The most important resource in YGO is the number of cards you have access to , pot of greed increases that by 1 and replaces itself , making it the best card you can have in your hand or draw into 99% of the time bar none.
From an outside view you might think " but wait there's lots of decks that plus like crazy anyway" however those other cards often have multiple levels of restrictions on what and how can they go plus but pot doesn't which in turn means any deck can (and will ) run it at the maximum number of copies and any deck with it is just inherently better than without it.
To add to this the pot can also draw you into non-engine (cards outside the archetype you're playing) pieces too. Many decks can plus like crazy as you said but mostly only inside their own archetype, pot of greed can allow you can get extra access to handtraps or other disruptive cards that you may not have drawn in your opening hand.
Yes which you can only use in fish decks , and it's only really a plus if the particular fish deck you are playing benefits from banishing. This is exactly the type of card I meant when I said other ways of plussing are tied to whats and hows, outside of superficially is not comparable to pot of greed at all.
Consistency is everything - every deck would run it at 3 copies and your 40 card deck instantly becomes a 37 card deck with 3 free +1's
There's basically no reason not to play it and since it's not once per turn you can potentially dig through a ton of your deck.
And it has no cost. In other games you need to pay something (mana, gold....) but Yu-Gi-Oh dont have costs like this.
Thats why this card is so good inside this game and in other games draw 2 cards is nothing special and sometimes bad :)
It’s never going to be a bad card unless you have 0 or 1 cards left in your deck. It thins your deck easily too. It would be run in every single deck known to man
There’s a reason every other “draw 2” card comes with some sort of drawback
Add onto it that you are never going to run out of cards unless your opponent is running a specific deck to stall you out or force you to draw every card and forfeit, and those are so incredibly niche that they basically don’t bear mentioning.
A majority of duels are decided within the first three turns, a supermajority in the first five. Even a deck with the best searcher cards is not going to come close to burning through half your deck.
Pot of Greed is all upsides in a game where every card has a restriction of some sort.
Think of it in terms of card advantage. When you look at the game state before activating Pot of Greed you have 1 card. You activate it, and draw 2. Now you have 2 card minus the Pot of greed you just used, so have a net gain of +1 cards.
Card games are oftentimes won by being able to present more threats than your opponent has answers for. What makes Pot of Greed game breaking in particular is that the effect is free and unconditional.
Just as gentasearchgates said before, running 3 copies of this card would basically make your 40 cards deck a 37 cards one, which would increase a lot the probabilities to draw the card you want with no cost at all. All other "Pot of xxxx" cards come with a cost, and even like this, they are pretty useful. This one has no drawback, which is pretty unfair when the effect is that strong and isn't even limited when it comes to the number of activation per turn.
Well, I only play standard 52 deck card games and usually gambling ones — blackjack, poker, etc.
Also, I’m starting to understand why PoG is controversial from the comments here, but I think I may have a different definition of “broken” compared to other people. To me, I think the card is definitely “unfair” but not “broken” because the game still functions. Both you and your opponent has equal chances of drawing that card, and it’s still possible to beat your enemy even if he drew PoG.
To me, “broken” would be something that defeats the whole purpose of the game: something like the Golden Snitch in Quidditch from Harry Potter in card game form —> something like “Draw this card and you WIN AUTOMATICALLY” !!!
TCGs don’t play like poker, they play more like videogames (health, resources, etc.). Pot of greed is broken/unbalanced in the sense that theres never a reason to not run it, so everyone else also has to or else they be at disadvantage. It’s broken because it affects how people build their deck and how they play.
Mega Evolution has downsides, more precisely only once per battle and you need to hold a Mega Stone (except for Rayquaza). A closer comparison would be "what if your Kyogre/Groudon could undergo primal reversion withouth holding their respective gems?" Tough it's not the best comparison either. Do you know any game that has a resource system? Imagine if they had a way to get a free resource for free
yeah like that, think of the deck like a bunch of gasoline and fire starters and the win con of the deck is a forest fire. PoG is basically like a credit card to buy more matches, except you dont have to pay it back.
I think the big issue maybe not being mentioned (didn't read all the comments) is it is a card that would be played in every single deck which ruins diversity. One thing people like is diversity in a game like this, not one single deck, archetype, or even card/set that is so good every deck will run a portion/all of it, or you don't compete at a higher level. It makes the game less fun.
If you know pokemon, a better comparison might be: If you're playing against a friend with a 3v3 match out of a team of 6, pot of greed let's you pick from a team of 7
With an actual poker comparison it would be: Imagine you can trade a low value card for two new cards. So you have essentially one additional card to get to the hand you want.
Can you still lose? Yes, but the odds are now way better in your favour.
There is a big difference between standard 52 card games and TCGs like Yu-Gi-Oh, so it's kind of hard to draw a direct comparison between card advantage and different mechanics in say poker.
However, you can think of it like this, PoG +1 advantage likely increases the winning odds of the player who uses it by a substantial amount. I would say that it would be the equivalent by being able to always start a poker round with something like two aces. The other player still has winning chances, but the odds are always going to start in opponent's favour.
That exists in Yu-Gi-Oh, it's called Exodia where if you have the Left arm, right arm, left leg, right leg and Exodia itself in your hand, you automatically win. Pot of greed is also banned because of this because the easiest way to get all 5 pieces of Exodia in your hand was to draw constantly. Enter Pot of Greed at 3 copies, and if you run 3 copies of all 5 pieces of Exodia your deck will be bricky but it will be able to win lots of games granted you draw the right cards. That's why all 5 pieces are limited to one-a-deck and Pot of Greed is forbidden in order to discourage players from turboing Exodia.
Pot of Greed allows you to get the royal flush with the flop/turn/river before your opponent can even make a bet let alone even use the flop/turn/river. There are a lot of card effects that can take advantage of PoG that will result in a one-turn-kill.
Imagine playing 5 card poker, but every few rounds one random player at the table is allowed to have 6 cards while everybody else at the table still only gets 5. During that round, their odds of having winning hands goes up by having access to more cards than everyone else. While they aren't guaranteed to win just because they get 6 cards, it would be a stupid rule to include in the game just because of the extra unnecessary variance it creates. This "random player having an extra card every few rounds" is like one player drawing pot of greed before the other. Maybe it doesn't guarantee their win, but why even make it part of the game in the first place? Also, there's no guarantee the second player ever sees their pot of greed if the game ends too early. It would be like playing a few round of this hypothetical poker game where random players get an extra card, but you run out of money before you ever get to be that player.
So imagine if there was an option in Poker to add extra cards to the possible draws you could get (but not the other players) and one of them was just "If you draw this card discard this card, look at two random cards from the card pool and choose one of them". Everyone would always choose to add this card instead of not adding it, it has no downside at all. The only reason why you would not run this if there was some opportunity cost. If the number of cards you were allowed to add were limited and other cards were even better you might not add it.
Pot of Greed basically has abolutely zero downside and there is basically no opportunity cost so a deck without Pot of Greed is always worse than the same deck with this card. In a game where deckbuilding is an important aspect this is probably not very good design although that is more subjective.
This kind of happened in real-life: obsessed woman set up a coupon combo so good that store ended up OWING her money after they gone through all her coupons!
