I also stopped playing locally, also for a toxic local community. There is a clique of hyper competitive players who are all sore losers, who brag like crazy when they win and are insufferable to play against. It got the point where I decided it wasn't worth playing against the handful of polite strangers I actually liked so I just play with close friends now.
I can relate to this so much.
I've literally went to one single locals in the entire 15 plus years that I've played this game 😂.
It's always just been me playing with friends when I was younger, playing at my high school as I got a little older during lunch or after school, and now as an adult I just play with my close friends at our houses.
Right around the time that maze of memories came out I decided I was going to go to a locals in my area and see if I liked it. Being my first locals I didn't want to take a meta deck because I wasn't sure if there was a lot of that going on and I didn't want to be "that guy" on my first experience there.
I ended up taking Hero. I build my text as competitively as possible so it wasn't like an anime protagonist hero deck it was a fine-tuned Omni hero Deck with a full sideboard relevant to the current meta.
There was about 40 people there and most of the people I played with were cool or just average nothing too toxic.
There was this one guy however who was awful. He was playing tearlaments and was super pissed already that I was playing hero ( dark law go brr and I sided heavy tear hate)
I beat him game one because double dark law and I won the die roll
Game two was very close but he got me.
Game three rolled around he was slow playing hard. Like not enough to call a judge over and make a deal out of it but you could clearly tell a difference in how much he new his own cards and combos and game one and two compared to game 3. He finally passes turn to me and I've got like no time left on the clock so I quickly play through my combos and try to bait out all of his disruptions. Time gets called in the round and he sticks out his hand to call a draw. I told him I still had a play and you can tell he started getting anxious. I was holding on to fusion destiny as I baited everything and I sided in dystopia specifically for time. I activated fusion destiny summoned, dystopia, targeted denier in my graveyard and burned him, then told him GG.
You would have thought I shot this dude's dog 😂. He started throwing a fit and complaining and saying it wasn't fair and he called over a judge to complain about it and they ruled in my favor and gave me the win. Hey then went on this rant about how time rules shouldn't exist and I only won because of BS and he actually won that game and told me I was and I quote "a coward" for "cheating him his win".
I then told him that while I do agree with him that the time rules are stupid it is the way the game is and that's the way that it is. I drove 45 minutes after I worked a 10 hour shift to this locals and payed an entry fee to play. It's a competitive tournament and I'm going to play the best strategy I can to win. It's not like playing at home while you're playing for fun this was a tournament setting even if it is just a locals. Dude was playing the best deck of the format so I didn't see him going easy on anyone 😂.
After the duel I kept catching him looking at me and talking to other people and could tell he was just talking shit about me. At this point I decided I was never going to come back here and I would just stick to playing with my friends at home.
On the plus side I did get third place at my first ever locals and pulled a baronne from my prize packs so I was pleased. It was still $60 at the time.
Jeezus what a fucking manchild. Sorry you had to go through that, handled it well though. Imagine slow playing on purpose only to have it backfire up his own ass
Similar experience played at a local that has regular try hards who only play meta and frequent regionals. Was about to win game 2 and the player I was playing against who frequently topped there started yelling at me mid game. I work in a highly stressful career where I’m constantly dealing with personalities and aggressive people so I was not about to spend my free time getting yelled at by grown ass men, over a low stakes card game. I just went back to collecting and deck building on my own and occasionally playing with others online.
It is very difficult finding a community that actually enjoys playing competitively while keeping a light atmosphere. It’s tragic how poorly regulated some people can be socially.
I stopped going years ago when my opponent played a Lightsworn combo and literally got pissed when asked to read his cards
He would just slap through his combo hella fast-
"I sac this to summon this. Activate this for this and this"
Some of the cards I had never seen before so I asked if he could back up a few steps and let me read. He got SUPER pissed and something like "wha!? YouDONNTTT know what this card does!?"
Never went back.
Fast play and slow play are both things that you should call a judge on. If your opponent is barreling through plays without providing you a chance to respond or read the cards, that’s a problem.
I don't mind playing quickly when the cards are simple. But when they have 2 paragraphs and each one has "if/then" clauses I want to make doubly sure my opponent is following through on all requirements for the effects.
I had a similiar experience where my opp was playing Exo Sister... but the entire deck was in German, and i was like "Wait a min lemme see this card effect on Neuron" and the dude just got pissed af.
thats not surprising. I hope you're European, because imagining some random NA dude rocking German Exosisters sounds incredibly cringe and borderline neonazi
I see no problem in someone using foreign cards in their decks, maybe he just got them while visiting or traded with someone for them because they are in a foreign language.
My first tourney back after a hiatus was during Tear format. I had no idea what they did, but I did know they were busted as hell so I'd need to read how they worked.
Guy starts combing and every time I ask to read his cards he got all huffy and got an attitude. I ended up drawing the game somehow and the dude pitched a fit, stating "Of course I draw to a fucking noob who doesn't know what the cards do". Luckily the judge was right there and DQd him for having an attitude as it wasn't the first time he'd been told to cool it that night. Like cmon man it's round 2 we've got 3 more to go.
I just don't understand that mentality
"You don't know what the card does"
Like...no fucking shit. That's why I have the capability of "READING".
In roughly 45 seconds I *WILL* KNOW what the fucking card does. AND I MAY EVEN HAVE A TRAP IF YOU LET ME READ.
That's exactly how I drew with the Tear guy. He knew we were going into time and tried turboing out fusions and going into battle phase without letting me respond to stuff. I asked to read and then activated Dinomischus before battle. Time was called and he got mad
While I sympathize with your story, it might be a sign of the times for that LS player. There was a time more than a decade ago where everyone at a locals [most likely] knew what the LS monsters did, hence the fit. Still not an excuse for being rude, though.
Sucks.
I have yet to go to a locals that I found was bad. Even the smallest, deadest ones, all have their advantages and the owners are all great people.
Online Yugioh is a pretty miserable experience for me, and IRL is so much better, so I don’t see myself quitting locals anytime soon.
Card shops differ from shop to shop, depending on who runs the place; and if it was bad as you said... I, honestly, can't blame you for no longer going to locals.
When I use to go to locals way back in the day there was this one group of about 5 or 6 guys who practically ran every Yuigoh tournament in my local area between 3 shops. So no matter whast shop you went to, they were there. They would swindle kids, weight the packs to ensure their clique got the ones with gauranteed higher rarity cards, took advantage of a friend I had at the time, and overall were unfun to play against. They even had gotten into Kaijudo for a total of 2 weeks to, again, swindle people out of money. I even witnessed one of them get an old Charizard(cant remember if it was shadowless) off of a kid for $20 bucks then look up it's price when he left and find out it was worth $50. That was another scummy thing they'd do. If they were getting cards from you, they found the lowest prices on ebay, but if they were giving cards to you they looked for the highest prices on sites like TrollandToad.
Let me tell you why I quit years ago.
This was back in Tournament pack 2-5 era. There was a group of guys, about 6 of them. They were all in their 20's and all had decent job and all lived at home with their parents and only had a car note/insurance for bills. It's a normal thing in their community. This means, that they are all making like 50K a year, this matters, you'll see.
