History TierInducedScrappy / YuGiOh

-> ''"It's this asshole. This piece of shit, who cripples the entire Synchro mechanic just by existing because Tuners have to be overbalanced and banned accordingly due to his batshit insane summon effect. Let's be real here for a second, do we really still need this card? I think society has progressed past the need for Halq. I think it's genuinely impressive that they made a card without any negation or disruption that's this obnoxious, but it's been a while since it stopped being funny and now it just brings my piss to a boil."''
-->--'''WebVideo/Rank10YGO''' on [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Crystron_Halqifibrax Crystron Halqifibrax]]

With over thousands of cards that continue to churn out new sets, it is inevitable that there will always be a deck or card that players hate, whether by being overpowered, failing to live up to their expectations, or just both.

[[index]]
* [[TierInducedScrappy/YuGiOhDuelLinks Duel Links Tier-Induced Scrappies]]
[[/index]]
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[[folder:High Tiers]]
* In general, any new card that causes an older card to be banned while avoiding the banlist itself is likely to not win many fans. This goes double if the banned card is an integral part of lower-tier decks which are crippled by its loss, while the unrestricted card was exclusively used for degenerate combos or field states. Examples have included Dragon Rulers (got a lot of generic Dragon support banned, including the main playmaker of Dragunities), Utopic ZEXAL (got Argent Chaos Force, one of the few strong Rank-Up Magics, banned, and is seen as the reason that the game had never had a good RUM searcher), Crystron Halqifibrax (got a ''lot'' of Tuners banned), and Firewall Dragon (at the height of its infamy, seemingly every new list would ban or limit a card used in a combo with Firewall).
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Rescue_Cat Rescue Cat]] was not all that popular when it first came out (2004-2005), being a common card that people found rather silly, but it started to suffer of a very disturbing case of VindicatedByHistory around 2008. The reason? Its insane synergy with Synchros. Synchros, in and of themselves, are considered this due to their insane power-to-cost ratio (doing everything from whittling the opponent's hand down to drawing cards to ''destroying the entire field on a whim'' while only needing a few token nondescript monsters to summon), but Rescue Cat pushes that over the top, letting you get out any two monsters needed to bring out the most powerful low-level Synchros with just the effort of summoning and then tributing itself. It's pretty sad when the unbanning of two GameBreaker revival cards ''and'' a field-clearer that's been banned ever since the list was first created is considered a fair trade-off to the feline's dismissal from the game. Oh, and don't ever speak of X Saber/Rescue Cat in the Western metagame where X-Sabers have even bigger synergy with this evil thing.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Rescue_Rabbit Rescue Rabbit]], Rescue Cat's {{Nerf}}ed brother, gets even ''more'' hate nowadays because of his insane synergy with the Xyz mechanic. Decks based on this little guy work by Summoning him, getting 2 Dinosaur-Types and using them to Xyz Summon [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Evolzar_Laggia Evolzar Laggia]]. Laggia is absolutely ''brutal'' -- it can negate almost anything, but it's balanced out by the fact that this can only be done once and it's quite hard to Xyz Summon... except that ''this deck does it with only one card''. Oh, and there's [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Leviair_the_Sea_Dragon Leviair the Sea Dragon]], which is Summoned just as easily and allows you to get back the Rabbit once you use his effect. '''Twice'''. So, the whole "can only be used once"? It won't matter when your opponent has ''three'' Laggias. Have fun not being able to play anything at all because of two cards!\\
Another reason why Rabbit is even more of a Scrappy than the cat is because unlike Cat, Rabbit is far more expensive thanks to a TCG rarity bump from Rare in Japan to Secret Rare - turning Rabbit from a possible keycard of a pseudo-budget deck to an extremely expensive deck.
* In 2013, the [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Dragon_Ruler Dragon Ruler]] archetype was hit with this before it was even released. In addition to being very consistent with only two other decks at the time that could even hope to compete with it, it could lock down the entire field in one turn and won most matches in three turns. The deck was also very simple to construct, requiring little innovation and consisted of a number of the most expensive cards in the game, making it an example of BribingYourWayToVictory. Konami seemed to realize this and banned half the cards in the series and limiting the other half from 3 to 1, taking a number of support cards with it in the process.
** This move made the deck very hated by [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Dragunity Dragunity]] players, since the deck became a joke after one of the key cards of the deck, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Dragon_Ravine Dragon Ravine]], was banned due to its popularity with Dragon Rulers. While Konami tried to bring in an [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Dragunity_Divine_Lance Equip Spell]] to give the deck a chance to become part of competitive play again, the deck still did not enough power to become part of competitive play. This continued until The Dragon Rulers were banned and Dragon Ravine came off the ban list, giving Dragunity some of its competitive nature back and letting the hate die down.
* Around the same time as Dragon Rulers, there was another deck almost as hated, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Spellbook Spellbooks]]/[[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Prophecy Prophecies]]. Previously, the deck had been on the radar, but not spectacular. Then, it got one card that pushed it into being one of the two completely dominant decks of the format, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Spellbook_of_Judgment Spellbook Of Judgement.]] With just that addition, the deck gained access to a way to instantly replenish their supply of spells and also end off with [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Justice_of_Prophecy searching their boss monster and another Judgement]] or a [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Jowgen_the_Spiritualist powerful stun.]] Judgement is widely considered to be one of the most overpowered spell cards ever made, and it's telling that A: the 2013 World Championship players not playing Dragon Rulers were all playing it. And B: that by simply banning Judgement, Prophecies ceased to be oppressive while Dragon Rulers remained a problem for years despite getting many key cards banned.
* One of the worst offenders of the later 5Ds era was [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Legendary_Six_Samurai_-_Shi_En Legendary Six Samurai - Shi En]]. Shi En is one of the aforementioned Synchro Monsters, meaning he's easy and cheap to summon, but requires a [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Six_Samurai Six Samurai]] deck to do so. Such decks are {{Lightning Bruiser}}s, capable of spamming monsters with 2000 or more attack very easily and can often destroy another Samurai in place of themselves. Shi En can do that, on top of being able to negate one of your opponent's spell or trap cards every turn, meaning the best ways to deal with him often require you to spend a card to lure out his effect. Getting out two would usually end games right there.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Reborn_Tengu Reborn Tengu]] has insane synergy with Synchros. When it's removed from the field, whether by being attacked and destroyed, returned to your hand, being [[DeaderThanDead banished]] or sent to the grave for a Synchro Summon, you grab another from your deck and since it's mandatory, said effect can never miss the timing. Combine this with the fact that the other requirement for the synchro summon, a tuner monster, can be laughably easy to summon and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/T.G._Hyper_Librarian T.G. Hyper Librarian]] (''another'' tier-induced scrappy), who lets you draw for each synchro summon you make (and can be made with a tengu and the most spammable tuners in the game) and you have yourself a deck that can explode into victory if you draw a tengu. Reborn Tengu got Semi-Limited from the March 2012 banlist, and wouldn't be unlimited until years later.
* In the earlier eras of the game, there were two major Tier Induced Scrappy decks. One was Goat Control, which used [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Scapegoat Scapegoat]] to create easy walls of defenders and [[https://yugioh.fandom.com/wiki/Metamorphosis Metamorphosis]] to morph one of them into the normally AwesomeButImpractical [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Thousand-Eyes_Restrict Thousand-Eyes Restrict]], paralyzing the enemy from attacking, stealing their monsters, and basically rendering monster-based strategies moot. The other one was Chaos, which was even worse, consisting of three powerful creatures with the ridiculously easy summoning cost of removing one light and one dark monster from the graveyard. [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Chaos_Sorcerer Chaos Sorcerer]], the least powerful of the three, was hated because it was an easy summon with a body bigger than beatdown staple [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Cyber_Dragon Cyber Dragon]] and guaranteed to remove an enemy creature from play if the opponent had any face-up monsters. [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Black_Luster_Soldier_-_Envoy_of_the_Beginning Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning]] was ''loathed'' for having a more powerful version of Chaos Sorcerer's effect, 3000 attack to make it basically untouchable in battle, and the additional ability to gain a second attack whenever it killed something, meaning fending it off without losing nearly half your life points was remarkably difficult. Finally, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Chaos_Emperor_Dragon_-_Envoy_of_the_End Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End]] was considered the most broken card ever printed in its day; in addition to being just as strong as the Blue-Eyes White Dragon despite being easier to summon than most 4-star monsters, it also had an effect that let it nuke both players' field and hands for a minor lifepoint payment, completely hosing any strategy because of the wording of its effect and generally leaving the opponent at a massive life point and card disadvantage. All three cards saw time on the banlist, with the latter being unbanned following a {{nerf}} errata. That said, the era later became VindicatedByHistory due to players actually enjoying the slower speed caused by the format.
** Black Luster Soldier was, for a while, a Limited card and later put to 3, but seeing as it is not nearly as unbeatable in today's meta as it was before (there are plenty of cards that can defeat it or even trump it in terms of Attack Score) it doesn't have as many haters (or even as many ''fans'') as before.
** Chaos Emperor Dragon returns to the game limited to 1. However, it received a drastic card effect change (errata) on November 2018 that not only weakened the card's effect, but greatly restricted the use of the card. The burn damage only applies to how much your opponent's card has, thus a lot less damage inflicted. The effect can ONLY be used if you did not use any card effect, breaking all combos this card would have done in that turn including Witch and Sangan. Since its return, "priority" to its effect no longer applies due to that rule change in 2011 (OCG) and 2012 (TCG), so you can't activate its effect if cards like Bottomless Trap Hole are used in response to the summon.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Tour_Guide_From_the_Underworld Tour Guide From the Underworld]]. She's a level 3 fiend that can summon another level 3 Fiend from the deck when Normal Summoned at the cost of negating the monster's effect (which doesn't matter if the monster has an effect that activates in the Graveyard) and can't be used as Synchro material (which doesn't matter when she enables a free Rank 3 Xyz summon). The fact that she was so rare and expensive when she first came out cranked her Scrappy-ness up to eleven.
* Dear God, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Wind-Up Wind-Ups]]. While these cards looked like funny wind-up toys, players were able to figure out something called the Wind-Up Loop that could destroy your opponent's entire hand before they even had a turn. [[note]]The most common strategy was as follows: First, send [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Wind-Up_Hunter Wind-Up Hunter]] to your Graveyard somehow (any card that requires a discard will do). Then Xyz Summon [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Wind-Up_Carrier_Zenmaity Wind-Up Carrier Zenmaity]] (easily done with Tour Guide, see above) and activate it's effect to Special Summon a [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Wind-Up_Rat Wind-Up Rat]]. Then activate Wind-Up Rat's effect to Special Summon Wind-Up Hunter from the Graveyard. Use Wind-Up Hunter's effect to tribute Wind-Up Zenmaity and make your opponent send a random card from their hand to the grave. Then use Wind-Up Rat and Wind-Up Hunter as Xyz Materials to summon a second Zenmaity. Repeat the loop twice by sending Wind-Up Hunter to the Graveyard to Special Summon another Wind-Up Rat.[[/note]] And this wasn't even the best strategy the deck could do! Fortunately, with Zenmaity now limited, strategies using Wind-Ups are somewhat more respectable.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Inzektor Inzektors]] were even worse, as the players who hated them wondered if Konami even bothered with playtesting them before release. These Insect-Type monsters that resembled ''Franchise/KamenRider'' had another lethal loop strategy involving [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Inzektor_Dragonfly Inzektor Dragonfly]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Inzektor_Hornet Inzektor Hornet]], which could not only destroy every one of your opponent's cards turn after turn, but continue to swarm the field in the process. Even worse, it was nearly impossible to defend against this strategy unless you could banish them from your opponent's Graveyard. After both Hornet and Dragon were Limited, effectively ruining the Loop, Konami quickly started to put "once per turn" clauses on most new cards, meaning that the effect of a card could only be used once per turn, even if you controlled two of them.
* The original Tier-Induced Scrappy is [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Yata-Garasu Yata-Garasu]]. Despite only having 200 attack points, it possesses the ability to make your opponent skip their draw phase when it does damage. But its low attack makes it easy to destroy right? Wrong. It also possesses the Spirit characteristic with means it returns to its owner's hand at the end phase. Of particular note is the combo with Chaos Emperor Dragon and Sangan in the old days. After triggering CED's effect while your Sangan is on the field, Sangan hits the graveyard and triggers its tutor effect, allowing you to retrieve Yata, and assuming you haven't used your normal summon for the turn yet, leaving you free to summon it and attack. Not only is your opponent unable to draw, but their hand was just emptied by the effect of Chaos Emperor Dragon, resulting in a guaranteed win. Such was the brokenness of the combo that Konami saw fit to ban ''both'', with Yata returning to limited status in the May 2022 banlist in the TCG and the October 2022 OCG banlist, a ''whopping 18 years later'', and CED only coming back after a nerf.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Jinzo Jinzo]] was one of the most devastating cards to ever be published around the time of its release (2000). Its effect of negating traps was borderline insane in a time when most decks needed to rely on permanent traps in order to successfully advance their own combo's and especially to counter devastating cards (such as [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Raigeki Raigeki]] (with [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Magic_Jammer Magic Jammer]]) or [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Blue-Eyes_White_Dragon Blue-Eyes White Dragon]] (with [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Trap_Hole Trap Hole]])) of the opponent. The card also had some decent ATK (2400 to be exact) and only required one tribute to be summoned, which meant that it could easily dominate the field. The hatred towards it has however calmed down around 2008 when decks started to rely more on special summoning and cards such as [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Stardust_Dragon Stardust Dragon]] could counter devastating cards without being rendered useless by Jinzo. Nowadays you can play 3 copies of it, but only because the game's exponential power creep has made Jinzo's stats along with Trap Cards in general almost completely obsolete.