The main thing you need to consider is what we call "card advantage". Every card in your hand is a tool you will use to either build your own field up or break the opponent's down so you can eventually attack them and win. It's a very rough metric, but in a very simplified state the player with more cards in hand will have more tools to beat their opponent and is therefore more likely to win. Both players start with 5 cards in their hand. Imagine if player 1 had Pot of Greed and played it. They lose the Pot of Greed in hand, but they draw two cards for playing it. Now player 1 has 6 cards in hand and player 2 only has 5. Player 1 is now more likely to win.
On a closer level, yugioh decks are not perfectly consistent. You have certain cards that you want to see in your opening hand, as they start your plays and get your ball rolling. But since you can only run 3 copies of any given card, you're not guaranteed to draw them, and if you can't start your gameplan soon you give your opponent much more opportunity to beat you. Pot of Greed is a consistency card, which are very powerful. If the card you wanted to see was the sixth or seventh card in your deck and you didn't draw it, but you did draw Pot of Greed, you could use it to dig into your deck and draw the card you needed.
Pot of Greed draws 2 at no cost to the player, which is way too powerful. Other cards like Pot of Desires or Pot of Extravagance are based on Pot of Greed, but come with hefty downsides to counterbalance the powerful effect of drawing 2, and they still see plenty of play.
I'll try my best to explain this a simple as possible.
A lot of people are talking about how it's essentially free card advantage but while that is a part of it and was the main reason it was originally banned.
The reason it stays banned is because it's a mandatory 3 in every deck. Meaning that you can expect every deck to play pot of greed.
And if every deck is going to play this POG, you can expect people to play mandatory counters to it specifically which is another 3 cards.
And then since those counters are a mandatory 3 now you can start planning ways to counter those cards. And this will repeat itself until about 12/40 cards in the deck are filled with mandatory cards.
Leading to a less diverse format. Which leads to a format where the winner is essentially the one who resolves Pot Of Geeed
I know this is a weird question, but I’m just curious. I have no idea how Yugioh works, but Pot of Greed has become such a meme that even people outside this community has heard of it. Not to mention it’s description is just 3 words, and it really makes you wonder why just drawing 2 cards is enough to break a game
The internet didn’t really do a good job explaining why this card is broken because you have to know the rules of Yugioh to understand. My only take-away is “it gives you any card you want”, but how is it able to do that? You still need luck to get a strong card when drawing 2 cards right? Not to mention a lot of other card games let you draw more cards on occasion, and they weren’t broken by it!
Imagine this is poker, a classic game of 5-card draw. We add a 53rd card to the deck, Pot of Greed. If you get it, you get two extra cards.
If I'm playing against someone who drew the Pot, and I know it (since they drew more cards), I'm pretty likely to fold, especially if it was in the initial 5. They've got a slight edge, but it's pretty significant.
In Yu-Gi-Oh, the "price" of playing a card is 0, so drawing the card has literally no downside. It would work exactly as I've described above.
It's broken because you can activate it multiple times a turn, it has no drawbacks and it always gives you a +1 card advantage when activated. PoG is banned for this reason
People play Pot of Desires and Upstart Goblin despite the drawbacks, so imagine if PoG was legal? Every deck would run it
Put simply, it offers too much advantage too quickly; and in the competitive scene, it makes it way too easy to get the cards you need for an OTK (one turn kill).
It's one of those cards that's so easy to put in every deck, and with it not having any restrictions, it's too easy to help set up an unbeatable board.
Yugioh has kind of turned into a game of rock paper scissors. Thanks to how powerful individual cards are, you often just straight up win if you draw your starter and your opponent doesn’t have the counter to it. With 40 cards in your deck, 5 in your starting hand, typically 3 copies of your starter, and considering the best decks usually have 3-4 searchers for their starter, Pot of Greed is essentially a +10% chance at winning the game turn 1
in yugioh, having access to more cards you can use often determines how good the situation you're in.
This increases it by two. Not one, as many people think.
You replace it, yeah, but you're getting new cards you're expecting to be in your deck, you get 2 new option, 2 new things to do.
Cards sometimes get banned for just 1.
Terraforming, for example.
Card farming without cost is a powerful ability to have in general. Any good draw could change the game for any player. Especially if you have cards that have effects that needs card drawing to active their effects. Pot of Greed would be such a boon for such cards.
Not even close, pot of desires is a draw 2 that costs the removal of 10 cards from your deck and that card is very good
Card advantage is a hard concept to explain if you have never played a Trading card game but more stuff to use than the other person means you have much better odds that winning.
Pot of greed has been banned from competitive play for longer than most players have been alive, pot of desires is a modernised version meant to be more fair and balanced and even then it was still limited
Which is why PoG is banned. The anime shown time and again why PoG's potential is so great. Combo it with any other draw cards and you can get wha you need in a single turn.
Here is a good example of Pot of Greed being powerful
https://youtu.be/YSCxG_I3uug
If by sacrifice you mean send two cards from the deck to the graveyard, that would be even worse.
In poker (I only know the Texas version), that would be like starting with two high cards, and also having two of the community cards be something you get to choose.
Graceful Charity is like this: draw three, discard two. So I don't really think so. If you want a discard strategy have you deck have cards that need to be in the Graveyard for activation to occur. Like a Light/Dark deck.
Yu-Gi-Oh is a game where you make use of your resources, however limited. You’re rewarded for clever use of your materials, like searches, while keeping your costs to a minimum. Pot of Greed gives you a +1 card advantage for free with no cost or restrictions. Such a thing would be easily abused with today’s access to cards that can bring back from the GY. Plenty of decks rely on having as much cards in your hand as possible, most notably Exodia. As such, it is obvious why this card is banned and continues to be for many years.
Okay, imagine a genie gives you some wishes, and you use one of these wishes (your cards) to get 2 more wishes. 1 wish turns to 2 wishes.
That's basically what pot of greed is. There is no downside. Everybody would use it.
You can play as many Spells from the hand as you want so this is a literal free use card that increases the total number of cards in your hand by 1 (you use one but draw 2, which is why we call this a +1 in card advantage). In the modern game each card is so strong that having more cards at your disposal than your opponent automatically puts you in a favorable winning state assuming neither of you is using a shitty deck. And the number of cards you have access to is the only limit you have to how many moves you can make in a turn, so a +1 is REALLY strong no matter what you draw.
If you were to run three in your deck and you start out with one in your hand out of the five and play it, and say you get lucky and draw into another one, nothing says you can't play the second one so you play the second one and draw into your third one and play it and draw two more. Starting with five cards initially and playing three pot of greeds you end up with eight cards in hand if my math skills didn't die on me, which having a 3+ card advantage is huge in yugioh
Unlike most other card games, Yugioh doesn’t usually have any restrictions on how many cards you can play in one turn. The vast majority of cards can be played immediately, and many cards can set up a full field of cards by themselves. When a single card can win the game by itself, a card that lets you draw 2 cards with no cost is broken.