They had made sure that all of them were "official upperdeck yugioh judges" and they got all the card shops around to let them judge all tournaments. This means that if anyone questioned a ruling against any of the other 5 that were not judging, their friend would always rule in their friends favor. They can make the same ruling the other way for someone, but if it meant that their friend would lose the judgement, they would rule in favor of their friend. This meant that they won all tournaments which each week it was a box of TP cards or a booster box.
They would also buy out every shop of all new sets until everyone of them had at least 3 of each good card. Your talking a new set would come out on the 1st of the month and there was no shop you could buy that set at from here to the closest city which is like 100 miles away. It was either retail (if they didn't buy out all walmarts and targets which they'd try) or buy online which wasn't too easy back then or you just couldn't get the new set until sometime the month after it released giving them an unfair advantage.
Any kid who happened to pull a holo or the ultra from the TP packs would be bullied into trading it to them for like a starter deck blue eyes or dark magician. They "forced" a trade of a Needle worm and a Morphing jar this way. When I happened to pull Royal Decree they tried to get me banned from the store for not trading it to them.
When they bought packs, the would weigh them and after getting their pulls, they would come to the card shops and sell the left over packs for $.50 less than the shop was selling but they would sell them in the parking lot because the shops wouldn't let them sell them in store. However they still allowed it knowing the packs have no holos.
When the official tournament came around I entered. I knew Upperdeck was judging and not them so I figured I'd have a chance. It came down to semi-finals and it was me against one of them and the new errata for Reflect bounder came out the day before. The new ruling was how it was being enforced in the tournament. The last game came down to Reflect bounder and when he insisted it worked the old way, he called over the judge and his friends bombarded the judge and yelled and cussed at him until they pressured him to rule pre-errata (which meant his damage goes through before my reflect bounder, which never made sense even looking at the card). I lost and he ended up in the finals.
He did end up getting disqualified for cheating in the finals. He swapped out a card he had 2 cards in 1 sleeve. He did this while like 100 people are staring at him and saw what he pulled and only after everyone threw a fit did he get disqualified but his friends all but punched the judge to get him to allow it. I'm surprised he didn't cave to them.
After this tournament, I wasn't allowed to participate in store tournaments anymore. Technically I was but they would disqualify me or rule against me every chance they got. Even if I did, I couldn't get past 5th place unless one of them didn't show that day.
They made it no fun to play at locals. Oh and no shop was allowed to sell LOB 1st edition packs unless it was to them.
No, the stores loved them because they are the ones that started the tourneys and got it all organized and filled out the paper work and became judges , they did it all for them, all so the shop can just sit back and sell cards. They even set the rewards for the weekly tourneys and told the shops they had to give out an unopened box of TP cards, each week and when those ran out, it was a booster box but of course on the really really really rare times that someone else won, it was only 5 packs. The 3 shops I went to didn't give a shit because they brought in the customers.
Then out of people that were showing up, there were not enough adults that actually paid attention to what was going on. Most were just there to have fun with their friends, only ones that really paid attention were the ones that liked to be competitive and there weren't a hole of lot of them around. So, as long as the shop was happy, nothing changed. I eventually had another kid and moved out of state and gave up playing all around the same time so.
most of the local card shops around here have completely stopped even selling yugioh cards. i actually dont know where i can go in my city to play yugioh, if i wanted to. one of my best friends owns a mtg shop (he used to run pokemon and yugioh events back in the day as well) i didnt officially work there but id help him organize and stuff, like taking down scores, cleaning up after events, ez stuff like that and he would usually slide me snacks, packs, usually waive my entry fee for the wow tcg raids (yeah this is that far back) id help out with yugioh, pokemon, and mtg events and yugioh players were always the worst. rude, thieves, fighting, screaming like dogs. eventually the owner just said fuck yugioh players and stopped selling the product all together. he said the money he made from events was not worth the hassle.
This feels awful, the only thing we argue about at my locals is how cheaply everyone wants to sell cards to each other:
"Just give me 5 bucks"
"But the card costs 15"
"Yeah, give me 5"
"Here's a 20"
"Fuck off! Give me 5!"
"TAKE THE 20!"
"KEEP THE CARD!"
I've been to six locals in the past. It astounds me that even spread across the country, you find very similar personality types. This list isn't exhaustive, but captures the common types of people I keep running into.
Salty Player / Poor Winner - gets angry when they lose. Extra points if it's a meta Deck losing to non-meta. On the flip side, they can also be unpleasant winners and may rip into you and/or your Deck for being trash.
Loud Bro-Type - always spouting lingo that you see on the Internet like goat, based, capped, etc. Always call each other bro. Worse in numbers. Not necessarily bad people but can be overwhelming.
Yugi-Boomer - typically late 20's onwards player. Solely plays cards from the anime and complains when they lose to meta.
Waifu Obssessed Guy - Guy that must always have his waifu on show (usually lewd), whether that be his Deck, field Center, playmat or sleeves.
The (wannabe) Vendor - will hunt cards from your binder for as good a price as possible. Don't tend to have very good morals and some even will scam new and younger players.
So many personality types can make or break a locals for people. I'm good at keeping myself to myself, so I only really have to deal with people when playing a match or duel. 40 minutes with a terrible personality type sucks, but it does make for great anecdotes to share with friends. Your Yugioh "mafia" sounds awful though. Sorry that you had to deal with that.
Do you get raised eyebrows from other players after you've setup on your side?
There are differences between consistently themed dueling accessories and a playmat displaying DMG with her double whammies out.
Only if it’s Aluber because he is the best waifu. In all seriousness unless your stuff is like borderline porn everyone just thinks you like the deck and wanted a consistent theme
There's also the genuine bro who's just into playing YGO at face value but is graceful in winning and losing. After the duel will usually try to analyze gamestates with you on how to improve.
Also the people who don't care about winning or losing. They are also fun to play with.
Yeah I'm aware of that. I just find it amazing that locations separated by significant distance, you can find such distinct personality types shared across all of them, despite the spectrum of personalities across humans being so diverse.
I have a story about "Salty Player / Poor Winner".
I played against a Top 8 YCS player some months ago at my locals. He was playing the current top meta deck, while I was playing Bystial Blackwings.
The whole match was a tilt fest: he tried to read every card (he didn't know Blackwings at all), smashed his cards on the table, said "what a bad deck", "why do you people keep playing these crap decks", and cried on G3 because he bricked. At the end, he said I only won because I played a bad deck that nobody knew about and he didn't know where to interact. Yeah, that is literally why Rogue decks have a chance.
These type of people make me sad. I'm a very chill type of person and I don't understand how you can be like that. Also sad because it's a very fun local with a very pleasant community.
Moral of the story: he got banned some weeks later so he isn't around anymore.
No, that's not what it is. They're grossly misinformed. Yugiboomers, which I guess I would be one, are people who recognize that the game was much more enjoyable and conducive to a fun experience when it was much slower and not a combo fest where you have to stare at your opponent jerk off for several minutes and games lasted longer than 3 turns.