* "Floodgates" are reviled for preventing certain aspects of the game from being played at all, especially when only the user is likely prepared to work around them.
** [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Skill_Drain Skill Drain]] has jumped on and off of the banlist. At the simple activation cost of 1000 LP, it continuously negates all face-up monster effects. It has become particularly notorious in Trap-heavy Eldlich decks, where the [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Eldlich_the_Golden_Lord star monster]] doesn't need to be on the field to activate its effects, and almost everything else is a Trap Monster that skirts around Skill Drain by activating its effects in the Spell & Trap Zone. But its criticism pales in comparison to...
** [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Mystic_Mine Mystic Mine]] prevents the player who controls more monsters from attacking or activating monster effects ''from anywhere'', with the caveat that it will destroy itself during the End Phase if the monster count is equal. It encourages the user to play few, if any monsters, and even if they go first, they can simply hold back on their Summons and use [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Metaverse Metaverse]] to pluck it from the Deck in the middle of the opponent's plays. The card is reviled for slowing games to a halt if one can't "draw the out"... which the Mine player is probably prepared to counter anyway in a twisted form of "Defend the Castle". The card is banned in the OCG, and many demand the same in the TCG.
** Of all the floodgates, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Vanity%27s_Emptiness Vanity's Emptiness]], a Trap that prevents any Special Summons, proved truly devastating (even with the drawback of destroying itself the moment a card from the user's Deck or field hits the Graveyard) as most modern decks Special Summon several times, resulting in the TCG banning it and being limited for years in the OCG, where it proved to be a nasty staple and was deemed very sacky, eventually resulting in the OCG also following suit by banning it in the July 2022 banlist.
** In the same vein, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Imperial_Order Imperial Order]], which negates any Spell effects (which comprises several of the common cards that could get rid of it) as long as you pay 700 LP on every Standby Phase, was essentially a death sentence to any deck that uses Spell cards and saw heavy abuse in decks that either don't use Spells or use them first on their turn before activating Imperial Order during the opponent's, resulting in its ban. Notably, it eventually left the banlist in both formats after a nerf that forced you to pay LP on both Standby Phases, only to prove to be a staple yet again that kneecapped decks that needed Spells to make their plays, leading to the card ending banned again in the TCG and eventually the OCG as well.
* Decks primarily centered around Level 4 monsters that make Rank 4 Xyz monsters are often disliked. A large number of very powerful cards are Rank 4 Xyz monsters that only require two non-specific materials and, all together, they make an incredibly versatile toolbox that get around many decks or become common staples. One example is [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Castel,_the_Skyblaster_Musketeer Castel, the Skyblaster Musketeer]]; once he's summoned, he can use his materials to send one face-up card your opponent controls back to the deck. ''Any'' face-up card. Rank 4s vastly outnumber any other Rank whose best cards are either too hard to summon or not as good as the multitude of options the Rank 4 toolbox has.
** [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Noden Elder Entity Norden]]. It has been abused like there's no tomorrow with [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Instant_Fusion Instant Fusion]] and can summon ''any'' Level 4 or lower monster from your graveyard upon Special Summon. Worse, unlike most other cards nowadays that are balanced the "only once per turn" restriction, this card does not have any Summoning restrictions and can be used multiple times per turn! (Several [=OTKs=] and ''[=FTKs=]'' can be achieved very easily with Norden. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86Mr3ABuYlY Here]] is an example. Note that the FTK is no longer possible as [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Instant_Fusion Instant Fusion]] and [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Blaze_Fenix,_the_Burning_Bombardment_Bird Blaze Fenix]] are limited in OCG. In TCG on the other hand...)
** [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Tellarknight_Ptolemaeus Tellarknight Ptolemaeus]]: At first glance its nothing special, a Rank 4 with low ATK but high DEF. Except for one thing; it can ditch 3 materials to bring out a Rank 5 monster (provided it isn't a Number). [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Constellar_Pleiades Constellar Pleiades]] or [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Outer_Entity_Azathoth Outer Entity Azathoth]]? Both became staples. [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Stellarknight_Constellar_Diamond Stellarknight Constellar Diamond]]? There are now two ways to get it out. '''[[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Cyber_Dragon_Infinity Cyber Dragon Infinity]]?''' The most infamous combo with Ptolemaeus, summon this bad boy out, use its effect to summon [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Cyber_Dragon_Nova Nova]] and then Summon Infinity immediately. And getting the materials for this effect is easy; not only can you use more than 2 Monsters to summon it, but you can also attach a Stellarknight Monster to it as well every End Phase. It also has a more Awesome but Impractical effect of skipping the opponent's turn if you got 7 materials on it.
** What happens when you take a [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Entermage_Trick_Clown a clown that revives itself by and takes 1000 LP away afterwards]] and [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Heroic_Challenger_-_Thousand_Blades a knight with too many swords an an ability to revive himself if you take damage]]? The exact same result you would get from summoning Elder Entity Norden with Instant Fusion: a 1000 cost Rank 4 Engine. Except for one thing; you can do this every turn. That right, You can get out Ptolemaeus one turn, bring out another one the next and then repeat with other Rank 4 cards like Castel, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Number_39:_Utopia Number 39: Utopia]], or [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Number_101:_Silent_Honor_ARK Number 101: Silent Honor ARK]], so long as you can get both monsters to the Graveyard, And you can combine this with cards like the [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Star_Seraph Star Seraphs]], [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Goblindbergh Goblindbergh]], [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Tin_Goldfish Tin Goldfish]], or even Norden himself to bring out monsters that need 3 materials or just add more to Ptolemaeus and immediately use its effect to SummonBiggerFish.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Zoodiac Zoodiacs]] are probably the most divisive monsters in the game's history. It's designed to build up the power of its Xyz Monsters from the ATK from all of its Xyz materials, but the real threat was their neverending combos that can break out at least seven Xyz summons, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Zoodiac_Ratpier Ratpier]], who can recover a destroyed field from nothing, and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Zoodiac_Drident Drident]], who has quick effect destruction, all of which are accessible by throwing together a couple of cards into the deck. This led to them [[ComplacentGamingSyndrome immediately taking over tournaments as soon as they dropped]], so much so that almost every deck in the OCG and TCG at the time was either Zoodiacs, or a hybrid of Zoodiacs, causing many casual players to resent them and fear that one day ALL decks will have Zodiac cards in them. They also brought along [[ScrappyMechanic the much reviled "one card Xyz Monster" mechanic]] from the ZEXAL and ARC-V animes, which many hoped would stay as far away from the game as possible. Adding fuel to the fire is that with the new Link Monster Master Rule in place limiting monsters summoned from the Extra Deck to one monster zone without dumping resources into summoning Link Monsters, many Extra Deck-reliant decks were crippled, whereas Zoodiacs found ways to get around those limitations, making them even more powerful and more commonplace. It was so bad, that ''many Japanese card shops refused to allow them in their tournaments out of protest''. They finally stopped seeing as much play in September 2017, with their play makers Drident and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Zoodiac_Broadbull Broadbull]] being banned in the TCG.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/SPYRAL SPYRALs]] at their launch was a fun and functional if inconsistent deck that focused on knowing what was on top of your opponent's deck to maintain advantage. Enter their new shiny Link Monster [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/SPYRAL_Double_Helix SPYRAL Double Helix]], [[BalanceBuff which fixes all of the deck's problems]] [[GoneHorriblyRight a little too well]]. Double Helix is easy to break out with only two SPYRAL monsters required and is in an archetype with easy swarming, and it can special summon any SPYRAL monster from the deck, such as [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/SPYRAL_Master_Plan Master Plan]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/SPYRAL_Quik-Fix Quik-Fix]] for easy resource advantage, and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/SPYRAL_GEAR_-_Drone Drone]] to rearrange the opponent's top cards of their deck to guarantee a correct guess and stop any top-deck comebacks. Throw in [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/SPYRAL_Resort SPYRAL Resort]], which gives the deck overwhelming amounts of protection, and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/SPYRAL_Sleeper SPYRAL Sleeper]], who's card popping effects do not come at any cost with the above field spell in place, and you have Zoodiacs II to the groans of many players. This ended up with emergency action being taken with the November 2017 TCG banlist, which Limited Quik-Fix, and Drone, so while the deck is still powerful, it's no longer untouchable.
* Hoo boy, [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Blaze_Fenix,_the_Burning_Bombardment_Bird Blaze Fenix the Burning Bombardment Bird.]] On its own, it's a completely unspectacular monster with materials that don't fit into any deck (who uses Machines and Pyros together?) and a reasonably strong burn effect that requires it to skip attacking. But that burn effect isn't once per turn, and it's high enough that with a full field, multiple activations can be a game-ender. Add in [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Fusion_Gate Fusion Gate]] for repeated fusings, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Black_Garden Black Garden]] to fill up the field, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Number_42:_Galaxy_Tomahawk Galaxy Tomahawk]] to generate a pile of Machine-type Tokens, and the fact that you can fuse those Tokens with a Blaze Fenix in play, and you have the high lord of FTK decks. Particularly bad is that he's led to multiple other cards getting limited or banned for their interactions with him, including [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Divine_Wind_of_Mist_Valley Divine Wind of Mist Valley]], [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Genex_Ally_Birdman Genex Ally Birdman]], [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Ancient_Fairy_Dragon Ancient Fairy Dragon]], and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Elemental_HERO_Stratos Elemental HERO Stratos]], despite the fact that the playerbase generally agrees that simply Limiting Blaze Fenix (as it is in the OCG) or errataing it to be hard-once-per-turn would kill the FTK dead.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Firewall_Dragon Firewall Dragon]] has ascended to becoming the most singularly loathed protagonist monster of all time among the card-game-playing fanbase. It has very generic requirements, making it feasible in pretty much any deck, usable stats, and two great effects. The first is a bounce effect that can allow for both getting rid of an opponent's problem cards and recycling your own cards, and the second allows you to summon a monster from your hand whenever a monster it points to is sent to the Graveyard. This makes it an absurdly versatile card, capable of starting combos, keeping combos going, and turning a duel around - and what's more, while the first effect has a use limitation on it, the second effect ''doesn't.'' This last detail makes the card far more powerful than it should be, allowing its effect to be potentially looped and go on forever. The card broke new ground by being the first protagonist ace monster to ever be limited to one, after it was discovered just how laughably broken three Firewalls could be, and even when limited to one, it's still become a deadly cog in the machine of multiple FTK decks. But what pushes it here is that the card is the ace monster of the protagonist of ''Anime/YuGiOhVRAINS'', and survived many banlists while other cards involved in those FTK decks were banned or limited, meaning the fanbase saw it as surviving not because it's balanced, but [[ProtectionFromEditors because Konami wouldn't ban or errata Yusaku's ace]]. It was finally banned in the TCG in early December, becoming the first card of that stature to face the list. It was later released after both effects were given an "only once per turn" clause, and the second effect was nerfed to only Special Summon Cyberse monsters from your hand.
* When [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Maxx_%22C%22 Maxx "C"]] was first released, it was a decent tech card to use against special-summon heavy decks, where each time the opponent special summoned, the user of Maxx "C" draws one card. However, through the advent of PowerCreep, many of the top tier decks began doing multiple special summons within one turn and with the advent of hand traps, allowed the player to either gain huge amounts of cards that is potentially strong enough to break the board or drawing hand trap monsters to disrupt the opponent plays. Or even better, have them abruptly end their turn before the opponent drew too many cards which leaves themselves vulnerable to counterplays. While it was banned in the TCG, it is unlimited in the OCG meta and its presence warped the entire metagame where mass special summon decks like [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Adamancipator Adamancipators]] and Dragon Links are virtually non-existent while decks like [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Eldlich Eldlich]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Invoked Invoked]] variants, as well as Dragoon + Anaconda, are far more successful compared to its TCG counterpart.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Number_S0:_Utopic_ZEXAL Number S0: Utopic ZEXAL]] has the rather bizarre requirement of three "Number" monsters with the same Rank as material, but this can be completely ignored in favor of using a single [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Utopia_(archetype) Utopia]] monster after discarding a [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Rank-Up-Magic Rank-Up-Magic]] Normal Spell. Its Xyz Summon is impossible to negate or respond to, and it can prevent your opponent from activating ''anything'' by detaching a material during their turn. So for the most standard possible effort, and the price of one easily-summoned Xyz and a RUM from the hand, you now have a 3000-ATK monster that can decrease its ATK by 1000 to prevent the opponent from doing...basically anything during their turn, and keep this up for three turns. This single card is considered to be so overpowered that it prevented generic Rank-Up Magic search cards from being printed, simply because they'd make its summon consistent, and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Rank-Up-Magic_Argent_Chaos_Force Argent Chaos Force]] got banned due to a combo that could bring out S0. This made it largely hated by RUM users for essentially kneecapping the mechanic and banning one of their best cards. It only ''finally'' saw the banlist when [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Numeron_Calling Numeron Calling]] allowed Utopic ZEXAL to be summoned with its "intended" conditions. Tellingly, right after it was banned, the game saw the unbanning of Argent Chaos Force and the release of generic RUM searcher [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Zexal_Construction Zexal Construction]].