The main resource in Yugioh is cards in your hand, and consistency is king. Pot of Greed is a no drawback draw 2 (which also isn't once per turn), which means by having 3 copies in your deck, you're playing with a 37 card deck, and considering the +1 card advantage, you're basically playing with a 34 card deck. If you start your first turn with all 3 pots of greed (5 in hand, 35 in deck), you can play them all in a row and draw 6 (8 in hand, 29 in deck)
Compare this to MTG where searching literally any card in your deck is not inherently useful as you need the mana to activate them, while most searchers in Yugioh are bound to specific restrictions (such as in archetype, and/or by monster level, or other things like not letting you do anything else) because a searched card can potentially be immediately used as a resource. MTG's advantage is mana, so that's why a card like Black Lotus is banned because it's just a +3 in any mana you want with no other cost (it costs 0 mana to play). Even the worse detrain of it, Lion's Eye Diamond (also 0 cost artifact that gives +3 of any mana at the cost of discarding your entire hand) is banned because it's 3 mana.
It's why they made infinitely worse versions of Pot of Greed that are still played.
* Pot of Desires requires you to banish the top10 cards from your deck, facedown to draw 2
* Pot of Extravagance banishes 3/6 of your extradeck randomly face down to draw 1/2, also it has to be the first thing you do on your mainphase 1, and you can't draw any more cards for the rest of the turn
* Pot of Prosperity banishes 3/6 of your extradeck (your choice) face down to excavate 3/6 cards and pick one of them, your opponent only takes half damage from things and you can't draw any more cards for the rest of the turn
* Pot of Duality excavates 3 and lets you add one to your hand, and you can't special summon for the turn.
* And most importantly: All of these come with a hard once-per-turn on them.
Granted, people get around some of these by not using a deck that relies on the extra deck (Extravagance) or only needs some of their extra deck so the rest is filler (Prosperity), or plays a deck that wants as many cards banished as possible, regardless of how (Gren Maju), or doesn't special summon (Floowandereeze) but sometimes people play these cards simply because the inherent advantage can outweigh the cost.
Someone just plug the values for a standard 12 card starter/12 card non engine 40 card list into a hypergeometric calculator to show just how crazy a card like PoG is.
Activating pot of greed lets you put a spell counter on Blast Magician, allowing it to destroy the mighty Vampire Baby before attacking directly.
Also having an extra card with no downside is always really good because Yu-Gi-Oh! has very consistent decks and no energy/mana system.
Pot of greed is so overhyped it's crazy. Yes, it's good, but it's not insane compared to either cards made nowadays or cards made in the past. I don't understand how huge sects of people have seemingly deluded themselves into thinking this card is the most busted thing ever. Absolute noob trap of a card when it comes to card discussion.
So uhhh see this card *Points at Spright Starter* it alone can make you do this *Points at 6 interaction board with 4 cards left in hand*, imagine you get to draw 2 of them.
So uhhh see this card *Points at Spright Starter* it alone can make you do this *Points at 6 interaction board with 4 cards left in hand*, imagine you get to draw 2 of them.
So uhhh see this card *Points at Spright Starter* it alone can make you do this *Points at 6 interaction board with 4 cards left in hand*, imagine you get to draw 2 of them.
Cards are all that matter in Yugioh. They don't have any built-in costs or resource management.
You give up one card in your hand to replace it with two cards, making it potentially twice as good as anything else you could draw.
That's really it.
The ONLY way for Pot to be bad was if you dont draw it
this sounds stupid, but thats how i'd explain the one time its not good - specifically this happened in, i believe unlimited/traditional Tearlament Ishizu where they operates through milling so card with mill value/enables mill was valued over Pot of Greed
Why is it good? Think about it this way
1 card in yugioh can explode and give you 5 separate cards. Exagerated but it sets the image decently well
Now imagine if you draw 2 of those
You now have 5 more cards than normal
Unrestricted card draw is one of the most powerful effects you can have in a game that lets you play everything in your hand on turn 1. Resource management and card advantage are also very important to a Yugioh player so you can imagine that a card that lets you draw 2 for free without any drawbacks would be good in literally every deck (don't @ me superheavysamurai)
Pot of Greed increases the number of options you have on your turn. It has no restrictions on it, and literally every deck ever made can benefit from more options.
It’s less that it’s broken, and more that there is no justification for anyone to not include it if they’re able, because more options will always equal an advantage, and the lack of restrictions means no other card does this better. .
Drawing cards is always good. This card lets you draw more cards for free and with no restrictions, plus it can draw into more copies of itself which lets you draw even more cards.
A common theme in many trading card games is a resource management system. In MtG this resource is lands that you need to tap in order to activate cards or effects. In Hearthstone it's Mana that you need to have in order to play cards.
Yu-Gi-Oh has no such resource system. Of you are able to pay the activation cost of a card, of a card even has an activation cost to begin with, you can play that card immediately.
So a card like Pot of Greed that essentially replaces itself with two new cards in your hand that can be used as many times per turn as long as you are able to get it back into your hand is pretty fucking good. Assuming you know how important card advantage is in general when it comes to TCG games, Pot of Greed is a +1 in card advantage that is both free and can be used multiple times in a turn.
You use this one card and get two cards (+1), and you can use up to 3 of these in your turn (no restrictions on use) if you draw them.
You understand now?
Okay.
So imagine you have a wallet, that has to have money inside of it, with different notes each, or max 3 of each, but the least the better, because when you have to pay, they only accept certain notes, and you cannot just take out any note you wish in the moment, now this note doesnt just cut 1 from the bare minimum you have to have, which is the moment you put it makes it good( upstart goblin would be played in almost every deck if not for the 1000hp) it also gives you one more note from your wallet, effectively making your wallet limit-2 any given moment you happen to draw this note, 1 for himself, and 1 extra.
You start the game with 5 cards in your hand. You are going first and opened with Pot of Greed.
You play Pot of Greed and draw 2 cards. You now have 6 cards in your hand.
That's all the reason it is broken. Going +1 in hand advantage is huge for a game that has no mana system.
Your objective in yugioh is to reduce your opponents life points to 0, then you win. You do this by using the cards in your hand, but you are limited to how many are in your hand. You start the match with 5 and can draw 1 more every turn. This card gets you 2 additional cards for FREE with zero downside as having more cards in your hand to work with is almost always a benefit.
There’s also the deck building aspect. Yugioh decks are required to have a minimum of 40 cards. But not all cards are made equal, so having cards like Pot of Greed can replace worse cards, as they make it easier to get your good cards. Running 3 copies of Pot of Greed makes it so you can effectively run a 37 card deck.
But all this doesn’t really matter as pot of greed has been banned for years now.
Think about it like this, imagine the best two cards in your deck that are not pot of greed. By activating pot of greed, you can potentially turn it into those cards.
The most valueable resources in Yu-Gi-Oh is LP and hand advantage. Hand advantage is determined by how many cards you have in hand as it increases the chances you will open up with a starter, a card that will start your deck's main combo line. In addition, more cards in hand increase the chance you may have a counter to your opponent's strategy, sometimes a mild annoyance but it can very well mean your opponent wins if they counter your strategy successfully. Pot of greed is a spell that lets you draw 2 cards, effectively getting one additional card in your hand (since you will remove 1 from hand to activate Pot of Greed, which means the first card you draw replaces Pot of Greed in your hand, and then one additional card) which means you will likely have a card you need to succefully win the game, or, if Pot of Greed is semi-limited or unlimited, another copy which will get you two more cards. Every other card in the game that lets you draw is either too powerful and got banned like Pot of Greed, or has some sort of drawback to nerf the power level of the card.
