Hashtag Card Games on Motorcycles?

I really don't like Yugioh. I remember when it first came out, back when I was a huge Pokemon fanboy, and I considered Yugioh and Digimon to be the most slanderous knock-offs in the world. I've since forgiven Digimon. Yugioh is not so lucky.

I've been getting back into the swing of playing Magic: the Gathering lately, as you all probably already know because I mention it all the gosh dang time. In any case, I can look at commons now and see potential uses for pretty much all of them--whereas I used to only see uses for cards that fit into decks I had. Now that I have a better understanding of the game, and experience against multiple play styles, my vision is unclouding and the possibilities are unfolding before me. When I look at Yugioh cards, however, this does not happen.

And I doubt it's because I don't know the game well enough. There aren't really that many complex mechanics in Yugioh that all interlock and create interesting scenarios. Instead, there are a few mechanics with many specific instances. The cards are designed in such a way that they often mention other cards, or require other cards to work to their full potential.

Now, I'm not saying that the cards in Magic: the Gathering don't play off of each other for amazing combos, because they do. What I'm saying is that--even at a draft--I've never seen two Magic: the Gathering players with the same cards on either side of the battlefield. And yet when I watch Yugioh, which I've seen much less of, I come across players who appear to have almost the same exact deck.

There are multiple reasons why this is bad design--the first being that relying on the player having certain cards to use another card they just got doesn't make their new card readily accessible, which just doesn't feel satisfying. When you get a really rare and powerful card, your first urge is to build a deck around it, which you can usually do in Magic if you have a good amount of cards. In Yugioh, however, you might not have the other cards that the new one refers to--perhaps because the types of monsters it mentions are all-new and you haven't found any yet. Now you have to go and buy more booster packs and hope that you get what you need. Granted, it's great for sales, but it just feels so scummy. At least with Magic you'll usually get crappier versions of the cards you want that cost more to cast or something. Like counter spells. So many counter spells. Counter spells for days.

The other big problem with Yugioh is that a lot of the cards just appear to be unbalanced. It seems like I've seen some that are totally useless and others that can destroy a player in one turn, regardless of how well either player has been playing beforehand. Even the strongest cards in Magic require some combo-ing into, so to Yugioh, I say: "Get your shit together and playtest more."