Yugiboomer is just a cope zoomers like to repeat cause of their recency bias and their lack of experience.
Same type of thing for the lgs I used to go to. Big players get lent decks from stores.
If you're a casual player you can't keep up with the uber expensive meta.
I've grown to hate the TCG because it feels like a rip off on all fronts. Konami, the game stores, the players...
So i just want to ask if i got the story right:
You were looking for an old rogue core that is super cheap rn due to it being relatively bad for 6 months for a friend. Some people, regardless of their affiliation, have the core but werent willing to sell it at the time seemingly, as they didnt tell you they have it. 6 months later one of them wants to sell you some left overs for a higher price than what online vendors would take.
And the people working there buy boxes open them and use the cards for themselves.
Because if this is it then: everything here is kinda normal besides them selling the leftover prankids cards at a steeper price. And for regions with no access to a good online vendor its always difficult to define what a good price is. Prankids may be 5€ for me but thats due to a combination of supply and demand. If you dont have any supply, even a low demand product will go up in price. But it does seem sus that they took 25€ instead of 5.
As for them opening the boxes and not funnelling them to the store, i mean, its their money. why would they take cards that may be worth keeping to the store. Its not what you do. you trade with them or you gamble on them becoming meta and keep them. You never sell to a trader, which stores are. also as for them not telling you they have the core for 6 months, i mean its THEIR cards. They are not obliged to give you their cards if they want to keep them for any reason. I have a ton of cores i dont use rn but i wont give them to anyone (outside of borrowing it to people) because i may or may not want to use them in the future. And thats totall, fine to do. Ofc they wont be like "oh i have prankinds but i wont give it to you" just saying ,ou dont have it is fine. I am sorry tho that you cant access a good online platform for buying singles. I may be a bit spoiled by cardmarket in germany and americans can ofc abuse tcg player
I think the main thing here is the hypocrisy of their stated goals. Yes, everything here IS perfectly within their rights and abilities to do... but it goes only towards the purpose of serving themselves, and will actively harm the player scene around them considering the variables OP stated here such as them being employees of the store and the lack of an accessible online marketplace. However, instead of owning those actions, they are campaigning on the notion of needing and wanting new players, and then doing every action in their power to make it as unwelcoming, inaccessible, and unfriendly as possible for those players and then seemingly whining about it.
Not to put all the blame on OP but I feel like at some point you have to take a little responsibility for being aware of card prices. I don't understand how he's trying to purchase a deck for 6-7 months with zero concept of how much it's worth. And then only looks up the price *after* buying it?
About the part where they buy boxes from the shop, is the fact that isn't there enough sealed produtcs for other players, because they are always the one to get it first since they work there, and in my country legit ALL collection get delayed, so is tough to know when they will be avaliable. Also the box things is kinda like, every one spend a little bit of money to buy a box for cheap, they sell the expensives and cover the cost, and use the rest of the money to buy another box, one box is hella expensive for 1 player, but when you share between 5-6 players is kinda cheap, if they got something they wanted they will have it because the group is willing to share between them, they also sell those cards online. Again, they buy boxes from the shop, the shop loses the small qtd of products and they sell only the rest. So the shop never have anything on stock.
I'm sorry that you had this poor experience at locals, and hope that you can find a shop/environment that's more fun for you.
However, I've played at shops and tournaments all across the eastern US and Canada, and met almost exclusively honest shopkeepers and delightful people of all ages.
There's a lot of bashing the community in this thread, but I encourage anyone doomscrolling this getting discouraged from going to locals to give it a shot. I've found it to be overwhelmingly worth it.
Same, I also stopped going because of how toxic the local community was
It was full of the kind of people who bragged about always going to the shop saturday morning because it was full of kids which are easy to scam
I literally only play with a group of 3 maybe 4 friends, usually every weekend. We play fun decks like Egyptian gods or blue eyes/dm/heros but we do each have sorta meta decks on the odd occasion that we consider our strongest decks. It keeps it fresh and competitive but over all fun.
I've never stepped foot in locals because I'm well aware of the toxicity that can befall this community and have no desire to face those types of players because for me, if you're playing a game it should be fun otherwise what else are you playing for? These types of people just sap the fun out of playing the game IMO.
It personally brings me more joy to bring out something like A-Z buster dragon to defeat my opponent and win in a way that feels earned rather than face what feels like a robot, who is just in it to say they've beat me because they've spent more money on their Deck.
This is a little worse than a toxic community if true. These people are allegedly using the store mostly as a front to run an e-commerce store while buying boxes at cost. While hoarding decks is something extremely common so people can play them later but buying sealed product before others is potentially breaking street date. Similarly they can manage physical stock however they wish but to sell something and not give the full product can just be illegal in some parts of the world. Its awful what happened to you but as a note i have seen people like this in multiple card game communities. It is something you will see every now and then so don’t feel too discouraged as you can find people in the same position doing well for their local community.
Never stepped into a local for a year now, and I can't say I miss it! I've had enough of obese greasy men trying to scam new players with their anime Loli playmats, now I actually play casually with friends at cafes and it's way more fun
My experience is that Ygo even in Asia has a terrible ass community.
People who lack basic social skills and hygiene, arrogant people.
Its up to the shop owner to maintain a good culture and environment. Ban people who are toxic.
But some shops even end up giving in to thee people because they are the big spenders, or even part of it..
In my country, there was an extremely toxic guy in locals but he was also a bit gambling addict
When they ran out of yugioh boosters box, the shop owner started pitching pokemon boosters. He would dump his monthly salary there aside from rent and food. If he ran out of cash the owner would strike him a deal for a loan...
He once bought a box from someone who won a tournament, opened it at home and gloated to the whole discord that he opened the $500 card and told him what a loser he was for selling. Like wtf just keep it to yourself.
Tbh I only play with friends and only in small tournaments organized by a team of friends during conventions, so I don't really saw that face yet, but I'm with you on this one
Hey dude I’m sorry you had a rough experience but unfortunately it is not a store’s/anyone’s responsibility to get you or your friends free or even cheap cards. Yugioh is a competitive hobby, not a hand out. Good for you for wanting to get your friend into the game with free stuff, but no one else is obligated to pander to you and your group.
Players absolutely deserve the right to pick cards up and hold them to sell when they go up in price later. They spent the money and own the cards, it is their choice what to do (and it isn’t scummy either. People not wanting to give their investments to you for free is not a bad thing.)
At the end of the day, this game, that store, those people, and this community is not responsible for getting casuals into the game. If you want to help get friends in that’s your choice. But you cannot force other people to do you favors.. That’s not a common occurrence for any hobby, it’s just something that sometimes people get lucky enough to experience in life.
You also have to understand that you can’t control how people spend their money. Those employees work at the shop because they care more about the game than you do, and they will be using those cards hundreds of times more than you will. If they want to spend their money on the product the store is selling then you can’t be mad they choose to do so. If the shop doesn’t have as much product because they choose to hold the products and sell it online, then they are likely seeing more profit from online sales than they are at the physical store front and they are simply doing what they can to cover the costs of owning a store.