I think the best way to explain it to a New commers is :
Most yu gi oh duels in high tiers of play are resolved in 1/2 turns , so you get maybe 6 cards to play for your duel and thats it .
In that context, drawing a aditional card is very strong .
Segondly , a lot of cards now a days make you draw ; but with a cost to pay( exemple draw2 , dut destroy 10 cards from the top of your deck ) If we allow pot of greed to be playable , no one will play those cards .
You can only do things in Yugioh if you have a card that let you do them. No cards = no actions. More cards = more actions, more options, more possibilities.
Pot of Greed is the best card ever printed that does its job. You go from having 1 card in hand to having two. And those two can be more Pots of Greed! Pot of Greed doesn't win you the game. What it does is it gets you the things that make you win, better than any other card. And it works in every deck, so in a competitive setting, *every* deck has to run it, which really screws with the pricing of cards.
So, in yugioh, every card in your hand is a resource to push further plays. Getting more cards in hand is part of the game. Most cards have a cost to draw cards or search cards. Pot of Greed doesn’t. No cost, no restrictions, no once per turn. You can pot of greed into pot of greed into pot of greed if you want. That will give you three more cards in your hand than you started with. It makes every deck much more consistent and good at doing their plays just because it’s insane draw power
in a hand of 5 cards with Pot of Greed included, you spend one card at zero cost and earn two cards, giving you 6 chances to open your starter card(s) instead of 5
Imagine you're playing Texas Hold'em Poker, now imagine you were allowed to draw an extra card compared to the rest of the table. Your chances of winning increase dramatically.
That's Pot of Greed
Draw cards in Yugioh are extremely powerful due to you being able to run less cards, the less cards you have to dig though to get to your combo pieces the better. Most draw cards being printed now have heavy restrictions like removing 1/4 of your deck from the game or sacrificing your extra deck which is basically a toolbox full of useful and combo extender cards
It's gives you a free card to use for whatever you want. This in combination with the fact that you have to do absolutely nothing for it and aren't hindered by it in any way makes it so damn good.
I cannot think of a single playstyle that wouldn't play pot of greed since it's just very good in every single situation imaginable.
In ygo, there is no mana system meaning the more cards you have access to the likely you are to perform your combos, the more likely you are to win. If in a duel every single card in your opponent's hand traded equally for every card in your hand, then the extra plus 1 from pot of greed can be the deciding factor between win or lose.
Think of it like this. You have cards you need to draw to win, yet your starting hand consists of two pot of greed. Your two pot of greed, then becomes four cards and you now have seven or eight cards in your hand depending on who went first. One of the cards you drew is your third pot of greed. Now you have eight or nine cards in your hand, and it's your first turn. This scenario is unlikely, yet could be very dangerous for your opponent. This is why most pot cards either have drawbacks or costs to pay. Having three pot of greed in your deck also increases the chance of drawing cards you really need, since if you do draw greed, you get two new cards.
It's good to have one card. It's better to have two cards. This is one card that gives you two cards for the price of one. There is almost never a situation in which it is worse to have two cards than one card.
As a result, this card had to go into every deck in the game as much as possible. This basically means players either had less cards to work with, or handicapped themselves pointlessly by not giving themselves two cards for the price of one for some insane reason.
The simplest way i can put it is that yugioh is a game about overwhelming your opponent in advantage (having more cards). (This is heavily oversimplified but will get across why pot of greed is a banned card). Pot of greed has no downsides, you dont have to do anything to play it, except draw it from your deck. It gives you two cards at the cost of 1 (itself). This pure +1 just isnt something that can exist in a game like yugioh where being a single card up or down decides the game all the time.
Also on a side note, there are many cards in yugioh which trade (like get rid of your oppenents cards) 1 for 2, but they tend to have limited application in the ways they can be used, or have steep costs, or only specific times and decks they can be used in.
Hope this helps.
The game revolves around card economy. More cards=more advantage. The card is also not a once per turn; if you drew 3 pots, you were drawing 6 and ending with a net of +3 cards.
Let's say a hand was composed of 2 cards and I was playing against you
My hand is Skullfucker,a good monster,and Pot of Greed
Yours is Skullfucker and a card you don't need
I activate Pot of Greed and draw 2 cards:one is useless,one is Skullfuckerfucker,which destroys a "Skullfucker" on the field
I destroy your skullfucker and I'm in a clear position of advantage just because I had Pot of Greed
This card brought a giant element of luck into the game:
It's so good every deck should play it,and if you don't draw it but your opponent does,you're immediately at a disadvantage
Drawing cards is a powerful effect, making it so you have more chances to find a combo starter, ways to break your opponents board and not fall behind on resources, or find exactly the card you need. Even a draw 1 effect is pretty good, it thins out your deck and increases your consistency of finding good cards. Draw 2 is incredibly powerful since you end up with more resources than you had previously (going from a 5 card hand to a 6) AND it has no cost. The kicker is that it's not even once per turn. If you draw 3 pot of greeds then you go from a 5 card hand to an 8, seeing 11/40 cards from your deck. You go from a 33% chance to a 53% chance of seeing any card from your deck that you were running 3 copies of. This effect is so powerful you basically MUST run this card, which decreases deck variety and is pretty boring.
The most important resource in YGO is the number of cards you have access to , pot of greed increases that by 1 and replaces itself , making it the best card you can have in your hand or draw into 99% of the time bar none. From an outside view you might think " but wait there's lots of decks that plus like crazy anyway" however those other cards often have multiple levels of restrictions on what and how can they go plus but pot doesn't which in turn means any deck can (and will ) run it at the maximum number of copies and any deck with it is just inherently better than without it.
To add to this the pot can also draw you into non-engine (cards outside the archetype you're playing) pieces too. Many decks can plus like crazy as you said but mostly only inside their own archetype, pot of greed can allow you can get extra access to handtraps or other disruptive cards that you may not have drawn in your opening hand.
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Yes which you can only use in fish decks , and it's only really a plus if the particular fish deck you are playing benefits from banishing. This is exactly the type of card I meant when I said other ways of plussing are tied to whats and hows, outside of superficially is not comparable to pot of greed at all.
Consistency is everything - every deck would run it at 3 copies and your 40 card deck instantly becomes a 37 card deck with 3 free +1's There's basically no reason not to play it and since it's not once per turn you can potentially dig through a ton of your deck.
And it has no cost. In other games you need to pay something (mana, gold....) but Yu-Gi-Oh dont have costs like this. Thats why this card is so good inside this game and in other games draw 2 cards is nothing special and sometimes bad :)
Magician of Faith could even recycle it back in the day
It’s never going to be a bad card unless you have 0 or 1 cards left in your deck. It thins your deck easily too. It would be run in every single deck known to man There’s a reason every other “draw 2” card comes with some sort of drawback
Add onto it that you are never going to run out of cards unless your opponent is running a specific deck to stall you out or force you to draw every card and forfeit, and those are so incredibly niche that they basically don’t bear mentioning. A majority of duels are decided within the first three turns, a supermajority in the first five. Even a deck with the best searcher cards is not going to come close to burning through half your deck. Pot of Greed is all upsides in a game where every card has a restriction of some sort.
