different from Yugioh and Magic are explained in a little bit more
detail in a later section.
AtoS features a special type of card called edict. Edicts are not included in a players
deck. Instead players begin each game of AtoS with four edict cards face down.
Over the course of the game these edicts can be turned face up, and they can also
be destroyed by the opponent. Once either player has activated all four of their
own edicts, they win the game. If a player looses three of their edicts they loose the
game. These are the primary win conditions of the game.
Between the edicts of each player there is a four by four square of zones to which
bound cards can be played. These represent creatures, buildings or the landscape
of the world. Players can only place cards in their half of the field when they are
initially played, but some cards can be moved into the opponent’s half of the field.
Edicts are activated through a mechanic called conquest. At the end of their turn
a player without a conquest marker on the field places one such marker on one of
their face-down edict cards. At the end of their next turn they instead compare the
number of cards they control in that edict’s column, or their defence points to the
opponents number in the same column. If either is higher they can then activate
their edict in that column, flipping it face-up. This brings them closer to victory, but
also provides them with influence, which is required to play more powerful cards.
Most edicts also have an effect that benefits the player further.
Since dominance of the bound zones is necessary to activate edicts, players are
fighting over them. This is done through creature cards, which are a subtype of
bound cards. Each creature can, once per turn, either move to an adjacent zone on
11
2 A brief introduction to TCGs
Figure 2.2: The Field Layout of AtoS
the board, or attack another card in an adjacent zone. If the attacking creature’s
offence is higher than the target’s defence, the target is destroyed. This allows
invading the opponent’s half of the board, and destroying their cards.
If a creature manages to get to the last row of the board, it can also attack the edict
it is adjacent to. This destroys the edict, and allows the attacking player to banish
cards from the opponents discard pile, or from the top of their deck. The edict is
then replaced with a face-down "Shattered Edict", that has no effect, though it can
still be activated to potentially win the game.
While creatures are responsible for combat, they are not the only bound cards.
Players can also use lands and buildings. While these can not attack or move, they
provide various beneficial effects, such as drawing additional cards, or strengthening
creatures. These also advance the conquest, though since they can not move out of
their column each of these can only help to activate one edict.
While bound cards are at the core of most decks, they can also be supported by
12
2 A brief introduction to TCGs
Figure 2.3: An edict card from AtoS. Once this edict is activated, it provides one influ-
ence (bottom). It also provides a combat boost to allied creatures, allowing
them to more easily break through enemy defences.
instants. These are cards that have an immediate effect and are sent to the discard
pile after they resolve. These include effects that improve the combat capabilities
of your creatures, draw you more cards, or even destroy cards your opponent controls.
Cards in AtoS vary in their power level. Some creatures have better stats or
effects than others. This is balanced out in two ways. Firstly, some cards require
influence. Influence is exclusively provided by edicts, which can only be activated
over the course of the game. This means that while these cards are powerful, they
can only be used in the later stages of a game. Notably, influence is not consumed
by this, so once the influence threshold is reached multiple of these cards can be
played easily.
Secondly, most cards require a cost to be paid in order to play them. These are paid
by discarding cards from the hand, or by banishing cards from the hand or discard
pile. Some cards also allow a combination of the two.
There is also an additional cost called action tax. For every action a player takes
during their turn, every subsequent action has its cost increased by one discard.
This means the first action is free, the second requires one discard, the third two
discards, and so on. This system was implemented to stop combo heavy decks that
13
2 A brief introduction to TCGs
take very long to play out their turns, something that is bad for the pacing of the
game. It also makes lower cost cards worse, as the more cards are played the more
expensive all of them become. This encourages a more balanced playstyle, with
decks playing cheap cards for the early game, and expensive cards later on, as lots
of cheap cards have diminishing returns.
Playing cards and attacking with creatures are actions, but some abilities and
moving creatures are not, and are therefore exempt from action tax.
Players begin a game of AtoS with a seven card opening hand. After deter-
mining who goes first, players may then put any number of cards with the setup
ability into play. At this time they do not have to pay costs or action tax. After the
setup step is completed the first turn begins.
Each turn begins with the start phase. During this phase the turn player draws until
they have a number of cards in their hand equal to their draw limit. If they already
have that many or more cards in hand, they instead draw one card. The draw limit
is five by default, but may be altered by card effects.
After the start phase the player enters their action phase. During this phase they
may play cards, activate the effects of cards, or move or attack with their creatures.
Unlike in Yugioh and Magic there is no separate battle phase. Creatures may attack
or move at any time during the action phase, though not the turn they are played.
At the end of the turn a player advances their conquest, either placing a conquest
marker or resolving the conquest to activate their edict. Once this is completed both
players action tax is reset to zero and the other player takes their turn.
Notably the draw step and conquest are skipped during the first turn of the game,
to make up for the advantage of being able to establish their board first.
For a more detailed explanation of the rules you can read the rulebook,
found alongside the game here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/
filedetails/?id=3146296776, or here: https://drive.google.com/drive/
folders/1uPKrVVI_JOuavnDlhbjGKMKOaBLyaP2G?usp=sharing. Since the rules
can be somewhat complicated it might also help to watch one of the test games
played for this thesis here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUV0G4fMgq8&
list=PLC04XuW7de_hhia82r4WU6Q58npWnotRW
2.2 TCG concepts
This section will go into a little more depth on a few key concepts that are important
to the analysis later on. These include both game mechanics and design concepts.
14
2 A brief introduction to TCGs
Figure 2.4: A creature card from AtoS. While relatively expensive at 1 influence (upper
left corner) and 3 discards/banishes (upper right corner), this card provides
a powerful buff to other adjacent creatures, and becomes nearly unstoppable
once multiple of them are on the board.
2.2.1 Card Advantage
One of the most important concepts in TCGs is that of card advantage, sometimes
also just shortened to advantage or referred to as card economy. Card advantage
describes the amount of cards players have in relation to one another, either in play
or in their hand, and how this relation is affected by the usage of certain effects.
Since the cards players have in play and in their hand are what allows them to
perform various actions and ultimately work towards their win condition, the player
who has access to more cards is usually in an advantageous position.
Cards or effects that improve card advantage in the using players favour, or ones
that are card neutral are generally quite good, while cards that loose advantage
have to be more powerful in order to make up for the loss in resources to be good.
Improving ones card advantage can be done through either increasing the number of
cards you have access to (drawing, returning from a graveyard to the field etc.) or by
removing cards that the opponent has access to (destroying their cards or negating
effects that would grant them advantage).
The following article illustrates this in a little more detail and with some examples:
Introduction to Card Advantage (2006)
15
2 A brief introduction to TCGs
The impact that card advantage has on a game is reduced by the presence of
additional resource systems. Resource systems that rely on card advantage to
function, or allow a direct conversion from card advantage to other resources do
skew stronger towards card advantage than others though.
Notably, while card advantage is a good guideline to estimate the value of a card, the
concept is somewhat muddied in practice. Instead of simply comparing pure cards
to one another, comparing the value that these cards can generate might be a better
guideline. Discarding a card to the graveyard is technically a -1 in card advantage,
but if the discarded card has an effect that can only be activated from the graveyard,
discarding it might have made the card more useful. On the other hand, there are
cards that allow adding multiple cards from a players deck to their hand. While
this is a plus in card advantage, these cards are still only as useful as the cards they
can add to your hand. This has led to debates within the community: The Card
Advantage Theory (2010). Despite this, card advantage will still be considered in
this thesis, as it is a useful tool for the evaluation of most cards, with cases where it
does not apply pointed out.
2.2.2 Tempo
In addition to cards, which were discussed previously, players also have to manage
their tempo. Tempo is not a single resource, but is rather an abstract collection of
renewable resources and opportunities, that a player has to advance their game plan.
While spells and traps are usually free to use in Yugioh, Magic requires a mana cost
to be paid in order to play cards. Monsters in Yugioh need to be summoned in
order for many of them to be useful, and players are limited to one normal summon
per turn. Additionally, many effects in Yugioh have a stipulation that they can
only be activated once per turn, while many Magic cards need to tap to activate
effects, which can usually also only be done once per turn. Moreover, players only
have one battle phase per turn in both of these games, meaning there are limited
opportunities to attack.
Since tempo is not a tangible resource, unlike cards, it can be a bit harder to
visualise than card advantage. In Magic, a good approximation of tempo would be
the number of lands a player has on the board as well as the combined mana value of
all of their permanents, as mana spent on cards is the most common form of tempo
spent in magic, though this is by no means a perfect representation. Tempo (2006)
Since Yugioh does not have a resource system, defining tempo can be even harder to
do in that game. It does still exist though, with the following video giving several
examples: Tempo - Yugioh Theory Discussion (2018)
The relevance of tempo and card advantage in relation to one another can wildly
vary between games, decks and even stages of a game.
16
2 A brief introduction to TCGs
2.2.3 Removal and Protection
Removal is a term that refers to cards or effects that can remove cards the oppo-
nent controls from the field. Removal can come in different forms, based on the
zone the cards are moved to and the way they are moved there, as well as the
number of cards affected and additional properties that the card or effect might have.
(a) Murder (2022) (b) Makeshift Binding (2024)
Figure 2.5: Two removal cards, with varying up and downsides.
As an example, here is a comparison between the cards "Murder" and "Makeshift
Binding". Both have the same base mana cost at three, though they are both part of
different colours, and "Murder" requires one more mana of its specific colour, making
it less flexible.
"Murder" has the effect to destroy one target creature, while "Makeshift Binding"
exiles it. Since there are several cards that are immune to destruction effects, and
there are some cards that gain effects when destroyed, "Murder" is the worse card
in this regard. "Makeshift Binding" also gives the player using 2 life, which is an
additional minor upside.
On the other hand, "Makeshift Binding" stays on the field after it is played, and if
the opponent can remove it, their creature is returned to their field. "Murder" does
not have this downside. Additionally, "Murder" is an instant type card, meaning it
can also be played during the opponent’s turn. This gives it more flexibility.
The following video goes into some detail as to the various types of removal in
Yugioh, and the advantages and disadvantages that they have: Peasant’s Guide to
17
2 A brief introduction to TCGs
Removal in Yu-gi-oh (2023)
Generally, the quality of removal depends on the following factors: How much does
it change the relative card advantage, how much tempo investment does it remove
from the opponent and how easy is it to use?
Another term that is common to TCGs is board wipe, which generally refers to
removal that affects all cards, or all cards of a specific type that are currently in play.
The same stipulations that apply to regular removal also apply to board wipes.
In order to counter removal based strategies many of the more powerful crea-
tures in both Magic and Yugioh also have some manner of protection effect.
Immunity to destruction and targeting effects are among the more common ones in
both games, making targeting or destruction based removal less powerful. as they
are often not able to deal with some of the most critical targets.
2.2.4 Resource Systems
One of the most central mechanics of a TCG is its resource system. In games with such
a system, in order to play cards or use their effects players have to spend additional
resources, usually some form of tempo. Having a resource system allows for much
easier balancing of cards, as more powerful effects can be assigned a higher price,
allowing for a greater diversity of cards (Schreiber; Romero 2022: 157ff.), without
having cards that are strictly more powerful than others. While assigning arbitrary
costs to individual cards is possible, there are some advantages to having a central
unified system. The most important is that balancing cards becomes much easier. As
an example, the normal cost for a spell that destroys a creature in magic is around
three mana. With this defined, when designing a new, similar card, we could add
an additional upside to the card for four mana, or give it a limitation to what it can
target but make it cost two mana instead.
The downsides of arbitrary costs can be seen in Yugioh. Perhaps the best example
of this is "Number S0: Utopic Zexal", which, if summoned on the first turn basically
guaranteed a win for the player summoning it. Since it required the sacrifice of
three other monsters to summon it, which were also difficult to summon on their
own, this was fine. Decks would have to invest all of their resources into summoning
this monster, and even then it was not guaranteed that they could. This changed
with the release of a new card that on its own would summon the required materials
for "Number S0: Utopic Zexal" on its own, which lead to the card being banned.
Yu-Gi-Oh! This Card Needs to be Banned! Number S0: Utopic ZEXAL (2020)
2.2.5 Playsets
A common limitation in TCGs is the concept of playsets. In order to avoid players
only using the best cards available at as many copies as possible, many TCGs have
18
2 A brief introduction to TCGs
a limit on how many copies of any given card may be played in a deck. For Yugioh
this is 3, for Magic it is 4.
Additionally, some cards may be exempt from this rule. Magic has several cards that
state that they may be played at different numbers and a Magic deck may include
any number of basic land cards. Yugioh has several cards that have the clause "This
cards name is always treated as ..." in its text. These cards are also treated as the
same card during deckbuilding, meaning only a total of three copies between any of
those given cards may be played.
One of the most common restrictions to playsets is the banlist though. While both
games outright ban some cards, certain cards are only limited to be playable at a
lesser number of copies. This makes drawing them less consistent, which can lower
the power level of certain decks. Other cards become more powerful the more copies
a player has access to, in which case limiting them is sufficient to have them no longer
be problematic.
2.2.6 Archetypes
A common element of deckbuilding games is that of synergy. While it is certainly
not unique to the genre, the large pool of cards available allows for more synergies
to exist than in most other games.
Some synergies are discovered by the players, but others are intentionally created
by the designers. It is common in both Magic and Yugioh for several heavily
synergistic cards to be released in a set. These often centralise around one or
two core mechanics, and and have names and design indicating that they belong
together. In Yugioh, these are generally referred to as archetypes, and are at the
core of modern card design in that game. In Magic, the term archetype is often
used to refer to more general deck strategies, but occasionally also used to describe
similar concepts to that of Yugioh’s archetypes.
2.2.7 Banishing, Exile, and Graveyards
If a card on the field is destroyed, or if an instant effect card resolves, these cards are
sent to a zone to indicate that status. In Yugioh and Magic this is the Graveyard,
while in AtoS this zone is called the Discard pile. Additionally, there is a second
zone that cards can be put into. In Magic this is called Exile, while in Yugioh and
AtoS it is called Banishment. All games usually allow for cards in the Graveyard
to be used in some way, with cards either having effects that can be activated from
the Graveyard, or other cards bringing them back to the field or hand. Additionally,
some costs may be paid for by sending cards from the Graveyard to Banishment.
