Editing Yu-Gi-Oh (section)

==Formats and Ban Lists==
Yu-Gi-Oh has a strange relationship with what cards are legal or not. Unlike the two other big card games, [[Pokémon]] and [[Magic: The Gathering]] Yu-Gi-Oh does not have a "standard" format that says "all cards in sets X, Y and Z can be played and the rest cannot". This means that every single card, printed from ''Legend of the Blue Eyes White Dragon'' to the latest set can be used in a deck, as long as they're not on the ban lists. This means that in effect there are several thousand cards legal to use in your deck, with only a fraction being limited and only a handful being outright banned. Cards have four levels of legality, determining how many you can have of any one card in your Main, Extra and Side Decks:

* Unlimited: 3
* Semi-Limited: 2
* Limited: 1
* Forbidden: 0

There are also Illegal cards: cards that were never intended to see use in official duels or tournaments. These are often promotional materials, with the vast majority of them having conditions that allows their player to win the match. Not the duel: ''the best-out-of-three match''. This is less useful than it sounds because the opponent can forfeit before the effect goes off. The remaining ones are cards based on the anime, one being a promotional card handed out during the World Championship of 2007 that is quite useful in the right kind of deck, and the last three remaining cards being the unofficial versions of the three Egyptian Gods. There's also one special version of ''The Seal of Orichalcos'' with all the anime powers, including the "The soul of whichever Duelist loses this Duel is forfeit to the winner" part, intact. It was an internal novelty for Upper Deck Entertainment employees when they were distributor.

Exactly which cards are of what legality is determined by the region you're in. Yu-Gi-Oh has two regions where the game has different names: the Official Card Game and the Trading Card Game, shortened to OCG and TCG respectively. The OCG is played in Asia while the TCG is played in the rest of the world. Both regions have their own ban lists, some exclusive cards on either side, and (at times) different rulings, meaning that a deck that is played in one region might not work as well or is perhaps not even legal in the other. This separation stems from the card backings being different, and Konami farming the western release out to Upper Deck Entertainment for its early history. Originally the two were fairly similar, just with a delay on cards being released for the western game (with many promo cards in particular not showing up for half a decade!). After a decade of near identical ban-lists (there's less than a dozen differences in OCG/TCG bans before this), the two diverged a good deal in 2012, largely because Shock Master was completely broken, but a valuable promo card in the OCG and merely rare in the TCG, resulting in Konami of Japan stalled its banning for the rest of the world.

This is even further complicated that while the OCG has only one format, the TCG has two: Advanced and Traditional. The difference between the two is akin to the difference between Legacy and Vintage: Advanced restricts more cards to create a more balanced experience and has quite a few cards that are illegal in the format. Traditional is a friendlier kind of game: all Forbidden cards are Limited. If you want to use Illegal cards then you need your opponent's permission first due to the amount of [[cheese]] found in the banlist. Advanced is the format used in official tournaments and events, making it akin to Standard. In other words, Traditional and no banlist at all are for fun games with friends, and Advanced is for more serious games.

Beyond the "standard" tournament rules, Konami has also recently introduced the Generation Duel format, where players pick a Forbidden and Limited list for their decks from a set corresponding to the cards that were new when the various cartoons were released. This is the closest Yu-Gi-Oh comes to having an explicit list of legal cards, as every Generation Duel banlist has entries that ban card types that weren't extant when that list's cartoon was airing, and some ban ''all'' effect monsters that don't have a list entry. This never really took off due to Konami adding various unnecessary shit that detracted from the entire point.

=== Goat Format ===
GOAT Format (Named for both "Greatest of All Time" and the prominence of Scapegoat in it) is the the TCG as it was prior to the release of ''Cybernetic Revolution'' in 2005. This demarcation point is chosen because of that expansion's power creep and being closely followed by an extensive banlist change. This period has been immortalized due to the period boasting heavy competition, having a surprisingly diverse number of decks, and representing a much earlier era of the game that played significantly differently from the modern one. The revival is not officially supported by Konami, but it remains the most played historical format (unless one counts video games)

=== Master Rules 4 ===
{{Topquote|If you look at Firewall Dragon’s effect and see nothing wrong you’re either mentally deficient, or a very money hungry company[...] the first wave of Cyberse and Link Monsters was like witnessing 20 different FTK engines suddenly spawning into existence with no foresight by the developers whatsoever.|Rank10YGO}}
Introduced in 2017, Master Rules 4 (or "New Master Rules") made big changes to the game. The most obvious being the introduction of Link Monsters and there's an extra monster zone for extra deck monsters (which you can only have one of without work). This change would be widely despised due to its massive balance problems: Every existing deck type was screwed massively and needed to buy new link monsters to even have a remote chance of working '''except''' the ones that were ''already'' OP as shit anyways. Several early Link Monsters were stupidly broken, with anime ace monster Firewall Dragon alone getting half a dozen other cards banned, while most other Link Monsters were total garbage except for their arrows, a stark contrast with early Synchros offering plenty of good and generic options. Link Monsters lacking face down position, defense position or levels made a lot of older cards that changed cards to those positions or did things based on level completely and utterly useless. High level Yu-Gi-Oh already was heavy into board wipes where monsters never really fought each other that much, and MR4 made it far worse since link monsters were ''all'' about summoning a bunch of monsters in one turn and sacking them for OP shit before your opponent could really do anything to counter it. Problems were further compounded by Konami taking years to support a lot of "lesser" archetypes or generic support (The [https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Attribute_Booster Attribute Booster Link Monster] cycle is frequently highlighted here for Missus Radiant being decent generic support among the first set of Link Monsters but Konami taking a full year to provide a version for every other attribute, even though its predecessors were all within a single booster). So widely despised was MR4 that MR3 was still widely played on unofficial simulators.