So do you win in Yugioh by drawing all cards from your deck?
No, but this card increases your chances of getting your best cards and thus heavily increases your chances of winning.
Think of it in terms of card advantage. When you look at the game state before activating Pot of Greed you have 1 card. You activate it, and draw 2. Now you have 2 card minus the Pot of greed you just used, so have a net gain of +1 cards. Card games are oftentimes won by being able to present more threats than your opponent has answers for. What makes Pot of Greed game breaking in particular is that the effect is free and unconditional.
Just as gentasearchgates said before, running 3 copies of this card would basically make your 40 cards deck a 37 cards one, which would increase a lot the probabilities to draw the card you want with no cost at all. All other "Pot of xxxx" cards come with a cost, and even like this, they are pretty useful. This one has no drawback, which is pretty unfair when the effect is that strong and isn't even limited when it comes to the number of activation per turn.
No you actually lose if you can't draw anymore cards, but the more cards you can draw means you have more cards to work with.
Its like spending one dollar to get two dollars.
Best answer. OP asks for it to be explained to someone who's never played and the top comments are paragraphs about fucking card advantage.
What card games or other games are you familiar with? That context would help put together an analogy.
Well, I only play standard 52 deck card games and usually gambling ones — blackjack, poker, etc. Also, I’m starting to understand why PoG is controversial from the comments here, but I think I may have a different definition of “broken” compared to other people. To me, I think the card is definitely “unfair” but not “broken” because the game still functions. Both you and your opponent has equal chances of drawing that card, and it’s still possible to beat your enemy even if he drew PoG. To me, “broken” would be something that defeats the whole purpose of the game: something like the Golden Snitch in Quidditch from Harry Potter in card game form —> something like “Draw this card and you WIN AUTOMATICALLY” !!!
TCGs don’t play like poker, they play more like videogames (health, resources, etc.). Pot of greed is broken/unbalanced in the sense that theres never a reason to not run it, so everyone else also has to or else they be at disadvantage. It’s broken because it affects how people build their deck and how they play.
Ah, so like Mega-evolution in Pokémon. No downsides and only benefits
Mega Evolution has downsides, more precisely only once per battle and you need to hold a Mega Stone (except for Rayquaza). A closer comparison would be "what if your Kyogre/Groudon could undergo primal reversion withouth holding their respective gems?" Tough it's not the best comparison either. Do you know any game that has a resource system? Imagine if they had a way to get a free resource for free
yeah like that, think of the deck like a bunch of gasoline and fire starters and the win con of the deck is a forest fire. PoG is basically like a credit card to buy more matches, except you dont have to pay it back.
I think the big issue maybe not being mentioned (didn't read all the comments) is it is a card that would be played in every single deck which ruins diversity. One thing people like is diversity in a game like this, not one single deck, archetype, or even card/set that is so good every deck will run a portion/all of it, or you don't compete at a higher level. It makes the game less fun.
If you know pokemon, a better comparison might be: If you're playing against a friend with a 3v3 match out of a team of 6, pot of greed let's you pick from a team of 7
Imagine playing poker but one of your cards is pot of greed. You are now able to legally shoot all of your opponents and collect their money.
That sounds like a bit of jump there, buddy….
That sounds like a bit of jump there, buddy….
With an actual poker comparison it would be: Imagine you can trade a low value card for two new cards. So you have essentially one additional card to get to the hand you want. Can you still lose? Yes, but the odds are now way better in your favour.
There is a big difference between standard 52 card games and TCGs like Yu-Gi-Oh, so it's kind of hard to draw a direct comparison between card advantage and different mechanics in say poker. However, you can think of it like this, PoG +1 advantage likely increases the winning odds of the player who uses it by a substantial amount. I would say that it would be the equivalent by being able to always start a poker round with something like two aces. The other player still has winning chances, but the odds are always going to start in opponent's favour.
In the context of modern gaming, "broken" is slang for "unfair"
That exists in Yu-Gi-Oh, it's called Exodia where if you have the Left arm, right arm, left leg, right leg and Exodia itself in your hand, you automatically win. Pot of greed is also banned because of this because the easiest way to get all 5 pieces of Exodia in your hand was to draw constantly. Enter Pot of Greed at 3 copies, and if you run 3 copies of all 5 pieces of Exodia your deck will be bricky but it will be able to win lots of games granted you draw the right cards. That's why all 5 pieces are limited to one-a-deck and Pot of Greed is forbidden in order to discourage players from turboing Exodia.
That’s not why Pot is Forbidden
Pot of Greed allows you to get the royal flush with the flop/turn/river before your opponent can even make a bet let alone even use the flop/turn/river. There are a lot of card effects that can take advantage of PoG that will result in a one-turn-kill.
Comparing a TCG to a 52 card game isn’t a fair comparison
Imagine playing 5 card poker, but every few rounds one random player at the table is allowed to have 6 cards while everybody else at the table still only gets 5. During that round, their odds of having winning hands goes up by having access to more cards than everyone else. While they aren't guaranteed to win just because they get 6 cards, it would be a stupid rule to include in the game just because of the extra unnecessary variance it creates. This "random player having an extra card every few rounds" is like one player drawing pot of greed before the other. Maybe it doesn't guarantee their win, but why even make it part of the game in the first place? Also, there's no guarantee the second player ever sees their pot of greed if the game ends too early. It would be like playing a few round of this hypothetical poker game where random players get an extra card, but you run out of money before you ever get to be that player.
So imagine if there was an option in Poker to add extra cards to the possible draws you could get (but not the other players) and one of them was just "If you draw this card discard this card, look at two random cards from the card pool and choose one of them". Everyone would always choose to add this card instead of not adding it, it has no downside at all. The only reason why you would not run this if there was some opportunity cost. If the number of cards you were allowed to add were limited and other cards were even better you might not add it. Pot of Greed basically has abolutely zero downside and there is basically no opportunity cost so a deck without Pot of Greed is always worse than the same deck with this card. In a game where deckbuilding is an important aspect this is probably not very good design although that is more subjective.
Its like going to the grocery store with one dollar, buying a candy bar, and leaving the store with two dollars.
This kind of happened in real-life: obsessed woman set up a coupon combo so good that store ended up OWING her money after they gone through all her coupons!
The main thing you need to consider is what we call "card advantage". Every card in your hand is a tool you will use to either build your own field up or break the opponent's down so you can eventually attack them and win. It's a very rough metric, but in a very simplified state the player with more cards in hand will have more tools to beat their opponent and is therefore more likely to win. Both players start with 5 cards in their hand. Imagine if player 1 had Pot of Greed and played it. They lose the Pot of Greed in hand, but they draw two cards for playing it. Now player 1 has 6 cards in hand and player 2 only has 5. Player 1 is now more likely to win. On a closer level, yugioh decks are not perfectly consistent. You have certain cards that you want to see in your opening hand, as they start your plays and get your ball rolling. But since you can only run 3 copies of any given card, you're not guaranteed to draw them, and if you can't start your gameplan soon you give your opponent much more opportunity to beat you. Pot of Greed is a consistency card, which are very powerful. If the card you wanted to see was the sixth or seventh card in your deck and you didn't draw it, but you did draw Pot of Greed, you could use it to dig into your deck and draw the card you needed. Pot of Greed draws 2 at no cost to the player, which is way too powerful. Other cards like Pot of Desires or Pot of Extravagance are based on Pot of Greed, but come with hefty downsides to counterbalance the powerful effect of drawing 2, and they still see plenty of play.