Banished cards are usually a lot more difficult to use, and a card being banished
generally indicates that it is out of the game for good.
19
3 Designing a TCG
This chapter will briefly go over the major differences between AtoS and the the
other games, as well as giving a brief explanation for why I made some of these
design decisions.
3.1 Resource System
AtoS uses cards themselves as a resource, with most cards requiring discarding other
cards from your hand, banishing cards from your discard pile, or a combination of
the two to be played. This system avoids introducing new mechanics like mana,
using already established resources instead. It also avoids the problem of added
inconsistency that comes with the mana system in Magic, where drawing too many
or too few lands can cost you a victory through no fault of your own. This system
in fact has the opposite effect. Cards that are only useful in certain situations rarely
see play in Magic or Yugioh, since having a card in your hand that is not useful
at any given moment is a huge setback. In AtoS, these cards can still be used as
resources to fuel your other cards, making it far less risky to play them.
In addition to the cost of any individual card in AtoS a player has to pay "Action
Tax" for each card they play. Each action they perform requires an additional
discard for each action already performed this turn. This mechanic is meant to
result in a better pacing by preventing the existence of combo-heavy decks that take
very long turns without allowing the other player to interact with them. Instead
turns are over quick, allowing for a fast paced game without much down time for
either player. It also means that neither player can gain too much of an advantage
in a single turn, allowing the other player to make a comeback.
Due to the large number of cards the players have to discard, they are also running
out of cards very quickly. In order to avoid players only having access to one card
per turn, that they might not even be able to play if it requires a discard, players
draw until they have 5 cards in their hand every turn. This is likely to be the
most significant difference between AtoS and the other two games, as the increased
normal draw makes effects that draw cards significantly less powerful, relative to the
number of cards players already have access to.
20
3 Designing a TCG
3.2 Damage System
Both Magic and Yugioh feature a system for tracking the players lifepoints. Players
start with a certain amount of these, and loose the game if they run out of them,
which is the primary win condition in both of these games. Despite this, lifepoints
rarely matter in either game. Once a player has a substantial advantage in cards, and
or tempo, they usually can remain in that position, killing the opponent eventually,
while keeping themselves safe, irrespective of the actual lifepoints that players have.
Considering how little they contribute in other games, AtoS does not use lifepoints
at all. Since the win condition in these games effectively is controlling the board
anyway, AtoS has this as its primary win condition. In AtoS players begin the game
with four face down Edict cards, one of which can be activated every other turn, if a
player has more cards or defence points in its column than the opponent. Activating
an edict allows the player access to some of their more powerful cards and provides
them with various beneficial effects. Once a player has unlocked all four of their
edicts they win the game.
This system allows for various interesting decisions, as players may want to focus on
a specific column to activate the edict that is most useful right now, but this might
lead to them playing their cards to positions where they are vulnerable to enemy
attacks, or it might leave the enemy an opportunity to more easily advance their own
gameplan.
Should a creature reach the enemy back row, it can also attack directly. This destroys
the enemy’s edict in the column, replacing it with a locked edict that has no effect,
and allows the player to banish cards from the enemies deck or discard pile, depriving
them of further resources. If a player’s third edict is destroyed this way, that player
looses the game.
This makes direct attacks more impactful, as they not only advance win or loss con-
ditions, but can also deny the enemy access to their edicts that they may rely on, or
prevent them from playing their cards, as they do not have enough cards to banish.
If a players deck is empty they also have to destroy one of their own edicts per turn
in place of their normal draw, giving them very little time to stage a comeback.
Since multiple different game systems interact with each other through these mechan-
ics, all of them have far greater relevance.
21
4 Banlist analysis
This chapter will go over 5 total banlist from different periods of the analysed games.
It will focus both on the general trend the game was following at the time, as well
as analysing individual cards that are representative of certain patterns that I find
in the banned cards.
4.1 Criteria
Before beginning with the actual analysis the criteria by which to judge the cards
should be established.
Schiffke established in his thesis that the meta of a game should ideally be diverse
(Schiffke 2020: p.10). Players, at least at a competitive level, are likely to play the
most powerful strategy that is available to them. While having an diverse metagame
seems impossible when everyone is playing only the best strategy, what that strategy
is can be up for debate though. TCGs can be quite complex. Both Magic and
Yugioh have several thousand cards to build a deck from, and there are myriads of
different strategies that might compete for the most powerful. This ambiguity, in
combination with different decks sometimes being stronger or weaker against specific
other decks, results in a meta that is generally fairly diverse. Sometimes a dominant
strategy does emerge though. This leads to the first, and by far the most common
reason for cards being banned, namely that they are too powerful, and they are
banned or limited to reign in the power level of certain strategies.
Power level bans are by far the most common type of ban, and, as the topic of this
thesis is the balance of TCGs, is the one that will be primarily looked at in the
following analysis.
Since both Yugioh and Magic are relatively old games, both have had a number of
cards that do not conform with modern rules and or design philosophies, usually
ones designed during the early days of the game. This includes cards that require
physical actions, such as "Chaos Orb" that has to be thrown onto the field and
destroys all cards it touches when it lands. It also includes cards that would waste
lots of time in tournament settings, such as "Self-Destruct Button", which draws the
game. These cards will not be considered in the following analysis, as they are not
actually banned to balance the game.
22
4 Banlist analysis
4.2 Evaluating Cards
Schreiber and Romero suggest creating something they call "supporting math" in
order to evaluate the power level of cards (Schreiber; Romero 2022: p.164). Basically,
assigning a numeric value to all positive and negative effects of cards, resulting in a
total power level for the card. Unfortunately the complexity of Yugioh has increased
to the point where assigning such a value is nearly impossible, since cards can have
up to 6 different effects, in addition to their basic stats. Even then, many cards are
almost impossible to properly evaluate without the context of other cards that they
interact with.
Instead, most of the cards will be evaluated based on how they influence the
resource balance between players, how they interact with other cards, and how they
influenced the game when they were still legal to play.
4.3 1st Banlist Yugioh
The first banlist that will be looked at in this thesis is the March 2005 banlist for
Yugioh as seen here: ygoprodeck Banlists (2016). This format is known in the com-
munity as Goat-Format, named after the card "Scapegoat", which was widely played
during this time. goatformat whatisgoat (2015)
This was a relatively early period in Yugioh’s history. Many cards from these early
sets were poorly balanced, especially the spells and traps, being vastly more powerful
than any of the monster cards. This lead to a format that was largely defined by
these cards, with monsters generally playing a supporting role. Investing resources
into building a board of monsters was rarely worth it, since powerful removal spells
and traps were very common, making it a lot cheaper to destroy an established board
than building it.
Something else that was absent during this early stage of the game was the concept
of archetypes. Some archetypal cards existed during this time, such as Gravekeepers
and Harpies, but many of them were too weak to see play, not being able to compete
with better and more generic cards.
This focus on powerful generic cards lead to most decks at the time being very similar
to one another. "Different strategies" usually only swapped out a handful of cards,
as the rest were too powerful not to play them in a competitive setting.
This banlist consists of 18 cards that were completely banned, 44 cards that were
each limited to one copy per deck, and an additional 15 cards that were limited to
two copies per deck, for a total of 77 restricted cards.
Among these banned cards there are two large categories that stand out: Mass re-
moval and draw / search effects. Additionally, while there are fewer cards of this
category present, cards that remove cards from the opponent’s hand are also on the
banlist.
23
4 Banlist analysis
4.3.1 Draw and Search effects
There are 14 cards on this banlist that either draw one or more cards from the deck
or directly search a card from the deck. 10 of these are still on the banlist, with
several of them being restricted more harshly than before. Additionally, two of the
cards that have since left the banlist did receive an erratum.
The concept of card advantage was already discussed earlier on, and any card that
either draws or searches a card is at least neutral in terms of card advantage. Playing
spell cards has no cost other than loosing the card, meaning they have no tempo cost.
If the card also replaces itself with another card, that means it fully refunds its own
cost.
While this explains why a card like "Pot of Greed", which simply draws two cards on
activation is really powerful, as it just replaces itself with two more cards at no cost,
some of the other cards on the list may be a bit harder to understand.
(a) Reinforcement of the Army (2003) (b) Upstart Goblin (2002)
Figure 4.1: Two iconic Draw/Search spells
Card focus: Upstart Goblin
Perhaps the most difficult card to understand on the Goat format banlist is "Upstart
Goblin". The card reads: "Draw 1 card, then your opponent gains 1000 LP." (LP is
short for Lifepoints) Initially this seems like a very bad effect. Since the card itself
is sent to the Graveyard after activation and only one card is drawn, all this card
24
4 Banlist analysis
does is replace itself, while having a negative effect in addition. Had the player not
played Upstart Goblin, they would still have had another card in its place, without
giving the opponent additional Lifepoints.
Later in Yugioh’s history the card would mostly see play in decks that could synergise
with its effect, such as Nurse-Burn decks, which caused the Lifepoint gain to instead
deal damage, as well as Endymion and Sky-Striker, which gain additional effects
when spell cards are activated. However, the card is still useful in other decks.
To understand the reason for this, it is important to understand just how useful the
effect to draw one card is in Yugioh. While defining the exact value of many effects
in TCGs is very difficult, the value of drawing a card is actually quite easy to define.
The value of drawing a card is the average of the value of cards in the players deck,
since one of those is added at random. While this is of course an abstract value, we
can still compare this to the value of other cards in our deck. Since the value that
Upstart Goblin provides is the average value of a card in our deck, that means that
it is always better than the worst card in the deck. This is explained in a little more
detail in the following video: Why Everyone Played Upstart Goblin (2018)
This is of course not a perfect comparison. While the downside of giving the
opponent 1000 Lifepoints is a fairly minimal one, it is still reducing the effective
value of the card. If the worst card in our deck is one that is still necessary for
the deck to function, replacing it with Upstart Goblin will also weaken the deck as
some synergy might be lost as a result. Lastly, especially in modern Yugioh, time is
an important factor. There are several cards, generally referred to as "Handtraps"
that can be used during the opponents turn if they go first. Since "Upstart Goblin"
is not usable during the opponent’s turn, it might be better to play a Handtrap
instead. This shows how the game has evolved over time, to the point where not
being able to use the card on the opponents turn has become a significant tempo cost.
Card focus: Reinforcement of the Army
While the previous section explains why draw effects are powerful, there is another,
very similar, type of effect that is important to look at. These are search effects,
meaning effects that can add specific cards from the deck to the hand. One of the
best examples for a search effect is the card "Reinforcement of the Army". The card
reads: "Add 1 Level 4 or lower Warrior monster from your Deck to your hand." Since
the card has neither a cost nor downside, this is an amazing effect to have access to in
a deck that plays Level 4 or lower warrior monsters. Cards in Yugioh are limited to
three copies per deck, and cards may be limited to even fewer copies on the banlist.
Using search effects like this however can effectively allow a player to play more copies
of the respective card. This was already a good effect in early Yugioh, but the effect
would become significantly better later on once the game started to focus more on
combos. Many modern decks need specific cards to start their combos, and any way
of more reliably finding these cards makes the decks significantly more consistent.
25
4 Banlist analysis
Additionally, "Reinforcement of the Army" has a similar upside to "Upstart Goblin",
in that it effectively reduces the number of cards in your deck. If you play "Reinforce-
ment of the Army" and search a card, you have one less card in your deck than you
would have had, had you just drawn the search target. This makes it slightly more
likely to draw any of the given cards remaining, and thus increases the consistency
of the deck.
While search cards such as "Reinforcement of the Army" are already very useful when
they have just one target to search out, they become even more useful if there are
multiple options. This allows them to search for the right card in any given situation.
There were even entire decks constructed around this idea, called "Warrior Toolbox"
that used "Reinforcement of the Army" to search for warriors with somewhat niche
but powerful effects that would allow them to counter whatever the opponent was
doing in the situation. The following article explains the deck in a little bit more
detail Pojo Warrior Toolbox (2017).
4.3.2 Removal
There are 13 mass removal cards on the banlist and 7 more that are able to remove
1 card, though usually with an additional upside.
Out of the 13 mass removal cards only 2 are still on the banlist, though 2 of the
others did receive an erratum.
Similar to draw or search effects many removal cards are card neutral or even positive
in card advantage. Being able to spend one card to remove one from your opponent
is neutral, and cards that can remove multiple cards are positive in relative card
advantage.
Additionally, since removal effects generally let you choose what to destroy, they not
only get rid of one of the opponents cards, they get rid of the best of the opponents
cards they could be used against.
In addition to being positive or neutral in terms of card advantage, removal effects
were also powerful in terms of tempo. Since spells and traps have no limit on their
activation they would cost you nothing. If they removed an opponent’s monster
though, they would not only get rid of the card, but also the once per turn normal
summon that was probably invested into that monster.
While Yugioh lacks a resource system, many of its more powerful monsters can only
be played by sacrificing others. Level 5 and 6 monsters were significantly more
powerful than most other monsters that saw play during Goat-format, but they
required sacrificing a monster to be played. This meant that they were effectively
worth two cards if destroyed though, which is one of the main reasons why so few of
them saw play. Fusion monsters were even worse, as they required two monsters as
fusion material, plus a fusion spell to be summoned. Effectively, removal got better
the more expensive the target it could hit.
This made removal effects very powerful in the early days of the game, as most of
them were positive in both tempo and the card advantage they provided. Later
26
4 Banlist analysis
iterations of similar cards would often receive a downside to their effect, such as the
discard cost of "Phoenix Wing Wind Blast" or "Tribute to the Doomed", which were
usually positive on tempo, but lost you card advantage.
(a) Dark Hole (2002) (b) Heavy Storm (2002)
Figure 4.2: Two iconic mass removal spells
Card focus: Dark Hole
The card "Raigeki" can destroy all of the opponent’s monsters when activated.
The card "Dark Hole" on the other hand destroys all monsters on the field upon
activation, including those controlled by the activating player. While "Raigeki" is
obviously the more powerful card the downside of "Dark Hole" is surprisingly not
that relevant.
The main function these cards had, was to clear the board of the opponents monsters
while they were in a winning position, in such a situation the opponent would likely
have multiple monsters on the field that would be destroyed, while the activating
player would likely have either none or very few.