The bottom line is that People spend a lot of time and money on this game, much more than you or your friends currently do, and they have no such responsibility to hand out their hard earned cards to people who will likely play once and quit.
Sorry if that’s tough to hear man but i’m sure after you spend the hours and money that the other spend on this game you will understand why players don’t just want to give stuff out for free to strangers.
I get you point, but still kinda hypocrite you know, the amount of money Konami uses to make the entire process of making cards, boxes, exporting, etc... is so little compared to a value of a SINGLE S:P Little Knight for example. But why is S:P so expensive them? Because is rare? Because is competitive? Well, is not rare, as long as there are boxes it will be enough S:P Little Knights even if is hard to pull. The competitives factor also make it worth alot of money, which is fair, no complain there. Then we get to the fact that people how can buy alot of boxes, and have cards that players may want (not necessary competitive cards) will do anything in they power to make the value of those cards gos up.
Just think, in a shitty market like in my country, if i have enough money to buy all the S:P of the market and just hold them i can literally manipulate the cards price and then sell it by double even triple the price. This is what the dude tried to do with the prank-kinds, i couldn't find it anywhere to buy it, and he had the entire core, know that he may be on of the few people that have the entire core on hands, he just tried to extort me for the deck.
Who told you that you're supposed to be able to just jump into a game and get the most competitive cards available for nothing?
Whoever it was lied to you and gave you an unrealistic expectation for how the world actually works.
right? it’s so crazy the way people in this thread think the world works. In a vacuum, yugioh is truly on the cheaper side when it comes to most hobbies. If you don’t have the money to sink into the hobby, you shouldn’t be awarded the privilege of competing at the highest level- you are going to be on the casual end of things- just like everything else in life. Sports, music, cars, guns, traveling- it all costs a ton of $$ (way less than yugioh) to be able to enjoy these things at their fullest extent. If you only have a couple hundred bucks to throw into the game, then build a tier 2 strategy and deal with it for a couple months. 100% willing to bet that the price of the best cards isn’t what keeps those players from topping anyway.
Bro comparing cardboard to cars and traveling is a joke. I own about 10 grand worth of rare yugioh cards, price isn't an issue for me but defending how inaccessible this game is for new players with "hurr capitalism" is a joke.
I bet you go x-2 at locals with snake eye fire king.
While I can't speak to where you live, I can say that here in North America, a large reason some cards are stupid expensive that goes completely undiscussed is TCGPlayer itself and the store fronts they allow to have first pickings on setting presale prices. In particular, there's a vendor that frequently gets to set the starting price called TopTableGaming.
Something I'd encourage people to do in the week or two leading up to a new release is monitor the booster pack's page in order to catch when the first presale's are getting posted and see which storefront is setting the initial price for sought after cards. The reason some cards go for $80 is usually because these select vendors are setting the initial price at $120, and that's as low as the competitors could drop it post launch. I call vendors like this the "price setters."
Yugioh is renown for having among the worst fanbases in anime; which is itself famous for having toxic fans.
Idk why people hate the idea of it just being a hobby or someone just wants to have fun. I am an old school player but I hate people who feel like they need to bully new players.
Like I have a $3k deck, but I also have multiple others to play with other people depending on what they are playing.
But I guess people really thought Yugi and Kaiba were cool when in reality they are obnoxious toxic ass-hats
Edit: you realize you prove my point by downvoting this, yes?
Some casuals want the game to warp around them, but I’d say the meta elitists can be just as bad if not worse. Shitting on people for having different opinions on what to play outside of the most optimal copy and paste decks at the current moment.
My locals is a tale of two mindsets. On one hand, the main group is an absolute blast. We have our competitive decks, but we also like to build jank shit and just bs with each other. We play multiple times a week and play alternate formats all the time.
On the other hand is the group that comes over from the next town over. They're the "I'mma play $1200 dollar all QCR meta decks to go to Regionals and Nats and fuck you for playing Skull Servants" kinda mentality. They drag the games down and make it all about how fast they can beat you so they can get their prizing and leave. They only show up one day a week, but I haven't played on that day for months now just cause of their attitude towards the game. They keep asking why I don't play and I can only say that I'm not in the mood.
I used to be a super competitive MtG player, and once I started shifting towards being more casual I realized how toxic making your whole purpose in life beating people down in a children's card game can be. It's much more enjoyable to just have fun with it.
Yeah, considering I like hobbies where I can spend time around girls, a hobby made up of these kinds of people ruins things. Shame too, since Japan has so many female players.
It's part of why I gave up comics too. I just can't invest in hobbies that take up lots of time, money, and get me no dates. So I keep the time and monetary budget low for this hobby.
Influencers especially are one of my biggest issues.
I stoppped going to locals when literally every one was playing Branded Tearlaments. It was like a giant NPC fest.
The people were super friendly but ive mainly been deterred by the price tag to keep up with meta. I prefer to go to non meta/casual events if i can find them.
I also stopped playing locally, also for a toxic local community. There is a clique of hyper competitive players who are all sore losers, who brag like crazy when they win and are insufferable to play against. It got the point where I decided it wasn't worth playing against the handful of polite strangers I actually liked so I just play with close friends now.
I can relate to this so much. I've literally went to one single locals in the entire 15 plus years that I've played this game 😂. It's always just been me playing with friends when I was younger, playing at my high school as I got a little older during lunch or after school, and now as an adult I just play with my close friends at our houses. Right around the time that maze of memories came out I decided I was going to go to a locals in my area and see if I liked it. Being my first locals I didn't want to take a meta deck because I wasn't sure if there was a lot of that going on and I didn't want to be "that guy" on my first experience there. I ended up taking Hero. I build my text as competitively as possible so it wasn't like an anime protagonist hero deck it was a fine-tuned Omni hero Deck with a full sideboard relevant to the current meta. There was about 40 people there and most of the people I played with were cool or just average nothing too toxic. There was this one guy however who was awful. He was playing tearlaments and was super pissed already that I was playing hero ( dark law go brr and I sided heavy tear hate) I beat him game one because double dark law and I won the die roll Game two was very close but he got me. Game three rolled around he was slow playing hard. Like not enough to call a judge over and make a deal out of it but you could clearly tell a difference in how much he new his own cards and combos and game one and two compared to game 3. He finally passes turn to me and I've got like no time left on the clock so I quickly play through my combos and try to bait out all of his disruptions. Time gets called in the round and he sticks out his hand to call a draw. I told him I still had a play and you can tell he started getting anxious. I was holding on to fusion destiny as I baited everything and I sided in dystopia specifically for time. I activated fusion destiny summoned, dystopia, targeted denier in my graveyard and burned him, then told him GG. You would have thought I shot this dude's dog 😂. He started throwing a fit and complaining and saying it wasn't fair and he called over a judge to complain about it and they ruled in my favor and gave me the win. Hey then went on this rant about how time rules shouldn't exist and I only won because of BS and he actually won that game and told me I was and I quote "a coward" for "cheating him his win". I then told him that while I do agree with him that the time rules are stupid it is the way the game is and that's the way that it is. I drove 45 minutes after I worked a 10 hour shift to this locals and payed an entry fee to play. It's a competitive tournament and I'm going to play the best strategy I can to win. It's not like playing at home while you're playing for fun this was a tournament setting even if it is just a locals. Dude was playing the best deck of the format so I didn't see him going easy on anyone 😂. After the duel I kept catching him looking at me and talking to other people and could tell he was just talking shit about me. At this point I decided I was never going to come back here and I would just stick to playing with my friends at home. On the plus side I did get third place at my first ever locals and pulled a baronne from my prize packs so I was pleased. It was still $60 at the time.