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Crystron_Halqifibrax Crystron Halqifibrax]] was intended to make Synchro decks viable in Link format--it's a very easy-to-summon Link Monster with favorable arrows that can be brought out in just about any deck that runs Tuners, and its effect to bring out a Tuner from the Deck could enable some extra consistency. Unfortunately, it did its job ''far'' too well, because people quickly realized that it could simply be used as a Link engine in and of itself. In particular, if you managed to bring out a Tuner that also had some kind of revival or Token-generating effect, then that was essentially a free Link 4 on board, just as a basic example. Aside from the fact that it's a ridiculously good searcher and combo extender that will usually leave the user with far more resources than they know what to do with, what really puts it here is that ''four'' different tuners[[note]][[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Glow-Up_Bulb Glow-Up Bulb]], [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Mecha_Phantom_Beast_O-Lion Mecha Phantom Beast O-Lion]], [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Jet_Synchron Jet Synchron]], and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Blackwing_-_Steam_the_Cloak Blackwing - Steam the Cloak]][[/note]] were all banned ''specifically'' for their interactions with Halqifibrax while the card itself remained untouched, which meant that even Synchro players quickly grew to hate this thing for indirectly kneecapping Synchro decks by getting all the good Tuners banned. The card proved to be so devastating that any future Tuners and Synchro-based decks were released with this card in mind as most of the level 3 or lower Tuners no longer have effects that activate in the Graveyard and if they do, they lock you of special summoning Link Monsters while future archetypes based around Synchro summoning prevents the player from special summoning any Link Monsters after their effects are activated. Eventually, its brokeness led to the OCG finally banning Halquifibrax starting in [[https://ygoprodeck.com/new-ocg-banlist-2022-07/ July 2022 Banlist]], while the TCG limited him to 1 and banning Auroradon instead becasue of the many combos it was involved with Halq. Eventually, the TCG would follow suit in October 2022 and also ban Halqfibrax as well.
* Fusion Summons using materials from the Deck can be very controversial, whether by making powerful monsters too easy to summon without sufficient drawbacks, or by free milling. To name a few prominent cases:
** [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Future_Fusion Future Fusion]], upon activation, dumped all the materials for a revealed Fusion Monster. The actual Fusion Summon takes two turns, but even if the card was removed before then, you still got free milling. [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Five-Headed_Dragon Five-Headed Dragon]] was a common target for this as you essentially get to mill five Dragons of your choice. The card ended up banned, only returning after an errata delayed the dumping for a turn after activation.
** [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Brilliant_Fusion Brilliant Fusion]] uses Deck materials to Fusion Summon a Gem Knight, but the resulting monster will depend on the Spell staying on the field to live, and has its ATK/DEF reduced to 0, requiring a discarded Spell to temporarily regain the original values. Seems balanced enough... until [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Gem-Knight_Seraphinite Seraphinite]] comes into the picture. By dumping any Gem-Knight (most likely Garnet, whose name became associated with monsters you don't want to draw out) and any LIGHT monster (who may have a floating effect upon being sent to the Graveyard), you get a monster that provides an extra Normal Summon/Set each turn. The restrictions imposed on Seraphinite itself barely matter if you simply use it as material for another summon. The free LIGHT monster dump and extra Normal Summon were so potent that Brilliant Fusion ended up banned.
** [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Red-Eyes_Dark_Dragoon Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon]] is a Fusion of [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Dark_Magician Dark Magician]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Red-Eyes_Black_Dragon Red-Eyes Black Dragon]] (though the latter can be replaced with any Dragon Effect Monster). It can be summoned easily via [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Red-Eyes_Fusion Red-Eyes Fusion]] which can also fuse the Material from your Deck. It's immune to effect targeting and destruction, can pop up to two opposing monsters per turn (if both of its Fusion Materials were Normal Monsters) without technically targeting them and burn the opponent for their original ATK, and has a once per turn omni-negate that costs a discard, but boosts Dragoon's already high 3000 ATK by 1000 each time it goes off. Even Worse, Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon can be easily summoned through [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Predaplant_Verte_Anaconda Predaplant Verte Anaconda]] (itself a contender for high-tier Scrappydom that got banned), an easy to bring out link monster that lets you copy the effect of Red-Eyes Fusion at the cost of 2000 LP.[[note]] To make things even more ridiculous, since Verte Anaconda only ''copies'' the effect of Red-Eyes Fusion, it doesn't count as ''[[LoopholeAbuse activating]]'' the card, bypassing Red-Eyes Fusion's restriction of preventing you from summoning other monsters the turn you activate the card.[[/note]] The sheer difficulty of getting past this thing and the ease of bringing it out led to players willing to shoehorn three potential dead draws (Dark Magician, Red-Eyes, and Red-Eyes Fusion) into their deck list to access it. Dragoon was eventually banned in the OCG. Quite the accomplishment for a Fusion of two of the most iconic monsters in the franchise.
** [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Fusion_Destiny Fusion Destiny]] uses materials from the hand or Deck for any Fusion Monster that lists a Destiny Hero as material, but locks you out of Special Summoning anything that isn't a DARK HERO monster afterward, and the resulting Fusion monster is destroyed during the next End Phase. However, the intended short lifespan of the Fusion is rendered null by its most common choice, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Destiny_HERO_-_Destroyer_Phoenix_Enforcer Destiny Hero - Destroyer Phoenix Enforcer]], which can simply use its Quick Effect to blow up 1 card you control (such as itself) along with 1 card your opponent controls, then revive itself in the next Standby Phase to do it again. And while it's on the field, it drains the opposing field's ATK/DEF by 200 for each HERO in your GY, and its most common materials, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Destiny_HERO_-_Celestial Celestial]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Destiny_HERO_-_Dasher Dasher]], are perfectly functional in the GY, so it largely averts the bricking issue that the Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon components faced. Even the less used [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Destiny_End_Dragoon Destiny End Dragoon]], which Fusion Destiny's artwork suggests it was geared toward, has its own revival effect that renders the self-destruction little more than a brief inconvenience. This whole combo, on top of Enforcer's near-complete disregard for Fusion Destiny's drawbacks caused the Spell to get Limited in the [=OCG=], and Semi-Limited in the TCG.
* And of course, you can't really talk about the Fusion-from-deck spells without mentioning their most notorious enabler, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Predaplant_Verte_Anaconda Predaplant Verte Anaconda]]. This snake is a Link-2 monster with generic materials that allows you to effectively use any Fusion card straight from the deck for the mere cost of 2000 LP, meaning that ''any'' two monsters on the field could be turned into Dragoon or Destroyer Phoenix Enforcer, bypassing the final drawback to their power: actually requiring to draw the Fusion spell. The debate as to whether the spells themselves or Verte Anaconda was the issue here raged for months, until Konami themselves stepped in and banned Verte in May 2022.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Union_Carrier Union Carrier]] was likely designed just to support the A-to-Z series of LIGHT Machine Union monsters, but [[NotTheIntendedUse its effect was just broad enough to go well beyond that]]. It can equip any monster (not even restricted to Unions) from your hand or Deck to one you control with the same Type/Attribute, giving it 1000 ATK. One of the more notorious monsters for abuse was [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Dragon_Buster_Destruction_Sword Dragon Buster Destruction Sword]], normally only compatible with Buster Blader, allowing any Dark/Dragon monster you control to become an imposing floodgate that completely shuts the opponent out of Extra Deck summons. Union Carrier's effect also abused "leave the field" effects that don't specify leaving from Monster Zone, so cards such as [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Earthbound_Immortal_Aslla_piscu Earthbound Immortal Aslla Piscu]] could still trigger without needing to Summon it properly. Ultimately, this resulted in its ban in the TCG, but it would take until the October 2022 banlist for the OCG to also follow suit and ban it.
* At first glance, the [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Sky_Striker Sky Strikers]] don’t seem like much as they’re a fairly small archetype, with relatively weak Monsters and Spell cards that only work if the player controls no monsters in their Main Monster Zone. That said, despite their small numbers and low stats, the Sky Strikers are perhaps one of the best and most consistent control Decks in the history of the game. A good Sky Striker deck will be able to maintain complete control over the board, thanks to its powerful Spell cards that allow players to eliminate threats at will, and essentially preventing their opponent from making any plays, all while maintaining a considerable card advantage over them. But what makes this archetype truly ridiculous are [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Sky_Striker_Mobilize_-_Engage! Sky Striker Mobilize - Engage!]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Sky_Striker_Mecha_Modules_-_Multirole Sky Striker Mecha Modules - Multirole]], the former allowing a player to search out any Sky Striker card they need (and draw an additional card on top of that), and the latter able to prevent the opponent from activating card effects in response to Sky Striker Spells (at the cost of a card), and allowing the player to reuse any used Sky Striker spells by setting them back on the field. Finally, the Sky Strikers Ace Link monsters are both incredibly easy to bring out and incredibly difficult to get rid of thanks to [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Sky_Striker_Ace_-_Raye Sky Striker Ace - Raye]], who can Special Summon herself from the Graveyard any time one of the Link monsters leaves the field, then immediately activate her other effect to summon another Sky Striker Ace from the Extra Deck.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Endymion Endymion]] has earned a reputation for being extremely confusing due to its use of Spell Counters necessitating that every monster have a whole dictionary written on it. In addition to that, if it gets to go first it just [[NoSell completely shuts down a ton of different decks with the sheer quantity of negates it can put out]]. What makes it so scary is that it laughs at a lot of the common counters for such decks through the combination of [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Mythical_Beast_Jackal_King Mythical Beast Jackal King]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Servant_of_Endymion Servant of Endymion]]. And what Jackal King doesn't cover can be countered with the deck's access to [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Secret_Village_of_the_Spellcasters Secret Village of the Spellcasters]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Magician%27s_Right_Hand Magician's Right Hand]]. And even though it lacks the ability to run a lot of those same counters, the Pendulum effect of [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Endymion,_the_Mighty_Master_of_Magic their boss monster]] makes the deck somewhat competent even going second. Additionally, it minimizes the Pendulum mechanic's overreliance on Link Monsters in Master Rule 5 by having lots of ways to Special Summon by means other than Pendulum Summon.
* The most infamous and impactful additions to the 2022 meta in general were the "Adventure" Archtype. It a small archetype inspired in [[EasternRPG JRPGs]] centered around the "Adventurer Token", a Level 4 EARTH Fairy token with 2000 ATK/DEF, and cards that summons the Token or require it to be on the field to use their effects. The most notorious card out of the bunch, however, was [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Wandering_Gryphon_Rider Wandering Gryphon Rider]], a cheap omni-negate splashable in about every modern deck that doesn't require their normal summon to do their own plays (Read: about 90% of the decks in the modern meta) with good stats. The "adventure engine" ended up rising to the top of the meta right away and becoming one of the most loathed game-engines ever, making even the likes of [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Prank-Kids Prank-Kids]] to suddenly become relevant again and fully capable of disrupting opponent's plays in their turn with very little resource investment. This culminated in the OCG banning Wandering Gryphon Rider in the October 2022 listing.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Tearlaments Tearlaments]] have fallen under this for the absurd rate at which they spam out Fusions. The deck focuses on milling itself, with several monster effects activating if they are sent to the Graveyard by card effects. And since Fusion Summons are generally performed by card effects sending Materials to the Graveyard, one quickly leads into another. Of particular note is [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Tearlaments_Havnis Havnis]], which can Special Summon itself and mill 3 cards the moment your opponent simply activates a monster effect, making it common for the Deck going second to churn out a couple Fusions and mess up the opponent's plays before its first turn actually arrives. Havnis got Semi-Limited as a result.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Spright Sprights]] focus on quickly bringing out Level/Rank/Link-2 monsters. Controlling a single Level/Rank 2 monster allows ''all'' the Main Deck monsters to Special Summon themselves. [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Spright_Starter Spright Starter]] got Limited in the OCG for allowing them to casually pump out another Spright from the Deck at no cost and trivial drawbacks. [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Spright_Elf one of their boss monsters]] gives targeting protection to monsters it points to with a Quick Effect to revive Level/Rank/Link-2 monsters, while [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Gigantic_Spright the other]] pumps out more Level 2 monsters from the Deck with the "drawback'' of locking both players into Level/Rank/Link-2 monsters for the rest of the turn, which means little for Sprights, but restricts the opponent's options. A particular issue is its synergy with the [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Frog Frog]] engine, especially the notorious omni-negating [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Toadally_Awesome Toadally Awesome]], which got banned in the OCG.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Low Tiers]]
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Sparks Sparks]], one of the first burn cards ever released, did 200 damage. Even as a card released in the first set ever, this was pathetic, as players start with 8000 LP. It would take three Sparks to deal the damage of an attack from the weakest monsters in that set. Worse for Sparks, in an early example of PowerCreep, the following sets released multiple cards that were strictly better; [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Raimei Raimei]] did 300 damage, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Hinotama Hinotama]] did 500, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Final_Flame Final Flame]] did 600, and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Ookazi Ookazi]] did 800. To add insult to injury, when the sets were combined for international release, Sparks found itself packed with its own bigger brothers, meaning it was literally outclassed the day it was released. [[CherryTapping Winning a duel with Sparks]] is actually a special challenge in some games.
* [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Batteryman_C Batteryman C]] is an earlier [[ShockAndAwe Battery]][[ZergRush man]] monster unanimously seen as campfire fodder by the community. You would think that it should support its fellow Batteryman cards, but its ATK and DEF buff effect only works on ''Machine''-type monsters, while all Batteryman monsters are ''Thunder''-type. Its level of two makes it useless for Synchro and XYZ summoning with other Batteryman, and it is not even considered for Machine-focused decks due to its 0 ATK value, meaning the opponent can easily attack it for game with a high ATK monster (not to mention that Machines already had [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Limiter_Removal one of the best mass ATK boosts in the game]]). Rubbing salt on the wound is that the buffs from multiple Batteryman C's don't stack, so three on the field only gives out 1500 ATK, not 4500 ATK which may have made playing them worth the effort. The only days in the sun it gets are when players misread which monsters get the attack boost, and even then, Batterymen have much, much better ways to boost their ATK.