In this situation the downside of Dark Hole doesn’t come into play. While Raigeki
could also be used to clear the opponents board while the player was in a winning
position, this use was significantly less important, as the player likely would have
won without it, while using it in a loosing position would swing the game in their
favour.
27
4 Banlist analysis
While there are better examples of this, this is a common principle of many games.
An effect that gives you an advantage while you are loosing might result in you
winning. But an effect that gives you an advantage while you are already in a
winning position matters far less, because you could have likely won without it.
Card focus: Heavy Storm
Similarly to Raigeki and Dark Hole which destroy all of your opponent’s monsters
and all monsters, including your own, respectively, there are two cards that do the
same for spell and trap cards. Harpies Featherduster destroys all of the opponent’s
spell and trap cards, while Heavy Storm destroys all spell and trap cards on the
field.
Both fulfil similar functions as their monster destroying counterparts during older
formats. However, there have been some interesting developments since then.
Harpies Featherduster is legal at one copy in modern Yugioh while Heavy storm,
despite seemingly being the worse card, is completely forbidden. In the Goat format
banlist this is the other way around, and the reasons for it are hard to explain
without going into more context.
The following article outlines some of the reasons for this, though one of the core
reasons will be discussed in a later section as it relates to one of the other problematic
card types in the game: Forbidden & Limited Review: Heavy Storm (2023)
4.3.3 Hand Removal
There are 5 cards on the banlist that either remove cards from the opponent’s hand
or prevent them from drawing, without replacing their cards. 3 of them are still
banned, though one of the no longer banned ones did receive an errata.
Similarly to the other sections of cards that we have looked at during this banlist, all
of these cards are at least even in card advantage. While trading one of your cards
for one of your opponent’s seems like a fair trade, the player who goes first has the
opportunity to gain more card advantage through other effects first, meaning they
loose less relative to their total number of cards.
While this is already enough to make the cards fairly good, these cards have become
even more powerful as the game evolved to be far more combo oriented. The ability
to look at the opponent’s hand and remove one of their cards of your choice is very
powerful as this can allow you to remove an important card that the opponent needs
to start their combo, or remove a card they could use to interrupt yours. In addition,
if they have cards that could interrupt your combo, these kinds of effects also let you
to see what they have access to, allowing you to better play in a way as to minimise
the effect of those cards.
28
4 Banlist analysis
4.3.4 Development
Powercreep is a common phenomenon in many games, but Yugioh is perhaps one
of the best examples of it. Many modern cards are way more powerful than the
cards from the 2005 era. However, despite the level of powercreep that the game has
undergone, many of these early cards are still banned or limited to this day, with
some of them being restricted even more harshly than back then.
The number of cards from each category that are still restricted were mentioned in
the respective section already, and this shows an interesting trend. Many of the
removal cards that were ban worthy in the 2005 format are now unrestricted, while
the hand removal and draw / search cards are mostly still on the banlist.
The reason why Hand Removal is still powerful was briefly discussed in the respective
section already. However, why have removal spells gotten weaker relative to the
power level of the game, while draw and search effects have not?
As already mentioned in the section on them, the value of drawing a card is the
average of the value of cards in the deck. If all cards that are played in any given
deck get replaced with better versions due to powercreep, that also raises the value
of drawing a card. Therefore, irrespective of the power level that cards have, drawing
cards will always be an excellent effect.
For search effects the same is true as well. The more powerful the possible search
targets, the better the ability to get them. This is especially true for many of the
early draw and search cards, that had few if any restrictions on them.
Conversely, removal effects do not get more powerful as the power level of cards
increases. This might seem counter-intuitive at first. After all, the cards that
they remove are more powerful, so one would expect that the value of the removal
increases accordingly. However this is not necessarily the case, as many modern
cards have effects that can be triggered either when or before they can be removed.
Even if these cards get destroyed they have already refunded a lot of their value,
making it relatively easy for the player to rebuild again. Additionally, protection
effects have also become more common. Many cards are immune to destruction or
targeting, and there are several that can negate effects activated by the opponent,
allowing them to protect themselves.
This level to which cards get better with the level of powercreep is something that
will be further looked at once other types of cards come up in later sections.
4.4 2nd Banlist Yugioh
The second banlist that will be looked at as part of this thesis is the March 2010
Yugioh banlist as seen here: ygoprodeck Banlists (2016). This is another popular
retro format called Edison, named after the city of Edison where one of the bigger
Yugioh tournaments of the time was held edisonformat What-Is-Edison-Format
29
4 Banlist analysis
(??). Since the time of Goat format, that was looked at previously, many things
had changed. Many of the powerful cards from the early days of the game that had
dominated that format were now banned, leaving room for new decks. Additionally,
the introduction of a new mechanic in synchro summoning had changed the game,
shifting the focus to decks that could quickly provide as many monsters to be used
as synchro material as possible.
Archetypal cards also became more popular. While many decks were still playing
powerful generic cards, more focused strategies such as Blackwings, Lightsworn or
Six-Samurai would also see competitive play edisonformat Historic-Decklists (??).
There are a total of 135 cards on the March 2010 banlist, with 45 cards be-
ing banned, 70 limited to one copy per deck and 20 being semi limited to two copies
per deck.
The previously discussed categories of cards are all still present. The number of
draw and search cards has increased to 23. The number of mass removal cards has
only gone up by one since the Goat era, though due to the complexity of the cards
for some there might be some debate on whether or not they belong to this category.
Hand removal has only gone up by two cards, though both mass removal and hand
removal effects have only rarely been put on new cards since the early days of the
game.
In addition to these, there are some new categories that can be found on the list.
4.4.1 Floodgates
There are a total of 9 floodgates on the march 2010 banlist, 3 of which are still
banned in the modern game. Floodgates is a term used to refer to cards that apply
a lingering effect after activation, or a continuous effect on the field that somehow
limits the opponent’s actions. Many of these effects are very powerful, but also have
the downside of applying equally to both players. Additionally, several of them
have a maintenance cost, that needs to be paid every turn, otherwise the card is
destroyed.
Debates over floodgates are quite common in the community, with many people
stating that they heavily dislike them and that all of them should be banned. Here
is an example of such a discussion, though it is presented in a more entertainment
focused format: DO FLOODGATES HAVE A PLACE IN YU-GI-OH? - Magical
Hats (2023).
One of the more commonly cited pieces of wisdom when it comes to game devel-
opment is "Games are a series of interesting decisions", by Sid Meier GDC Talk:
Interesting Decisions (2012). Due to the high variance of possible hands players
can draw, decks they can build and matchups in which they can play against one
another, TCGs are generally pretty good at presenting players with such decisions.
Floodgates however, eliminate this decision making process, as they drastically limit
what players can do.
30
4 Banlist analysis
This is one of the main reasons why they are so commonly disliked, as reducing
the interactivity generally makes the games less fun. While that alone might be a
good enough reason to ban cards with these kinds of effects, many of them are also
extremely powerful.
(a) Imperial Order (2004) (b) Heavy Storm (2002)
Figure 4.3: A floodgate and a floodgate support card
Card focus: Imperial Order
The card that perhaps best shows the power of floodgates is the card "Imperial
Order". It is one of the few cards that would receive an erratum that changed how
the card works. The pre errata version of the card reads: "Negate all Spell Card
effects on the field. During each of your Standby Phases, pay 700 Life Points or
destroy this card."
This is an incredibly powerful effect. Spell cards are an important part of nearly
every deck in Yugioh, and being unable to access them will reduce the power of most
decks drastically, if not completely prevent them from playing the game.
While spell cards were not generally as important for central strategies in the early
days of the game as they are today, in formats like the previously mentioned Goat
format, spell cards often represented removal or defensive options, allowing a player
to equalize the playing field and turn the match in their favour. "Imperial Order"
would prevent this, allowing a player to activate it while they were in a winning
31
4 Banlist analysis
position to prevent any attempt from the opponent to make a comeback.
The same, or at least something similar is true for most floodgates, but "Imperial
Order" is actually quite a bit more powerful than most others. Firstly, since "Imperial
Order" is a trap card, it could be activated in response to an opponent using a spell.
This would negate that spells effect, meaning even if it got removed later on the
"Imperial Order" would be an even trade in card advantage.
Secondly, while there were some ways to destroy continuous traps like "Imperial
Order", in the early days of the game, most of those were spell cards. This meant
that once it resolved, there was almost no way for the opponent to get rid of the
card. This lack of counter play options is one of the most frustrating aspects of
many floodgates. While "Imperial Order" is certainly the worst in this regard, other
floodgates like "Skill drain", "There can be only one", "Rivalry of Warlords" and
"Gozen Match" serve as a similar counter to monster based removal options, by
either negating the monsters effect or preventing its summon.
This alone makes "Imperial Order" powerful enough to be banned. However, the
original version of the card had one more upside over the modern one, before it
received its errata. Since spell cards are so ubiquitous, many decks would play them,
even if they were using "Imperial Order". Due to the reciprocal nature of the card
the player who was using "Imperial Order" would also be locked out of using their
spells by its effect. However, the card has a maintenance cost that, when not paid,
would send the card to the graveyard, turning it off. While this was intended as a
way to balance the card, it actually turned out to be a convenient way to get rid of
the effect once it hindered the using player more than the opponent.
While this effect was later changed to make the cost payment mandatory, it still
proved to be an interesting aspect of the card. Beyond that, despite the errata of
the card preventing the built in deactivation, as well as doubling the lifepoint cost,
the card was still powerful enough to be banned again.
Card focus: Heavy Storm
While the previous section explains why floodgates are played, something that
should still be looked at is how they are played. Floodgates tend to see play in
two types of decks. Firstly, singular floodgates are often played by decks that can
naturally play them without conflict. This is more of a modern phenomenon, with
the cards often being played in the side deck, allowing the player to use them in
games where they know the card will be effective and they are going first, allowing
them to shut down the opponent before they get a chance to properly respond.
While this is the more common use of floodgates nowadays, there are also so called
stun strategies. These decks would play as many floodgates as possible in an attempt
to completely stop the opponent from doing anything. While singular floodgates
can already be crippling for many strategies, multiple are almost impossible to play
through without preparing for it, and being lucky enough to draw the correct cards.
32
4 Banlist analysis
While floodgates did a good job of buying the stun players enough time, they would
still have to work to some kind of win condition though. While some of these decks
played alternative win conditions which will be talked about in the next section,
other decks still tried to win by more traditional means, but ran into the problem of
their own floodgates limiting them.
This meant that they had to look for ways to remove their own floodgates once they
were ready to commit to their offence. And one of the easiest ways to get rid of
floodgates, most of which were spells and traps, while also having a powerful effect
in addition was "Heavy Storm". This card was already discussed previously, but
to reiterate, its effect is to destroy both players spell and trap cards on activation.
This was the perfect tool, clearing both the stun players floodgates, allowing them
to proceed with their offence, while also removing any spells and traps the opponent
might have to counter that offence.
This versatility is the one of the main reasons why "Heavy Storm" is banned over
seemingly more powerful cards. Many cards in deckbuilding games come with some
kind of downside, that can be used to one’s advantage by a certain strategy. "Heavy
Storm" is an example for one that has too powerful of an upside, while also being
able to help an already powerful strategy with its "downside", resulting in an overall
incredibly powerful card.
4.4.2 Alternate Win Conditions
The march 2010 list includes 6 cards with effects that either have an effect to win
the game immediately or are capable of dealing significant damage to the opponent’s
lifepoints through effects, rather than attacks.
The most common way to win a game of Yugioh is to establish control of the board,
then attack the opponent repeatedly with sufficiently powerful monsters. This is
not the only way to win the game though. Several cards have been released that
include effects that immediately let a player win the game. While such effects can
be interesting to build around, they often lead to several issues.
The core mechanics of Yugioh are designed to force a confrontation with the
opponent. Both players have to attack each other in order to win, so both are
fighting over control of the board. This leads to a game with lots of interaction
between the players, both trying to interrupt each others strategies, building up
their own resources while trying to deny the opponent a chance to build up theirs.
This concept changes if one player is using an alternate win condition. Since many
cards that are or facilitate these alternate win conditions do not work well with
other strategies, combining them is likely a bad idea. This means that these decks
are build to achieve their win condition as fast as possible, and have no backup plan
if that fails. However, this usually leads to very uninteractive decks that play out
their combo to achieve their win condition, and if they fail or get interrupted they
usually loose immediately.
33
4 Banlist analysis
Figure 4.4: Exodia the Forbidden One (2002)
Exodia ...
(a) Right Leg of
the Forbidden
One (2002)
(b) Right Arm of
the Forbidden
One (2002)
(c) Left Arm of
the Forbidden
One (2002)
(d) Left Leg of the
Forbidden One
(2002)
Figure 4.5: ... and its four pieces
Card Focus: Exodia the forbidden one
The best example for alternate win conditions is "Exodia the Forbidden One". Its
effect reads: "If you have "Right Leg of the Forbidden One", "Left Leg of the Forbidden
One", "Right Arm of the Forbidden One" and "Left Arm of the Forbidden One" in
addition to this card in your hand, you win the Duel."
Since all five cards of this combo do not do anything outside of being used for the
alternate win condition, combining this with another strategy is pointless, as drawing
only one or two of the Forbidden One monsters would be useless. So instead the deck
was played in one of the two ways that alternate win conditions are generally played.
The first variant is a stun strategy, trying to use as many floodgates as possible to
34
4 Banlist analysis
lock the opponent out of the game for long enough to assemble all five pieces.
The alternative was an FTK. FTK is short for First Turn Kill, and is used to refer
to strategies that aim to win the game on the first turn of the duel, even before the
opponent takes their first turn. Since attacking is not possible on the first turn, this
style of gameplay is usually limited to alternate win condition decks, and generally
leads to even less fun games than playing against stun decks. Either the FTK deck
is successful, in which case the opponent does not get to play at all, or they fail,
in which case they generally die on their next turn, since they rarely have a way of
defending themselves.
In case of Exodia, both stun and FTK strategies were possible, though some other
win conditions could only play one or the other. An Exodia FTK deck would try to
draw as many cards from their deck as possible, making use of many of the limited
cards from the draw category of cards that was previously discussed. These types of
decks are also a major contributing reason for why many of those cards are banned
or limited.
