NOTE: Before you continue reading thinking I am against any of the games, I am not. Both are great, and some like one more than the other, but there is no need for fighting. This article is just about opinions, because that’s what it is, neither game is really “better”, you just like it more for different reasons. My overall goal with this is to show that Yugioh and Magic are tied, mostly to the Magic players, as most seem to think they are superior to YGO players, which sounds crazy to me. I personally like Yugioh more, but that does not make it better than Magic. Nor does someone who likes Magic more make it better: it’s just opinions. I think that Magic players who insult YGO and call it a “worse game” need to learn the difference between a fact and an opinion. Same with the YGO players that insult Magic, and call it the “worse game” as well. I have gathered a ton of information about the two games, and from my research, these are my conclusions:
Both trading card games, Magic:The Gathering and Yugioh, have been very popular for a long time, but which one of them is the “best”? The first game I played was Yugioh. Lots of Magic players tell me that Magic is better, but they haven’t successfully “proven” it to me yet. If it really is better, I want to know exactly why it is better. I notice a lot that Magic players “troll” around Youtube Yugioh vids, and around Yugioh players, saying that Magic is better. Also, some Magic players play Magic over Yugioh because the Magic pictures are more grown up, hence why the packaging says “Ages 13+”. When my mom asked a Magic player why he liked the game, he said exactly that! Yugioh pictures are less detailed, and are drawn cartoon-ish. Magic pictures are very sophisticated, detailed artwork, with the artists name on the bottom of each and every Magic card. Also, Yugioh is advertised to kids, and Magic is advertised to older crowds. As a result, Magic players think their game is more “sophisticated” than Yugioh. Overall from my point of view, both games have their ups and downs and are better and worse depending on what elements of trading card games you like. Anyway, I will tell you a summary of my knowledge for both games and their advantages and disadvantages.
Yugioh has a cartoon anime that portrays the game as an immature, simple game to the Magic community. But what some Magic players don’t understand is that the T.V. show is completely different from the actual game of Yugioh. As a matter of fact, the T.V. show changes card effects and rulings from what they do in the real game. The characters in the T.V. show of Yugioh play really “bad” decks if in the real game; using super situational cards in the exact situation where they would be good (playing a card only useful in a certain situation in that situation). Meaning that the T.V. show, in terms of the cards the characters use, is used to advertise the cards. Magic, on the other hand, has no T.V. show, making it seem more adult. Then why do adults play Yugioh? Because even though it is advertised for kids, it is a very sophisticated game that most kids can’t understand fully. There are very few 8 year old “good” Yugioh players, I’ve never seen a really bad Magic player. This is because the land system makes it so that everyone has at least a half decent deck, since you obviously aren’t going to play with 5 land unless you have a weird 5-color Sliver deck like me. It’s easier for me to tell the difference between a good player and a bad player in Yugioh than Magic though, I actually have no idea what makes a good Magic player, but in Yugioh, there are many kids using literally random cards. I don’t see that EVER in a Magic player.
Yugioh has a great playing field, where both players take turns and have many options to choose from, from turn 1 to the end of the game (meaning you have several different choices to make depending on the situation). Yugioh has strategic deck building that takes a while to learn. If you build your deck correctly, with the proper ratios, you will rarely draw a bad hand (with nothing good to play). The bad side of Yugioh is that it is really hard to make your own original deck, so you have to play with the popular cards most of the time in order to win tournaments. Despite that, I think that the real strategy in Yugioh is playing the game, not building decks. It still has lots of deck building strategy though, just not a lot of deck building originality. In Yugioh, if you want to and draw the right cards, you can pretty much play your entire hand in the first turn, but if you do that, your opponent will “counter” your play with only a few of their cards, and win via card advantage. The main way to win in Yugioh is card advantage. The more cards you have than your opponent, the more likely it is to win. How do you get card advantage when both players have good decks? That is where the endless back and forth strategy of Yugioh is. But, in Yugioh, the banlists (powerful cards that get banned due to being “too powerful”) actually get banned sometimes just for Konami, the manufacturer’s own benefit. This is completely true with the March 2012 banlist, where I lost my $300 deck I was trying to build, even though I got it for cheaper than that since I am a businessman when it comes to Yugioh, I still lost money from that banlist. I bought the deck knowing that there were other decks that are better, yet mine still got banned. However, the Japenese banlist comes out about a month before the U.S. one, and usually the Japenese one and the U.S. one are the same banlist, so most Yugioh players have the option to not lose money from the banlist. I had the option to sell the deck beforehand, but I didn’t sell it in time.