====Master Rules 5====
In December of 2019 it was announced they'd '''finally''' be ending MR4 after years of that shit. Starting April 1st 2020 (with unofficial simulators moving over almost entirely as soon as it was announced), "Master Rules (April 1st 2020 Revision)", which everyone will just call Master Rules 5, were implemented. Now Fusion, Synchro, and Xyz monsters may be placed in either the Main Monster Zones or in the Extra Monster Zone, while Link Monsters and Pendulum Summoning from the Extra Deck are still dependent on summoning in either the Extra Monster Zone or link arrows pointing to their Main Monster Zones. Also a bunch of other minor rules changes, mostly just clearing up a bunch of crap.

Master Rules 5 unfortunately coincided with the outbreak of the [[Wikipedia:Coronavirus_disease_2019|Nurgle's latest blessing]]. See, Konami bases banlist changes largely on tournament results and utterly refuses to acknowledge simulator play, so with most tournaments being canceled Konami had nothing to base a new banlist on. As a result the June 2020 TCG banlist (which set Altergeist Multifaker, Nekroz of Unicore, and Ritual Beast Ulti-Cannahawk from Limited to Unlimited while doing nothing else) was the smallest change to the banlist in TCG history, and is tied in size only with the very first OCG banlist (which put Dark Hole, Raigeki and Trap Hole to Limited). This wouldn’t be too bad if this didn’t leave the TCG stuck in a fairly degenerate format for five months. Even the September 2020 banlist did the bare minimum in banning 3 problem cards and reducing restrictions on cards that had been unrestricted on the OCG side for years.

=== Speed Duel ===
Speed Duel was an alternate ruleset in the game for years that was primarily used for spin-off video games (''Duel Terminal'', ''Saikyo Card Battle'' and ''Duel Links'') and has lower starting LP/hand size/deck minimum, only three slots each for monsters and spell/traps, no extra monster zone (though this is at least in part due to predating that rule), and no Main Phase 2. The one unique thing about this format is that in the most recent incarnations each player has a skill card that is always activate-able if the conditions are met. One odd consequence of the lower deck size is that mill decks are actually quite good, and some cards [https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Cup_of_Ace that are absolutely horrible] [https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Hiro%27s_Shadow_Scout in the normal game] (because they give your opponent free cards) are actually used since you need to mill less than 16 cards to win. Likewise, the smaller field means giving your opponent cards they can't get rid of to block them from putting something useful on the field is also viable. 

There's several variants of this format with their own card pools.

The most prominent is Duel Links, Konami's gotchapon mobile game adapation of the franchise. The card pool for this is fairly eccentric, containing reprints of OG anime era cards, some synchro era stuff, some new cards that are weaker in the normal game, and a few anime cards that don't exist in the real world. These cards are selected to make a format based on moderately hard to bring out beatsticks instead of getting into crazy chains to wipe the opponent's field while summoning a bunch of monsters in one turn.

The reason this is getting a section is that in 2019 it was used for a soft reboot of the game in the west. Taking the skill cards from Duel Links with a completely different card pool that only allows cards printed with a Speed Duel watermark (these cards are also legal in normal TCG matches), though the core rules haven't really changed so casual matches with the full TCG card pool are possible. There's actually a few physical cards that have exclusively been released for this format, but they're just really old normal monsters that were never released physically in the west before because they were terrible (though they have shown up in video games). In 2020 Konami used it to make a quasi Living Card Game with the Speed Duel Box.

===Rush Duel===
Another alternate ruleset, similar to Speed Duels in that there are only 3 spell/trap slots and no Main Phase 2, but extra monster zone. In addition to being only able to use Rush Duel specific cards there are certain ''Legend'' cards that you can have only 1 copy of in your deck. Both players begin a Rush Duel with 8,000 LP and 4 cards in their hand. During your Draw Phase you draw until you have 5 cards in your hand. You can normal summon as many times as possible in a Rush Duel, although tribute summoning restrictions still apply. All cards and effects can only be activated once per turn, not counting field spells. In contrast to the original game, every card except normal monsters has a requirement to activate it. Some of these are passive, like controlling a monster of a particular type, while others require actions like discarding certain cards. A player can also only activate one effect per trigger.