When did magic introduce that rule it’s been ages since I’ve played, I also imagine that doesn’t apply to land, so you land to monster ratio wouldn’t change.
And I believe those rules wree introduced to yugioh after this debacle, I could be wrong. But it’s not about the individual cards, you need monsters/traps/energy ratios. Those odds wouldn’t change.
I started playing during revised, specifically with the Fallen Empires expansion, and thought that the 4 card limit had always been a part of the game. I looked at my Pocket Players Guide from around that time and could not find that rule. After a little bit of research I ran into this comment on reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/2jxr9z/comment/clh3ip7 which seems to have an answer although their source linked no longer works. In 1996 the mirage rule book has the 4 card limit listed under “house rules” and in 1999 the Sixth Edition Comprehensive Rules Document has the 4 card limit listed as rule 100.2
Again unfortunately the link to that document is broken so we can’t be 100% sure, but it seems the answer is sometime between Mirage in 1996 and Sixth Edition in 1999
The 1998 tournament guide I found doesn’t mention anything about card limits except for single cards and banned cards.
Mentions the 40 card minimum for drafting.
But that doesn’t line up with people saying ice age, since ice age is 1995(?). So it seems to be officially in 1999 and was a house rule somehow before that. Weird it being a house rule before official though…
Four card limits were implemented in the 1990’s; I remember it when Ice Age was released.
What year was that? I found a 1998 tournament pamphlet and nothing about 4 card limits and still had 40 card minimum.
That might be a limited (sealed/draft) tournament, where you have to build your deck out of cards you get from packs at the start of the tournament. To this day, those tournaments have 40 card deck minimums and no 4 card limits.
It doesn’t apply to just basic lands, yeah. But any special lands you can only have 4. It’s been a rule for as long as I’ve played (since 2017), but I do know it wasn’t a rule at the start of the game. I think they added it pretty early on though, as a response to people making decks out of just channel and fireball for instant wins.
And, sure, you could keep the ratio of card types the same, but while I don’t play Yu-Gi-Oh, I have to imagine there are some cards better than other cards. So to make a deck that big, you’d have to include cards that just aren’t as good. Playable, sure, but I can’t imagine it finding its best cards consistently enough to be competitive.
The point of a large deck (different school of thoughts for large decks) is to drag a game out and wear the opponent or their deck down. A lot of the cards would be considered filler to someone who wants certain monsters. The point of a large deck isn’t certain cards. It’s the ratio between types.
So yeah you don’t get your pretty little dragon card, but it doesn’t matter, that’s not the strategy.
This yugioh one in particular was about shuffling the deck, it had to be done properly or would be disqualified for not shuffling properly. So all he needed was one card that caused shuffle and it would take 30 minutes to properly shuffle. Lots of cards trigger shuffle, just need the ratio of types to stay alive till than.
If people didn’t surrender, they would probably win, but at what time cost.
I guess I don’t really understand Yu-Gi-Oh all that well. I know in Magic there’s a bit of a meme deck based around the card Battle of Wits, which basically says if you have over 200 cards in your library at the start of your turn you win the game. But it was never truly competitive because other decks would run it over before they could find and play one of those 4 cards in their 300 card deck or whatever. The synergies in other decks were just too strong for it to survive long enough. People occasionally got lucky enough to place well in a tourney here and there, but it was never a meta deck in competitive play.
Kinda figured that same problem would exist in Yu-Gi-Oh but yeah, I don’t really know enough to say.
I see what you’re saying about the shuffling, that would be annoying as hell. Do Yu-Gi-Oh rounds not have time limits?
I will admit that I didn’t start playing M:TG until Revised came out, but the limit of 4 of one type of card (excluding land) has always been in the rules. My brothers and I would make ridiculous decks at first, but we always only had four of any given spell card.
IIRC the minimum deck size was 40 or 60 cards
No it hasn’t always been in the rules, we used to play in official tournaments with loaded decks, I think someone abused it with a certain rare card now that I’m trying to remember.
Black lotus, channel, fireball. That was the crazy meta abuse with a 1 turn kill. By the third turn you’d have to have a terrible draw in order to not win.
I thought, though I could be wrong because it was a thousand years ago, that the 4 card rule came between beta and unlimited, but it could have been unlimited and revised. I started with beta and it definitely wasn’t in effect then. Folks coming at you with a hand full of lotuses, dark rituals, moxes, and fireballs.
It was a rule since very, very close to the beginning. We’re talking 4th or 5th set ever released. I’m not sure what official tournaments you were playing it, but they were either ignoring the rules or they were in the first year or two of the game being released.