In Magic, you slowly build up land and a devastating field, and then attack the opponent when you have the most advantage. I would be very impressed if a Magic player proves to me that Magic has strategy from turn 1, because with only 1 land, you can’t do much. It only gets “challenging” in the later stages of the game. In the later stages, both you and your opponent have many creatures out, and by then there is strategy up to the point where it gives you a headache in terms of attacking and defending. In Yugioh, sometimes I have to think about my move for a whole minute, on the very first turn, with excitement and intense play from the very beginning! Almost no games end up with both players topdecking in Yugioh, and if so, there is almost never a completely dead card. In Magic, though, the banlists are different than Yugioh, some are for Wizard’s of the Coast’s profit, others are for the game. I’ll get into that later. Magic is more strategic with deck building than Yugioh; you can build your own original deck and be successful. No matter what ratio of lands/other cards you have, you still could draw all lands or all other cards pretty easily from my point of view, which is where that mulligan rule (if you draw a bad starter hand, you add your hand to your deck, and draw the same number of cards –1; can be done as much as you like before the game starts), comes in, that rule seems to me like a throw-in at the last minute before the game first came out to prevent bad hands due to the land design. Also, your land will be “stuck together” at the end of every game, since you play land in a certain area separate from the rest of the cards, unless you separate them, you will need to mulligan after 1 game, drawing all land or no land. Of course, you could do the shuffle where you take the top 8 cards and put them in 4 columns and 2 rows then do the same for the rest of the cards, but that takes time, and is annoying if you are forced to do that after every game.
A decent deck in Yugioh costs around $100-$300, depending on the deck type. Sometimes there are very few different decks you can use competitively; sometimes there are tons, depending on the banlist. You can sometimes get a competitive deck in Yugioh for only $30, which are usually mostly made up from buying 3 “structure decks”, which are decks made by Konami for $10 a piece. The reason why you need 3 is for the duplicates, as with both Magic and Yugioh, the more duplicates you have, the more likely it is to draw the card you want. In Magic, there are always a ton of different decks you can use, and they are much cheaper ($30). There are lots of 30$ Yugioh decks, but most of the time they are not nearly as good as the more expensive, competitive decks. A summary of this would be that in Yugioh, you need money in order to be competitive most of the time, whereas for Magic, you don’t really need money to be competitive.
Since lots of competitive Yugioh cards are so expensive, there are people who search through little kids cards and “pick-pocket” all their good ones by trading them not so valuable cards for their $20 card. Also, I’ve heard stories of thievery in Yugioh, so be careful with your Yugioh cards if you are a competitive player! Also, the banlists can totally ruin your deck and hundreds of dollars you’ve spent on it. This is a good reason why Magic players prefer Magic to Yugioh. Although, if you are smart and understand the “meta” (decks being played, possible reprints) of Yugioh, you can predict what will happen, and sell cards beforehand. I sold a $58 Yugioh card on eBay a few weeks before the reprint of it got confirmed, and dropped the price to $30. That’s $28 profit right off the bat! You can play with a safe Yugioh deck that you know won’t get banned, but you may get annoyed after losing tons of games to the competitive decks. So, in terms of money, if you don’t want to have the chance of losing money, Magic is for you. If you want a business from your cards, Yugioh is the best bet. There are valuable Magic cards too, but from research, most of these are collectors cards and not cards for playing (such as “Black Lotus” and the rest of the “Power 9”).