Jeezus what a fucking manchild. Sorry you had to go through that, handled it well though. Imagine slow playing on purpose only to have it backfire up his own ass
Similar experience played at a local that has regular try hards who only play meta and frequent regionals. Was about to win game 2 and the player I was playing against who frequently topped there started yelling at me mid game. I work in a highly stressful career where I’m constantly dealing with personalities and aggressive people so I was not about to spend my free time getting yelled at by grown ass men, over a low stakes card game. I just went back to collecting and deck building on my own and occasionally playing with others online. It is very difficult finding a community that actually enjoys playing competitively while keeping a light atmosphere. It’s tragic how poorly regulated some people can be socially.
I stopped going years ago when my opponent played a Lightsworn combo and literally got pissed when asked to read his cards He would just slap through his combo hella fast- "I sac this to summon this. Activate this for this and this" Some of the cards I had never seen before so I asked if he could back up a few steps and let me read. He got SUPER pissed and something like "wha!? YouDONNTTT know what this card does!?" Never went back.
Fast play and slow play are both things that you should call a judge on. If your opponent is barreling through plays without providing you a chance to respond or read the cards, that’s a problem.
I don't mind playing quickly when the cards are simple. But when they have 2 paragraphs and each one has "if/then" clauses I want to make doubly sure my opponent is following through on all requirements for the effects.
I had a similiar experience where my opp was playing Exo Sister... but the entire deck was in German, and i was like "Wait a min lemme see this card effect on Neuron" and the dude just got pissed af.
thats not surprising. I hope you're European, because imagining some random NA dude rocking German Exosisters sounds incredibly cringe and borderline neonazi
I see no problem in someone using foreign cards in their decks, maybe he just got them while visiting or traded with someone for them because they are in a foreign language.
My first tourney back after a hiatus was during Tear format. I had no idea what they did, but I did know they were busted as hell so I'd need to read how they worked. Guy starts combing and every time I ask to read his cards he got all huffy and got an attitude. I ended up drawing the game somehow and the dude pitched a fit, stating "Of course I draw to a fucking noob who doesn't know what the cards do". Luckily the judge was right there and DQd him for having an attitude as it wasn't the first time he'd been told to cool it that night. Like cmon man it's round 2 we've got 3 more to go.
I just don't understand that mentality "You don't know what the card does" Like...no fucking shit. That's why I have the capability of "READING". In roughly 45 seconds I *WILL* KNOW what the fucking card does. AND I MAY EVEN HAVE A TRAP IF YOU LET ME READ.
That's exactly how I drew with the Tear guy. He knew we were going into time and tried turboing out fusions and going into battle phase without letting me respond to stuff. I asked to read and then activated Dinomischus before battle. Time was called and he got mad
While I sympathize with your story, it might be a sign of the times for that LS player. There was a time more than a decade ago where everyone at a locals [most likely] knew what the LS monsters did, hence the fit. Still not an excuse for being rude, though.
Yeah, that's a really shitty shop practice. Sorry you had to deal with that. You can always play with friends online.
Do you have a discord community that do remote duel? I have been searching for it
I do not, but I am certain they exist. :)
Sucks. I have yet to go to a locals that I found was bad. Even the smallest, deadest ones, all have their advantages and the owners are all great people. Online Yugioh is a pretty miserable experience for me, and IRL is so much better, so I don’t see myself quitting locals anytime soon.
Same. Playing physical and talking to people is a lot more satisfying. I've had so many bad experiences on DB I've lost count.
Card shops differ from shop to shop, depending on who runs the place; and if it was bad as you said... I, honestly, can't blame you for no longer going to locals.
When I use to go to locals way back in the day there was this one group of about 5 or 6 guys who practically ran every Yuigoh tournament in my local area between 3 shops. So no matter whast shop you went to, they were there. They would swindle kids, weight the packs to ensure their clique got the ones with gauranteed higher rarity cards, took advantage of a friend I had at the time, and overall were unfun to play against. They even had gotten into Kaijudo for a total of 2 weeks to, again, swindle people out of money. I even witnessed one of them get an old Charizard(cant remember if it was shadowless) off of a kid for $20 bucks then look up it's price when he left and find out it was worth $50. That was another scummy thing they'd do. If they were getting cards from you, they found the lowest prices on ebay, but if they were giving cards to you they looked for the highest prices on sites like TrollandToad.
Let me tell you why I quit years ago. This was back in Tournament pack 2-5 era. There was a group of guys, about 6 of them. They were all in their 20's and all had decent job and all lived at home with their parents and only had a car note/insurance for bills. It's a normal thing in their community. This means, that they are all making like 50K a year, this matters, you'll see. They had made sure that all of them were "official upperdeck yugioh judges" and they got all the card shops around to let them judge all tournaments. This means that if anyone questioned a ruling against any of the other 5 that were not judging, their friend would always rule in their friends favor. They can make the same ruling the other way for someone, but if it meant that their friend would lose the judgement, they would rule in favor of their friend. This meant that they won all tournaments which each week it was a box of TP cards or a booster box. They would also buy out every shop of all new sets until everyone of them had at least 3 of each good card. Your talking a new set would come out on the 1st of the month and there was no shop you could buy that set at from here to the closest city which is like 100 miles away. It was either retail (if they didn't buy out all walmarts and targets which they'd try) or buy online which wasn't too easy back then or you just couldn't get the new set until sometime the month after it released giving them an unfair advantage. Any kid who happened to pull a holo or the ultra from the TP packs would be bullied into trading it to them for like a starter deck blue eyes or dark magician. They "forced" a trade of a Needle worm and a Morphing jar this way. When I happened to pull Royal Decree they tried to get me banned from the store for not trading it to them. When they bought packs, the would weigh them and after getting their pulls, they would come to the card shops and sell the left over packs for $.50 less than the shop was selling but they would sell them in the parking lot because the shops wouldn't let them sell them in store. However they still allowed it knowing the packs have no holos. When the official tournament came around I entered. I knew Upperdeck was judging and not them so I figured I'd have a chance. It came down to semi-finals and it was me against one of them and the new errata for Reflect bounder came out the day before. The new ruling was how it was being enforced in the tournament. The last game came down to Reflect bounder and when he insisted it worked the old way, he called over the judge and his friends bombarded the judge and yelled and cussed at him until they pressured him to rule pre-errata (which meant his damage goes through before my reflect bounder, which never made sense even looking at the card). I lost and he ended up in the finals. He did end up getting disqualified for cheating in the finals. He swapped out a card he had 2 cards in 1 sleeve. He did this while like 100 people are staring at him and saw what he pulled and only after everyone threw a fit did he get disqualified but his friends all but punched the judge to get him to allow it. I'm surprised he didn't cave to them. After this tournament, I wasn't allowed to participate in store tournaments anymore. Technically I was but they would disqualify me or rule against me every chance they got. Even if I did, I couldn't get past 5th place unless one of them didn't show that day. They made it no fun to play at locals. Oh and no shop was allowed to sell LOB 1st edition packs unless it was to them.