Unfortunately FTK strategies are both potentially very powerful, being able to win
the game without leaving the opponent a chance for counter play, and are unfun, with
one player executing a mostly linear combo while the other can not do anything. This
has lead to many alternate win conditions being banned or limited, as well as many
of the cards enabling the strategies.
One of the more recent such bans was "Isolde, Two Tales of the Noble Knights", which
was an integral part of a combo that allowed searching every piece of Exodia from
the deck using only one card. The full combo, as well as a discussion of the deck can
be found here: Exodia WON in 2023... (2023).
4.4.3 Cheating Game Mechanics
While Yugioh lacks a central resource system, that does not mean that there aren’t
still costs to many cards or game actions a player can take. Normal summoning a
level 5 or higher monster requires a tribute cost, summoning a fusion monster requires
a fusion spell and the listed materials, and activating a trap card requires it to have
been set at least one turn earlier. All of these are central mechanics of the game, and
the game is designed around these costs and restrictions.
From a design perspective, these costs and limitations are very useful, as they allow
for more powerful effects to exist in the game. Since level 5 or higher monsters are
more difficult to summon, they can have more powerful effects in order to make up
for that. Since fusion monsters are even more difficult to summon, they can have
even more powerful effects, and so on. Schreiber and Romero call this a transitive
relationship between cost and effect, with both being proportional to one another
(Schreiber; Romero 2022: 157ff.). However, the idea of costs leads to a potentially
dangerous design space. What if players could circumvent the normal game restric-
tions?
This is ability to circumvent a mechanic is also referred to as "cheating something
35
4 Banlist analysis
into play", since it does not follow the normal, and intended, procedures.
Unfortunately, it is surprisingly difficult to classify what constitutes circumventing
the rules. Some of the most obvious examples from the 2010 banlist are "Magical Sci-
entist" and "Cyber Stein", both of which have the ability to summon a fusion monster
while completely circumventing the normal fusion summoning process. Additionally,
both "Temple of the Kings" and "Makyura the Destructor" allow you to activate trap
cards without setting them first. All four of these cards were banned for their respec-
tive effects, as they would allow for various unintended combos, or could allow decks
to access nearly unbeatable monsters that were balanced around being very difficult
to summon.
While these are obviously extremely powerful effects, there are several other cards on
the banlist that were put there for similar reasons. "Monster Reborn" allows a player
to summon any monster from either players graveyard to their field. In the early days
of the game players would intentionally discard powerful high level monsters in order
to later bring them back with "Monster Reborn" or similar cards, circumventing their
normal tribute cost. While this was a little less powerful than being able to summon
a monster directly from the extra deck, it did, essentially, the same thing, leading to
the card being banned.
Nowadays "Cyber Stein" is still banned, while "Monster Reborn" is only limited to
one copy. However, there are plenty of other cards that fulfil the same role as monster
reborn in various decks, and there are even some cards with similar effects that can
be used generically.
This is an interesting phenomenon, as both cards essentially allow breaking the games
rules in a certain way, though one is apparently worse than the other. The primary
reason for that is that the game has adapted to one of these effects but not the other.
Most modern cards are easy enough to summon using other methods, making the
ability to summon them out of the graveyard less impressive. Those cards that are
very difficult to summon, usually have clauses specifically stating they need to be
summoned in a certain way, making reviving them with "Monster Reborn" impossi-
ble. Since being able to summon a monster directly from the extra deck is a much
rarer effect fewer monsters have restrictions preventing that from happening.
These effects, the way they influence the game and how or if they should be designed
around in various cases is something that will be looked at more closely in later
sections about the other games.
4.5 3rd Banlist Yugioh
The last Yugioh banlist that will be looked at is that of July 2019, as seen here:
ygoprodeck Banlists (2016). This format is known as TOSS format, named after the
four most popular decks at the time. With several new summoning mechanics being
introduced in the years since the last banlist, this format is nearly unrecognisable
when compared to the previous ones. The game has gotten significantly faster, at
36
4 Banlist analysis
least in terms of the number of turns played, though each turn is likely to take a lot
longer, considering how long and complex combo plays have gotten.
This speed up and focus on combos is mostly facilitated by powerful and easily
accessible extra deck monsters, which is one of the major new categories of cards on
the banlist as well.
While the banlist has grown significantly, powercreep has finally caught up to many
of the overpowered cards from previous lists, allowing them back into sanctioned
play. 187 cards are on this banlist, with 90 banned completely, 85 limited to one
copy per deck and 12 being semi limited to two copies per deck.
4.5.1 Extra deck cards
One of the most limiting factors to most decks in all TCGs is that of randomness.
Since there is no way to control what cards you draw in your opening hand, there
is almost never a truly reliable game plan that you can follow. And while there are
many potentially game winning combos in Yugioh, having to rely on drawing the
right cards for them is very risky, and rarely competitively viable.
For context, the chance of drawing any given card in your opening hand, assuming
three copies are in your deck, and you are playing a 40 card deck, is around 1 in 3.
If you are playing a combo that requires 2 specific cards, the chance of having both
in your opening hand goes down significantly, to around 1 in 10.
Of course, that number can still be improved. Many combos allow for certain sub-
stitutes for some cards, or have ways of searching the specific cards that they need
from their deck.
Due to this level of inconsistency, many decks in the earlier days of the game played
more balanced strategies, building up resources slowly and playing spells and traps
to keep the opponent in check. This was around the time of Goat format which was
covered previously.
Combo focused strategies were often inefficient, as most pieces of the combo were
useless on their own, and with the abundance of powerful removal options available,
any combo that did not win the game on the spot could usually be countered by a
single removal card.
However, with the introduction of synchro summoning the game would change. Un-
like ritual, or tribute monsters, which were available previously, synchro monsters
were in your extra deck. This meant you would never draw them, and they were
always accessible. Additionally, they did not require playing any cards that did noth-
ing on their own like fusion monsters did.
The combination of power and accessibility they provided pushed synchro focused
strategies to the forefront, as they had access to powerful payoffs without the risk of
drawing unplayable hands in most of their games.
With more and more extra deck monsters being released, and more mechanics to
summon them being introduced, the game began focusing around these cards more
37
4 Banlist analysis
and more. Eventually, not only the boss monsters of an archetype would be found in
the extra deck. Cards that generated more value would also be printed as extra deck
monsters. This had two major effects on the game, which will now be discussed with
the help of the following examples.
(a) Wind-Up Carrier Zenmaity (2012) (b) M-X-Saber Invoker (2012)
Figure 4.6: Two extra deck monsters that allow summoning a monster from the deck
Card Focus: Wind-Up Carrier Zenmaity
The first is making the game much more combo focused. Cards could not only provide
value for the player that used them, they could also be used to summon extra deck
monsters that generated even more value. Here is an example:
The card "Wind-Up Carrier Zenmaity" is an extra deck monster with the effect to
summon a Wind-Up monster from the players deck. The card "Wind-Up Rat" has
an effect that allows reviving a Wind-Up monster from the graveyard. Players could
use Zenmaity to summon a Rat from the deck, use Rat to revive a monster, then use
the Rat and the revived monster to summon another Zenmaity, starting the cycle
over again. If the revived monster was "Wind-Up Hunter", it could use its effect to
sacrifice the original Zenmaity to discard a card from the opponents hand, something
that this loop could let you repeat up to four times.
This combo would lead to Zenmaity being banned, and from that point onward, many
Yugioh cards would receive limitations where their effects could only be used once
each turn, even across multiple instances of the card.
38
4 Banlist analysis
While this would help keep these kinds of combos in check, more and more cards
were released that could combo with one another, and each of which could still be
used in the same turn. This ability to use a "spent" monster, and turn it and another
material into more value, or, eventually, a payoff, would lead to longer and longer
combos, resulting in increasingly more powerful end boards.
Card Focus: M-X-Saber Invoker
While the ability to cascade into increasingly more powerful payoffs for a combo
would certainly make them more appealing, extra deck cards did something else to
make them more powerful. That is, making them more accessible.
Zoodiacs are a Yugioh archetype that was capable of doing some incredibly powerful
combos, which could allow them to draw between 5 and 6 cards, as well as have
destruction effects that could be used on either turn to interrupt the opponent. How-
ever, in order to start their combos they needed one specific card from the archetype,
"Zoodiac Ratpier".
The probability of having any given card in your opening hand, assuming you play
three copies of it in a 40 card deck is roughly 33 percent. Since there was a spellcard
available that could search it out from the deck that chance increased to around 58
percent. Considering how reliant the deck was on this combo, that might not have
been good enough though.
Fortunately there was another card in the game called "M-X-Saber Invoker". Invoker
is an extra deck monster that was relatively easy to summon generically, and had
an effect that could summon a Ratpier from the deck. Suddenly the deck no longer
needed to have a Ratpier, it just needed a way to get the required materials for an
Invoker.
The level of power that search cards can have was already discussed in a previous
section. But it is important to reiterate how much more powerful the effect to search
a specific card is, if it is accessible through an extra deck monster.
If your deck needs a certain card to play its combo, you likely want to play as many
copies of it as your deck allows, in order to maximise the chance you will see it in
your opening hand. The number of copies Yugioh normally allows is 3. However,
with a search spell, such as the previously discussed "Reinfocement of the Army", the
number of copies can go up to potentially 6. This is a significant increase in consis-
tency, and any deck that has access to such a card that searches its combo starter is
stronger because of it.
However, what happens if the search effect is available on an extra deck monster?
Suddenly, any way to make that monster effectively becomes a search spell for your
starter card. If there are just two different cards that can make the required extra
deck monster, that already gives you 6 more effective copies of your starter. If there
is any way to search any of those two monsters, that is also effectively a starter. And
so on.
The high point of this reliable accessibility came with the "Orcust" archetype, which
39
4 Banlist analysis
could access its full combo with any two monsters on the field. This ease of accessi-
bility eventually got both "Knightmare Mermaid" and "Orcust Harp Horror" banned,
which were responsible for it.
Results of these changes
The changes to the relevance of extra deck monsters has had some interesting con-
sequences for how games played out during the various eras of Yugioh. In the early
days, when they were unplayable, this resulted in a control oriented format, where
powerful monsters were simply not worth the investment.
This then shifted with the introduction of synchro monsters, leading to decks focused
around making them. However, while synchro decks could reliably make a synchro
monster, due to how they were summoned these decks were still reliant on what they
drew, as not all combinations of monsters could make all synchro monsters, though
most combinations could at least make something worthwhile.
Even later, with the consistency of decks increasing, decks took over that were ca-
pable of powerful linear combos for which they could search out their starter cards,
significantly reducing the variance in games. If the combo deck successfully executed
their combo, they would likely win, if not they would likely loose.
While the question of which is better does come down to personal preference, many
people find the much more linear combo formats that are common nowadays less
appealing than the previous eras, as seen in the rising popularity of retro formats.
4.5.2 Development
In the time since the previous banlist the game has changed significantly, and it
might be interesting to see how the various categories of cards that have been
analysed so far have changed.
The most immediately noticeable thing is the number of cards that access your main
deck. This is mostly in the way of searching or drawing. Additionally, putting cards
from the deck onto the field or into the graveyard are also effects that have been
added to this category, as their main purpose, giving you access to specific cards in
your deck, is always the same. There are 90 cards on the July 2019 banlist that do
one of these things, which is almost half of the entire list.
Conversely, most of the other previous categories have either not significantly gained
or even lost cards on the list. The most obvious of them is removal, of which there
are only 18 cards on the list. This is roughly the same number as back in 2005,
despite a significantly longer banlist and years of power creep.
Both hand removal and floodgate effects are still present with many of the same
cards as previously. Cards with these types of effects have only rarely been released
since the early days of the game, or have been put on very hard to use cards, some
of which were still powerful enough to be banned.
Alternate win conditions are also fairly rare in general, though 7 cards that represent
40
4 Banlist analysis
an alternate win condition are still on the list, with two more that were part of a
combo that could achieve an alternate win condition. This is another category in
which cards are released very rarely, and with many of the more modern ones being
very weak, so as not to overshadow the way the game is meant to be played.
While revival effects have been normalised since the previous eras, there are still
some effects that are banned for potentially resulting in unintended interactions.
Copying the effect of other cards generically is another new effect that several cards
have by now been banned for.
4.6 Predictions
The previous sections in this chapter went over the various types of cards that were
commonly on the various Yugioh banlists. Before doing a similar analysis for Magic,
I want to briefly sum up my observations on these categories, as well as make some
predictions as to the prevalence of similar cards on the Magic banlist.
The categories that were found for Yugioh are:
• Resource generation
This includes any effects that move a card out of your deck to a zone where it
becomes usable. This is usually to the hand in the form of drawing or searching
the card, but some effects just put the target directly onto the field or send it
to the graveyard.
• Mass Removal
Notably, mass removal tends to get weaker as the game evolves.
• Hand Removal
• Floodgates
Cards that prevent your opponent from playing.
• Alternate Win Conditions
• Cards that circumvent the normal costs for effects
In Yugioh, the most prominent cards from this category are ones that copy the
effects of other cards or ones that summon monsters from the extra deck while
ignoring their usual summoning methods.
• Extra deck cards
While the extra deck as a concept is not necessarily problematic, the cards being
always accessible amplifies any problems that already arise for other reasons.
41
4 Banlist analysis
Accessing cards is probably the most important of these effects, as it facilitates
all of the others. Due to its lacking resource system, and the ease with which
cards can be used once players have access to them, makes getting to more cards
a uniquely powerful effect in Yugioh. Coupled with the pace of the game, where
giving up tempo is something most decks can not afford, it is difficult to have effects
that generate card advantage without making them too powerful or too weak. The
only resource a player could give up in exchange for card advantage is more card
advantage.
Search effects are also somewhat problematic. Generally, ease of use and variety
of potential targets are what makes search effects powerful. If one of the factors is
high, then the other should be lowered to compensate. Though it is notable that
with increasing power creep previously high costs or difficult requirements can often
become trivial. New card releases are likely to also introduce more potential search
targets, further raising the power level of the effect.
Since Magic has mana as a resource system, I would not expect card draw to
necessarily be a broken effect, as it could be easily balanced out by an appropriate
mana cost. Cards that are broken for drawing more cards are likely just poorly
costed, rather than being inherently broken.
