r/gaming • u/RashFaustinho • 9d ago
How Magic The Gathering cards are written VS How Yu-Gi-Oh! cards are written
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u/R_V_Z 9d ago
Old MTG cards could be written like that too. Keywords do a lot of work in cleaning up the text.
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u/kerred 9d ago
Playing modern board games I kind of wish more a few more symbols.
It's easier if I see a flying icon than an upside down word flying when playing someone.
But not too many symbols like Ghost Stories. Net runner did a good job with symbols and words
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u/Spooktato 9d ago
Symbols are good but then if you have conditions in the card effect it becomes quite messy
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u/ninpho2246 9d ago
Mage Knight was a table top miniature game and they had a great use of color coded for abilities.
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u/round-earth-theory 9d ago
That would be fine in a digital game, but it would suck for a physical one. You'd have to first look through the entire bank of icons to find the one you've got, then you could see the definition. But what if you wanted to talk about it? Well it would still need a name, either given by the designers or the players, unless you want to say "image with the sword that's upside down with the spikes on top". So all a bunch of icons would do is obfuscate the game and make it frustrating to play.
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u/onerb2 8d ago
I don't think it's more confusing than text, yes, the icons will have names, but only the icon will be written. If i play magic today, since I'm not a magic player, I'll have to search wtf trample it's for example.
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u/round-earth-theory 8d ago
But you can search trample. You can't search bull symbol at easily.
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u/onerb2 8d ago
Hmm, maybe online with keywords, in a manual i would argue they're the same to search.
As far as i know, magic has a lot of those, which is an issue by itself because the game's complexity is too high right now for anyone who's not a massive mtg fan, but i digress.
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u/round-earth-theory 8d ago
MTG has many ways to ease into it. Low value cards are also very simple in design. So a brand new player should be able to start without much issue as long as they aren't dumped into a senior playgroup without any support. But if that happens, that's more on the group for ambushing the newby instead of shepherding them.
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u/WillowThyWisp 8d ago
I dunno. I played MetaZoo, and was very confused by symbols. Granted, that's probably because:
A. They changed EVERY icon mid-rotation, but kept their functionality.
B. Some have rules baggage, like certain environmental effects trigger when you're in eyesight, and others in 5 miles of. You can play in a suburb to get those bonuses and have River bonuses active if you live close to one, but god forbid you play out of eyesight of a suburb.
C. Some of them should have just been written out. There's one where you flip a coin to bounce a card, and another that when it ETBs, you tap something down.
I think a good balance is having an icon with the word in the first text box, and then replace future keywords with the icon, so Khenra Charioteer would read
" 🐾 Trample
Other creatures you control have 🐾."
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u/ImpossibleGT 9d ago
Literally applies to the original version of Akroma as well, before Vigilance was a keyword.
Also, the Legions version has the best flavor text.
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u/sed_non_extra 9d ago
The best flavor text on a card with the Angel subtype?
"The fall from heaven is never as painful as surviving the impact."
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u/ImpossibleGT 8d ago
I meant the best of the Akromas, but it does also happen to be one of the best period. Not as good as Hatred, but pretty close.
"I will flay the skin from your flesh and the flesh from your bones and scrape your bones dry. And still you will not have suffered enough." -- Greven il-Vec, to Gerrard
Or any quote attributed to Jaya:
"Of course you should fight fire with fire. You should fight everything with fire." -- Jaya Ballard, task mage
Or my personal favorite flavor text of all time:
"Spontaneous combustion is a myth. If you burst into flame, someone wanted you to." -- Chandra Nalaar
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u/DismalChance 9d ago
Too many people are forgetting that a lot of the lower rarity cards that have keywords on them will have the keyword explained on the card as well. Used to be alot more common with the core sets when those were still a thing and good entry point for new players.
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u/cockmanderkeen 9d ago
It's not lower rarity, it's when the keyword is new.
At least that my memory from about 10 years ago.
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u/Littlerob 9d ago
Nah, even in new premier sets, commons tend to have italicised reminder text for keywords. It's omitted if there isn't room (but commons don't usually have so much rules text that they can't fit reminder text), or in alt-art or alt-frame versions.
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u/keeperkairos 9d ago edited 9d ago
And in fact there are new cards which have gotten retro versions where this is plainly obvious, especially for planeswalkers. Here is an example Regular printing, Retro version.
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u/cockmanderkeen 9d ago
Seems like the retro version can get you the ability to gain control of any permanent you target, but regular limits this to targeted by spells.
Presumably from retro text you would gain control if you targeted something with an ability.
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u/keeperkairos 9d ago
They are functionally the same, it's still spells only, but yes it does read like that.
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u/pointblake25 9d ago
This true. I made several pauper commander decks this last month. All the commons with keywords had the explanation on it.
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u/Tucos_revolver 9d ago
Magic started using templating for cards eventually which is why they look much cleaner. Its had to change a little over time to account for rules changes but for the most part it works and is mostly pretty clear on what exactly a cars does.
There are some exceptions however.
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u/Smart_Ass_Dave 9d ago
My only feedback is that on the Yugioh card I would have increased the angel's cup size at least 3 letters.
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u/sed_non_extra 9d ago
They need to have two versions of the art. On from Japan where her entire sternum is bare, then the American version where they recolor her skin around her cleavage to match her armor.