In Magic, the card rulings are very clear, the card effects never get to complicated, and they are very organized. Magic even has a stack system to keep track of what effects resolve when in case people use several effects at the same time. In Yugioh, the card rulings are definitely more complicated, so complicated in fact, that sometimes the judges of major tournaments themselves can’t figure out what happens. In terms of both games, the rulings topic is tied from my point of view. Magic has a better system of card rulings, but that system ruins the “Hmm.. let me think about it” for most rulings that Yugioh has. Summary: Magic is better for organizing card rulings and keeping things simple, Yugioh is better for insanely complex card rulings that are stumbling to judges of the game in big tournaments (it doesn’t happen that often that an unsolvable card ruling comes out, but it does sometimes). Recently, however, Konami figured out a way to possibly solve this finally with what they call the “problem-solving card text”, which tells how different effects work with grammar symbols (like :, ; and ,).
Yugioh has 2 formats, Advanced and Traditional. Advanced is where the banned cards are, and that’s what most tournaments play by. Traditional is the same as Advanced, but all the banned cards become playable at 1 copy per deck. This may seem like a lifesaver, and usually is, but sometimes decks get ruined even for Traditional play. When a card gets limited to 2 per deck in Advanced, it is still limited to 2 per deck in Traditional. In Yugioh, any real competitive player plays by the advanced format, but it’s ok to play Traditional as well. In Magic, research shows that there are several different formats. One is like the Advanced format of Yugioh, where there are banned cards. Another is where there is no banlist, which seems like a super insane format where you can build decks that win on the first turn every game. There is also a format where Wizards of the Coast bans old sets, so that you are forced to play with the newer cards so that Wizards makes money. This, from my point of view, is way more extreme than what Konami does in Yugioh, which is banning specific cards to make the newer cards more playable.
I think that Magic has no bluffing. It has some, but basic ratios can figure out the bluffs easily. A Magic player told me that Instants (cards you can play on your opponents turn) are bluffs. I disagree, because you can easily predict which Instant your opponent can play depending on how much land they have untapped (Or at least the strength of the Instant, since there are so many different ones). Also, someone said that you can always bluff the land instead of playing the land and pretend it is a non-land, however basic ratios of land would make any smart player be able to figure out you have lands in your hand. Yugioh has trap cards, which you can set, meaning to simply put on the field, face down and play later on. You can even set a spell card that is not useable in the situation, and bluff as a trap card. I won a game using this bluff that I would have easily lost otherwise!
Overall, I like Yugioh more. I understand that Yugioh has little deck creativity, but it has a good amount of deck building, which are two subtly different things. Magic has 10x more deckbuilding/creativity with decks strategy then YGO, but I like YGO’s playing strategy more. I find Magic to be weak in the playing category, because I think that in Magic the lands completely, or almost completely, control what you can play in the early game, and late game you draw dead lands/too much lands. The only real strategy in playing to me is when both players have a ton of creatures out, then it’s either math math math or go stalemate till someone feels as though they have a good enough field to attack with everyone and go for the kill.
Please note that I don’t think that Magic is a bad game. My goal with this is not to start more huge arguments over which is better, but to know what makes Magic players think their game is so much superior to YGO. Yugioh does require intelligence to play well too, and predict ban-lists/reprints and stuff. I am not talking about all Magic players, but many act this way, and it is absurd. As you can tell, I’ve thought about this very carefully, and figured out all the ups and downs I can think of for both games. I think that overall, it’s just an opinion, and that they both are tied overall. I think that Yugioh, compared to Magic, is weak on deckbuilding, but has more gameplay strategy. I think that Magic has little play strategy compared to YGO, but has way more deckbuilding strategy. These are the two overall main concepts of TCG’s. Magic does have some play strategy, and YGO has some deckbuilding strategy, but their strengths are the other way around to me. I think that playing the game is more important then deck strategy, which is why I like Yugioh more than Magic. Many get annoyed by the “broken decks” of YGO and want to play something original. which is a good reason to play MTG over YGO. Just that doesn’t make it better though, nor does intense bluff-whenever-you-want-to playing strategy make YGO better than MTG. If there is anything I explained that is not true, please let me know. I never actually played Magic competitively, but have played Yugioh competitively, if I am getting a concept wrong in Magic, or something else, please explain thoroughly. As I said in the very beginning, I have talked with many Magic players, and half the time they say something like “It just is better”, showing that they don’t really know what they are talking about in terms of comparing both games. I think that overall, which game is better depends on what concepts with card games you like more, and they are overall tied with each other. After all, if Magic really is better in every way possible than Yugioh, and Yugioh is advertised for kids and Magic is advertised for adults, why do adults play Yugioh? If Magic really is better and it is so obvious that it is, no adults would be playing Yugioh.