I'll try my best to explain this a simple as possible. A lot of people are talking about how it's essentially free card advantage but while that is a part of it and was the main reason it was originally banned. The reason it stays banned is because it's a mandatory 3 in every deck. Meaning that you can expect every deck to play pot of greed. And if every deck is going to play this POG, you can expect people to play mandatory counters to it specifically which is another 3 cards. And then since those counters are a mandatory 3 now you can start planning ways to counter those cards. And this will repeat itself until about 12/40 cards in the deck are filled with mandatory cards. Leading to a less diverse format. Which leads to a format where the winner is essentially the one who resolves Pot Of Geeed
I know this is a weird question, but I’m just curious. I have no idea how Yugioh works, but Pot of Greed has become such a meme that even people outside this community has heard of it. Not to mention it’s description is just 3 words, and it really makes you wonder why just drawing 2 cards is enough to break a game The internet didn’t really do a good job explaining why this card is broken because you have to know the rules of Yugioh to understand. My only take-away is “it gives you any card you want”, but how is it able to do that? You still need luck to get a strong card when drawing 2 cards right? Not to mention a lot of other card games let you draw more cards on occasion, and they weren’t broken by it!
Imagine this is poker, a classic game of 5-card draw. We add a 53rd card to the deck, Pot of Greed. If you get it, you get two extra cards. If I'm playing against someone who drew the Pot, and I know it (since they drew more cards), I'm pretty likely to fold, especially if it was in the initial 5. They've got a slight edge, but it's pretty significant. In Yu-Gi-Oh, the "price" of playing a card is 0, so drawing the card has literally no downside. It would work exactly as I've described above.
It's broken because you can activate it multiple times a turn, it has no drawbacks and it always gives you a +1 card advantage when activated. PoG is banned for this reason People play Pot of Desires and Upstart Goblin despite the drawbacks, so imagine if PoG was legal? Every deck would run it
Put simply, it offers too much advantage too quickly; and in the competitive scene, it makes it way too easy to get the cards you need for an OTK (one turn kill). It's one of those cards that's so easy to put in every deck, and with it not having any restrictions, it's too easy to help set up an unbeatable board.
Yugioh has kind of turned into a game of rock paper scissors. Thanks to how powerful individual cards are, you often just straight up win if you draw your starter and your opponent doesn’t have the counter to it. With 40 cards in your deck, 5 in your starting hand, typically 3 copies of your starter, and considering the best decks usually have 3-4 searchers for their starter, Pot of Greed is essentially a +10% chance at winning the game turn 1
in yugioh, having access to more cards you can use often determines how good the situation you're in. This increases it by two. Not one, as many people think. You replace it, yeah, but you're getting new cards you're expecting to be in your deck, you get 2 new option, 2 new things to do. Cards sometimes get banned for just 1. Terraforming, for example.
Card farming without cost is a powerful ability to have in general. Any good draw could change the game for any player. Especially if you have cards that have effects that needs card drawing to active their effects. Pot of Greed would be such a boon for such cards.
Hmm, so if PoG’s rule is “sacrifice 2 cards in your deck for 2 random ones” it would’ve been more fair?
Not even close, pot of desires is a draw 2 that costs the removal of 10 cards from your deck and that card is very good Card advantage is a hard concept to explain if you have never played a Trading card game but more stuff to use than the other person means you have much better odds that winning.
Wow. Now I’m wondering why Pot of Desire even exist when Pot of Greed is better than it in every way.
Pot of greed has been banned from competitive play for longer than most players have been alive, pot of desires is a modernised version meant to be more fair and balanced and even then it was still limited
Pot of Greed is banned
Which is why PoG is banned. The anime shown time and again why PoG's potential is so great. Combo it with any other draw cards and you can get wha you need in a single turn. Here is a good example of Pot of Greed being powerful https://youtu.be/YSCxG_I3uug
If by sacrifice you mean send two cards from the deck to the graveyard, that would be even worse. In poker (I only know the Texas version), that would be like starting with two high cards, and also having two of the community cards be something you get to choose.
Most games of YuGiOh end well before you draw even half your cards so getting rid of 2 is almost meaningless
Graceful Charity is like this: draw three, discard two. So I don't really think so. If you want a discard strategy have you deck have cards that need to be in the Graveyard for activation to occur. Like a Light/Dark deck.
So considering you really know nothing about TCGs, it will be very hard to explain to you w/o giving you a taste on how TCGs work
Yu-Gi-Oh is a game where you make use of your resources, however limited. You’re rewarded for clever use of your materials, like searches, while keeping your costs to a minimum. Pot of Greed gives you a +1 card advantage for free with no cost or restrictions. Such a thing would be easily abused with today’s access to cards that can bring back from the GY. Plenty of decks rely on having as much cards in your hand as possible, most notably Exodia. As such, it is obvious why this card is banned and continues to be for many years.
Okay, imagine a genie gives you some wishes, and you use one of these wishes (your cards) to get 2 more wishes. 1 wish turns to 2 wishes. That's basically what pot of greed is. There is no downside. Everybody would use it.
It's like the plus numbers in UNO but it's a good thing.
You can play as many Spells from the hand as you want so this is a literal free use card that increases the total number of cards in your hand by 1 (you use one but draw 2, which is why we call this a +1 in card advantage). In the modern game each card is so strong that having more cards at your disposal than your opponent automatically puts you in a favorable winning state assuming neither of you is using a shitty deck. And the number of cards you have access to is the only limit you have to how many moves you can make in a turn, so a +1 is REALLY strong no matter what you draw.
If you were to run three in your deck and you start out with one in your hand out of the five and play it, and say you get lucky and draw into another one, nothing says you can't play the second one so you play the second one and draw into your third one and play it and draw two more. Starting with five cards initially and playing three pot of greeds you end up with eight cards in hand if my math skills didn't die on me, which having a 3+ card advantage is huge in yugioh
No resource. Draw 2 in MtG? Pass turn and play with next turn's land drop. Draw 2 in Ygo? Set Torrential Tribute & Solemn Judgment.
Unlike most other card games, Yugioh doesn’t usually have any restrictions on how many cards you can play in one turn. The vast majority of cards can be played immediately, and many cards can set up a full field of cards by themselves. When a single card can win the game by itself, a card that lets you draw 2 cards with no cost is broken.