* The [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Petit_Moth Petit Moth]]/[[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Cocoon_of_Evolution Cocoon of Evolution]] line of cards they can summon were very notorious for not being worth the effort. They include:
** One of the first cases of this trope was [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Larvae_Moth Larvae Moth]], in the second set released internationally. Larvae Moth is pretty hard to play--you have to have an extremely weak Petit Moth out, then use Cocoon of Evolution on it (increasing its defensive stats from awful to just mediocre), wait exactly two turns, and tribute both Petit Moth and Cocoon Of Evolution on it. The end result is... 500 ATK, 400 DEF. Yes, a card that's considerably harder to summon than a normal Level 7+ monster, and the stats of a Level 1. This summoning requirement also means that Larvae Moth is an Effect Monster, so it doesn't get Normal Monster support (the sole redeeming factor for most JokeCharacter cards). It's also Larvae Moth's only effect. It's the only card where [[TheWikiRule the wiki's]] "Tips" section [[DamnedByFaintPraise actively suggests discarding it for a cost]]. Even today, it's considered one of the worst cards ever made.
** The next card they could summon is [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Great_Moth Great Moth]], which has 2600 attack, passable, but not great for a level 8 at the time, but requires waiting four of your turns to summon. Even in the era, you might as well set Cocoon of Evolution and just tribute the duo for Blue-Eyes White Dragon if you can keep them alive for that long.
** Lastly, there is the other famous member of the line, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Perfectly_Ultimate_Great_Moth Perfectly Ultimate Great Moth]]. With a name like that, you'd expect it to be powerful, and it does have an impressive 3500 Attack. The problem? You have to wait '''''six of your turns''''' [[AwesomeButImpractical just to summon it]]. Is it any wonder that some video games have special rewards for pulling it off? This has been mitigated a tiny bit by [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Cocoon_of_Ultra_Evolution Cocoon of Ultra Evolution]], which summons an Insect while ignoring summoning conditions, meaning that PUGM is now slightly usable as the biggest beatstick summonable by its effect. Even then, though, you're better off with [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Metamorphosed_Insect_Queen Metamorphosed Insect Queen]]. The only time it saw any use was in the earliest OCG formats, as the rules of the time made it possible to revive with Monster Reborn after discarding it--later rulings made this impossible.
* CCGImportanceDissonance is an occupational hazard in the card game. Compare the anime with real life and you'll notice that a lot of cards and archetypes that get plenty of screentime don't fare very well in real life, since you don't get TheMagicPokerEquation to reliably use a lot of really niche cards.
** [[TheHero Yugi's]] deck has a rather underwhelming reputation outside of the most casual circles. Due to being designed in a time where the game was barely even a game, its highly successful anime record ends up translating to a bunch of severely outdated, banned, or nerfed cards with little to no consistency in design. The stereotype of its users as suffering majorly from the NostalgiaFilter or refusing to play against any deck released after 2005 certainly hasn't helped its reputation. That said, a lot of his monsters have broken off and had their own archetypes and support to make them functional, making decks like [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Dark_Magician_(archetype) Dark Magicians]], [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Gadget Gadgets]], [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Black_Luster_Soldier_(archetype) Black Luster]]/[[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Gaia_The_Fierce_Knight_(archetype) Gaia Knights]], [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Buster_Blader_(archetype) Buster Bladers]], and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Magnet_Warrior Magnet Warriors]] at worst playable, which has [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap improved the deck's standing quite a bit]]--though trying to combine them will still usually get you laughed at.
** Of the Egyptian God Cards, and perhaps cards in general, none had it worse in the transition to real life than [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/The_Winged_Dragon_of_Ra The Winged Dragon of Ra]]. In the manga and anime, it was a monster with near-perfect protection (shared with the other Egyptian Gods, but Ra is higher in Hierarchy), three major effects of extreme strength, and [[SuperpowerLottery a notoriously extensive laundry list of minor abilities]] that made it the undisputed strongest card in the series. Some nerfing was expected in its OCG incarnation when it arrived in 2009, but they overcompensated so badly that it resulted in a card that just flat-out sucks. While it retains somewhat nerfed versions of its Point-To-Point transfer and Phoenix Mode abilities, the former is the only way for it to have any ATK at all (and requires ''all but 100'' LP as payment), the latter is just an unimpressive targeted-destruction ability, and they can't be used together unless you can get back some of your LP after summoning it, because the former can only be used right after it was Normal Summoned. It has no protection outside of blocking effects on its summon, which turns it into a massive clay pigeon (all the worse when both its effects require blowing through lots of LP). And worst of all, it's the only Egyptian God that can't be Special Summoned at all, requiring three Tributes--especially painful when [[{{Irony}} Ra was ''designed'' to be Special Summoned in the series]]. The result is an absolute joke of a card that was useless even on release, while its two counterparts, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Obelisk_the_Tormentor Obelisk]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Slifer_the_Sky_Dragon Slifer]], went on to varying levels of actual success. Tellingly, Konami seems to have realized how badly they screwed up with Ra, releasing many different support cards (culminating in a total of ''five'' in the Rage of Ra set) that tried to restore its series potency, but even then, it's rather sad that you have to essentially build a whole deck around Ra just to get a fraction of what it could do on its own in the series. Even more depressingly, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/The_Winged_Dragon_of_Ra_-_Sphere_Mode Ra Sphere Mode]] turned out to be much better as a removal option than a means of supporting Ra, which led to it seeing far more play on its own than Ra ever did.
** [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Guardian The Guardians]], one of the very first archetypes ever introduced, is also widely considered one of the worst as well. They are defined by being impossible to summon, period, without having a specific (and decent to mediocre) Equip card on the field. As Equip cards can't be played by themselves, this makes Guardians impossible to use by themselves. And even once they had been summoned, most of the Guardians were nothing special, and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Guardian_Elma one of them]] became outright unusable after [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Butterfly_Dagger_-_Elma their Equip Spell]] was banned for [[NotTheIntendedUse reasons that had nothing to do with the archetype.]] The only Guardians to be even mildly well-regarded are [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Guardian_Eatos Eatos]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Guardian_Dreadscythe Dreadscythe]], who were released years later and were clearly designed to be as independent as possible from the rest (including having the summon restriction removed), and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Guardian_Grarl Grarl]] had a very short window of popularity at the beginning of ''Duel Links.''[[note]]The game pulled a ResetButton on the card pool, which meant that a 2500 ATK beater that could Special Summon itself became a rare and powerful effect that made it ladder viable despite needing to control [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Gravity_Axe_-_Grarl Gravity Axe]], which itself was viable due to position freezing being a good effect in early Duel Links. It was quickly outclassed by more consistent options, but it was at least satisfying to use rather than completely unwieldy.[[/note]] Bizarrely, the anime [[MerchandiseDriven saw fit]] to make Guardian-user Rafael the first character to fairly break [[InvincibleHero Yami Yugi's]] [[BrokenWinLossStreak winning streak]].
** The [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Elemental_HERO Elemental HERO]] monsters used by protagonist Jaden Yuki of ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'' took up absurdly large pack space without being usable enough to justify it. The Main Deck monsters generally have pitiful stats and weak effects (if any at all), while the Fusion Monsters that the Deck was meant to build had overly specific Fusion Materials and still often weren’t very impressive. Several of their support cards were also specific to a single HERO, thus becoming bricks more often than not. However, the manga helped redeem the deck with Fusions that were easier to bring out and boasted better effects, as well as the [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Masked_HERO Masked HERO]] sub-archetype.
** The [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Neo-Spacian Neo-Spacians]], introduced in ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'', were an early experiment in Extra Deck summoning outside of standard Fusion. They could summon their Fusion monsters without the use of Polymerization, instead being based on "Contact Fusion" that merely required you to return the relevant monsters to your deck. Unfortunately, Konami apparently felt so tentative with this strategy that they decided to add balancing factors... and then they kept adding them until the deck was unusable. The Neo-Spacians themselves had terrible stats and generally unimpressive effects, and the only monster they could fuse with was [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Elemental_HERO_Neos Elemental HERO Neos]], a high-cost monster with low stats for its level and no effects. Getting both Neos and a Neo-Spacian on the field and keeping them alive for a Contact Fusion was surprisingly risky, and a lot slower than regular Fusion. You'd expect the Neos fusions to be game-winners to make up for all this effort, but instead, they not only possessed similarly lackluster stats and effects, but unless you had a specific (and similarly unimpressive) [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Neo_Space Field Spell]] out, ''they returned to the Extra Deck at the end of your turn'' and left you with nothing, meaning that accomplishing the goal of the Deck usually left you with spent resources and an empty field. The deck had almost no synergy with standard [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Elemental_HERO Elemental HERO]] builds despite Neos's presence, it had multiple sub-archetypes such as [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/NEX NEX]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Chrysalis Chrysalis]] monsters that did nothing to help it, and being used by protagonist Judai Yuki meant it kept getting cards released to the end of GX's lifespan, none of which actually fixed the deck's massive issues. The nails in its coffin came when Konami released the ''second'' Contact Fusion-based archetype, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Gladiator_Beast Gladiator Beasts]], which handily fixed every problem that Neo-Spacians had and proceeded to become one of the most fun and effective decks of its time, showing just how much potential the Neo-Spacians could have had if they were designed properly. The Neo-Spacians were so hated that [[NeverLiveItDown they've even colored appraisals of their user]], Judai Yuki, with detractors naming the deck as a reason for him being "the worst protagonist", and fans of the character cursing the deck for making the cards of their favorite character nearly impossible to use. Thankfully, ''Savage Strike'''s support has led to the deck being RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap, with cards like [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Neo_Space_Connector Neo Space Connector]], [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Contact_Gate Contact Gate]], [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Neos_Fusion Neos Fusion]], and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Elemental_HERO_Cosmo_Neos Cosmo Neos]] finally making the deck viable, even in competitive play.
** Unlike the Neo-Spacians, fellow GX main-character archetype [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Vehicroid Vehicroids]] are considered similarly bad, but are mostly just forgotten (likely due to their weaker designs and less popular user). Where Neo-Spacians have an intriguing concept with colossal drawbacks, Vehicroids are largely remembered for having no concept whatsoever, with [[MasterOfNone a great variety of effects, but no real focus or unifying strategy.]] The majority of their monsters are passable at best for their time period, but very few have effects that synergize with each other. Only a few saw any kind of play outside of the most casual decks, and though they had a few powerful cards, they had almost no way to actually make use of them. The biggest indicator of how useless the archetype was would probably be the [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Speedroid Speedroid]] archetype, which, despite being fully able to take part in Vehicroid support thanks to their shared name, almost entirely shunned them in favor of their own support because the Vehicroids were just that pathetic. They were given a ''colossal'' balance buff in the ''Legendary Duelists'' pack, with several cards with massively bloated texts being released to try to finally make them a functional archetype; general consensus is that the resulting archetype is barely playable, especially given that it still requires you to run the now horribly outdated originals, but it's at least objectively better than whatever it was before.
** [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Cyberdark Cyberdarks]] are another GX archetype that got the shaft upon their release. Their gimmick is equipping Level Three or lower Dragon type monsters from the Graveyard to boost their ATK by the Dragon's ATK points and use them as protection from battle destruction. The problems begin with the fact that they are ''all Machine-type'', forcing a player building a Cyberdark deck to awkwardly juggle between two types of monsters which makes for an inconsistent mess of a deck that has next-to-no synergy between cards[[note]][[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Limiter_Removal Limiter Removal]] would boost your Machine-type monsters, but not your Dragon-type monsters[[/note]]. It doesn't help that very few Level Three Dragons even existed at the time of their release[[note]] This led to the unimpressive [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Hunter_Dragon Hunter Dragon]] or [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Twin-Headed_Behemoth Twin Headed Behemoth]] being auto-includes, along with the throw-in of Dragunity cards when you are better off making a pure Dragunity deck[[/note]], and that the main deck Cyberdark monsters all have the laughable ATK points of 800 without equips along with having battle effects that are completely forgettable. Topping off the train wreck is that their Extra Deck boss monster [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Cyberdark_Dragon Cyberdark Dragon]], while easy to Fusion Summon with [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Cyberdark_Impact! Cyberdark Impact]], has a measly 1000 ATK points without equipping a Dragon (at least it is of any level), and has no protection outside of battle, meaning that something as simple as [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Dark_Hole Dark Hole]] can make all the effort put into Fusion Summoning it and powering it up go down the drain with no chance of recovery. The end result is a GlassCannon deck that needs a meadow's worth of four-leaved clovers to fire, and needs the opponent to tip over a diner's supply of salt shakers to actually land a hit. After over a decade, Cyberdarks finally [[BalanceBuff got some TLC in the form of Legacy support]] with the introduction of [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Cyberdark_Cannon Cyberdark Cannon]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Cyberdark_Claw Cyberdark Claw]] which are Level Three Dragon-type monsters with versatile Graveyard-dumping effects and card draw/searching, along with [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Cyberdarkness_Dragon Cyberdarkness Dragon]], a new boss monster that can equip both Dragon and Machine monsters and can negate and destroy any card by dumping any equipped card. While not enough to make them competitive, as you still need to run the outdated original cards, the archetype stopped being a laughing stock and became playable with the new support that fixed many of the archetype's problems. By fan demand, they then proceeded to get ''another'' wave of support (including [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Attachment_Cybern more]] [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Cyberdark_Chimera setup]] [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Cyberdark_Realm tools]] and a [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Cyberdark_End_Dragon formidable finisher]]), which [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap solidly redeemed them]].