Good post, I always like them.
Man, this is loooooooooooooooooooooooooong. I like ur opinion– ppl r fighting bout this like adult male syrian hamsters. ive never seen it, but i know u have. can u make a summary at the end for lazy ppl like me?
Yes, that is exactly what I want to do, but have no clue how to say it.
Which game is better:Yugioh or Magic:The Gathering | cardgamechampion
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I respesct you greatly for your maturity exposing your opinions. However, Magic players tend to see Yu gi oh as childish not because the game is bad, but because is poorly designed (and i don’t mean that as an insult). Yu gi oh cards (having played both games myself) are all over the place. You can find a card of any type that does anything, and the fact that they added tuners and synchro just made matters worse in the sense that feels disconnected. There are cards with the same effect as traps, magic cards and even effect monsters in some cases. Also, the fact that there are cards that require a certain board setup to be played is a poor desing concept. In magic each color has an identity, flavorwise, powerwise and mechanics. Also each card type has an identity in each color, with finite desing spaces. I’m not saying you shouldn’t enjoy yu gi oh, or that is worst, or more luck based, or anything bad. If you prefer it that’s absolutely understandable, is another flavor of TCG alltogether.
I agree that in terms of competitiveness, every card is good in Magic whereas in Yugioh only certain cards are competitive. That’s what I interpreted when you said that some cards require a certain board setup, the first thing I thought of was Machina Force lol. But this card can be used as discard fodder for Fortress, which is really good. There are other cards, like Valkyrion the Magna Warrior, that will never see competitive play due to this.
Also, I have heard from Magic players that Magic has the same overpowered deck feel that YGO has recently. Not sure if this is true or not.
I don’t like Magic because I feel as though the land controls what cards you can play during gameplay. That is pretty much it :P. Magic has more deck building creativity than YGO to me though.
I also find lots of YGO players/former YGO players rage over the “overpowered” decks. Every deck always has their counters, there are too many cards in the game to have a purely overpowered deck. Take Mermails/Fire Fists for instance. D Fissure and Macro Cosmos and Banisher of the Radiance nail Mermials, and stuff like Mind Crush wrecks Fire Fists. Not sure about Dragon Rulers or Prophecies, but Im sure there is some counter. I know that there are lots of cards that help against Spellcasters and Dragons.
Thanks for your input.
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So a pal of mine and me ad this debate, and he sent me here.
I know more than the basics of both, and eventually I for one stuck with MtG.
I won’t dabble into comparing artstyle and flavour, as there’s nothing objective to say there; whether you find it cooler to have cards representing characters or events from an anime show, or a batch of fantasy novels is completely up to your personal taste.
The main reason for my preference is that to me, MtG is the one feeling more rewarding towards not only what deck you’re running, but moreso how you play it, allowing more ways of reacting to your opponent’s actions and luck generally playing less of a role. Even in you’re opponent’s turn you retain a good bit of control over what’s going on as the stack sytem allows you to respond to whatever action your opponent takes, and you’re the one deciding whether not, and which creatures block, rather than the attacker declaring who fights whom.
You point it out yourself, in YGO you can very well drop your entire hand turn one, whereas MTG has a more differentiated options for early-, mid- and late-game; I get the appeal of the former, but eventually it also enable lucky first-turn kills (Beaver Warrior to victory :V ) – a feat basically unheard of in MtG – and leaves you extremely dependant on a favourable starting hand. On that note, you asked how much tactic is involved in the first few turns? The first tactical decision you have to take in a game of MtG actually happens before turn one – after drawing your starting hand, you decide whether you’d like to “keep” it, or take a “mulligan”. While “keeping” is probably self-explaining, the latter means you may shuffle your hand back into your deck, and draw a new, hopefully more favourable starting hand; you may do this as often as you like, however, your starting hand’s size is reduced by one everytime you do this (example, default starting hand size is 7; if you’re not happy with that one, you may shuffle it back in and draw 6 new cards).