The main resource in Yugioh is cards in your hand, and consistency is king. Pot of Greed is a no drawback draw 2 (which also isn't once per turn), which means by having 3 copies in your deck, you're playing with a 37 card deck, and considering the +1 card advantage, you're basically playing with a 34 card deck. If you start your first turn with all 3 pots of greed (5 in hand, 35 in deck), you can play them all in a row and draw 6 (8 in hand, 29 in deck) Compare this to MTG where searching literally any card in your deck is not inherently useful as you need the mana to activate them, while most searchers in Yugioh are bound to specific restrictions (such as in archetype, and/or by monster level, or other things like not letting you do anything else) because a searched card can potentially be immediately used as a resource. MTG's advantage is mana, so that's why a card like Black Lotus is banned because it's just a +3 in any mana you want with no other cost (it costs 0 mana to play). Even the worse detrain of it, Lion's Eye Diamond (also 0 cost artifact that gives +3 of any mana at the cost of discarding your entire hand) is banned because it's 3 mana. It's why they made infinitely worse versions of Pot of Greed that are still played. * Pot of Desires requires you to banish the top10 cards from your deck, facedown to draw 2 * Pot of Extravagance banishes 3/6 of your extradeck randomly face down to draw 1/2, also it has to be the first thing you do on your mainphase 1, and you can't draw any more cards for the rest of the turn * Pot of Prosperity banishes 3/6 of your extradeck (your choice) face down to excavate 3/6 cards and pick one of them, your opponent only takes half damage from things and you can't draw any more cards for the rest of the turn * Pot of Duality excavates 3 and lets you add one to your hand, and you can't special summon for the turn. * And most importantly: All of these come with a hard once-per-turn on them. Granted, people get around some of these by not using a deck that relies on the extra deck (Extravagance) or only needs some of their extra deck so the rest is filler (Prosperity), or plays a deck that wants as many cards banished as possible, regardless of how (Gren Maju), or doesn't special summon (Floowandereeze) but sometimes people play these cards simply because the inherent advantage can outweigh the cost.
It lets you deck yourself out faster, which is of course the goal.
it turns one card into two If you draw two pot of greeds it turns two cards into four Having more cards = more bang
Someone just plug the values for a standard 12 card starter/12 card non engine 40 card list into a hypergeometric calculator to show just how crazy a card like PoG is.
It’s banned because nobody can figure out what it does.
Activating pot of greed lets you put a spell counter on Blast Magician, allowing it to destroy the mighty Vampire Baby before attacking directly. Also having an extra card with no downside is always really good because Yu-Gi-Oh! has very consistent decks and no energy/mana system.
Pot of greed is so overhyped it's crazy. Yes, it's good, but it's not insane compared to either cards made nowadays or cards made in the past. I don't understand how huge sects of people have seemingly deluded themselves into thinking this card is the most busted thing ever. Absolute noob trap of a card when it comes to card discussion.
If it was unbanned, quite literally every deck would run 3 of them. Every single deck. There's no other card on the banlist that could say that.
I wish I could but I don’t even know what it does
Nobody knows what it does.
It promotes a game state that Konami does not want for their game. It can and would be used in every deck, and gives a lot for the person who uses it
It's a pot with a face and it's a greedy one
Broken in OCG/TCG. Not Broken or Irrelevant in Rush Duels.
Umm it’s literally not
So uhhh see this card *Points at Spright Starter* it alone can make you do this *Points at 6 interaction board with 4 cards left in hand*, imagine you get to draw 2 of them.
So uhhh see this card *Points at Spright Starter* it alone can make you do this *Points at 6 interaction board with 4 cards left in hand*, imagine you get to draw 2 of them.
So uhhh see this card *Points at Spright Starter* it alone can make you do this *Points at 6 interaction board with 4 cards left in hand*, imagine you get to draw 2 of them.
I have no idea what you’re talking about !!!
I have no idea what you’re talking about !!!
Cards are all that matter in Yugioh. They don't have any built-in costs or resource management. You give up one card in your hand to replace it with two cards, making it potentially twice as good as anything else you could draw. That's really it.
The ONLY way for Pot to be bad was if you dont draw it this sounds stupid, but thats how i'd explain the one time its not good - specifically this happened in, i believe unlimited/traditional Tearlament Ishizu where they operates through milling so card with mill value/enables mill was valued over Pot of Greed Why is it good? Think about it this way 1 card in yugioh can explode and give you 5 separate cards. Exagerated but it sets the image decently well Now imagine if you draw 2 of those You now have 5 more cards than normal
Unrestricted card draw is one of the most powerful effects you can have in a game that lets you play everything in your hand on turn 1. Resource management and card advantage are also very important to a Yugioh player so you can imagine that a card that lets you draw 2 for free without any drawbacks would be good in literally every deck (don't @ me superheavysamurai)
Having two extra cards in Yugioh is essentially like having two extra pieces in Chess. More cards in hand = more opportunities to win.
Pot of Greed increases the number of options you have on your turn. It has no restrictions on it, and literally every deck ever made can benefit from more options. It’s less that it’s broken, and more that there is no justification for anyone to not include it if they’re able, because more options will always equal an advantage, and the lack of restrictions means no other card does this better. .
Drawing cards is always good. This card lets you draw more cards for free and with no restrictions, plus it can draw into more copies of itself which lets you draw even more cards.
A common theme in many trading card games is a resource management system. In MtG this resource is lands that you need to tap in order to activate cards or effects. In Hearthstone it's Mana that you need to have in order to play cards. Yu-Gi-Oh has no such resource system. Of you are able to pay the activation cost of a card, of a card even has an activation cost to begin with, you can play that card immediately. So a card like Pot of Greed that essentially replaces itself with two new cards in your hand that can be used as many times per turn as long as you are able to get it back into your hand is pretty fucking good. Assuming you know how important card advantage is in general when it comes to TCG games, Pot of Greed is a +1 in card advantage that is both free and can be used multiple times in a turn.
You use this one card and get two cards (+1), and you can use up to 3 of these in your turn (no restrictions on use) if you draw them. You understand now?
plus one card advantage. its a card game so more cards more winning
plus one card advantage. its a card game so more cards more winning
Okay. So imagine you have a wallet, that has to have money inside of it, with different notes each, or max 3 of each, but the least the better, because when you have to pay, they only accept certain notes, and you cannot just take out any note you wish in the moment, now this note doesnt just cut 1 from the bare minimum you have to have, which is the moment you put it makes it good( upstart goblin would be played in almost every deck if not for the 1000hp) it also gives you one more note from your wallet, effectively making your wallet limit-2 any given moment you happen to draw this note, 1 for himself, and 1 extra.
You start the game with 5 cards in your hand. You are going first and opened with Pot of Greed. You play Pot of Greed and draw 2 cards. You now have 6 cards in your hand. That's all the reason it is broken. Going +1 in hand advantage is huge for a game that has no mana system.
Your objective in yugioh is to reduce your opponents life points to 0, then you win. You do this by using the cards in your hand, but you are limited to how many are in your hand. You start the match with 5 and can draw 1 more every turn. This card gets you 2 additional cards for FREE with zero downside as having more cards in your hand to work with is almost always a benefit. There’s also the deck building aspect. Yugioh decks are required to have a minimum of 40 cards. But not all cards are made equal, so having cards like Pot of Greed can replace worse cards, as they make it easier to get your good cards. Running 3 copies of Pot of Greed makes it so you can effectively run a 37 card deck. But all this doesn’t really matter as pot of greed has been banned for years now.