As for search effects, those are likely to be problematic. Magic has as much if not
more combo potential than Yugioh, making accessing these combo pieces potentially
a very powerful effect. Such an effect could still be somewhat balanced though, as
mana costs are still a limitation. Depending on the cost and the prevalence of these
effects, combo decks might still be slow or inconsistent enough for other decks to
keep up with them.
While early Yugioh had plenty of overpowered removal effects, the game has
evolved to the point where very few of them are still problematic, as defensive
abilities have risen to match them. Additionally, as few removal effects advance the
players game plan they are somewhat risky to play in the main deck, as drawing to
many in place of your combo pieces only leads to a stalemate, where neither player
can advance their win condition. Removal also leads to a more interactive game,
something that is generally seen as a positive. Unlike draw or search effects, removal
is also unlikely to increase in power as the game expands.
I would expect something similar to be true for Magic, though specifically mass
removal might be too powerful, depending on how it is priced. Too much removal
for too low of a cost might result in similar control formats as in early Yugioh,
where committing resources to the board is basically useless, with the difference
that Magic’s rules make it an inherently slower game, leading to very dragged out
matches.
Since the format that is being looked at for this analysis is the modern format
though, Magic had been around for many years by the time the oldest cards legal in
the format released. Due to this I do not expect such problems to still be around.
42
4 Banlist analysis
While the ability to remove cards from the opponent’s board is unlikely to
scale with an evolving game, being able to get rid of cards in the opponent’s hand,
especially before they get the opportunity to use them is likely to stay powerful
over time. In Yugioh, where cards are the only necessary resource, this is extremely
powerful, to the point where few cards with this effect are still legal. Though this
effect can actually have several permutations that drastically vary in power level,
based on where the removed cards go and how it is picked.
Since the effect is likely to have a mana cost, one for one hand removal should be
fine as an effect in Magic, though a version that is too cheap and allows picking the
card the opponent discards would be problematic, as requiring both lands and non
land cards to play makes hands more fragile.
One of the most powerful aspect of floodgates in Yugioh is having the ability
to set them up before the opponent gets a chance to respond. Additionally, they
are generally made much better by having multiple, or having a board presence in
addition to protect them. Magic’s mana system prevents this, as using floodgate
effects would require a mana investment, meaning having multiple or having other
cards in play in addition is likely too expensive. One of the upsides of Floodgate
effects in magic would be the colour pie. Not every colour has access to removal
effects, and especially artifact and enchantment removal is generally limited to white
and green decks. This makes these effects potentially significantly more powerful, as
many decks will not have any way to fight back against them.
Alternative win conditions are usually quite unique, making it difficult to say
whether or not they may be problematic, though they tend to be either very good
or very bad, rarely something in between. In Yugioh they are also heavily reliant
on search effects to assemble their win condition more quickly, and/or floodgates to
buy them enough time to get there.
Whether or not the circumstances for these effects are present in magic will determine
if alternate win conditions are playable or good. Though since reliably, at least as
far as I am aware as of writing this, is lower than in Yugioh, I would expect them to
be less of an issue.
The ability to circumvent the usual restrictions placed on cards or effects is
difficult to properly assess. Many cards in Yugioh do this, however only a handful
of the effects were sufficiently powerful to result in the cards with the effects being
banned. Many others were eventually designed around. The effects in Yugioh that
were banned are activating trap cards without having to set them, summoning
monsters from the extra deck and copying the effects of other cards.
Some of these could have analogous effects in Magic, though whether they are
problematic would heavily depend on other cards and the general design of the
game.
That being said, cheating mana costs is an effect that I would expect to maybe be
43
4 Banlist analysis
problematic in magic, either by reducing costs or playing cards without paying them.
The extra deck is something that makes Yugioh fairly unique. The ability to
have access to 15 additional cards every game has been defining for the game for
a very long time. While whether the impact this had is a good one is certainly
debatable, it is one of the core mechanics of the game. The number of banned extra
deck monsters shows the immense power that the mechanic inherently has, but, for
the most part, the game was developed to accommodate it.
While Magic does not have an extra deck, there are a few cards in that I am aware
of that allow accessing either themselves or other cards from outside the game,
which has a similar effect to the extra deck mechanic in Yugioh. Whether this causes
problems remains to be seen, though I would not be surprised if it did.
4.7 1st Banlist Magic
Unlike Yugioh, which only has one officially sanctioned format, magic has several
formats, all of which have varying power levels, card pools, and in some cases special
rules. The format that will be looked at in this thesis is the "Modern" format. It
became officially sanctioned in 2011, and includes cards printed since the set "Eigth
Edition" released in 2003.
This means that a lot of the poorly balanced cards from the earliest days of the
game are not legal in the format, and are therefore not on the banlist.
Notably, cards are not limited in Modern. All cards that are on the banlist are
completely forbidden, while all cards that are legal to play are so at their full four
copies.
At the format’s inception the Modern banlist only includes 21 cards, though 6 further
cards were put on the banlist only a month later. This is banlist from September
2011 will be looked at for this analysis. It can be found here: mtg.fandom.com
Banlists (2011)
4.7.1 Resource Generation
Something that is immediately apparent is that 10 out of 27 banned cards access
cards from your deck. While accessing even one card from your deck was a near
universally good effect in Yugioh, due to cards actually having a cost this works a
little bit different in Magic. Having to invest mana into these cards means that you
have less available to spend on everything else.
These cards can also be separated into two categories. The first is consistency, the
second advantage. Cards like "Ponder" or "Green Sun’s Zenith" do not generate card
advantage for the player. They instead allow for greater consistency. "Green Sun’s
44
4 Banlist analysis
(a) Green Sun’s Zenith (2022) (b) Ponder (2022)
Figure 4.7: Two cards that greatly increase the consistency of a deck
Zenith" does this by directly putting a card from the deck into play, while "Ponder"
allows looking at the top cards of the deck and picking the best one of them to draw.
These cards serve the same function as similar cards in Yugioh, though they do have
a cost to balance out the added consistency. Despite this, they were still deemed too
powerful to keep them legal in the format.
The other cards are those that actually draw more than one card to replace them-
selves. These are "Ancestral Vision", "Skullclamp" and "Glimpse of Nature". All of
these cards have an extremely low cost, and all of them need other cards to combo
with, in order to actually draw the cards. Since decks that can fulfil these combo
requirements are already fairly powerful, these cards were banned to reduce their
power level.
Mana is the second resource players need in addition to cards, and the Modern
banlist includes 7 cards that give access to more mana, than you would normally
have access to, or that allow playing cards without paying their mana cost.
Magic is balanced around the amount of mana players have access to at any given
time. Usually this is limited as mana is produced by lands, and only one land can
be played each turn, meaning players have roughly one mana for each turn they have
taken during the game. While there are cards that allow producing more mana, they
generally come with some kind of downside. Both cards that allow putting more lands
into play, and cards that generate mana by themselves trade short term advantage
for a better long term mana production. Notably none of those cards are on the list.
45
4 Banlist analysis
The cards that are on the list that immediately generate mana do so for less mana
than it takes to play them.
"Cloudpost" is a land that generates one mana for each locus you control, being one
itself. Lands that generate more than one mana per turn are incredibly powerful,
and "Cloudpost" can potentially generate up to eight, if you play all available locus
cards. This comes at almost no costs, as lands are free to play. The only limitation
of the card is that it does come into play tapped, meaning it can not produce mana
on the turn you play it.
"Rite of Flame" is a card that immediately adds mana to your mana pool, effectively
trading the card for more mana. This one time burst of mana can allow you to
play very powerful cards much earlier than you would normally be able to. This is
especially problematic as cards in magic do not scale linearly with their mana cost.
It can also help combos, as combo strategies tend to end the game immediately or
get to an unbeatable state once their combo has been achieved. In these cases cards
like "Rite of Flame" could give them the mana they need to perform their combo one
or two turns earlier.
4.7.2 Affinity
(a) Dark Depths (2020) (b) Thought Monitor (2021)
Figure 4.10: Two cards with harsh restrictions but very powerful effects
One of the greatest problems when evaluating cards, both when looking at them
from an outside perspective, and when designing them yourself, is the interaction the
47
4 Banlist analysis
card has with other cards. When looking at cards like "Cloudpost" or "Umezawa’s
Jitte", it is very easily apparent just how powerful they are. Other cards, like
"Ancestral Vision" or "Dark Depths" have effects that are very powerful, but have
fairly harsh restrictions holding them back. Once players figured out how to
circumvent these restrictions, these cards were too powerful to be left legal in the
format.
The Artifact lands on the Modern banlist fall into neither of these categories. They
are a series of five lands, one for each color, that can produce one mana of their
respective colour each turn, just like the basic lands. The difference is that all of
them are artifacts in addition to being lands. Artifacts are a type of card in Magic.
They are a permanent type, meaning once played they remain on the field, but
otherwise do not have any inherent effects. There are however, a lot of cards that
interact with artifacts. Most notably, there are several cards that have the "affinity
for artifacts" ability, meaning they cost 1 less mana to play for every artifact you
control.
Affinity decks could play a lot of cheap artifacts, then use them to make their affinity
cards free or very cheap to play, and would quickly overwhelm the opponent with
the advantage generated this way. If these decks had access to the artifact lands
they would have a major advantage as they are just more free to play artifacts, that
would also give these decks access to coloured mana.
Heavily synergistic cards are common in TCGs, but the affinity mechanic is perhaps
one of the most powerful examples for it in Magic. Additionally, affinity is not only
extremely powerful as a mechanic, the affinity with artifacts ability also synergises
with one of the most common types of cards in the game. This level of broad synergy
combined with high power level leads to synergies that easily spiral out of control,
especially with the game expanding.
4.8 2nd Banlist Magic
The Second banlist of the Modern format is the most recent one as of writing this,
that being the one from December 4th 2023. This list consists of a total of 49 cards.
The list, as of writing this, can be found here: magic.wizards.com (??)
While a few previously banned cards have since left the banlist, and several new
cards have been added, surprisingly little has changed in the Modern format from a
banlist perspective. Most of the cards on the banlist are still ones that either access
more cards, or that circumvent mana restrictions, with 17 of the former and 14 of
the latter. The remaining cards, that do not do either, mostly belong into one of
three categories. There are the artifact lands that have already been talked about
in the previous section. There are several cards banned for how they interact with
very specific other cards, being part of a particular combo that was deemed to be
too powerful for the format, or they are the companions, which will be talked about
48
4 Banlist analysis
in the next subsection.
Before going on to the companions, it is interesting to see the difference between
Magic an Yugioh here. Each of the banlists that were analysed for Yugioh had a
fairly substantial shift in how the game is played that they brought with them. This
is not the case for Magic. While there are new developments in the Modern format,
several decks that were playable at the inception of the format are still playable
today, even though they likely have undergone some changes.
There are two primary reasons for this. Firstly, Yugioh has undergone several
massive changes with the introduction of new summoning mechanics, some of which
came with significant changes to the base rules of the game as well. These changes
have altered how the game is played in significant ways, and have therefore also
brought new cards to the banlist.
As an example, cards like "Grinder Golem" and "Level Eater" have the ability to
summon lots of monsters to your side of the field. Since they did not do anything
else, and the monsters they gave you access to were fairly unimpressive, they existed
for years without problem. With the advent of Link summoning, these monsters
could suddenly be used for very powerful extra deck plays, leading to both of the
cards being banned.
With no significant changes to the ruleset of Magic, something like this did not
happen.
The other major difference is the design philosophy. While Magic has different
formats, all of which do receive new cards to support them, the primary format
that is supported the most is standard. This is a format that only uses cards from
the most recent years, with older cards rotating out of the format while new sets
introduce more cards.
This system of rotation allows for a relatively constant power level, with only few
powerful cards being introduced in each given set. For formats that do not rotate
this means that powercreep, while present, is slowed down significantly. With fewer
powerful cards being introduced, this limits how many cards have to be banned,
and leads to a format with fewer changes when compared to Yugioh, where each set
introduces many new powerful cards.
4.8.1 Companions
Two of the most interesting new cards on the Modern banlist are "Lurrus of the
Dream-Den" and "Yorion, Sky Nomad". Both are fairly powerful cards on their own,
but one of the most interesting aspects of them is the companion mechanic. This
mechanic allows the player to reveal the card from their sidedeck at the start of the
game, and, if the deck meets a certain requirement, they can add that card to their
hand during the game for 3 mana.
This mechanic was highly controversial among the playerbase, for reasons outlined in
this article on the subject: Companion Controversy (2020). The interesting part of it
49
4 Banlist analysis
(a) Lurrus of the Dream-Den (2020) (b) Yorion, Sky Nomad (2020)
Figure 4.11: The two companions currently banned in Modern
describes how the mechanic began warping the game around it. The companions had
such powerful abilities, and having them as an additional card meant that almost
any deck would play them, even if it had to make concessions to accommodate the
companion’s restrictions. Knowing you would always have access to the companion’s
abilities also changed how people built their decks, as they were suddenly a lot more
consistent.
The companion mechanic in general was pretty analogous to the extra deck in
Yugioh, being a card(s) that would begin the game outside your main deck and that
you could always access at a minor additional cost.
This level of reliable access made the mechanic extremely powerful, at least on those
companions whose abilities were the most powerful, leading to the banning on both
of them, with some of the others still being contentious within the community.
Since magic was not designed around the mechanic, which has a pretty substantial
impact on the game, it ultimately failed at a game design level.
4.8.2 Repeatable Removal
There is one more category of cards that should be mentioned, although there are only
two cards with this ability are present on the banlist. That being repeatable removal
effects. "Punishing fire" is an instant that can deal 2 damage to a creature or player,
and can be returned from the graveyard to a players hand if the opponent gains life,
50
4 Banlist analysis
(a) Umezawa’s Jitte (2005) (b) Punishing Fire (2011)
Figure 4.12: Two banned cards that have repeatable removal effects
something that you can trigger yourself. "Umezawa’s Jitte" is an equipment that
gains counters when the equipped creature does combat damage. These can, among
other things, be spent to reduce a creatures power and toughness, killing it if its
toughness reaches 0.
While both of these abilities seem fairly innocuous, after all, there are much more
powerful removal options available, their ability to keep repeating the effect for a
comparatively low cost makes them quite dangerous. This form of low investment
repeatable removal can completely shut down creature based decks by continually
destroying any creatures they play.