And just because not all of the cards can be plopped down turn 1 doesn’t mean there’s no tactical thinking behind the ones you play – especially when more than one colour is involved you have to decide which manasources to set up; do you play a creature for an early attack, or rather leave the mana open to mess up what your opponent does with an instant? Do you quickly need a blocker, or is it safe to instead go for card-control?
There won’t be much variety if you’re trying to, say, run a 5-colored Sliver deck with a basic landbase, I give you that, but this is more inert to the nature of the deck than the nature of the game; Slivers are – or rather up to recently were – a very mana-intensive tribe, and trying to run all colors on top without spending tons and tons of money on multicolored lands is bound to result in a slow start.
While we’re at it, I’m calling bullsquid on the claim that there were no bluffs in MtG. Yes, with a bit of knowledge about your opponent’s deck you can have an idea of their options – that’s exactly the point! The amount of untapped lands and hand cards your opponent has can be as much of a deterrent as trap cards when you’re anticipating a Counterspell, Lightning Bolt or Doom Blade, regardless of whether not that’s what you’re actually holding – not even starting with the options opened up by manaless spells like Force of Will, or Surgical Extraction.
As for the “great playing field”, I get that some might find the rigid structures YGO revolves around appealing, but I’m not the only one who sees them mostly as a limitation. In MtG, nothing prevents you from having as many creatures/monsters, global enchantments/field spells and so on as you like; there is more room for the course of individual games to devellop, just as more things are left open to the player’s preference in both, deck construction and gameplay.
It’s not just the cap to cards on the field that feels – to me at least – like it’s narrowing the game down: the entire trap system eventually limits a good part of your actions to pre-set scenarios by design; not the case with MtG’s instants – those are practically playable whenever you feel like it, and it’s up to the player to find the situation where they can get the most out of the effect.
Up next, you proclaim that of the two, YGO is the one with higher standards when it comes to deck construction based on… what exactly? To me, the fact that unlike it’s the case in YGO, a pile of random MtG cards isn’t even remotely playable, somehow doesn’t look like evidence pointing in this direction.
If you know how to construct your deck, a bulk of lands isn’t a necessity at all – Belcher decks for example run smoothly with a total of 0-2 lands total, as they get their required mana from other sources, while Dredge decks can be built to not even be dependant on ever adding mana to their pool to begin with; and those aren’t just some gimmick decks, but tournament-winning builds, meaning if you’re demands for powerlevel are not that of a world-champion, variety only increases.
Looking on the other side, a viable deck without a base of monsters would be completely unthinkable in YGO. Not to mention that many cards’ effects are referring to others by name, basically setting up the one setup they can be played in, cramping up deck construction a good bit.
A point you only grazed is user-friendliness – and it’s one that MtG easily takes, on my cap.
Starting at card-layout: In MtG, it’s generally obvious how a card behaves without having to google for an explaination, it’s not only the vanilla cards that get flavourtext, and the textbox still doesn’t look like a wall of letters. I know it’s a generalization, and exceptions exist on either side, but to give you an example of what I’m going on about, have a pic of the first card that shows up on google images for “magic the gathering card”:
http://magiccards.info/scans/en/dvd/13.jpg
Now compare it to the first card that shows up for “yugioh card”:
http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130626162635/yugioh/images/9/92/FireKingHighAvatarGarunix-SDOK-EN-UR-1E.png
Well, see what I mean?
To keep textboxes clean and make cards of similar traits more comfortable to find for deck constructors, MtG often abbreviates commonly seen mechanics with a single term (as seen above with “flying”).