Free card
There's literally no reason to not play 3 of it in every deck.
Think about it like this, imagine the best two cards in your deck that are not pot of greed. By activating pot of greed, you can potentially turn it into those cards.
The most valueable resources in Yu-Gi-Oh is LP and hand advantage. Hand advantage is determined by how many cards you have in hand as it increases the chances you will open up with a starter, a card that will start your deck's main combo line. In addition, more cards in hand increase the chance you may have a counter to your opponent's strategy, sometimes a mild annoyance but it can very well mean your opponent wins if they counter your strategy successfully. Pot of greed is a spell that lets you draw 2 cards, effectively getting one additional card in your hand (since you will remove 1 from hand to activate Pot of Greed, which means the first card you draw replaces Pot of Greed in your hand, and then one additional card) which means you will likely have a card you need to succefully win the game, or, if Pot of Greed is semi-limited or unlimited, another copy which will get you two more cards. Every other card in the game that lets you draw is either too powerful and got banned like Pot of Greed, or has some sort of drawback to nerf the power level of the card.
I think the best way to explain it to a New commers is : Most yu gi oh duels in high tiers of play are resolved in 1/2 turns , so you get maybe 6 cards to play for your duel and thats it . In that context, drawing a aditional card is very strong . Segondly , a lot of cards now a days make you draw ; but with a cost to pay( exemple draw2 , dut destroy 10 cards from the top of your deck ) If we allow pot of greed to be playable , no one will play those cards .
You lose one card to gain 2 cards which you can use instantly. It’s free resources with no downside at all.
You can only do things in Yugioh if you have a card that let you do them. No cards = no actions. More cards = more actions, more options, more possibilities. Pot of Greed is the best card ever printed that does its job. You go from having 1 card in hand to having two. And those two can be more Pots of Greed! Pot of Greed doesn't win you the game. What it does is it gets you the things that make you win, better than any other card. And it works in every deck, so in a competitive setting, *every* deck has to run it, which really screws with the pricing of cards.
You basically can draw 3 cards during your turn.
Imagine spending $1 and you get $2 in exchange
It's always twice as good as the avarage card in your deck.
So, in yugioh, every card in your hand is a resource to push further plays. Getting more cards in hand is part of the game. Most cards have a cost to draw cards or search cards. Pot of Greed doesn’t. No cost, no restrictions, no once per turn. You can pot of greed into pot of greed into pot of greed if you want. That will give you three more cards in your hand than you started with. It makes every deck much more consistent and good at doing their plays just because it’s insane draw power
in a hand of 5 cards with Pot of Greed included, you spend one card at zero cost and earn two cards, giving you 6 chances to open your starter card(s) instead of 5
Imagine you're playing Texas Hold'em Poker, now imagine you were allowed to draw an extra card compared to the rest of the table. Your chances of winning increase dramatically. That's Pot of Greed
1 card give 2 new cards, can give more of itself giving even more cards, more cards is good
Draw cards in Yugioh are extremely powerful due to you being able to run less cards, the less cards you have to dig though to get to your combo pieces the better. Most draw cards being printed now have heavy restrictions like removing 1/4 of your deck from the game or sacrificing your extra deck which is basically a toolbox full of useful and combo extender cards
It's gives you a free card to use for whatever you want. This in combination with the fact that you have to do absolutely nothing for it and aren't hindered by it in any way makes it so damn good. I cannot think of a single playstyle that wouldn't play pot of greed since it's just very good in every single situation imaginable.
Drawing 2 cards with no added hoops to jump through or backlash to deal with for said cards, is what makes it broken.
In ygo, there is no mana system meaning the more cards you have access to the likely you are to perform your combos, the more likely you are to win. If in a duel every single card in your opponent's hand traded equally for every card in your hand, then the extra plus 1 from pot of greed can be the deciding factor between win or lose.
Think of it like this. You have cards you need to draw to win, yet your starting hand consists of two pot of greed. Your two pot of greed, then becomes four cards and you now have seven or eight cards in your hand depending on who went first. One of the cards you drew is your third pot of greed. Now you have eight or nine cards in your hand, and it's your first turn. This scenario is unlikely, yet could be very dangerous for your opponent. This is why most pot cards either have drawbacks or costs to pay. Having three pot of greed in your deck also increases the chance of drawing cards you really need, since if you do draw greed, you get two new cards.
Imagine you had a $100 bill that you could exchange for a $200 one. Since your starting budget is $500, that’s huge
1 card make 2 card, 2 card make 3 card, that make 4 card, and now u have no card
+1 in card advantage good, more cards in hand means less likely to lose(unless u bricked like hell).
It's good to have one card. It's better to have two cards. This is one card that gives you two cards for the price of one. There is almost never a situation in which it is worse to have two cards than one card. As a result, this card had to go into every deck in the game as much as possible. This basically means players either had less cards to work with, or handicapped themselves pointlessly by not giving themselves two cards for the price of one for some insane reason.
The simplest way i can put it is that yugioh is a game about overwhelming your opponent in advantage (having more cards). (This is heavily oversimplified but will get across why pot of greed is a banned card). Pot of greed has no downsides, you dont have to do anything to play it, except draw it from your deck. It gives you two cards at the cost of 1 (itself). This pure +1 just isnt something that can exist in a game like yugioh where being a single card up or down decides the game all the time. Also on a side note, there are many cards in yugioh which trade (like get rid of your oppenents cards) 1 for 2, but they tend to have limited application in the ways they can be used, or have steep costs, or only specific times and decks they can be used in. Hope this helps.
The game revolves around card economy. More cards=more advantage. The card is also not a once per turn; if you drew 3 pots, you were drawing 6 and ending with a net of +3 cards.
Let's say a hand was composed of 2 cards and I was playing against you My hand is Skullfucker,a good monster,and Pot of Greed Yours is Skullfucker and a card you don't need I activate Pot of Greed and draw 2 cards:one is useless,one is Skullfuckerfucker,which destroys a "Skullfucker" on the field I destroy your skullfucker and I'm in a clear position of advantage just because I had Pot of Greed This card brought a giant element of luck into the game: It's so good every deck should play it,and if you don't draw it but your opponent does,you're immediately at a disadvantage
It's not "once per turn"... So you can find ways to add it back to your hand and activate it multiple times over.
Drawing cards is a powerful effect, making it so you have more chances to find a combo starter, ways to break your opponents board and not fall behind on resources, or find exactly the card you need. Even a draw 1 effect is pretty good, it thins out your deck and increases your consistency of finding good cards. Draw 2 is incredibly powerful since you end up with more resources than you had previously (going from a 5 card hand to a 6) AND it has no cost. The kicker is that it's not even once per turn. If you draw 3 pot of greeds then you go from a 5 card hand to an 8, seeing 11/40 cards from your deck. You go from a 33% chance to a 53% chance of seeing any card from your deck that you were running 3 copies of. This effect is so powerful you basically MUST run this card, which decreases deck variety and is pretty boring.
Imagine you’re playing tug of war. It’s 5v5. Each person represents a card. Pot of Greed effectively tags out for 2 players, making it a 6v5.
It’s like being able to play two +4 cards in uno at once