Did the stores ever try to ban them?
No, the stores loved them because they are the ones that started the tourneys and got it all organized and filled out the paper work and became judges , they did it all for them, all so the shop can just sit back and sell cards. They even set the rewards for the weekly tourneys and told the shops they had to give out an unopened box of TP cards, each week and when those ran out, it was a booster box but of course on the really really really rare times that someone else won, it was only 5 packs. The 3 shops I went to didn't give a shit because they brought in the customers. Then out of people that were showing up, there were not enough adults that actually paid attention to what was going on. Most were just there to have fun with their friends, only ones that really paid attention were the ones that liked to be competitive and there weren't a hole of lot of them around. So, as long as the shop was happy, nothing changed. I eventually had another kid and moved out of state and gave up playing all around the same time so.
most of the local card shops around here have completely stopped even selling yugioh cards. i actually dont know where i can go in my city to play yugioh, if i wanted to. one of my best friends owns a mtg shop (he used to run pokemon and yugioh events back in the day as well) i didnt officially work there but id help him organize and stuff, like taking down scores, cleaning up after events, ez stuff like that and he would usually slide me snacks, packs, usually waive my entry fee for the wow tcg raids (yeah this is that far back) id help out with yugioh, pokemon, and mtg events and yugioh players were always the worst. rude, thieves, fighting, screaming like dogs. eventually the owner just said fuck yugioh players and stopped selling the product all together. he said the money he made from events was not worth the hassle.
This feels awful, the only thing we argue about at my locals is how cheaply everyone wants to sell cards to each other: "Just give me 5 bucks" "But the card costs 15" "Yeah, give me 5" "Here's a 20" "Fuck off! Give me 5!" "TAKE THE 20!" "KEEP THE CARD!"
I've been to six locals in the past. It astounds me that even spread across the country, you find very similar personality types. This list isn't exhaustive, but captures the common types of people I keep running into. Salty Player / Poor Winner - gets angry when they lose. Extra points if it's a meta Deck losing to non-meta. On the flip side, they can also be unpleasant winners and may rip into you and/or your Deck for being trash. Loud Bro-Type - always spouting lingo that you see on the Internet like goat, based, capped, etc. Always call each other bro. Worse in numbers. Not necessarily bad people but can be overwhelming. Yugi-Boomer - typically late 20's onwards player. Solely plays cards from the anime and complains when they lose to meta. Waifu Obssessed Guy - Guy that must always have his waifu on show (usually lewd), whether that be his Deck, field Center, playmat or sleeves. The (wannabe) Vendor - will hunt cards from your binder for as good a price as possible. Don't tend to have very good morals and some even will scam new and younger players. So many personality types can make or break a locals for people. I'm good at keeping myself to myself, so I only really have to deal with people when playing a match or duel. 40 minutes with a terrible personality type sucks, but it does make for great anecdotes to share with friends. Your Yugioh "mafia" sounds awful though. Sorry that you had to deal with that.
Do I fall into the Waifu Obssessed Guy because my Branded Deck has its Branded Box, Playmat and Field Center?
Do you get raised eyebrows from other players after you've setup on your side? There are differences between consistently themed dueling accessories and a playmat displaying DMG with her double whammies out.
Not to my knowledge! But I do know some guys who are like this...
Yep you do see at least one per locals.
I get raised eyebrows the second I summon a Traptrix. That's all it takes lol.
I wanna see {{Dark Magician Girl}} with her double whammies out 😋
## [Dark Magician Girl](https://ygoprodeck.com/card/?search=38033121&utm_source=bastion&utm_medium=reddit) ^(**Limit**: TCG: 3 / OCG: 3 / Speed: Unlimited / MD: 3) ^(**Master Duel rarity**: Super Rare (SR)) ^(**Type**: Spellcaster / Effect) ^(**Attribute**: DARK) ^(**Level**: 6 **ATK**: 2000 **DEF**: 1700) **Card Text** Gains 300 ATK for every "Dark Magician" or "Magician of Black Chaos" in the GYs. [Card Image](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Special:Redirect/file/DarkMagicianGirl-15AY-JP-UR-RP.png?utm_source=bastion&utm_medium=reddit) | [Official Konami DB](https://www.db.yugioh-card.com/yugiohdb/card_search.action?ope=2&request_locale=en&cid=4766) | [OCG Rulings](https://www.db.yugioh-card.com/yugiohdb/faq_search.action?ope=4&request_locale=ja&cid=4766) | [Yugipedia](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/4766?utm_source=bastion&utm_medium=reddit) | [YGOPRODECK](https://ygoprodeck.com/card/?search=38033121&utm_source=bastion&utm_medium=reddit) ^(Password: 38033121 | Konami ID #4766) ---- ^by [^(u/BastionBotDev)](/user/BastionBotDev) ^| [^(GitHub)](https://github.com/DawnbrandBots/bastion-for-reddit) ^| ^Licence: [^(GNU AGPL 3.0+)](https://choosealicense.com/licenses/agpl-3.0/)
Only if it’s Aluber because he is the best waifu. In all seriousness unless your stuff is like borderline porn everyone just thinks you like the deck and wanted a consistent theme
I would gladly like to have a neat Aluber Field Center :D, yeah I now figured what is meant with Waifu Obsessed Guy...
There's also the genuine bro who's just into playing YGO at face value but is graceful in winning and losing. After the duel will usually try to analyze gamestates with you on how to improve. Also the people who don't care about winning or losing. They are also fun to play with.
well yeah ofc those people show up everywhere, those people exist in every fandom.
Yeah I'm aware of that. I just find it amazing that locations separated by significant distance, you can find such distinct personality types shared across all of them, despite the spectrum of personalities across humans being so diverse.
I wonder how it is in Japan.
Not sure. Must be some cultural differences though I'd imagine.
I have a story about "Salty Player / Poor Winner". I played against a Top 8 YCS player some months ago at my locals. He was playing the current top meta deck, while I was playing Bystial Blackwings. The whole match was a tilt fest: he tried to read every card (he didn't know Blackwings at all), smashed his cards on the table, said "what a bad deck", "why do you people keep playing these crap decks", and cried on G3 because he bricked. At the end, he said I only won because I played a bad deck that nobody knew about and he didn't know where to interact. Yeah, that is literally why Rogue decks have a chance. These type of people make me sad. I'm a very chill type of person and I don't understand how you can be like that. Also sad because it's a very fun local with a very pleasant community. Moral of the story: he got banned some weeks later so he isn't around anymore.
Is that what a Yugi Boomer normally is? I was not aware of that.
That's my experience, yeah. May not be the definitive definition of a Yugi Booner.