** The [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Crystal_Beast Crystal Beast]] archetype suffers from this trope in a couple of ways:
*** The archetype maintains one of the strongest and most varied libraries of Spell and Trap support, which can search for the Crystal Beasts, put them on the field, and use the Crystal Beasts in the backrow for a number of purposes. However, the main Crystal Beast lineup is ''terrible''. It was stuck with seven maindeck monsters, (until [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Crystal_Beast_Rainbow_Dragon an eighth one]] was added) and of the selection about three of them (Carbuncle, Pegasus, and maybe Tiger or Eagle depending on the time period) were considered playable even at the time of release. The monster lineup stagnated as they never even got retrains like older archetypes did. Its Pendulum support, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Crystal_Master Crystal Master]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Crystal_Keeper Crystal Keeper]], were rendered unplayable by Master Rule 4 as using them as Pendulum Cards took up space that would otherwise be used for Crystal Beasts in the backrow. While the archetype received regular support over the years, players are still begging Konami to improve the main monster lineup so they have more options to use; [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Advanced_Crystal_Beast Advanced Crystal Beasts]] were loads more powerful than the original seven and are compatible with Crystal S/T support, but their dependence on [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Advanced_Dark Advanced Dark]] to even exist really injured their ability to function.
*** Their boss monster, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Rainbow_Dragon Rainbow Dragon]], is heavily AwesomeButImpractical. Playing it not only requires massive amounts of setup, but for the user to be running at least one copy of nearly every Crystal Beast, including the long-outdated ones. For all that work, it does boast 4000 ATK, but it has no protection at all, its effects can't be activated on the turn it's summoned, and both of them have additional costs. One requires the loss of all the Crystal Beast monsters you control just to pump up its stats (the one thing it ''doesn't'' need), and the other spins the whole field, but it banishes all Crystal Beasts in your Graveyard (likely crippling you for the rest of the duel), does not exempt Rainbow Dragon from the mass-spin, and is in an archetype that already has [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Crystal_Abundance a strong field-nuke option]]. The result is a card that, despite downright ''absurd'' buildup in the anime and requiring an entire deck built around it, ends up a GlassCannon that more often than not shoots its user instead of the opponent. Tellingly, just about every successful Crystal Beast deck eschews Rainbow Dragon; once Xyz and Links were added to the game, the deck found a far more constructive use of its swarming playstyle, and even in the ''GX'' and ''5D's'' period, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Hamon,_Lord_of_Striking_Thunder several]] [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Malefic_Cyber_End_Dragon other]] [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Dragon_Queen_of_Tragic_Endings cards]] much better filled the boss monster role.
*** To add insult to injury, monster support for the archetype continued to try to push Rainbow Dragon as the Crystal Beast boss monster rather than improve the Crystal Beast base. Despite the inclusion of [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Rainbow_Overdragon Rainbow Overdragon]], [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Rainbow_Dragon_Overdrive Rainbow Dragon Overdrive]], and a ton of "Ultimate Crystal" support, Rainbow Dragon is still basically only played to any degree of seriousness in decks focused on [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Rainbow_Neos Rainbow Neos]], where it's nothing more than fusion material.
** The [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Venom Venom]] archetype used by Professor Viper in Season 3 of GX (and technically Yuri in ARC-V via Starving Venom) came out much less threatening in real life. The deck focuses on putting Venom Counters on your opponent's monsters while their Field Spell [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Venom_Swamp Venom Swamp]] slowly weakens and destroys them, but the Counters mean nothing unless the Field Spell is up. This puts a [[AchillesHeel big target on Venom Swamp]], without which the deck barely functions, as most of the monsters only focus on putting more Counters at the expense of attacking (with stats too pathetic to accomplish much even if they do). Their boss monsters [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Vennominon_the_King_of_Poisonous_Snakes Vennominon]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Vennominaga_the_Deity_of_Poisonous_Snakes Vennominaga]] gain 500 ATK for each Reptile in your Graveyard, can revive after battle destruction at the cost of banishing one of said Reptiles, and the latter boasts the first [[NighInvulnerable blanket immunity to all other card effects]] on top of an InstantWinCondition of inflicting battle damage three times, but Vennominon is a two-Tribute monster in an archetype too slow and frail to provide them, while Vennominaga needs a [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Rise_of_the_Snake_Deity specific Trap]] activated only when Vennominon is destroyed by a card effect to hit the field in the first place.
** Remember Jinzo? Well, he has an upgraded form in [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Jinzo_-_Lord Jinzo - Lord]], used by a one-off antagonist in the [[NoDubForYou un-dubbed fourth season of GX]]. And it sucks. For the price of tributing a Jinzo, this card yields a miserable 200-point ATK boost and an effect to destroy face-up Traps to deal a minuscule amount of burn damage--something that is only useful against very specific decks, and even then, is fairly dubious due to destroying cards which are currently negated and useless. Even dedicated Jinzo decks, which have multiple ways to easily cheat it out, avoid this thing because it does almost nothing that standard Jinzo can't.
** What happens when you staple together [[ScrappyMechanic coin flip effects]] and an all-risk-small-reward factor onto an archetype? You get the [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Arcana_Force Arcana Force]], which are all based on doing coin-flips to gain a beneficial effect when landing heads, and dish out a detrimental effect onto their player when landing tails. Needless to say, playing the deck is a LuckBasedMission in which heads results yield an underpowered and slow deck with underwhelming monster effects, and tails results quickly degrade into an automatic loss. While they do have powerful beatsticks in the [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Arcana_Force_EX_-_The_Light_Ruler EX]] [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Arcana_Force_EX_-_The_Dark_Ruler Monsters]], they require three tributes to summon, when most of the time Arcana Force is lucky just to have one monster survive the opponent's turn. The only card that saw some play was [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Arcana_Force_XXI_-_The_World Arcana Force XXI - The World]] for its ExtraTurn-lock down effect, but it was used in faster decks that went as far away as possible from the monster's lineage. The real nail in the coffin with the Arcana Force archetype is simply the chance isn't worth taking. In Yu-Gi-Oh, for players to take the chance with effects, the benefits had to be worth the risk; but the Arcana Force monsters had effects that barely benefited the player at best or severely crippled the player at worst.
** The [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki//Assault_Mode Assault Mode]] series of monsters were introduced and promoted in a 5D's side episode and are the face of the ''Crimson Crisis'' pack, but they became a laughing stock of the era. Conceptually, they were buffed versions of Synchro monsters, but were so filled with bad design decisions that it severely handicapped their playability. First, unlike Synchro monsters, each one is a standard effect monster, meaning they require taking slots in your main deck to be played. Next, they require you to first Synchro Summon the original, and then use the trap card [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Assault_Mode_Activate Assault Mode Activate]] to tribute it to summon its Assault Mode Counterpart from the deck. This makes summoning any of them a minimum 3-card combo that is very vulnerable to interruption, and if a deck runs only one copy of the Assault Mode version and draws it, it becomes the mother of all dead draws. It's a strategy that effectively requires building an entire deck around to achieve with any regularity, for monsters whose effects often weren't that great anyways. [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Stardust_Dragon/Assault_Mode Stardust Dragon/Assault Mode]] was the only one that saw any significant play, due to a strong stat-line and being a once-per-turn omni-negate when those were still rare, and it was generally seen as a rogue strategy at best. By the time they got more support 10 years later that addressed many of their biggest weaknesses, it was too-little, too-late.
** [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Malefic Malefics]] introduced in ''Anime/YuGiOhBondsBeyondTime'' are a set of corrupted fan-favorite dragons that may have some of the most self-lobotomizing effects in the entire game. Similar to the Guardians, they can't be summoned at all unless the player banishes their non-Malefic counterpart card from their hand or deck, which makes summoning the ones based on Main Deck monsters a complete pain, as the main deck monster in question is almost always a dead draw and turns its own Malefic into a dead draw if it's put out of reach somehow (the Extra Deck Malefics at least don't have this issue). When brought out, all the player gets is a beater that has no beneficial effects, but plenty of detrimental ones including the prevention of their other monsters from attacking, locking out the summoning of other Malefic monsters, and is destroyed if there is no field spell. While [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Malefic_Stardust_Dragon Malefic Stardust Dragon]] saw some play in competitive [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Gravekeeper%27s Gravekeeper]] decks (whose heart and soul is their field spell [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Necrovalley Necrovalley]]) [[NotCompletelyUseless thanks to its field spell protection effect]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Malefic_Cyber_End_Dragon Malefic Cyber End Dragon]] sometimes gets run as an easy 4000 ATK beatstick in decks that lack such an option, the Malefics' own field spell [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Malefic_World Malefic World]] is a joke, only providing a randomized search effect in place of the draw step. It's also required for summoning their [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Malefic_Paradox_Dragon Synchro boss Monster]] that has a fantastic Synchro monster recycling effect, but it's automatically destroyed without Malefic World. Despite having a [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Malefic_Parallel_Gear unique Tuner]] that uses monsters from the hand for a Synchro Summon, a pure Malefic deck is completely unreliable with their laundry list of restrictions. Malefics were finally given a shot in the arm by Duel Overload thanks to a handful of support cards that address most of their issues, turning pure Malefics from an unplayable mess into a workable but unspectacular beatdown deck, although players wasted no time pointing out how the original Malefic cards were so poorly designed that they needed a card that ''[[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Malefic_Territory rewrites their effects entirely]]'' similar to their anime versions (intended to swarm the field with beatsticks without using up Normal Summon) to become playable.
** [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Earthbound_Immortal Earthbound Immortals]], fellow ''Anime/YuGiOh5Ds''-era Field Spell-focused villainous boss monster archetype, have not seen much more luck and for pretty much all the same reasons. A lineup of Level 10 Dark monsters based on the [[LandmarkOfLore Nazca Lines]], they do boast some unique benefits (they can't be attacked and can attack the opponent directly), but share the same downsides as Malefics (they die without a Field Spell and you can only have one out) without the special summoning condition that would at least turn them into easy big beatsticks; they don't even have any kind of way to generate tribute fodder. Each one does at least have a personalized effect, but most of those effects are flat-out bad, either consuming additional resources, only activating when the Earthbound Immortal gets destroyed by something else, or just being too hard to pull off. While Malefics had a bad Field Spell, Earthbounds straight-up didn't have one initially, meaning they were meant to be a series of stand-alone alternate boss monsters (like how the Dark Signers used them, of which the version they used have immunity to opponent's Spell/Trap and doesn't immediately die when there are no Field Spell, but does so at the End Phase), without having any strong support to make it easier. Malefics at least got enough support to function later on, but when Earthbound Immortals got their BalanceBuff, it was a complete mess, attempting to fuse the deck with Rex Goodwin's "[[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Inca Incan]]" monsters for a bizarre strategy that used Synchros as Tribute material. Their central Field Spell, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Earthbound_Geoglyph Earthbound Geoglyph]], is scarcely better than Malefic World. It's quite telling that the closest thing the archetype has ever been to meta is various OTK and FTK decks that abused [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Earthbound_Immortal_Aslla_piscu Aslla piscu]]'s floating effect in combination with cards like [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Union_Carrier Union Carrier]]--a strategy that is ''definitely'' NotTheIntendedUse.
** [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Nordic Nordics]], one of the most infamous legacies of the 5D's era whose designs based around Myth/NorseMythology are generally seen as being far more interesting than the deck itself (though the idea would eventually be revisited in a far better form in the [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Generaider Generaider]] archetype). Theoretically, they're designed as a Synchro turbo deck focused on bringing out one of the three [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Aesir Aesir]] monsters and then playing a game of defend-the-castle while the high-statted, self-reviving Aesir crushes the opponent. In practice, it fails on virtually every level. The Nordic cards' effects are horribly costly, slow, and/or just plain underwhelming (to put things in perspective, their archetypal search card--normally the domain of Spells or Monster effects--is a ''[[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Gleipnir,_the_Fetters_of_Fenrir Normal Trap]]'' for some inexplicable reason), often doing nothing to help fill the hideously demanding summoning requirements of the Aesirs or provide anything resembling a defense against opponents, and the Aesirs themselves are quite underwhelming for the amount of effort needed to summon them, to the point where anyone that does attempt a Nordic build will invariably [[BoringButPractical just summon generic Synchro monsters instead]] on the rare occasion that they actually manage to set up a field. Their revival effect requires you to banish Tuners from your Graveyard, limiting the number of times it can be used, and their other effects like Thor's effect negation and Odin's protection from card effects would be great if they were Quick Effects but are just terrible at Spell Speed 1. In general, the majority of cards in the deck were derived from a single clumsily-plotted anime duel before being nerfed for good measure by making most of them only usable with other Nordic cards (for comparison, the anime version of the Aesirs have generic requirement of Synchro material as well as its revival effect being costless, making them playable as stand-alone boss monsters). Like a lot of crappy archetypes, Nordics ended up getting a helping of legacy support, although the results are still fairly mediocre. Despite [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Gullveig_of_the_Nordic_Ascendant Gullveig]] letting them turbo out Aesir monsters with unparalleled ease and a handful of other support cards later on providing more search power, swarming, and better utility (such as [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Nordic_Relic_Svalinn a reusable board-wide negate and cheap revival for Aesirs]]), the deck still isn't very highly regarded, mainly because while they can now actually access their intended boss monsters, those bosses themselves are just plain bad by modern standards, and the legacy support focused on summoning Aesirs easier to the detriment of almost everything else. Fans generally agree that Nordics desperately need more Extra Deck monsters, preferably lower-levelled Synchros or retrained Aesirs, in order to make the deck actually work.