In essence both of these cards act similarly to the floodgates that were present in
Yugioh, locking creature based decks out of the game, and preventing them from
getting to any countermeasures.
4.9 Conclusions
The previous sections of this chapter went over the various patterns that were found
in both Magic an Yugioh, as well as briefly going over why they were problematic
and how they developed over the games history. Before returning to AtoS in the next
chapter and going over my own cards to check for these patterns, this section will
summarise the most important findings from this chapter.
After analysing the Yugioh banlists, I established several categories that the cards
51
4 Banlist analysis
belong into. While these do still apply, there are some changes that should be made
to these categories.
• Resource Generation
Any deck build in any kind of TCG is ultimately dependent on certain resources.
While many games have a resource system, like mana in Magic, every TCG also
has cards that players draw over the course of the game. Whichever player has
more resources available, is likely to win the game in the end, making resource
generation a critical aspect of these games.
Notably, this only includes cards that generate more resources than they con-
sume, of at least one type. A card like "Upstart Goblin" that simply draws a
card when played does not generate any resources, and instead belongs to the
second category.
• Consistency
Many strategies in TCGs are built around powerful synergies between cards.
Due to the inherent randomness of drawing cards, players do not always have
access to all pieces of their synergy. Cards that increase the consistency of their
deck, by searching out these synergy pieces, or drawing cards faster make these
combo strategies much more powerful as a result.
Notably there is some overlap between resource generation and consistency
increasing effects, as any way to draw more cards also makes it more likely to
draw the specific cards you are looking for in any given moment.
• Alternate Win Conditions
Since alternate win conditions are usually based around performing very specific
combos, they have a tendency to promote playing in a way as to not interact
with game systems that are not directly related to that win condition. This
often means trying to avoid any interaction with the opponent, resulting in
games that are less fun. Alternate win conditions also have a tendency to
be either too easy to fulfil, overshadowing traditional strategies, or being too
difficult to actually attempt.
• Circumventing Game Rules
This is an unfortunately vague category, as most effects of cards do something
to change the game in some way that is not explicit in the rules. The most
critical instances of this sort of effect are ones that circumvent costs for other
cards, especially if they can do so for a wide range of cards, or for very powerful
ones. If one of these cards is already in the game, it is likely to lead to problems
later on, if more cards are designed whose costs can be circumvented.
• Lock out effects
These are cards that prevent your opponent from playing the game. This in-
cludes cards that continuously prevent certain game actions, like the floodgates
52
4 Banlist analysis
in Yugioh, or cards that can immediately stop any attempt at doing something,
like the repeatable removal in Magic. The two notable features of this are that
it needs to be able to be usable very early on in the game, before the opponent
is given a chance to prepare. It also should be able to deal with multiple things
the opponent can do, which is why repeatability of the effect is so crucial.
• Inherent Accessibility
All of the above effects, while usually very powerful, are still limited by
having to draw the cards that provide these effects. If they become inherently
accessible, and players do not have to draw them, this makes already powerful
effects even better.
53
5 Revisiting AtoS
With problematic effects now established, this chapter will return to AtoS. The in
the first section we will go over some structural differences between the games, and
what effect these might have on potentially problematic cards. The second section
will go over some cards that have already been designed before the analysis in the
previous chapter. I will try to guess, based on my observations so far, whether or not
those cards will become problematic in the test games and why. Lastly I will create
some new cards that are designed to be problematic.
5.1 Structural differences
While AtoS was designed to have many similarities to both Yugioh and Magic, there
are some differences between the games, which will likely have an impact on the
problematic card types.
The most significant of these regards resource generation. Players in AtoS have to
pay action tax for each card they play in a turn, which means they are required to
discard a card for each previous action performed in the same turn as an additional
cost. With a six card hand, that means, assuming none of the cards played require a
discard already, a player could play three of their six cards, discarding the others as
action tax. If a player wanted to play four cards in a turn they would need a total
of ten cards, as the discard cost keeps increasing.
This makes strategies relying on playing many cheap cards a lot weaker. It also
makes any effect that immediately draws cards or searches them out of the deck a
lot weaker, as the newly added cards are now far more expensive to play.
While adding more cards and waiting for the next turn to play them is possible,
it not only slows the player down, it also conflicts with another one of the game’s
systems.
At the start of their turn players draw until they have five cards in hand. This
means the more cards a player keeps in their hand, the lower the number of cards
they draw. This can lead to them falling behind on resources if they do not spend
their cards.
While immediate draw or search effects are less powerful as a result, cards that draw
may still be useful if they do so continually, without requiring an action. These are
further discussed in the next section.
54
5 Revisiting AtoS
While AtoS does not feature an extra deck or companions, there are still some cards
that players are guaranteed to have access to without having to draw them.
Players begin a game of AtoS with four face down edict cards, that can be flipped
face up over the course of the game. This is done by controlling more cards, or cards
with more defence points in the edicts column at the end of your turn. Only one
edict may be activated every other turn though, making it somewhat slow to access
them. The opponent also has a chance to block off these edicts with their cards, and
can even destroy them if their creatures get close enough.
These limitations and counter play options should make edicts less powerful than
extra deck monsters or companions, but edicts are still likely to have a huge impact
on the game.
5.2 Analysing existing cards
5.2.1 Resource Generation
As already mentioned in the previous section, cards that simply draw cards as an
immediate effect are not particularly powerful, due to the action tax mechanic. I was
already aware of this as I designed the game, therefore there are not a lot of cards
with this type of effect. There are however several cards that increase the players
draw limit, meaning the number of cards they draw up to at the start of their turn.
This is a fairly powerful effect that comes in several variants, but crucially all of
them grant the player access to at least 6 cards, meaning they reach the threshold
of being able to play three cards per turn.
"Mobilising Resources" is the only card currently in the game that does nothing
other than drawing cards. Its effect is: "Pay 1 banish, then draw a card. You may
repeat this effect any number of times, but its cost increases by 1 each time". Pay
1 banish means that you have to banish 1 card from your hand or discard pile to
activate the effect, with the number of cards you need to banish increasing each
time. With a sufficiently full discard pile, this can allow you to fairly easily draw 4
to 5 cards with one activation. This is powerful enough to the point where the card
effectively fully refunds its cost while giving you access to significantly more options.
While the effect is very powerful, it does not enable significant combos, as action
tax still limits what follow up the player has, as well as requiring significant setup. I
would still expect the card to see play in decks that rarely banish cards from their
discard pile for other costs.
5.2.2 Consistency
Currently there are several cards in AtoS that allow searching out cards from the
deck. These are "4th Legion Mobilisation", "Ambitious goals" and "Battlemage
55
5 Revisiting AtoS
Apprentice".
"Battlemage Apprentice" is probably the least powerful, as it can only search out
evocation spell cards, which is a very small category. While it will likely see play in
spell focused strategies, which will be stronger as a result of this card existing, it is
not generically useful.
"Ambitious goals" can search out any card that requires more influence than the
player has access to, meaning the card searched out can almost never be played
immediately. It also becomes useless in the later stages of the game, once the player
has enough influence to play all of their cards. While this effect is potentially quite
powerful, I would not expect this card to see a lot of play. Once cards that allow for
a more combo focused style of play are introduced, this could conceivably be used in
conjunction with them. For the next section I will attempt to create some of those
cards to see how this performs.
The last search card is "4th Legion Mobilisation". This can search out any creature
card, the most common type of card in the game. It does not even have a cost, but
it increases the cost of the searched card for the next few turns. This is meant to
work in conjunction with its archetype, which can ignore the cost increase. This is
one of the most difficult cards to evaluate. It is incredibly powerful, but very costly
to play outside its own deck, which I consider to be one of the weaker ones in the
current game. While the card is likely not overpowered yet, I would expect that to
change with the introduction of future cards.
Beyond cards that directly search out cards, draw effects can also be used to increase
the consistency of decks. Most have already been talked about earlier, but "Patient
Planning" should also be mentioned here. It is an Edict that allows you to draw two
cards as an action. This can be very useful to look for a particular card in any given
situation, as you can fairly easily draw six cards with the effect in a turn, though
action tax will likely leave you without any way to play more than one card if you do
so. While this is not particularly powerful, I could imagine this card would see play
to search for a removal effect, or to draw several cards in preparation for a big combo.
5.2.3 Alternate Win Conditions
The only alternate win condition currently in the game is "Favoured by Fate". This
is an edict that, provides 0 influence. If you control three of them, wins the game
immediately.
Usually to win the game you need to activate all four of your edicts. Since you can
only activate one edict every other turn, it usually takes at least eight turns to win
this way. "Favoured by Fate" reduces this to six turns, but has several downsides
to it as well. Most importantly, your opponent can see it coming, and can prepare
accordingly. While it can lead to an earlier victory than what would usually be
possible, six turns is still a long time for your opponent to react.
Additionally, since "Favoured by Fate" does not have any other beneficial effects, nor
56
5 Revisiting AtoS
provides influence, your opponent is likely to have several advantages over you.
These downsides make the card too weak to be a serious threat to most decks.
5.2.4 Circumventing Game Rules
"Monster Nest" is a powerful support card for the Monster archetype. It has several
effects, but the most notable of them is: "To pay for the cost of a Monster (including
action tax) you may banish cards from the top of your deck." This is currently the
only effect in the game that is able to circumvent the discards required for action
tax. Being able to circumvent the costs of all their cards allows the monster deck to
play very fast and aggressively, though it does so at the risk of running out of cards
in their deck if they do not win fast enough. This card is very powerful, and will
likely see play in any deck using the Monster archetype. Whether or not this deck is
the most powerful as a result remains to be seen though, as the card is only useful
in conjunction with monster cards.
5.2.5 Lockout effects
Due to a personal dislike for Floodgate effects I have not yet designed many for
AtoS. The only effects that could currently potentially lock the opponent out of
the game are "4th Legion Battlemage" and "Desert". "4th Legion Battlemage" has
the ability to add spell cards from a players discard pile back to their hand. This
could be used to re-use removal spells over and over again, destroying every card
the opponent plays, similar to "Punishing Fire" in Magic. "Desert" is a card that
increases the cost of all cards played to adjacent zones by one. I expect neither of
these effects to be powerful enough to stop the opponent from playing on their own,
though both might see play in a control focused strategy once it receives more cards.
5.2.6 Inherent Accessibility
Edict cards are AtoS’s version of inherently accessible cards. Out of the previously
discussed cards only two of them are edicts. "Favoured by Fate" was already
discussed in some detail above. The other card is "Friends in high places". This is
an edict that increases the players draw limit to six. Meaning they draw until they
have six cards in their hand at the start of each of their turns.
As seen in the resource generation section above, I expect these effects to be very
powerful, and with this one being an edict it is probably the best version of this effect.
57
5 Revisiting AtoS
5.2.7 Synergy Pieces
The last two cards that should be mentioned here are two powerful synergy cards.
"2nd Legion Phalanx" is a creature that grants all adjacent Phalanx creatures a
bonus to their offence and defence. This can make a formation of multiple Phalanx
creatures almost impossible to stop. While boosting combat capabilities of creatures
is usually not that powerful of an effect, this has proven to be nearly insurmountable
for other decks in the various test games played already.
Lastly, "Arcane Focus" is an edict that provides the player with spellpower.
Spellpower is necessary to play spell cards, which are very powerful instant effect
cards. While there are other ways to get spellpower, they are usually cards that
the opponent can more easily remove through combat or effects. "Arcane Focus"
provides these decks with a fall-back, and a way to more easily accumulate lots of
spellpower fast, to reach their critical thresholds.
5.3 Adding new cards
With the observations made in the previous sections in mind, I have designed several
new cards. Twelve of of these were specifically designed to be powerful cards belonging
to one of the categories of ban worthy cards previously established.
5.3.1 Resource Generation
"Recall lessons" is an instant that draws three cards. This is the simplest draw effect
in the game, and while it would be extremely powerful in any of the other games
(with Magic’s version of the card being known as one of the most powerful cards
in the games history) I am not sure if the card is even worth playing. In AtoS a
player can usually afford to take three actions in any given turn. After that, due
to the action tax mechanic any further action requires three discards. This means
that "Recall lessons" does not generate enough advantage to pay for its own cost.
While the added selection of cards, and the ability to save up cards for a big combo
turn might be useful, the cards still represent a loss of effective resources in most
scenarios.
Additionally, the card requires one point of influence to play, meaning it is usually
not usable during the first two turns of the game, where looking for critical parts of
your strategy is most important.
While the card will likely be played, I do not expect it to perform particularly well.
58
5 Revisiting AtoS
5.3.2 Consistency
"Key piece" is an edict that, when activated, adds any card from your deck to your
hand, then allows you to play it ignoring the usual rules for when you may play
cards. This is the ultimate consistency effect, with it being always accessible as an
edict and being able to add any card from the deck. While there are not enough
powerful combos in the game yet to play this as an enabler for them, this does allow
you to play one copy of each of a number of situational cards and add them when
needed, serving as a toolbox of useful effects.
Since AtoS has a relatively small card pool so far, this card is not overpowered yet,
though that would likely change with more search targets and combo tools being
released. I still expect this to be played in any deck that does have a free edict slot,
due to how generically versatile the effect is.
"Desperate Search" is an instant that allows you to banish your hand and
draw that many cards, then repeat this process any number of times.
This effectively searches out any card from your deck, as you can just keep drawing
until you find it, though you will potentially lose many cards in the process. There
are some analogous cards in Yugioh, though those shuffle the cards back into the
deck, and do not allow repeating the effect. These cards have usually only seen
play in unreliable first turn kill combo decks, something which is not possible in
AtoS. And while the effect does provide consistency, it looses a significant amount
of resources, as the card does not replace itself, and increases your action tax.
With these factors I do not expect the card to be particularly good, though it might
see some experimentation.
5.3.3 Circumventing Game Rules
"Grand design" is an instant that upon activation allows paying action tax by
banishing cards from the discard pile, in addition to discarding cards, for the rest of
the turn. This is currently the only generic way to circumvent the discard cost that
action tax incurs. While this is a very powerful tool for combo focused strategies,
those do not exist in the game yet. I do not believe that there is any deck that could
take sufficient advantage of this card, though should the game be developed further,
that might change.
