When you have a game that has been around and evolved for over 25 years, you are bound to run into some problems with how cards interact with each other. I’m not talking about broken combos, but actual complicated scenarios that players will argue tooth and nail on how they are supposed to resolve, given how the game is played.
While most of these cards are complicated because of the lack of problem-solving card text, someYu-Gi-Oh! cardshave become difficult to read solely because of their word count. Even if you’ve passed the judge exam, I can guarantee you’ll have a slip-up or two if you run into some of these cards.
10Endymion, The Mighty Master Of Magic
If you were to show this card to a yugi-boomer, they would probably explode. Endymion, The Mighty Master of Magic, alongside having a ridiculously long name, has the record for the longest word count on a Yu-Gi-Oh! card.
Luckily, it’s not as complicated as it seems, since it really is two separate cards built into one. Pendulum Monsters can be used as Spell cards, which use the top text box as an effect, so you don’t have to worry about both effects on the spot.
9Inspector Boarder
This card is an excellent floodgate to prevent your opponent from using Monster effects, but how does it actually work? Inspector Boarder inspects the board every time one of the named Monsters is summoned and adds one to the count of how many effects can be activated.
Outside of Nibiru, The Primal Being, Yu-Gi-Oh! don’t have you keep track of how many things are on the board, and with a constantly fluctuating number, Inspector Boarder is a nightmare to rule for judges.
Monsters like Odd-Eyes Rebellion Xyz Dragon count as two types for the sake of Inspector Boarder’s effect.
8Last Turn
Last Turn reads pretty easily. You need to have 1,000 Life Points, you summon a Monster, then your opponent summons a Monster of their own, so why is this hard so hated by judges to the point that it got banned?
Given that there are plenty of Monsters that lock your opponent from summoning, you can use Last Turn to always manifest a win for yourself. While that might not seem too complicated either, Last Turn’s wording and effect have caused a plethora of ruling questions, so much so that it has becomea nightmarefor trained judges to explain accurately.
7Magical Refpanel
Yu-Gi-Oh! the card game has been around for so long that older cards have become obsolete. Not because they aren’t strong enough to keep up, but because the wording on the cards directlyconflicts with how the game is played in modern times.
Magical Refpanel, while not that old, reads like a classic Yu-Gi-Oh! card. It has a basic effect of stealing a Spell card from your opponent, but Yu-Gi-Oh! cards don’t ever target players directly, so whatever “targets one player” means is just up to Konami’s discretion.
6Simultaneous Equation Cannons
Us Yu-Gi-Oh! players are already notorious for not reading card effects, so asking us to do math on top of that might be a tall order. Simultaneous Equation Cannons can be an excellent board wipe, but at what cost?
You’ll have to count the level or rank of the Monster that you’re targeting, then add the levels and ranks of three Monsters in your extra deck to equal the number of cards on the field and both hands, and then subtract the two that you’re shuffling back to equal the first Monster. Did that make sense? Probably not.
5Power Frame
Sometimes few words do trick. Power Frame is not a complicated effect by any means, but the way that the card is worded looks like one of those memes of how Yu-Gi-Oh! cards look like other card game players.
All it does is negate an attack, then give one of your Monsters ATK based on the difference of both Monsters' ATK. Power Frame reads like someone at Konami needed to meet the word count on their assignment. Maybe Yu-Gi-Oh! could use keywords…
4Small World
If you can see any Small World line on the spot, then you have my respect. Small World is a universal searcher for just about any card in your deck. The only thing is you’ll need a very specific group of matching qualities of three different cards.
You have to reveal a Monster, then choose a different one from your deck with a matching qualifier, whether it is its type, attribute, level, or stats, then you’ll be able to search for a Monster with one of those matching qualifiers from the deck Monster. This card’s lines get so complicated that players have made games out of finding lines, and even a site that calculates for you.
3D/D/D Archetype
That’s right. The entire archetype. None of the cards themselves are super complicated, but simply playing the deck will give you a headache if you don’t know what you are doing. The deck has so many different combos and lines that if you’re looking for a deck that will stress test your flexibility as a duelist, then this is the one for you.
Since it is an anime archetype, D/D/D will continue to get support for years to come, consistently adding even more entries to the fabled D/D/D combo master spreadsheet.
2Spirit Elimination
This card is another problematic old card that simply suffers from being a bit too old. It has a few simple lines of text, but the wording makes it so that everyone who uses it has millions of questions about what happens after resolving this card.
Yu-Gi-Oh! is a very specifically-worded game, so having a card that circumvents costs and doesn’t specify which player is the one that this card is targeting is quite problematic. The fact that Konami even has trouble coming up with rulings for this issue shows that the card is probably not even worth thinking about.
Pre Errata
New Text
Discard two cards from your hand. Select one face-up Monster and flip it face-down, but do not change its battle position.
Discard two cards from your hand. Select one face-up Monsterand change it to face-down Defense Position.
Book of Moon has been an iconic card since early Yu-Gi-Oh!, but there was another card that did something similar, but in a far more complicated way. Darkness Approaches asked for two cards from your hand as cost, but it didn’t change the battle position of the Monster.
This means, before itsmuch-needed errata, Darkness Approaches used to be able to change a Monster into a face-down attack position, something that’s not possible in the game. You can only imagine the nightmares that these rulings caused in tournaments.