** [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Meklord Meklords]] are the next villainous archetype of the 5D's era after the Earthbound Immortals, and the antithesis to Synchro monsters -- level 1 monsters with the ability to absorb enemy Synchros and turn their power against the opponent. Ignoring the fact that Meklords are [[CripplingOverspecialization powerless against other Extra Deck monsters]], Meklords also struggle against Synchros themselves since they have no consistent innate ability to interrupt enemy plays involving Synchros or protection from Synchros, and a number of their own unique effects are mainly battle- and burn-oriented, which, even at the time of their release, was getting obsoleted in favor of effect-based removal. Their boss monsters, Mekanikle and Asterisk, in comparison to their summoning condition-free anime versions, are too costly to summon and have their effects nerfed to the point that it doesn't justify the process, and their support cards are split a little too thinly between the Meklord Emperors and the Meklord Army cards to significantly support the archetype. They were ''somewhat'' helped by a later wave of support, which introduced a proper boss monster in the form of [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Meklord_Astro_Dragon_Triskelion Triskelion]] as well as a number of cards that granted them much better search options and ways to bring out their monsters, which brought the deck up to an "OTK or bust" strategy.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Digital_Bug Digital Bugs]] are notoriously regarded as one of the worst-designed sets of cards in the game, primarily due to a gameplan that actually ''interrupted itself''[[note]]The archetype's main deck monsters are all level 3 Insects that give a monster Xyz Summoned with them extra effects, but the deck has only [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Digital_Bug_Scaradiator one rather weak Rank 3]], with its [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Digital_Bug_Corebage higher-rank]] [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Digital_Bug_Rhinosebus Monsters]] being summoned by ranking up said Rank 3, meaning they can't make use of their main deck effects on their stronger monsters. The process of said rankup also requires the cost of two materials, which means the deck can't simply cycle through its monsters like some other Xyz Change-focused decks, requiring further setup and leaving their monsters unable to use effects without blocking the rankup, while leaving the final result with fewer Xyz materials.[[/note]] until the release of [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Digital_Bug_Registrider Digital Bug Registrider]] five years down the line made summoning their strong monsters actually feasible. Aside from that, Digital Bugs also happen to be an Xyz-focused deck that locks itself into an absurdly limited pool (Rank 3, 5, and 7 Insects, of which there are seven in the game), most of their main deck cards require themselves to be switched into Defense Position to do anything (the series has two ways to accomplish this without outside support and one is Registrider), and once you've thrown all your work into summoning that Xyz, you realize that nearly all Digital Bug offensive effects are based on position-changing or Defense Position in some way, meaning that ''any'' Link Monster is immune to 90% of the archetype, and frequently aren't all that great otherwise. It's even worse because their artwork and theming is interesting (computer bugs personified as actual electronic insect beings), but the deck in no way lives up to it. And to add insult to injury, the concepts of one-card Xyz Summoning and Xyz monsters inheriting the effects of their materials ended up being incorporated into ''Zoodiacs'', which are listed under High Tier for a very good reason.
** Digital Bugs also have the unusual honor of coming from an era where Field Spells were often designed to be the centerpiece of a deck, while having possibly the worst archetypal Field Spell in the game: [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Bug_Matrix Bug Matrix]]. For comparison, there were [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Mausoleum_of_White four]] [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Amorphous_Persona other]] [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Deskbot_Base Field]] [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Fire_King_Island Spells]] in the same set, and they all had at ''least'' three effects. Bug Matrix has two. The first, attaching materials to an Insect-type Xyz from the hand, is effectively a -1 that doesn't advance anything but making the deck's convoluted rankup easier ''and'' is hard-once-per-turn for some reason. The second is boosting Insect ATK by 300, a whole 100 points more than [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Forest cards released in 1999.]]
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Ally_of_Justice Allies of Justice]] were created for the purpose of acknowledging the lore of the Duel Terminal, where the primary ArcVillain at the time was the Light-type and Flip Effect-focused [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Worm Worms]]. To that end, the Allies were an entire archetype of monsters designed to counter Light-types or facedown monsters. As one can imagine, this made them a victim of CripplingOverspecialization right off the bat, but even as counter cards, the Allies were wholly unimpressive. Most of the time, they possessed effects that would have been barely okay even if they affected ''all'' monsters, their stats were consistently miserable, and their focus on counterplay left them absent of any way to support each other. A small handful saw play, such as [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Ally_of_Justice_Catastor Catastor]], which could affect attributes besides Light, and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Ally_of_Justice_Cycle_Reader Cycle Reader]], [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Ally_of_Justice_Decisive_Armor Decisive Armor]], and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Ally_of_Justice_Quarantine Quarantine]], which managed to find limited use as [[NotCompletelyUseless Side Deck cards]] against Light decks, but the Allies of Justice as a whole were consigned to the bin. Even ''against Worms'', they weren't considered particularly dangerous, since Worms had some okay power output through [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/W_Nebula_Meteorite W Nebula Meteorite]] and ways to swarm the field or search their monsters, which the Allies had none of.
* While [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Mermail Mermails]] as whole are far from this, the TCG exclusive [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Mermail_Abyssbalaen Mermail Abyssbalaen]], also known by the not-so affectionate nickname of “Fail Whale”, definitely is. Like the other level 7 Mermails, it can be special summoned from the hand by discarding cards. However, not only does it have a steeper cost than any other of them, it's also the strictest, requiring you discard 4 "Mermail" cards. This makes it ridiculously hard and/or rare to have enough to discard for this, and it also means no discarding any [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Atlantean Atlanteans]] like they usually like doing for summoning monsters and there are [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Mermail_Abyssgunde only]] [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Mermail_Abysshilde two]] Mermails with effects worth discarding them for summons in the first place. And what do you get for this? A 500 attack boost to being a 3000 attack monster and the ability to target and destroy cards equal to the number of Mermails in the grave, meaning at least 4, but most Mermail decks already run [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Atlantean_Heavy_Infantry certain]] [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Atlantean_Marksman Atlantean]] cards for this purpose, meaning the archetype wasn't exactly in dire need of a mass destruction card. Lastly, its tribute a water monster for a bonus effect, the last possible redeeming factor it could possibly have, is to destroy a defense position monster it battles at the start of the damage step, which is underwhelming compared to getting a second attack or making the opponent discard. In conclusion, a steep and strict summoning cost and barely of any use effects mean that no sane Mermail player will ever be caught running it.
* Some mechanics take time to be good, but [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Gemini_monster Geminis]] are particularly long-suffering. Their thing is that when Summoned or in the Graveyard, they're treated as Normal Monsters, and then you can burn a Normal Summon to turn them into Effect Monsters. In theory? A versatile set of cards that can take advantage of Normal Monster support while also boasting abnormally powerful effects. In practice? Slow, inefficient, and dead in the water. Being unable to be treated as Normals in the hand or deck limits the Normal support that can help them, since many of the best Normal cards are searchers or require one in the hand. Most of the initial Gemini Monsters had middling base stats so they'd be overshadowed even by Normal Monsters of their time, and the effects they gain for spending an additional Normal Summon were too weak to be worth the investment. On top of that, the mechanic ''hates'' PowerCreep, since shorter Duels mean that its precious Normal Summons become even more of an opportunity cost. Only a handful of Geminis have ever seen competitive play, and only one notable deck (Gigavise) actually made much use of the mechanic. The only recent decks to involve Geminis are [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Red-Eyes Red-Eyes]] (which still often sticks to vanillas) and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Chemicritter Chemicritters]] (which have a [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Catalyst_Field Field Spell]] that seems designed to solve all possible Gemini problems), and both are generally seen as tolerable at best.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Flip_monster Flip Monsters]] just couldn't keep up with PowerCreep. They need to be set face-down, then flipped face-up by getting attacked or changing position (monsters cannot be in face-down Attack position) to activate their effects. While they had some success in the early days of the game, when Special Summons were less frequent and removal was largely based on attacking, modern decks generally don't want to waste their Normal Summon on something that will usually need at least a turn to trigger. Removal effects have also become much more common, making it less likely that your opponent will actually attack into them. Lastly, face-down monsters cannot be used as material for Extra Deck summons. Some Flip-heavy archetypes like [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Subterror Subterrors]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Shaddoll Shaddolls]] can facilitate the mechanic by Special Summoning monsters face-down or letting face-up monsters set themselves again, but the overall mechanic is still simply too slow.
* In what might be one of the meanest cases of PowerCreep in the modern game, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Duston Dustons]]. They were designed as a LethalJokeCharacter deck, similar to the older [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Ojama Ojamas]], that would fill up the opponent's field with useless monsters to lock them down. Duston monsters had detrimental effects, bad stats, and couldn't be used for Tributes, Synchros, Fusions, or Xyz, and they could be summoned easily to the opponent's field en masse, so on paper the deck worked, and though far from meta, it could be a nasty surprise if your opponent got off [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/House_Duston House Duston]] and then [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Goblin_King Goblin King]] or [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Starduston Starduston]]. But then Link Summoning became a thing, and filling up your field with lots of monsters became such a fundamental strategy that Scapegoat came back into fashion - and Dustons had no protection from being used as Link material, when Links were now being run basically everywhere. Activating House Duston's effect and tossing four Dustons on the opponents field went from a real detriment to the card game equivalent of handing your opponent a loaded gun.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Duel_Link_Dragon,_the_Duel_Dragon Duel Link Dragon, the Duel Dragon]], aside from [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment a fantastically redundant name]], earns a lot of scorn for being seen as one of the worst cards of the VRAINS era. It's an homage to [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Ultimaya_Tzolkin Ultimaya Tzolkin]], a rather popular card based on the FinalBoss of ''Manga/YuGiOh5Ds manga'', which, befitting its status as the ruler of the Duel Dragons, could summon strong Dragon-type Synchros almost for free. This was tragically made far more limited by Link Summoning rules, meaning Duel Link Dragon was widely seen as a potential PoorMansSubstitute... and unfortunately, it ended up looking more like spitting on Ultimaya's grave. Duel Link Dragon is a Link 4 (meaning it requires a minimum of four monsters to be brought out), of which one of those monsters needs to be a Synchro (so actually five monsters). What do you get for all that effort? Well, it has no stats, but it can summon Tokens by ''banishing high-level Synchro Dragons from the Extra Deck,'' at which the Tokens gain the stats of the banished Dragons and nothing else, and Duel Link Dragon gains limited protection while its Tokens are out. So you gave up a minimum of three Extra Deck slots and five summons, all to bring out one or two beatsticks with 3000 ATK at most and no effects, and a 0-ATK monster with protection that goes away when the beatsticks die. This is a card released in 2019 that's almost strictly worse than using [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Ancient_Rules Ancient Rules]] to summon Blue-Eyes, and keep in mind, Ultimaya could be [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Sea_Monster_of_Theseus summoned off]] a single [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Instant_Fusion Instant Fusion]] and any Level 5, and could yield a fully-powered [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Crystal_Wing_Synchro_Dragon Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon]] for the price of setting one card. The result is a card so notoriously awful that people were actively ''happy'' when it became a tournament prize card outside of Japan, since it meant this thing wouldn't be clogging up packs in the TCG anytime soon.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/War_Rock War Rocks]]. A TCG-premiere archetype introduced in ''Blazing Vortex'', War Rocks were dead on arrival and considered one of the bigger missteps in the SEVENS era. The archetype relies heavily on the Battle Phase, which in the Link era had lost much of its importance, as at that point monsters were typically removed by card effect in the Main Phase rather than destroyed by battle. While the archetype on the surface promotes an aggressive, beatdown strategy, its cards don't accel at even that as their effects are often underpowered or hit with needless restrictions, sometimes both. Many cards boost the ATK of War Rock monsters, but only by 200 ATK, which is rather low, and only until the end of the opponent's turn, so they can't even build up their ATK over time. The Level 4's, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/War_Rock_Fortia Fortia]], [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/War_Rock_Gactos Gactos]], and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/War_Rock_Wento Wento]], can float into a Level 5 or higher War Rock, but only when sent to the Graveyard by an opponent's card effect, meaning they can be run over in battle by an opponent's monster with no punishment for doing so (except for Bashileos, more on that later). And without the Level 4's, the Level 5 and higher monsters have a hard time summoning themselves, as [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/War_Rock_Mammud Mammud]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/War_Rock_Orpis Orpis]] can only Normal Summon themselves out of the hand, making it impossible to swarm the field with them, and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/War_Rock_Bashileos Bashileos]] relies on an EARTH Warrior being destroyed by battle to Special Summon itself from the hand or Graveyard, and is the only effect in the archtype to punish the opponent for destroying a War Rock by battle, but banishes itself if it would leave the field afterward, meaning it can't be done repeatedly. [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/War_Rock_Mountain Mountain]] can summon a War Rock from the hand, but only if it has a different name from the ones already on the field, and send itself to the Graveyard to protect a War Rock from destruction by battle, an effect that would be much better on a card that didn't have a swarming effect that the archetype desperately needs. Both [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/War_Rock_Skyler Skyler]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/War_Rock_Spirit Spirit]] can summon War Rocks from the graveyard, but bizarrely prevent that monster from attacking directly that turn, and even preventing some other monsters from attacking directly (Skyler) or negating the effects of the summoned monster for the turn (Spirit, but only if summoned in Attack Position). Overall, the archetype feels like a time capsule from the ''GX'' era or even earlier, with its focus on the Battle Phase feeling not only completely outdated in the SEVENS era, but also outdone by other archetypes such as [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Amazoness Amazoness]]. The archetype is widely remembered for [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXU2i0-Zrjg a duel]] that showed a War Rock deck with its first wave of support losing to ''Goat Control'', a deck that was over fifteen years old at the time.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Noble_Knight Noble Knights]] are generally considered an extremely overhyped batch of cards, almost to MemeticLoser levels, because of how underwhelming they turned out to be relative to their publicity. A large part of the deck's problems come from being saddled with a clunky playstyle built around Equip Spells and a pseudo-Gemini mechanic (where several of their monsters count as Normal Monsters until a condition is met), two of the most slow and antiquated mechanics in the game, with the payoff being a mediocre defend-the-castle deck built around [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Artorigus,_King_of_the_Noble_Knights a so-so Xyz Monster]] which required both a lot of setup to pay for itself and was hard for the deck to put out consistently in the first place. It took numerous waves of support to make the original Noble Knights into a decent deck, and the Noble Knight name would later be redeemed by the [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Infernoble_Knight Infernoble Knights]] which were a fairly good deck in their own right (albeit by largely ignoring the older Noble Knight cards entirely), but for many players the original Noble Knights are still the very definition of JunkRare because of how disappointing they were in contrast to their cool [[Myth/ArthurianLegend theming]] and [[SugarWiki/AwesomeArt artwork]] on top of demanding unreasonable prices.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Both]]
* As an archetype, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Ice_Barrier Ice Barriers]] are widely seen as mediocre on their best day, consisting mostly of lackluster stun and draw cards and possessing a fragile and slow playstyle. The Ice Barrier Synchros, on the other hand, are universally regarded as among the most overpowered in the game, with three of the initial four having spent time on the banned or limited list. [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Brionac,_Dragon_of_the_Ice_Barrier Brionac's]] multi-card bouncing at minimal cost (to the point that it had to get an ObviousRulePatch), [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Dewloren,_Tiger_King_of_the_Ice_Barrier Dewloren's]] ability to bounce any number of your cards (including itself) making it the main cog of countless infinite loops until it got a similar patch, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Trishula,_Dragon_of_the_Ice_Barrier Trishula's]] non-targeting banishment of all parts of the opponent's strategy... even [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Gungnir,_Dragon_of_the_Ice_Barrier Gungnir]], the only non-broken one, can blow up two cards per turn. Ironically, Ice Barriers were considered among the worst decks to try summoning their own ace monsters in, being too slow and lacking the swarming capability to pull it off. [[ThrowTheDogABone Ice Barriers were eventually thrown a bone]] by getting their own structure deck, which finally gave them some swarming capability and allowed the archetype to actually start making Synchro plays.