"Grand manouver" is an instant that allows you to attack with your creatures
without paying or increasing your action tax for the rest of the turn. Additionally,
each time you destroy an opponents card in combat this turn, you draw one card.
This makes it a great tool for breaking through the opponents defence in a decisive
push. This is a very situational card, but due to the inherently slow nature of AtoS
there is usually enough time to find the card in the later half of the game, and in
59
5 Revisiting AtoS
the stalemate situations that developed in many of the test games this card would
have been quite useful for both sides.
This card greatly rewards combat focused decks by giving them a massive boost in
resources, both through the cards it can draw and the costs it can circumvent. I do
expect it to see play, and to be part of some game winning plays.
"Warmonger" is an edict that allows both players to attack without increasing
or paying action tax for it. This has a similar effect to the previous card, though this
one applies continuously. Aggressive decks usually need to spend lots of resources
to pay for their attacks, and tend to fall behind on board presence because of this.
"Warmonger" allows them to both stay on the offensive and build up their own board
simultaneously.
However, this card has several disadvantages. The effect is symmetrical, so your
opponent benefits from it as well, without suffering any of the other disadvantages,
making it risky to play unless you are certain that your deck could beat them at
combat consistently. The card provides 0 influence, meaning that certain strategies
would be slowed down a lot by playing this early on. Lastly, if you do not attack on
your turn, the edict locks itself, meaning you are required to fully commit to this
style of play.
I am not sure just how powerful this effect is, nor if there are any decks that could
make good use of it. Though it will likely see some experimentation at least.
The last card is able to circumvent the cost of cards is "Of Noble Blood". It
is an edict that reduces the cost of all cards, including the action tax you pay for
it, by the excess influence you have. Notably, since this card does not provide any
influence itself, it does not do anything until you activate at least one more edict.
While the cost reduction is substantial, this card does require significant setup to be
powerful, at which point you likely would have won anyway. This makes it hard to
evaluate just how powerful it actually is.
5.3.4 Lockout effects
Next there are several cards all focused around hindering the opponent. First is
"Impenetrable Jungle". This card can be played next to any other copy of itself, even
to the opponents half of the field. While its defence is only 1, it can not be destroyed
by battle or card effects. This effect can be negated by either player as an action.
This card is mostly there to clog up the opponent’s zones, making it hard for them
to play more cards or move around. While they can get rid of it, it will usually
take them two actions, one to remove the invincibility and one to actually destroy
it. This makes it a useful card to slow down the opponent in decks that need the
additional time to set themselves up.
This card is less powerful and allows more counter play than most floodgate style
60
5 Revisiting AtoS
effects in other games, but it has the advantage of being reliably annoying for any
deck to play against while draining their resources.
I am not sure just how powerful the card is, but in decks that profit from a slower
pace it should at least see experimentation.
A more traditional floodgate effect is "Bureaucratic bog". While it is active
the action tax for both players only resets to one each turn. Effectively this increases
the cost of any action by one discard. This effect will hinder any deck in the game
significantly. Therein also lies the problem. This card is almost impossible to play
around, so neither player has anything to gain from it. Additionally, since the effect
only activates once the edict is unlocked, the opponent does have enough time to set
up their strategy before it becomes active.
With these problems I don’t think the card will be particularly useful, and since
it likely makes the game less fun to play I don’t think this card will even be
experimented with.
"The cycle of violence" is an instant that can only be played when two crea-
tures battle. It then destroys both of those battling creatures. Additionally, if this
card is either banished or discarded to pay for another copy of this card, you may
add a third copy of this card from your deck to your hand. This can then banish the
previously used copy from your discard pile to pay for its cost, allowing you to keep
a copy of it in rotation at all times.
This makes the card a constant danger, making even your weaker creatures a threat
to your opponent’s strongest ones. For decks that can easily facilitate playing
large numbers of cheap creatures, this allows them to significantly increase their
effectiveness.
Notably, while this is two for one removal, since it replaces itself it is neutral in card
advantage.
While it does require a little setup, I expect this card to be very useful for any deck
that can spare the creatures.
"Eternal Fire" is an edict that, during your end phase, if you played an evo-
cation spell this turn, adds one of your banished evocation spells to your hand, then
forces you to discard a card. Since evocation spells have effects that allow destroying
the opponent’s cards, banish cards from their deck or discard pile or discard cards
from their hand, this is a very powerful control tool.
This card allows spell focused decks to continually recycle their best cards, meaning
they always have a way to counter the opponent’s strategy.
Once this deck reaches that point I would expect it to be the strongest deck available.
And since AtoS is a fairly slow game, players have enough time to get to that point.
Out of all the cards introduced in this section I expect this to be the one that is
most likely to be problematic.
61
5 Revisiting AtoS
5.3.5 Synergy Pieces
"4th Legion Battlehymn" is an instant that can only be played as a normal action
(meaning only during your turn, and not in response to another card). It negates
the effects of all creatures until the end of the turn, then all of your creatures gain a
boost to their battle stats equal to the number of 4th Legion creatures you control.
Since the 4th Legion deck is built around having creatures with high stats but no
effects, this makes the card a pure positive for them, weakening your opponent while
strengthening you even more.
This card sets you up for a number of powerful attacks with your creatures, all of
which you are likely to win. In combination with the previously mentioned cards that
allow attacking for free, this could allow the 4th Legion deck to be able to compete
with many of the other decks currently in the game.
62
6 Testing and analysis of my game
6.1 Testing
In order to test the predictions made in the previous sections of this thesis, a total
of 14 games of AtoS were played. These games were recorded and can be found
here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUV0G4fMgq8&list=PLC04XuW7de_
hhia82r4WU6Q58npWnotRW. In addition to the recordings there are several question-
naires filled out by the players, as well as the play and win rates of the critical cards.
These can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uPKrVVI_
JOuavnDlhbjGKMKOaBLyaP2G?usp=sharing. When analysing the collected data
there are several observations that can be made and some assumptions that have
been confirmed, as well as some that have been disproved.
6.2 Testing results
6.2.1 Focus Cards
While many of the testing results did meet expectations, as they are outlined in the
previous chapter, there are several notable exceptions.
Beginning with the various cards that increase the draw limit, I expected the card
"Friends in high places", which is an edict that sets the draw limit to 6, to be one of
the more powerful cards. While the effect is powerful, and having it on an edict gives
it reliability, as well as not requiring deck space for other versions of the effect, there
is a significant downside. Due to how edict cards are accessed in the game, a player
can only activate their first edict at the end of their second or third turn. This means
that they lose a significant amount of card advantage during the earlier turns, which
are often the most critical. More importantly though, many decks already have edicts
that are critical to their strategy, that they ideally want to activate first. This sets
back the activation of "Friends in high places" back another two turns.
In this case the player looses so much advantage that having the effect active for the
last few turns of the game is likely not worth it. Other versions of this effect are
therefore a lot better.
One card that significantly over performed was "Gold Mine". It also has the effect
to increase the player’s draw limit, but increases it further when placed next to a
"Mountain" card. Additionally, unlike other versions of the effect, multiple "Gold
63
6 Testing and analysis of my game
(a) Gold Mine (b) Friends in high places
Figure 6.1: Two cards whose performance significantly deviated from my expectations.
Mines" can stack, increasing the players draw limit even further.
The action tax mechanic of AtoS means that there are diminishing returns on
card advantage, but this amount of it will still lead to one player being favoured
significantly over the other.
Overall the effect of all cards that passively increase the players draw limit is still
significant though, as I had expected.
One card that I had underestimated the power of was "Battlemage Appren-
tice". This card is easy to play. It requires no influence and can be paid for by
banishing cards from your discard pile. Despite this relatively low cost it has three
fairly powerful benefits. Upon being played, it allows searching your deck for an
evocation card. Evocation cards usually have powerful removal effects, but can
also be used to disrupt the opponents strategy in other ways by discarding their
cards or weakening their creatures. These are usually limited by requiring a certain
amount of spellpower, which is provided by other cards. "Battlemage Apprentice"
also provides one spellpower for these evocation cards, meaning it on its own sets
up the cheaper ones, and can help get to the more expensive ones once you have
sufficient spellpower.
This ability to easily set up powerful other cards, was something I had expected
when designing the card. However, this, in combination with a decent statline and
its low cost made it more powerful than I had anticipated. Additionally, even if
64
6 Testing and analysis of my game
you do not intend to use the card that you search with "Battlemage Apprentice",
it can still be used to pay for discard costs later on. Since its cost can be paid for
with cards from your discard pile, this is a search effect that is inherently positive in
terms of card advantage, something that no other card does.
While there are a few other cards that allow searching a card from the deck, such
as "4th Legion Mobilisation" or "Ambitious Goals" these currently have slightly less
powerful search targets, and more importantly, they are not creatures that stick
around on the field to be useful later on in the game.
(a) Battlemage Apprentice (b) Grand Manoeuvre
Figure 6.2: Two cards whose performance significantly deviated from my expectations.
Both "Warmonger" and "Grand Manoeuvre" are cards that allow a player to attack
without paying a cost, freeing a lot of resources to play more creatures. These are
powerful in theory, and have been impactful in several of the test games. They are
however limited by how situational they are.
"Grand Manouver" is only useful if you can make multiple attacks in a single turn,
as otherwise the cost for the attack is lower than the cost for "Grand Manouver".
While "Warmonger" is an edict, and thus drawing it is not necessary, activating it is
still somewhat difficult. This is only worth it if you can sufficiently capitalise on the
effect.
While situations in which you can make multiple attacks in a turn do come up, they
are too rare for these cards to be worth playing in most decks. Overall I consider
both to be too inconsistent to be powerful, despite their effects being good.
65
6 Testing and analysis of my game
"4th Legion Battlehymn" suffers from a similar issue, being a powerful finisher card,
that you only need in very few situations, and rarely have access to when you
actually do need it.
All three also require you to already be in a winning position to take the most
advantage of their effects.
"Recall Lessons" and "Desperate Search" are in a similar position. Their ef-
fects allow drawing more cards, in order to more easily find the ones you need in
a given situation. While the improved consistency did help several decks in the
test games, this can not fully eliminate any inconsistency that is inherent to certain
decks.
This is because they only draw more cards, rather than actually searching the
missing piece.
Since "Desperate Search" looses card advantage, and "Recall lessons" requires an
active edict, both of these have a downside to make up for the consistency bonus
they provide. Therefore I consider them to be quite well balanced. Both have seen
fairly little play in the test games though, so this assessment should not be seen as
final.
(a) Of Noble Blood (b) Eternal Fire
Figure 6.3: Two cards whose performance significantly deviated from my expectations.
"Eternal fire" was a card I was initially worried about when designing it. Its effect
allows recurring powerful cards, potentially leading to the player using it being in
66
6 Testing and analysis of my game
an unbeatable position for the remainder of the game. Due to this I designed the
card with several downsides, which ultimately lead to the card being almost useless,
if not actively detrimental to the player using it.
Something I had not considered when designing the card is the amount of setup
required for it, which ultimately leads to it being somewhat situational, even if it
did not have any of its downsides. This is due to the cards it recurs all having fairly
harsh requirements on how and when they can be used.
"Of Noble Blood" is an edict that reduces the cost of other cards, based on
the amount of influence a player has available. This also reduces the action tax a
player has to pay, which is usually the limiting factor for how many cards can be
used by a player in any given turn.
Despite the incredible power of the card, it is still fairly well balanced. The card
does not provide influence on its own, meaning at least one other edict has to be
active for it to provide any benefit. This means that the card only becomes active at
around halfway through the game, and only if the player has protected their edicts
well enough.
This means the effect of the card is only useful if the player using it is already in a
good position, functioning as a feedback loop to accelerate their victory.
These are the most notable insights that vary from my expectations, found in
the previous chapter. Unfortunately, not all cards saw equal representation in the
test games though, so for the cards: "Monster nest", "Ambitious goals", "Desert",
"Recall lessons", "Grand Design", "Desperate Search" "Impenetrable Jungle" and
"Bureocratic Bog", there might be further insight to be found in further testing.
6.2.2 Player Feedback
After each test game, players were asked to complete a short survey. Among other
things they were asked to provide the most impactful cards from the game they just
played, as well as any that they considered to be overpowered or unfair. Most of
the cards players provided are not actually among the cards noted in the previous
sections, which I had considered for the potentially ban worthy cards. Instead these
cards primarily belong to one of two categories.
The first are powerful removal cards. These are the evocation spells, "Fire-
ball", "Telekinetic Execution" and "Lightning Bolt", all of which have various costs
and activation requirements, but all have the ability to destroy creatures on the
board. As most other removal cards are even more expensive, and or more restrictive,
these cards were perceived to be very powerful by the players.
Despite this, I do not believe these cards to be significantly unbalanced. While
spells have powerful effects, each spell has a spellpower requirement that has to be
67
6 Testing and analysis of my game
fulfilled in order to be playable. This means the player needs other cards in order
to even access spells. Before that point they are completely useless. Similarly, most
cards that provide spellpower are otherwise fairly weak and have little in terms of
additional utility.
This leads to the deck being less reliable and being vulnerable in the early stages of
the game, usually leading to an early loss if the player can not accumulate spellpower
fast enough to defend themselves. This is something that is also reflected in the win
rate of spell focused decks which is at six out of eleven.
Another notable card that was mentioned several times as being one of the
most impactful cards, as well as a too powerful one was "Tabula Rasa". This card
destroys all cards on the field upon activation, and is currently the only card that
can do this. However, the card has a fairly steep cost, requiring three discards
(which usually leaves the player without further plays during that turn), as well as
requiring to banish an edict from the discard pile. This is usually only possible if the
player has suffered a direct attack, meaning they are usually behind in the game.
This makes the card a powerful comeback tool, though it still leaves the player using
it at a disadvantage, as the opponent gets to rebuild first.
This pattern of removal effects being very powerful was something we also encoun-
tered on the first Yugioh banlist analysed. As there are few counters to it in the
current version of the game, and most decks heavily rely on their creatures to win,
these cards are still a little bit too powerful in the current version of the game.
If more cards were to be introduced, I would expect removal to become less powerful,
mirroring the respective development in Yugioh.