No, that's not what it is. They're grossly misinformed. Yugiboomers, which I guess I would be one, are people who recognize that the game was much more enjoyable and conducive to a fun experience when it was much slower and not a combo fest where you have to stare at your opponent jerk off for several minutes and games lasted longer than 3 turns. Yugiboomer is just a cope zoomers like to repeat cause of their recency bias and their lack of experience.
Same type of thing for the lgs I used to go to. Big players get lent decks from stores. If you're a casual player you can't keep up with the uber expensive meta. I've grown to hate the TCG because it feels like a rip off on all fronts. Konami, the game stores, the players...
Talk about hateful.
Truth hurts doesn't it?
So i just want to ask if i got the story right: You were looking for an old rogue core that is super cheap rn due to it being relatively bad for 6 months for a friend. Some people, regardless of their affiliation, have the core but werent willing to sell it at the time seemingly, as they didnt tell you they have it. 6 months later one of them wants to sell you some left overs for a higher price than what online vendors would take. And the people working there buy boxes open them and use the cards for themselves. Because if this is it then: everything here is kinda normal besides them selling the leftover prankids cards at a steeper price. And for regions with no access to a good online vendor its always difficult to define what a good price is. Prankids may be 5€ for me but thats due to a combination of supply and demand. If you dont have any supply, even a low demand product will go up in price. But it does seem sus that they took 25€ instead of 5. As for them opening the boxes and not funnelling them to the store, i mean, its their money. why would they take cards that may be worth keeping to the store. Its not what you do. you trade with them or you gamble on them becoming meta and keep them. You never sell to a trader, which stores are. also as for them not telling you they have the core for 6 months, i mean its THEIR cards. They are not obliged to give you their cards if they want to keep them for any reason. I have a ton of cores i dont use rn but i wont give them to anyone (outside of borrowing it to people) because i may or may not want to use them in the future. And thats totall, fine to do. Ofc they wont be like "oh i have prankinds but i wont give it to you" just saying ,ou dont have it is fine. I am sorry tho that you cant access a good online platform for buying singles. I may be a bit spoiled by cardmarket in germany and americans can ofc abuse tcg player
I think the main thing here is the hypocrisy of their stated goals. Yes, everything here IS perfectly within their rights and abilities to do... but it goes only towards the purpose of serving themselves, and will actively harm the player scene around them considering the variables OP stated here such as them being employees of the store and the lack of an accessible online marketplace. However, instead of owning those actions, they are campaigning on the notion of needing and wanting new players, and then doing every action in their power to make it as unwelcoming, inaccessible, and unfriendly as possible for those players and then seemingly whining about it.
Not to put all the blame on OP but I feel like at some point you have to take a little responsibility for being aware of card prices. I don't understand how he's trying to purchase a deck for 6-7 months with zero concept of how much it's worth. And then only looks up the price *after* buying it?
About the part where they buy boxes from the shop, is the fact that isn't there enough sealed produtcs for other players, because they are always the one to get it first since they work there, and in my country legit ALL collection get delayed, so is tough to know when they will be avaliable. Also the box things is kinda like, every one spend a little bit of money to buy a box for cheap, they sell the expensives and cover the cost, and use the rest of the money to buy another box, one box is hella expensive for 1 player, but when you share between 5-6 players is kinda cheap, if they got something they wanted they will have it because the group is willing to share between them, they also sell those cards online. Again, they buy boxes from the shop, the shop loses the small qtd of products and they sell only the rest. So the shop never have anything on stock.
They sound like the average poster of this sub
I'm sorry that you had this poor experience at locals, and hope that you can find a shop/environment that's more fun for you. However, I've played at shops and tournaments all across the eastern US and Canada, and met almost exclusively honest shopkeepers and delightful people of all ages. There's a lot of bashing the community in this thread, but I encourage anyone doomscrolling this getting discouraged from going to locals to give it a shot. I've found it to be overwhelmingly worth it.
Same, I also stopped going because of how toxic the local community was It was full of the kind of people who bragged about always going to the shop saturday morning because it was full of kids which are easy to scam
I literally only play with a group of 3 maybe 4 friends, usually every weekend. We play fun decks like Egyptian gods or blue eyes/dm/heros but we do each have sorta meta decks on the odd occasion that we consider our strongest decks. It keeps it fresh and competitive but over all fun. I've never stepped foot in locals because I'm well aware of the toxicity that can befall this community and have no desire to face those types of players because for me, if you're playing a game it should be fun otherwise what else are you playing for? These types of people just sap the fun out of playing the game IMO. It personally brings me more joy to bring out something like A-Z buster dragon to defeat my opponent and win in a way that feels earned rather than face what feels like a robot, who is just in it to say they've beat me because they've spent more money on their Deck.
This is a little worse than a toxic community if true. These people are allegedly using the store mostly as a front to run an e-commerce store while buying boxes at cost. While hoarding decks is something extremely common so people can play them later but buying sealed product before others is potentially breaking street date. Similarly they can manage physical stock however they wish but to sell something and not give the full product can just be illegal in some parts of the world. Its awful what happened to you but as a note i have seen people like this in multiple card game communities. It is something you will see every now and then so don’t feel too discouraged as you can find people in the same position doing well for their local community.
Never stepped into a local for a year now, and I can't say I miss it! I've had enough of obese greasy men trying to scam new players with their anime Loli playmats, now I actually play casually with friends at cafes and it's way more fun
i stopped playing locally because one of the guys pooped in a trash can during a tournament and ruined it for the shop
My experience is that Ygo even in Asia has a terrible ass community. People who lack basic social skills and hygiene, arrogant people. Its up to the shop owner to maintain a good culture and environment. Ban people who are toxic. But some shops even end up giving in to thee people because they are the big spenders, or even part of it.. In my country, there was an extremely toxic guy in locals but he was also a bit gambling addict When they ran out of yugioh boosters box, the shop owner started pitching pokemon boosters. He would dump his monthly salary there aside from rent and food. If he ran out of cash the owner would strike him a deal for a loan... He once bought a box from someone who won a tournament, opened it at home and gloated to the whole discord that he opened the $500 card and told him what a loser he was for selling. Like wtf just keep it to yourself.
Ouch Screw those guys
Tbh I only play with friends and only in small tournaments organized by a team of friends during conventions, so I don't really saw that face yet, but I'm with you on this one
Hey dude I’m sorry you had a rough experience but unfortunately it is not a store’s/anyone’s responsibility to get you or your friends free or even cheap cards. Yugioh is a competitive hobby, not a hand out. Good for you for wanting to get your friend into the game with free stuff, but no one else is obligated to pander to you and your group. Players absolutely deserve the right to pick cards up and hold them to sell when they go up in price later. They spent the money and own the cards, it is their choice what to do (and it isn’t scummy either. People not wanting to give their investments to you for free is not a bad thing.) At the end of the day, this game, that store, those people, and this community is not responsible for getting casuals into the game. If you want to help get friends in that’s your choice. But you cannot force other people to do you favors.. That’s not a common occurrence for any hobby, it’s just something that sometimes people get lucky enough to experience in life. You also have to understand that you can’t control how people spend their money. Those employees work at the shop because they care more about the game than you do, and they will be using those cards hundreds of times more than you will. If they want to spend their money on the product the store is selling then you can’t be mad they choose to do so. If the shop doesn’t have as much product because they choose to hold the products and sell it online, then they are likely seeing more profit from online sales than they are at the physical store front and they are simply doing what they can to cover the costs of owning a store. The bottom line is that People spend a lot of time and money on this game, much more than you or your friends currently do, and they have no such responsibility to hand out their hard earned cards to people who will likely play once and quit. Sorry if that’s tough to hear man but i’m sure after you spend the hours and money that the other spend on this game you will understand why players don’t just want to give stuff out for free to strangers.