* In a similar vein to Ice Barriers is [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Mecha_Phantom_Beast Mecha Phantom Beasts]]. Awesome concept, and a neat gimmick in gaining protection from battle and card effects by churning out Tokens, which also raise their monsters' levels to give access to various Synchro and Xyz options. In theory, at least, since the Tokens tend to be a liability that makes it hard to make plays more often than not by screwing up your levels (especially if you're trying to make one of their Synchro monsters) and despite their best effects being reliant on swarming the field with Mecha Phantom Beasts, they have no good ways to actually do that, rendering the deck slower than a tranquilized snail. On the other hand, the few MPB cards that saw play did so by becoming ubiquitous in other decks due to their powerful effects. [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Mecha_Phantom_Beast_Dracossack Dracossack]] is a generic Rank 7 that was nigh-impossible to deal with efficiently back in its heyday and pops a card as soon as it comes down more often than not, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Mecha_Phantom_Beast_Auroradon Auroradon]] spits out Tokens that can be used for its effects or as Synchro fodder and ended up being far more generic than intended thanks to Crystron Halqifibrax, and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Mecha_Phantom_Beast_O-Lion O-Lion]] worked wonders with the aforementioned Auroradon and Halqifibrax thanks to floating into a Token until it got banned. This results in an archetype whose flagship monsters are cards that most people are tired of seeing, and the rest of its cards essentially being non-existent.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Naturia Naturias]] are another case of it. The majority of the archetype consists of a clumsy, disorganized set of effects themed around responding to your opponent's actions that generally won't impede any deck made after 2008, with its few redeeming cards being rather outdated barring the actually useful [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Naturia_Sacred_Tree Sacred Tree]] (which, tragically, came far too late to save the deck from irrelevance). However, it also boasts an Extra Deck lineup that includes the notoriously problematic [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Naturia_Beast Naturia Beast]], a card that can effectively shut down all your opponent's Spells in exchange for a cost so minor that it may as well not even exist, plus the more limited but still incredible [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Naturia_Barkion Barkion]], which does something similar to Traps, and the tricky-to-summon [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Naturia_Exterio Exterio]], which does it with ''both''--all three cards have such powerful lockdown effects that decks focused on Spells or Traps often can't respond to them at all. This results in Beast (and Barkion, to a lesser extent) being run in just about every deck that runs EARTH monsters and Tuners, and Exterio being an absolute horror when brought out with cards like [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Waking_the_Dragon Waking the Dragon]], all while the rest of the archetype languishes in obscurity.
* The [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Exodia Exodia]] lineup is largely hated, because it focuses on a single strategy of drawing through the deck as soon as possible to enable an InstantWinCondition. If it pulls this off, it wins the game with zero interaction required, often on the first turn. If it fails to pull this off, it [[CripplingOverspecialization has no real way to come back]] other than stalling. Either way, it's going to be a deck that's braindead easy to play and incredibly boring to play against. Its great susceptibility to handtraps have effectively neutered it in the modern era (in particular, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Droll_%26_Lock_Bird Droll & Lock Bird]] shuts it down completely), but it still ends up being a rather unpleasant deck to face on the best of days, and earns very little respect despite its iconic status. It was especially hated in the OCG's very early days, as many strong draw cards and recruiters were unlimited, which made assembling a full Exodia hilariously easy--to the point that it seemingly inspired a character in the manga, who was portrayed as a cowardly weakling StarterVillain. Exodia is an iconic monster that, unlike Firewall Dragon, can't truly be nerfed, and thus will always be a constant thorn on attempts at making balanced draw cards or drawing engines, because a single mistake can mean that Exodia will turn the game into solitaire until an emergency ban or nerf is handed out.
* Any card that focuses on a victory condition not based on damage will fall into this, due to its binary nature: they end up being either too difficult to access and therefore AwesomeButImpractical, or too easy to access and therefore having the potential to end a game with no meaningful interaction. [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Final_Countdown Final Countdown]] is a particular case - it's actually not a very strong card, but its nature (win the Duel twenty turns after it's been played) means that a Duel against a Final Countdown player inevitably consists of the Final Countdown player using [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Swift_Scarecrow Swift Scarecrow]] or [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Threatening_Roar Threatening Roar]] for twenty turns. [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Self-Destruct_Button Self-Destruct Button]] is even more disliked for being very easy to trigger if you've got the right cards, and for the fact that it ends the Duel in a draw, and draw Duels are tricky to resolve in a tournament. The January 2014 banlist actually restricted Final Countdown and banned SDB, despite the fact that neither were used much, strictly because nobody liked them.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Lswarm Evilswarm]]: At first glance, they're little more than a simple rank 4 spam deck. However, their other gimmick is to combat level 5 or higher monsters, and none do this job better than their boss monster, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Evilswarm_Ophion Evilswarm Ophion]]. Its main effect is simple: level 5 or higher monsters cannot be special summoned if it has Xyz material. It also has an effect to search out an Infestation spell or trap, usually [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Infestation_Pandemic Infestation Pandemic]], which makes all your "lswarm" monsters immune to spells and traps for a turn, making it even harder to kill. Ophion's powerful stun effect and especially high 2550 attack stat and dark attribute making it an excellent target for [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Eradicator_Epidemic_Virus Eradicator Epidemic Virus]] meant that Evilswarms were one of the only other decks at the time able to combat Spellbooks/Prophecies and Dragon Rulers in their prime, and Ophion was deemed enough of a problem in the OCG to get limited for a while. Despite this, the big problem the deck suffers from is that it is entirely reliant on the match-up, it's either an auto-win against a deck vulnerable to Ophion's effect and unable to draw their select few, if any, outs, or it struggles or gets stomped against a deck that couldn't care less about said stun effect.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/PSY-Frame PSY-Frames]] are not a very powerful archetype (though [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/PSY-Framelord_Omega Omega]] tends to get abused in Synchro-focused decks), but it's notorious for being absolutely no fun to play against, because almost all of its monsters are "hand traps" - monsters that activate in the hand in response to something the opponent does. Since you can't ''see'' when your opponent has a hand trap or how many they have, and you can't preemptively get rid of them easily, this results in the deck having the ability to counter your plays at will while you can't counter back easily. Since the handtraps can only be used with an empty field, it also focuses on clearing its own field by banishing its cards during the opponent's turn (and taking one of the opponent's cards with them), making it hard to destroy them. This is "balanced" by the deck's offensive capability being roundly awful, but this just means on top of being able to counter all your plays and hide all its monsters out of your reach, the Psy-Frame player can't finish the job, so the duel's just going to drag out until you can ''finally'' deplete the Psy-Frame player's supply of handtraps.
* By the same token, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Ghostrick Ghostricks]]. Adorable CreepyCute artwork, [[StoneWall the offensive presence of a dying hamster, and endless, endless stall.]] Pretty much every card commonly played in the deck allows for some form of reducing damage or a way to add more cards that reduce damage, and a good chunk, like Psy-Frames, activate in the hand. While it lacks the frustrating negation effects of Psy-Frames, it more than makes up for it in its ability to drag Duels out. Even worse, while the deck has a number of different cards based on alternate win conditions (for instance, Skeleton's milling or Angel of Mischief's instant win), both those win conditions are really, really slow; [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Ghostrick_Skeleton Skeleton]] can only mill a maximum of five cards per turn (and that's assuming a full field), and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Ghostrick_Angel_of_Mischief Angel of Mischief]] (assuming it's summoned as intended) requires at least six turns. It's often joked that the actual win condition of Ghostricks is to make the opponent quit, and "Ghostrick FTK" is to summon one Ghostrick on your first turn, at which the opponent leaves rather than waste their life pounding slowly through your defenses. Oh, and then it got worse: the advent of Link Monsters means that fields are now packed with monsters that can't be flipped down at all, leaving the archetype unable to properly perform one of their most important tricks, and thus effectively dead.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Majespecter Majespecters]] were in this boat. The deck's theme is around Pendulum WIND Spellcasters who each 1: with the exception of their [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Majespecter_Unicorn_-_Kirin boss monster]], are level 3 or 4 monsters that have an effect to search a card of the archetype upon summon. and 2: [[NighInvulnerability cannot be targeted or destroyed by the opponent's card effects]]. Their spells and traps revolve around tributing them for a powerful effect that are often dispruptive to the opponent. With a good hand and build, you would [[CycleOfHurting pendulum summon them en mass, search for spells and traps, prevent the opponent's plays with said cards, and then pendulum summon them all back, chipping at the opponent's life points in the process with very few outs due to their aforementioned invulnerability]]. The problems the archetype has, however, is that it has difficulty dealing with big monsters with comparable immunity effects. It's also one of the decks most adversely affected by Master Rule 4[[note]]the [[BrokenBase controversial]] change that extra deck monsters can only be summoned to the extra deck monster zone or monster zones link monsters point to[[/note]], crippling the deck's play-style. Meanwhile, their boss monster ironically went on to be a staple in every other pendulum deck that can use it, due to its powerful bounce effect and archetypal invulnerability, earning it a spot on the [[GameBreaker/YuGiOhCardGame limited and then the forbidden list]].
* The [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Performapal Performapals]] have a ''long'' history with this trope, starting out the era on the weakest tier of this trope then skyrocketing to the highest tier imaginable. When they first debuted, they had underwhelming effects, lackluster stats, and awkward Pendulum scales that made performing the very mechanic they were ''based'' around difficult to do. They were repeatedly mocked throughout the era, with their rather gaudy and ugly designs not helping the impression that they were made to be the butt of jokes. However, then a [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Performapal_Pendulum_Sorcerer certain Sorcerer came into being]], along with the [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Performage Performages]], and the hybrid deck known as [=PePe=][[note]]Performage Performapals, [=EmEm=] in the OCG for Entermate Entermage, the portmanteu of their OCG names[[/note]] was born, having deceptively easy search power and ability to Rank 4 spam quickly, a deck tactic that was already reviled thanks to little skill needed to play. However, it didn't stop there. Then came the [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Dracoslayer Dracoslayers]], which added support for their main weakness of destroying monsters in the Pendulum zones and added even more search power. When played right, a deck like this can easily lock out the opponent from even ''playing the game'', and immediately dominated the tournaments. It got so bad that after not long in the TCG, Konami introduced an emergency event banlist that not only included the Performage hits from the OCG, but also hit the Performapal and Dracoslayer engines. Now only a select few are used in [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Odd-Eyes Odd-Eyes]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Magician Pendulum Magicians]] as supporting cards. Performapals end up in an odd place where about 90% of their cards are considered awful, but the vast size of the archetype meant that a small core engine turned out to be a GameBreaker.