The second category of cards that players often mentioned as too powerful
were creatures with high offence / defence values, such as "Emperor’s Champion"
or "Sentinel", as well as creatures that can increase their own or other creatures’
combat stats, such as "2nd Legion Phalanx" or "Outcast Champion". Since combat
is still the most common way of getting rid of creatures in the current version of the
game, many decks did not have an easy way to get rid of these cards once they were
in play, without either finding a removal card, or their own powerful creature.
While the many complaints about them being too powerful or highly impactful seem
to indicate that they are unbalanced, five different creatures were mentioned, and
none of them show up more than twice in the 14 played games.
This suggests that while all of these cards are quite powerful, none is overshadowing
the others. These cards fulfil their role as powerful late game finishers rather well.
6.2.3 Unexpected entries
The previous sections went over the cards that I had expected to be powerful, and
whether they actually were. In addition to these, there are also several cards that I
did not expect to be as powerful as they ultimately turned out to be.
68
6 Testing and analysis of my game
The first of these is "Bright Lurkers". This is a creature with an extremely
high defence value, and no cost. One of the observations I made in the analysis
chapter was that combat stats of cards did not matter. Even in the early days of
Yugioh, when the power level was still fairly low, no creature was banned for its
combat capabilities, and later in the game’s history there would be easy to access
creatures that could kill the opponent in a single hit. None of these cards were ever
present on the banlist.
Similarly, AtoS has several quite powerful creatures, though, as mentioned previously,
they have not proven to be problematic. "Bright Lurkers" is a different case though.
Edicts are one of the core mechanics of AtoS, and getting to activate your edicts is
a significant advantage in any deck. This is especially critical in the early stages of
the game. Edicts are activated through the conquest mechanic, which requires you
to have more cards, or more defence points in the same column as your edict.
Since "Bright Lurkers" has one of the highest defence values in the game, and has no
cost, that makes it the perfect card to activate edicts.
This generic utility makes it a powerful card in every deck, and one of the potentially
banworthy cards currently in AtoS.
This is also an interesting case for how AtoS is different from Yugioh and Magic, in
that combat stats have a significant impact on the game, even outside of combat.
This structural difference has lead to a card becoming incredibly powerful, when an
equivalent card in the other games would be very weak.
The second card that should probably be banned or redesigned is "Ferocious
Strike". This card grants a creature a minor increase to its combat stats this turn,
but far more importantly allows it to immediately attack. This attack is in addition
to the attack the creature could already perform, and this card can be used to allow
a creature to attack immediately after it is played, which is not possible otherwise.
The board that AtoS is played on is relatively small, but it still takes time to move
cards around. Playing a powerful creature still leaves the opponent with a turn or
two to react and prepare accordingly. "Ferocious Strike" allows circumventing this
restriction in a major way, allowing for game determining attacks at a very low cost.
This circumvention of usual game rules is something that was a major point in
previous sections, though I underestimated just how powerful the effect to grant
an attack might be. Similar to the "Bright Lurkers" card, this card’s power is
unique to AtoS, with similar effects being very weak in other games, which is why I
underestimated its power initially.
69
6 Testing and analysis of my game
(a) Bright Lurkers (b) Ferocious Strike
Figure 6.4: Two cards whose performance significantly deviated from my expectations.
6.3 Summary
While most of my assumptions were proven correct by the test games, there were
still some interesting and unexpected results.
Resource generation proved to be most influential in the early stages of the game,
when the opponent did not have ways to counter it, and so that it could provide
its benefits throughout the entire game. Continuous resource generation or cost
reduction also functioned as a feedback loop, which made it difficult for the opponent
to catch up again.
With few defensive abilities or cards, removal proved to be more powerful than
expected.
While the analysis of Magic and Yugioh served as a good foundation to analyse and
assess many of the AtoS cards, the differences in the design of the game still had a
significant impact. While I was able to predict some of these, such as immediate draw
effects being a lot weaker, others, such as cheap creatures with high defence being
very powerful surprised me. This is mostly due to the higher level of interconnection
of the various systems of AtoS, which makes evaluating cards more difficult, as any
one aspect of a card might have consequences to various different systems.
70
7 Conclusions
Both the analysis of Yugioh and Magic and the test games of AtoS have provided
interesting findings. Several patterns of powerful effects could be found, such as
cheap resource generation or floodgate effects. It also showed the consequences of
removing randomness from the game through search effects and mechanics that
make cards inherently accessible. These lead to combo heavy formats with little
interaction between players.
The test games also showed how different rules affect these patterns, such as the
Action Tax mechanic of AtoS greatly reducing the power of card draw and search
effects.
A high level of interconnectedness between game systems and effects can lead to
more variance in games and lead to more interesting decisions the players can
make, both when building their decks and during play. However, this added level of
complexity also drastically increases the number of unintended interactions that are
potentially game breaking.
Additionally, some interesting observations on the development of TCGs were
made. One of the most problematic aspects of the early formats of Yugioh was very
accessible removal that allowed for little counter-play. While not quite as powerful,
this is a pattern also found in the AtoS test games. If AtoS were to be continued
and expanded with more cards it would be interesting to see if this would stay the
same way, or if the game would evolve similarly to Yugioh, with a shift toward a
more combo heavy style of play and with most of the problematic cards being combo
starters or enablers.
This thesis should serve as a foundation for further research on the balance in
Trading Card Games, as there are several problems still unanswered. For one, only
relatively few test games were played. While these have shown some interesting
results several cards were only played very rarely and their interactions could not be
observed properly.
A longer series of test games would also allow for making modifications to cards.
This would make it easier to identify qualifications for when an effect becomes too
powerful, as not all effects that have the potential to be game breaking actually are.
Modifying additional factors, such as the cost of the cards would allow for greater
specificity in that regard.
71
A Appendix
A.1 Additional documents
You can find the current version of "A Tale of Suns" here: https:
//steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3146296776. It does
require the Table Top Simulator to be played. This version includes the playing
field, all currently available cards, a rulebook and several of the decks that were
played during the test games.
The complete rulebook, as well as all of the cards can also be found here: https:
//drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uPKrVVI_JOuavnDlhbjGKMKOaBLyaP2G?
usp=sharing. The questionnaires for the players as well as the observations on
various cards can also be found there.
The recordings of the test games played can be found here: https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=yUV0G4fMgq8&list=PLC04XuW7de_hhia82r4WU6Q58npWnotRW.
A.2 Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all of the wonderful people that helped me complete my thesis.
Firstly, my professor, Gunther Rehfeld, who was always patient with me, despite my
lack of enthusiasm for scientific writing.
Next, all the people who participated in my test games, and made conducting this
research possible that way.
Lastly, my fellow students and my father, who took the time to read this thesis,
despite not being all that interested in the subject. They spared you from several
horribly phrased sentences and spelling mistakes.
72
List of Figures
2.1 An example of a Yugioh field (screenshot) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2 The Field Layout of AtoS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.3 Frontline Deployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.4 2nd Legion Phalanx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.5 Murder and Makeshift Binding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.1 Reinforcements of the Army and Upstart Goblin . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.2 Dark Hole and Heavy Storm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4.3 Imperial Order and Heavy Storm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.4 Exodia the Forbidden One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4.5 The Four Exodia Pieces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4.6 Wind-Up Carrier Zenmaity and M-X-Sabe Invoker . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.7 Green Sun’s Zenith and Ponder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4.8 Glimpse of Nature and Skullclamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.9 Cloudpost and Rite of Flame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.10 Dark Depths and Thought Monitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.11 Lurrus of the Dream-Den and Yorion, Sky Nomad . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.12 Umezawa’s Jitte and Punishing Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
6.1 Gold Mine and Friends in high places . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
6.2 Battlemage Apprentice and Grand Manoeuvre . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
6.3 Of Noble Blood and Eternal Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
6.4 Bright Lurkers and Ferocious Strike . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
73
Bibliography
ygoprodeck.com A community made website on Yugioh that lists the various ban-
lists over the games history, https://ygoprodeck.com/banlist/, retrieved:
11.03.2024
mtg.fandom.com A fan website about Magic: the Gathering, among other things
recording the banlists over the games history https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/
Banned_and_restricted_cards/Timeline#August_2, retrieved: 11.03.2024
magic.wizards.com The official website for Magic: The Gathering https://magic.
wizards.com/en/banned-restricted-list, retrieved 11.03.2024
Schreiber, Ian; Romero, Brenda: Game Balance, 1st edition, CRC Press 2022
goatformat.com A website on the popular retro format Goat, https://www.
goatformat.com/whatisgoat.html, retrieved: 11.03.2024
edisonformat.com A website on the popular retro format Edison, https://www.
edisonformat.com/what-is-edison-format.html, retrieved: 11.03.2024
edisonformat.com A website on the popular retro format Edison, https://www.
edisonformat.com/historic-decklists.html, retrieved: 11.03.2024
MBT Yu-Gi-Oh! A discussion on floodgates in Yugioh, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=Mrz_Ye-fffY, retrieved: 11.03.2024
Meier, Sid A GDC talk on his often cited quote: "Games are a series of inter-
esting decisions" https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1015756/Interesting, re-
trieved: 11.03.2024
Schiffke, Alexander: Analyse der Metabildung von Sammelkartenspielen an drei
Beispielen, 2020, Masterthesis
Anteaus An article on the warrior toolbox deck https://www.pojo.com/
deconstructing-warrior-toolbox/, retrieved: 11.03.2024
Sam Black An article going over the problems of the companion mechanic https:
//articles.starcitygames.com/magic-the-gathering/premium/companion-
is-the-worst-mechanic-for-the-health-of-magic-since-phyrexian-
mana/, retrieved: 11.03.2024
74
Bibliography
Ted Knutson An article on the concept of card advantage https://web.archive.
org/web/20070311031938/http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/
academy/11, retrieved: 11.03.2024
Discussion begun by: The Ogdoad A forum discussion on the merits of card advan-
tage as a concept https://www.pojo.biz/board/showthread.php?t=1045044,
retrieved: 11.03.2024
TopTierYugioh An explanation on the resource of tempo in Yugioh https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=PTs8xpJdQgw&t=301s, retrieved: 11.03.2024
CuChuTrain A video on various types of removal in Yugioh https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=pltWcoOVlkI, retrieved: 11.03.2024
@DeletedUser40283073 (edited by various other users over time) A description of
tempo in magic https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Tempo, retrieved: 11.03.2024
Cimoooooooo A video on how newly released cards make accessing an old and very
powerful one trivial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nquPs0IpR94, retrieved:
11.03.2024
Dzeeff A video on the card Upstart Goblin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
jSVzFARNYJA, retrieved: 11.03.2024
AntiMattering An article on the card Heavy Storm https://ygoprodeck.com/
article/forbidden-amp-limited-review-heavy-storm-302242, retrieved:
18.03.2024
Cimoooooooo A video on an Exodia FTK deck https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=6VAjUkS0mMM, retreived 18.03.2024
MTG Fandom A wiki page on the colours in Magic: The Gathering https://mtg.
fandom.com/wiki/Color, retreived on 20.03.2024
75
Bibliography
Images
Reinforcement of the Army https://images.ygoprodeck.com/images/cards/
32807846.jpg
Upstart Goblin https://images.ygoprodeck.com/images/cards/70368879.jpg
Dark Hole https://images.ygoprodeck.com/images/cards/53129443.jpg
Heavy Storm https://images.ygoprodeck.com/images/cards/19613556.jpg
Imperial Order https://images.ygoprodeck.com/images/cards/61740673.jpg
Exodia the Forbidden One https://images.ygoprodeck.com/images/cards/
33396948.jpg
Left Arm of the Forbidden One https://images.ygoprodeck.com/images/cards/
7902349.jpg
Right Arm of the Forbidden One https://images.ygoprodeck.com/images/cards/
70903634.jpg
Left Leg of the Forbidden One https://images.ygoprodeck.com/images/cards/
44519536.jpg
Right Leg of the Forbidden One https://images.ygoprodeck.com/images/cards/
8124921.jpg
Wind-Up Carrier Zenmaity https://images.ygoprodeck.com/images/cards/
81122844.jpg
M-X-Saber Invoker https://images.ygoprodeck.com/images/cards/4423206.
jpg
Yorion, Sky Nomad https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/2/7/275426c4-
c14e-47d0-a9d4-24da7f6f6911.jpg?1665402560
Lurrus of the Dream-Den https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/5/a/
5ad36fb2-c44e-4085-ba0d-54277841ad3a.jpg?1682228556
Cloudpost https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/2/f/2f28ecdc-a4f0-
4327-a78c-340be41555ee.jpg?1562139726
Rite of Flame https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/c/0/c062caf7-f0eb-
44db-9f74-e6711a13fada.jpg?1593275318
Murder https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/1/c/1c13ac76-7cd9-456f-
9b89-92bfa07c64c5.jpg?1664411132
76
Bibliography
Makeshift Binding https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/e/4/e45d2e0c-
d70d-40e5-8c3d-db6803393516.jpg?1706241508
Dark Depths https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/0/0/00cb17a0-5a13-
4d02-b7fb-f99531bc8ca5.jpg?1599710396
Thought Monitor https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/9/9/996c1952-
8d10-4296-8960-ff8993833649.jpg?1626095167
Umezawa’s Jitte https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/3/b/3b6e5956-f795-
451b-bb24-56462d1ced27.jpg?1562876528
Punishing Fire https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/b/3/b381d3c4-b318-
4dff-a214-8a16a3872107.jpg?1592713604
Glimpse of Nature https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/1/d/1ddcd76b-
a7a1-4ae6-bf4a-f929c6574bdc.jpg?1562757977
Skullclamp https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/a/3/a36fd6d8-66a2-
49d1-b9f3-b400ebc03674.jpg?1682210228
Ponder https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/4/4/44dcfc0c-b23d-48be-
bf3a-a6fc6806c5e1.jpg?1710160906
Green Sun’s Zenith https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/7/0/70291c7b-
a86f-4466-8502-c28765a89b2a.jpg?1673148124
77
Ich versichere, die vorliegende Arbeit selbstständig ohne fremde Hilfe
verfasst und keine anderen Quellen und Hilfsmittel als die angegebe-
nen benutzt zu haben. Die aus anderen Werken wörtlich entnomme-
nen Stellen oder dem Sinn nach entlehnten Passagen sind durch
Quellenangaben eindeutig kenntlich gemacht.
Ort, Datum Jacob Heindorf
Hamburg, 25.03.2024