I can already hear the inevitable “Oh, so insider vocabulary I have to learn first is ‘user-friendly’ now?”, and the answer of course is no. Unlike it’s the case with YGO where all the effects are on the card, a MtG player should be familiar with terms like “flying” or “trample” beforehead, and that can definitely be a challenge for newcomers. This is why MtG ships new expansions specifically dedicated to introducing new players to how the game works on an annual basis (in addition to the canon expansions, that is). These “core-sets” typically feature a lot of reprints of old cards that were tricky to get your hands on, making them available without too much money involved (without harming the old version’s collectible value, as they ship with different artwork), and all cards are outfitted with additional reminder text, explaining how each ability or keywoord that might seem ambigous works in-detail (here’s an example for above’s flying: http://magiccards.info/10e/en/64.html ).
Additionally, regardless of the expansion, effects working within similar circumstances share a common keyword – for example, cards benefitting from lands being played all are labelled with “landfall” – making deck construction more comfortable, as it becomes less of a chore for you to find a pool of cards fit for certain situations you’d like to build around.
And to correct you on your research, MtG is at least as much, if not more of a money-business than YGO, which isn’t necessarily something speaking in its favour on my cap, but yeah… 300$ for a competitive deck isn’t remotely realistic here, as 3-digit-price per copy cards like Volcanic Island or Tarmogoyf for example are all but dust-gatherers for collectors, but actively played in any format allowing them and always high in demand – which may be cool if you’re interested in big business, but eventually brings a considerable gap in terms of powerlevel in comparison to decks on a narrower budget.
Unlike it’s the case in YGO, the cards’ value doesn’t hinge on banlist policies as much as playability and how well the card interacts with others; if you want to make profit with MtG, you don’t need to be as much of a stock-market broker as you need to be a clever player: Stoneforge Mystic, Planescape or Living End all were bargain-bin cards until some wise-guys found ways to seize their potential, and suddenly everyone was ready to pay them ridiculous amounts of money for their copies.
Bottom line, it’s a matter of preference, eventually. I’m the kind of guy who prefers a game being something where all parties involved have a saying in what’s going on at all times. That and the fact that luck and randomness carry a lot less of weight with MtG having a lot less weight on lucky opening hands, coin-flips, dice-rolls and so on make it my pick of the two.
That’s all, folks.
/textwall
Thanks for your input. The only real thing that bothers me is the land system of MTG, it seems too controlling. I haven’t played MTG competitively before though. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think MTG is bad, I just like YGO more, and as you said, it’s all opinion-based. Recently the YGO rules changed so that the first player doesn’t draw a card, meaning that there is more strategy in going first/second, but before that, I agree that there was an unfair advantage in going first in YGO. Also, in YGO, having to run certain decks to compete depends on the format. Sometimes, many decks are good, sometimes only a few. Also, some players, like me, may enjoy confusing card rulings and having to look them up. There are pluses and minuses to how MTG and YGO card effects are worded.
I played Yu-Gi-Oh for about 5 years. I have played Magic for about 20. I can’t deny that Yu-Gi-Oh is a fun game, it definitely is. I don’t hate it, and newer cards have definitely added depth since I played. However, I have followed both games throughout that time, YGO has made huge progress in developing depth, adding combos, cool interactions and more. It feels fleshed out when I watched professional play….It feels almost like Magic. And that’s the thing. It’s only just catching up to where my favorite game has been for a decade.
Some of the things you mentioned may sound fun, but are really unappealing on a professional level. I am amateur but I have done several magic tournaments, the game is not simple but most of the time the cards are clear enough on interactions, not being able to rely on a judge to resolve a question is something that does not appeal to me at all.
Also, and this would have to be my biggest complaint by far. When I got out of YGO, I kept my cards, and my spellcaster deck I was REALLY proud of. Come back a couple of years later to people still in the scene telling me that almost all of my cards are pretty much garbage compared to current cards. And I saw it, it was obvious, the newer cards were way more versatile, able to be played faster, had way better synergy etc. This is disappointing, it feels like if you do not have the newest cards in YGO you might as well not have any.
Magic cards never stop being good, the game is VERY well managed to prevent power creep. Older cards are in fact, on average more powerful than newer cards as they dialed in where they wanted the power of the game, and since then it’s been fairly stable with some blips on the high low end, notably recently high power blip being mirrodin and low being kamigawa. But they weren’t massive, and cards from ALL sets are still amazing in the proper formats.