* Pendulums in general have swung back and forth (appropriately) between busted and useless. Aside from accusations of bloated card design, Pendulums made initial waves due to seeming overpowered at first glance: they all boast two sets of effects as Monsters and Spells, go to the Extra Deck rather than being sent from field to Graveyard, and enable the once-per-turn use of a Pendulum Summon, a massive summon that pulls from both monsters in the hand and Pendulums in the Extra Deck as long as the scales are sufficiently far apart. However, they quickly became viewed as AwesomeButImpractical: unless you were playing an all-Pendulum deck, which posed its own problems, attempting to use Pendulum Summon in an otherwise standard deck was rather ineffective since it required you to play two cards of differing scales and have a hand where Pendulum Summoning would be meaningful. Pendulums lacked the main strong point of Extra Deck summons (that is to say, not needing to draw them) in favor of being an attempt to facilitate them, but the issues of matching scales, many decks having their own ways to make mass-summons or simply finding the Pendulum Summon itself unhelpful, and the underpowered design of most of the early lineup consigned many of them to the trade binder. Tellingly, while Synchro, Xyz, and Links all immediately saw some level of integration into nearly every meta deck of their era, Pendulums proved so undesirable to anything but pure-Pendulum decks that some decks intended to use Pendulums, like Yosenjus, ignored the mechanic entirely.\\
Then at a certain point, an all-Pendulum deck became feasible, and Pendulum strategy switched from trying to facilitate non-Pendulum decks to facilitating themselves, and players realized they could destroy Pendulums ''en masse'', fill up the Extra Deck, and summon five monsters basically for free on any given turn before following up with some nasty Extra Deck plays (mostly Rank 4 spam or Dracoslayers). This resulted in decks that broke the concept of advantage over their knees, since even after a beatdown, a Pendulum player could simply play their scales and explode out of nowhere. Even after the emergency banlist took out [=PePe=], players treated Pendulum decks warily for the rest of the ''ARC-V'' era, and decks like Dracopals or the increasingly surging Pendulum Magicians proved extremely nasty due to their ability to easily develop strong fields (often with multiple negates or disruption effects on board). Tellingly, even after the ''VRAINS'' era brought with it a new set of Master Rules that removed dedicated Pendulum zones and forced users of the mechanic to set up Links first to make significant Pendulum Summons, the flagship Pendulum Magician deck managed to use cards like [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Heavymetalfoes_Electrumite Heavymetalfoes Electrumite]] in conjunction with the last wave of ''ARC-V'' cards to pull off full-on FTK strategies.\\
\\
However, the response to the FTK was particularly dire, and saw the loss of a massive number of their best cards, which led to the Pendulum mechanic being crippled: without Electrumite, the deck now didn't have a good way to get its strategies going, and consequently, the much-vaunted Pendulum Summon was now severely gutted. New Pendulum archetypes became incredibly thin on the ground, with the only one to debut in the the ''VRAINS'' era being the [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Endymion Endymion]] archetype (which largely ignored the Pendulum Summon in favor of focusing on Spell Counter generation). In 2020, they were the only Extra Deck mechanic that ''didn't'' get freed from Master Rule 4, leaving them still forced to use Link engines just to make their strategies. Consequently, the more common joke about Pendulums in the modern day is that they're TheUnfavorite of summoning types and [[OldShame a thing Konami just wants to forget ever happened]], and though the noose around their neck has gotten looser with time, with [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Astrograph_Sorcerer Astrograph Sorcerer]] being unbanned, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Double_Iris_Magician Double Iris Magician]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Performapal_Skullcrobat_Joker Skullcrobat Joker]] coming off the ban list entirely, and the creation of [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Beyond_the_Pendulum a new Pendulum-supporting Link Monster]], it's a reputation they have a long way to go before shedding.
* Rituals take the core problem with Master Rule 3 Pendulums, namely that they have a tendency to either be complete trash or broken beyond all reason with almost no middle ground, and amplifies it tenfold. Like Fusions, their original design was incredibly weak, and saw little success, as requiring two specific cards and at least one other monster (or, more often than not, at least two) as Tribute made Rituals a brickfest at the best of times. However, unlike Fusions, which have seen a ton of success over the years with some very minor tweaking (due to Fusions themselves occupying the Extra Deck and thus being less prone to giving you dead hands), the only way Rituals can even vaguely approach competitive viability is if Konami intentionally breaks them in half, either allowing them to cheat out their Monsters with powerful Ritual Spell cards or making the Ritual Monsters either extremely powerful or very easy to summon. If the Ritual Spell doesn't give enough benefits, or the Ritual Monster isn't utterly broken or very easy to summon, it simply isn't worth it to spend too many resources on a Ritual Summon when you can use a good Fusion Spell or Synchro/Xyz/Pendulum/Link Monsters, which are all simpler to use. It's quite telling that generic Ritual support tends to give them levels of card advantage that would be downright busted in decks built around other mechanics, but are acceptable in Rituals because they just need that much card advantage to do ''anything''.
* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Trickstar Trickstars]] by their gameplay focus on [[DeathOfAThousandCuts incremental burn damage]], play disruption, and swarming fall into both ends of the spectrum depending on what they're fighting. Against [[MightyGlacier Defend-the-Castle decks]] it's all over, as Trickstars played by themselves have no outs to boss monsters such as [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Master_Peace,_the_True_Dracoslaying_King Master Peace]], and have to use [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Eater_of_Millions Eater of Millions]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Borreload_Dragon Borreload Dragon]] to get around them, both are unreliable to breakout and waste cards in the Extra Deck toolbox. However, they trash combo-oriented decks, as if there are enough Trickstars out, the opponent cannot play without burning themselves to a crisp. It is also annoyingly frequent for them to end up losing a vital combo piece to the dreaded [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Trickstar_Reincarnation Trickstar Reincarnation]] which banishes and replaces all cards in the opponents hand and burns the opponent for more damage. The deck also has a few degenerate combos involving [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Trickstar_Lilybell Lilybell]] and pre-errata Firewall Dragon[[note]]As Lilybell can attack directly with monsters on the opponents field, Firewall Dragon could be used to bounce Lilybell from hand to field for dozens of attacks.[[/note]], and the above-mentioned Reincarnation and Droll & Lock Bird which leaves the opponent with no hand; while they rarely happen, they guarantee victory and feel abysmal to lose to. For a while, Trickstars as a whole were in a competitive limbo, in which dozens of Trickstar players invade tournaments, but they hardly top in them, until Sky Strikers rolled out and gave Trickstars the tools they lacked and enabled the deck to win the World Championship. Even then, pure Trickstars induce either white hot rage or easy wins depending on the opposing deck and opening hands.
[[/folder]]
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** [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Fusion_Destiny Fusion Destiny]] uses materials from the hand or Deck for any Fusion Monster that lists a Destiny Hero as material, but locks you out of Special Summoning anything that isn't a DARK HERO monster afterward, and the resulting Fusion monster is destroyed during the next End Phase. However, the intended short lifespan of the Fusion is rendered null by its most common choice, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Destiny_HERO_-_Destroyer_Phoenix_Enforcer Destiny Hero - Destroyer Pheonix Enforcer]], which can simply use its Quick Effect to blow up 1 card you control (such as itself) along with 1 card your opponent controls, then revive itself in the next Standby Phase to do it again. And while it's on the field, it drains the opposing field's ATK/DEF by 200 for each HERO in your GY, and its most common materials, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Destiny_HERO_-_Celestial Celestial]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Destiny_HERO_-_Dasher Dasher]], are perfectly functional in the GY, so it largely averts the bricking issue that the Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon components faced. Even the less used [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Destiny_End_Dragoon Destiny End Dragoon]], which Fusion Destiny's artwork suggests it was geared toward, has its own revival effect that renders the self-destruction little more than a brief inconvenience. This whole combo, on top of Enforcer's near-complete disregard for Fusion Destiny's drawbacks caused the Spell to get Limited in the [=OCG=], and Semi-Limited in the TCG.

** [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Fusion_Destiny Fusion Destiny]] uses materials from the hand or Deck for any Fusion Monster that lists a Destiny Hero as material, but locks you out of Special Summoning anything that isn't a DARK HERO monster afterward, and the resulting Fusion monster is destroyed during the next End Phase. However, the intended short lifespan of the Fusion is rendered null by its most common choice, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Destiny_HERO_-_Destroyer_Phoenix_Enforcer Destiny Hero - Destroyer Pheonix Enforcer]], which can simply use its Quick Effect to blow up 1 card you control (such as itself) along with 1 card your opponent controls, then revive itself in the next Standby Phase to do it again. And while it's on the field, it drains the opposing field's ATK/DEF by 200 for each HERO in your GY, and its most common materials, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Destiny_HERO_-_Celestial Celestial]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Destiny_HERO_-_Dasher Dasher]], are perfectly functional in the GY, so it largely averts the bricking issue that the Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon components faced. Even the less used [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Destiny_End_Dragoon Destiny End Dragoon]], which Fusion Destiny's artwork suggests it was geared toward, has its own revival effect that renders the self-destruction little more than an inconvenience. This whole combo, on top of Enforcer's near-complete disregard for Fusion Destiny's drawbacks caused the Spell to get Limited in the [=OCG=], and Semi-Limited in the TCG.

** [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Fusion_Destiny Fusion Destiny]] uses materials from the hand or Deck for any Fusion Monster that lists a Destiny Hero as material, but locks you out of Special Summoning anything that isn't a DARK HERO monster afterward, and the resulting Fusion monster is destroyed during the next End Phase. However, the intended short lifespan of the Fusion is rendered null by its most common choice, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Destiny_HERO_-_Destroyer_Phoenix_Enforcer Destiny Hero - Destroyer Pheonix Enforcer]], which can simply use its Quick Effect to blow up 1 card you control (such as itself) along with 1 card your opponent controls, then revive itself in the next Standby Phase to do it again. And while it's on the field, it drains the opposing field's ATK/DEF by 200 for each HERO in your GY, and its most common materials, [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Destiny_HERO_-_Celestial Celestial]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Destiny_HERO_-_Dasher Dasher]], are perfectly functional in the GY, so it largely averts the bricking issue that the Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon components faced. This whole combo, on top of Enforcer's near-complete disregard for Fusion Destiny's drawbacks caused the Spell to get Limited in the [=OCG=], and Semi-Limited in the TCG.

** The [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Venom Venom]] archetype used by Professor Viper in Season 3 of GX (and technically Yuri in Arc-V via Starving Venom) came out much less threatening in real life. The deck focuses on putting Venom Counters on your opponent's monsters while their Field Spell [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Venom_Swamp Venom Swamp]] slowly weakens and destroys them, but the Counters mean nothing unless the Field Spell is up. This puts a [[AchillesHeel big target on Venom Swamp]], without which the deck barely functions, as most of the monsters only focus on putting more Counters at the expense of attacking (with stats too pathetic to accomplish much even if they do). Their boss monsters [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Vennominon_the_King_of_Poisonous_Snakes Vennominon]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Vennominaga_the_Deity_of_Poisonous_Snakes Vennominaga]] gain 500 ATK for each Reptile in your Graveyard, can revive after battle destruction at the cost of banishing one of said Reptiles, and the latter boasts the first [[NighInvulnerable blanket immunity to all other card effects]] on top of an InstantWinCondition of inflicting battle damage three times, but Vennominon is a two-Tribute monster in an archetype too slow and frail to provide them, while Vennominaga needs a [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Rise_of_the_Snake_Deity specific Trap]] activated only when Vennominon is destroyed by a card effect to hit the field in the first place.

** The [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Venom Venom]] archetype used by Professor Viper in Season 3 of GX (and technically Yuri in Arc-V via Starving Venom) came out much less threatening in real life. The deck focuses on putting Venom Counters on your opponent's monsters while their Field Spell [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Venom_Swamp Venom Swamp]] slowly weakens and destroys them, but the Counters mean nothing unless the Field Spell is up. This puts a [[AchillesHeel big target on Venom Swamp]], without which the deck barely functions, as most of the monsters only focus on putting more Counters at the expense of attacking (with stats too pathetic to accomplish much even if they do). Their boss monsters [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Vennominon_the_King_of_Poisonous_Snakes Vennominon]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Vennominaga_the_Deity_of_Poisonous_Snakes Vennominaga]] gain 500 ATK for each Reptile in your Graveyard, can revive after battle destruction at the cost of banishing one of said Reptiles, and the latter boasts the first [[NighInvulnerable blanket immnity to all other card effects]] on top of an InstantWinCondition of inflicting battle damage three times, but Vennominon is a two-Tribute monster in an archetype too slow and frail to provide them, while Vennominaga needs a [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Rise_of_the_Snake_Deity specific Trap]] activated only when Vennominon is destroyed by a card effect to hit the field in the first place.

* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Flip_monster Flip Monsters]] just couldn't keep up with PowerCreep. They need to be set face-down, then flipped face-up by getting attacked or changing position (monsters cannot be in face-down Attack position) to activate their effects. While they had some success in the early days of the game, when Special Summons were less frequent and removal was largely based on attacking, modern decks generally don't want to waste their Normal Summon on something that will usually need at a turn to trigger. Removal effects have also become much more common, making it less likely that your opponent will actually attack into them. Lastly, face-down monsters cannot be used as material for Extra Deck summons. Some Flip-heavy archetypes like [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Subterror Subterrors]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Shaddoll Shaddolls]] can facilitate the mechanic by Special Summoning monsters face-down or letting face-up monsters set themselves again, but the overall mechanic is still simply too slow.

* [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Flip_monster Flip Monsters]] just couldn't keep up with PowerCreep. They need to be set face-down, then flipped face-up by getting attacked or changing position (monsters cannot be in face-down Attack position) to activate their effects. While they had some success in the early days of the game, when Special Summons were less frequent and removal was largely based on attacking, modern decks generally don't want to waste their Normal Summon on something that will usually need at a turn to trigger. Removal effects have also become much more common, making it less likely that your opponent will actually attack into it. Lastly, face-down monsters cannot be used as material for Extra Deck summons. Some Flip-heavy archetypes like [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Subterror Subterrors]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Shaddoll Shaddolls]] can facilitate the mechanic by Special Summoning monsters face-down or letting face-up monsters set themselves again, but the overall mechanic is still simply too slow.

** The [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Venom Venom]] archetype used by Professor Viper in Season 3 of GX (and technically Yuri in Arc-V via Starving Venom) came out much less threatening in real life. The deck focuses on putting Venom Counters on your opponent's monsters while their Field Spell [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Venom_Swamp Venom Swamp]] slowly weakens and destroys them, but the Counters mean nothing unless the Field Spell is up. This puts a [[AchillesHeel big target on Venom Swamp]], without which the deck barely functions, as most of the monsters only focus on putting more Counters at the expense of attacking (with stats too pathetic to accomplish much even if they do). Their boss monsters [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Vennominon_the_King_of_Poisonous_Snakes Vennominon]] and [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Vennominaga_the_Deity_of_Poisonous_Snakes Vennominaga]] gain 500 ATK for each Reptile in your Graveyard, can revive after battle destruction at the cost of banishing one of said Reptiles, and the latter is famous for having the first [[NighInvulnerable blanket immnity to all other card effects]], on top of an InstantWinCondition of inflicting battle damage three times, but Vennominon is a two-Tribute monster in an archetype too slow and frail to provide them, and Vennominaga needs a [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Rise_of_the_Snake_Deity specific Trap]] activated only when Vennominon is destroyed by a card effect to hit the field in the first place.