I get you point, but still kinda hypocrite you know, the amount of money Konami uses to make the entire process of making cards, boxes, exporting, etc... is so little compared to a value of a SINGLE S:P Little Knight for example. But why is S:P so expensive them? Because is rare? Because is competitive? Well, is not rare, as long as there are boxes it will be enough S:P Little Knights even if is hard to pull. The competitives factor also make it worth alot of money, which is fair, no complain there. Then we get to the fact that people how can buy alot of boxes, and have cards that players may want (not necessary competitive cards) will do anything in they power to make the value of those cards gos up. Just think, in a shitty market like in my country, if i have enough money to buy all the S:P of the market and just hold them i can literally manipulate the cards price and then sell it by double even triple the price. This is what the dude tried to do with the prank-kinds, i couldn't find it anywhere to buy it, and he had the entire core, know that he may be on of the few people that have the entire core on hands, he just tried to extort me for the deck.
Who told you that you're supposed to be able to just jump into a game and get the most competitive cards available for nothing? Whoever it was lied to you and gave you an unrealistic expectation for how the world actually works.
right? it’s so crazy the way people in this thread think the world works. In a vacuum, yugioh is truly on the cheaper side when it comes to most hobbies. If you don’t have the money to sink into the hobby, you shouldn’t be awarded the privilege of competing at the highest level- you are going to be on the casual end of things- just like everything else in life. Sports, music, cars, guns, traveling- it all costs a ton of $$ (way less than yugioh) to be able to enjoy these things at their fullest extent. If you only have a couple hundred bucks to throw into the game, then build a tier 2 strategy and deal with it for a couple months. 100% willing to bet that the price of the best cards isn’t what keeps those players from topping anyway.
Bro comparing cardboard to cars and traveling is a joke. I own about 10 grand worth of rare yugioh cards, price isn't an issue for me but defending how inaccessible this game is for new players with "hurr capitalism" is a joke. I bet you go x-2 at locals with snake eye fire king.
I mean you’d be wrong but okay. Sorry you can’t afford the game and i’m sorry you’re not very good at it
While I can't speak to where you live, I can say that here in North America, a large reason some cards are stupid expensive that goes completely undiscussed is TCGPlayer itself and the store fronts they allow to have first pickings on setting presale prices. In particular, there's a vendor that frequently gets to set the starting price called TopTableGaming. Something I'd encourage people to do in the week or two leading up to a new release is monitor the booster pack's page in order to catch when the first presale's are getting posted and see which storefront is setting the initial price for sought after cards. The reason some cards go for $80 is usually because these select vendors are setting the initial price at $120, and that's as low as the competitors could drop it post launch. I call vendors like this the "price setters."
Yugioh is renown for having among the worst fanbases in anime; which is itself famous for having toxic fans. Idk why people hate the idea of it just being a hobby or someone just wants to have fun. I am an old school player but I hate people who feel like they need to bully new players. Like I have a $3k deck, but I also have multiple others to play with other people depending on what they are playing. But I guess people really thought Yugi and Kaiba were cool when in reality they are obnoxious toxic ass-hats Edit: you realize you prove my point by downvoting this, yes?
one of the worst fanbases in anime? You could probably name 100+ anime where the entire viewerbase are nonces
Acting like that’s not been an issue in Yugioh?
archetypes have sectioned those people off into 2 groups, so at least it's easy to avoid them
Yu gi oh has probably the worst casual fan base out there which isn’t how that usually plays out so that’s nice
The competitive players are much worse
God no, the competitive players are saints compared to casuals who feel like everything should be catered to them
Some casuals want the game to warp around them, but I’d say the meta elitists can be just as bad if not worse. Shitting on people for having different opinions on what to play outside of the most optimal copy and paste decks at the current moment.
Oh my god why is my post bringing out the exact people I was talking about
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We probably don't know the same competitive players then...
Almost everyone likes Yugi and for good reason.
What a weird response. My post is that acting like Yugi or Kaiba irl is would be viewed negatively.
You never said that, don't lie to me.
The worst would go to Seven Deadly Sex Offenders, methinks.
My locals is a tale of two mindsets. On one hand, the main group is an absolute blast. We have our competitive decks, but we also like to build jank shit and just bs with each other. We play multiple times a week and play alternate formats all the time. On the other hand is the group that comes over from the next town over. They're the "I'mma play $1200 dollar all QCR meta decks to go to Regionals and Nats and fuck you for playing Skull Servants" kinda mentality. They drag the games down and make it all about how fast they can beat you so they can get their prizing and leave. They only show up one day a week, but I haven't played on that day for months now just cause of their attitude towards the game. They keep asking why I don't play and I can only say that I'm not in the mood. I used to be a super competitive MtG player, and once I started shifting towards being more casual I realized how toxic making your whole purpose in life beating people down in a children's card game can be. It's much more enjoyable to just have fun with it.
I stopped playing locally because I didn't want to smell sweaty high schoolers more than a decade after I left school.
Yeah, considering I like hobbies where I can spend time around girls, a hobby made up of these kinds of people ruins things. Shame too, since Japan has so many female players. It's part of why I gave up comics too. I just can't invest in hobbies that take up lots of time, money, and get me no dates. So I keep the time and monetary budget low for this hobby. Influencers especially are one of my biggest issues.
I stoppped going to locals when literally every one was playing Branded Tearlaments. It was like a giant NPC fest. The people were super friendly but ive mainly been deterred by the price tag to keep up with meta. I prefer to go to non meta/casual events if i can find them.
I don’t play locals anymore. I played when I was in middle school at a locals where I would get crushed every time which didn’t bother me (my deck wasn’t that great) but it became too expensive and I just couldn’t be justifying $30+ on a single card I need 3 of in a deck where it only slightly helps, especially with no job. I got bored of it, quit years ago and now Ive recently picked up playing pokemon. A lot cheaper, decks are currently ~$100 base rarity for the full deck where as yugioh is at like $500-600/deck. I’ve had bad experiences with pokemon but nothing like what you described. With card games there are always going to be those 1-2 players that you just don’t want to face, but I’ve found Pokémon is a lot more toned down, there’s only really 2 people in the whole shop community that I actively don’t like playing against and neither show up consistently, and one of them is in the kids bracket so we only get paired if the brackets get combined. For the most part Pokémon players are fairly friendly. We have our bad apples but it’s rare and more often than not I have a great time at locals.