What if...Yu-gi-oh cards were in Magic the Gathering and vise versa?

edited January 2022 in Off-topic Chat
As someone who used to play Yu-gi-oh in the earlier years of my life, I thought it would be fun to see some cards interpreted by magic players to see what they came up with. It would also be neat to see how Yu-gi-oh players could interpret magic cards if there is anyone who plays both. 

Comments

  • I didn't know Yu-gi-oh had rules. 
  • @KorandAngels The anime may have lied to you, you can't summon a Dark Magician on turn 1 and attack directly. (If you don't get the joke it's basically a goof on a commercial for yu-gi-oh where a guy does that move.)   
  • Never saw the anime, I just have memories of being annoyed at kids at school who clearly don't know what flavour text is.
  • @KorandAngels Bruh I feel you, I remember in middle school when I would get into arguments with other kids on the importance of flavor text. It was dumb af but that's being a middle schooler. 
  • I used to play both card games; gave up on Yu-Gi-Oh just before Link monsters came out, since the power creep was too absurd for me, and I just found Magic to be a much better game in a number of ways. (Mostly because commander is a wonderful format and Yu-Gi-Oh only has one eternal format in which all cards are legal except for the banned/restricted list, similar to Magic's Vintage & Legacy formats.) I played Yu-Gi-Oh for ~15 years starting when it first came out in English, and I've been playing Magic for ~11 years, with 7 or so years of overlap between those periods.

    Because of said power creep it'd be pretty difficult to turn most current viable Yu-Gi-Oh card(s) into anything vaguely reasonable as a Magic card (especially newer cards), as most Yu-Gi-Oh decks can destroy everything your opponent controls, attack for lethal, combo into a noncombat win, and/or summon 3~5 creatures with countermagic abilities in 1 turn, while only using a single card from your starting hand in many cases. (Virtually everything is a combo piece, tutor, and/or countermagic effect. Additionally, Yu-Gi-Oh doesn't have a resource system analogous to Magic's mana; i.e. you can basically use any card in your hand as long as you meet the activation conditions for it. And then there's the Extra Deck…)

    All that aside though, here's a quick sketch I came up with of one popular staple card that translates fairly easily (effect-wise at least):
    Ash Blossom and Joyous Spring {r}
    Creature – Zombie (0/2)
    Discard Ash Blossom and Joyous Spring: Counter target spell or ability that would cause one or more cards to leave one or more libraries. Activate only if you haven't activated an ability of a card named Ash Blossom and Joyous Spring this turn.

    Going in the opposite direction, most Magic cards that draw cards would be super broken in Yu-Gi-Oh because they don't use a resource system, so card advantage is very important. As an example, one currently unbanned effect similar to Divination that sees lots of play is Pot of Desires, which makes you exile the top 10 cards of your library face down as a cost (minimum deck size is 40 cards in Yu-Gi-Oh, so that's a quarter of your starting deck). As for anything else that isn't cheap and powerful utility/countermagic (e.g. Swords to Plowshares), it'd probably be just about useless since most strong monsters in Yu-Gi-Oh have hexproof, indestructible, and/or protection from virtually everything (in addition to a bunch of other effects). Anything that doesn't generally gets blown up or exiled in moments.

    Hope this wasn't too rambly. :sweat_smile:
  • @cadstar369 It's fine it actually enlightens me a bit. Also love that translation of Ash Blossem
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