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u/danger522 9d ago
And make her an anime girl
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u/Smart_Ass_Dave 9d ago
I think technically, any female yugioh character is an anime girl, regardless of how they are drawn.
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u/Sneedzilla 9d ago
akroma is the angel of wrath for a reason. shes an insecure chestlet. i doubt those armor titty cups even touch her undershirt/skin
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u/Nightsheade 9d ago
It's worth noting that Yu-gi-oh has a general philosophy of having its card text describe exactly what it should do and that two similar-looking effects can have very different interactions. A few cards that have a similar effect involving negating a card effect for example can differ where one card negates the activation only, another negatives the activation then destroys, another only negates the card effect, etc. There also just aren't a lot of keywords that condense a lot of text, with I believe the biggest one in recent years being 'Graveyard' being abbreviated to 'GY'.
Problem-solving card text means that there is a difference between effects that read "X, and if you do, Y" vs. "X, also do Y", and how they interact with certain card effects and chain sequences.
I'd say the yugioh card design should definitely be upgraded to make better use of the space and provide more room for card text, but otherwise, Yugioh would be more difficult to comprehend if you just start trying to condense things into keywords.
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u/adambebadam 9d ago edited 9d ago
Most people don't know this, but Yu-Gi-Oh chain resolutions are much more complex than MTG stack resolutions. Hell, the entire spell speed and phase system is much more complex, not even mentioning the subtle differences of problem-solving card text.
When designing a card game from the ground up, keywords make sense, but if you're trying to maintain parity with your entire decades-old card pool, there's only so much you can do while keeping the game fresh and interesting. How many big refreshes has MTG done? How many set rotations? It isn't really a fair comparison.
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u/Lemurmoo 9d ago
Yeah I mean the cards chosen for these comparisons are always selective, too. YGO does have keywords like piercing and GY, texts that aren't specified like draw from your deck or whether or not things need to be controlled by who and what. But because the effects are so descriptive and follow a uniform pattern (summon condition>on-field effect>restriction with PSCT), most long time players don't really take more than 2-3 seconds to read a whole card, and very rarely will some written nuance throw a YGO player off.
Comparatively, whenever MTG has to introduce a new keyword, they have to put the effects in parenthesis anyways, and good on them for having more like base line legacy texts, but it also results in anything not considered legacy to have a difficult time coming back. Also since they're largely very continuous in nature and not ignition or generally reactive like in YGO, you end up with less complex situations overall. That's not to say the overall flow of the game can't be complex, but interesting situations just happen in YGO more because the effect wordings are more complex
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u/SearingPhoenix 9d ago
Keywords in Magic, as a result, occasionally cause some oddity where some cards will say something like "Scry 2" whereas another will write out 'long form' the Scry action. This is so that card effects that trigger "Whenever you Scry..." don't interact with them.
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u/Athildur 8d ago
This doesn't happen with Scry.
Magic differentiates between how they approach mechanics. There are 'evergreen' mechanics that are almost guaranteed to show up in every set (like flying, trample), 'deciduous' mechanics that can show up in every set, but aren't guaranteed, and all other mechanics.
Evergreen mechanics are always printed with the mechanic name, as are deciduous mechanics, though deciduous mechanics are more likely to get reminder text. Scry has been evergreen for a while. That means even older cards will have gotten an Oracle update (Oracle being the official database of all card text, which means especially older cards may have rules text that differs from their printed text. This very, very rarely, if ever, changes the card's effects. It just makes it work with newer cards/rules)
All other mechanics will never use the mechanical keyword (or keyword action), instead fully describing the actions required, and thereby not interacting with synergies from sets that feature the mechanic.
The reason for this is a simple reduction in complexity. You don't want to overload sets with keywords because it makes it far more difficult for newer players to pick up your game.
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u/IrrelevantLeprechaun 8d ago
People also forget that in modern YGO, people can and often do lose before they even get their first turn due to their opponent just chaining a ton of summons and effects together.
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u/Nightsheade 8d ago
Sometimes, but not really? Hand traps/blow out cards are ubiquitous and it wasn't that long ago that the TCG was in a Tearlaments meta. (you know, the archetype that lets you play on Turn 0 and do Chain Link 3+ on opponent's turn to summon and play a bunch of effects?)
If you're losing because opponent got to play for free and you didn't interrupt, that's more on you and less on the game.
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u/IrrelevantLeprechaun 8d ago
No game should allow one person to win simply by virtue of having the first turn, while their opponent has no opportunity to retaliate.
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u/Nightsheade 8d ago
Again, it's not the game's fault if you choose to build your deck in such a manner that you can't retaliate.
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u/TheHumanPickleRick 8d ago
Hey man wanna hear a long technical explanation of why "target 1 monster your opponent controls, destroy it" and "destroy 1 monster your opponent controls" are two very different things? Also, wanna hear about how some effects miss timing? So see, basically there's "if (thing happens) you can (effect)" which does NOT miss the timing if it happens in the middle of a chain, then there's "when (thing happens) you can (effect)" where the effect has to be the last thing to resolve on that chain. Don't let this be confused with "when (thing happens) (effect)" which is mandatory and must be resolved. Also lemme tell you why removing a continuous spell or trap is the middle of its effect causes the effect to fizzle, but doesn't negate it, but that's not the case for the several other s/t types except field spells and... hey wait come back I haven't told you why Anti Spell Fragrance shuts down literally an entire summoning mechanic.
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u/sudden_aggression 9d ago
You forget this but early editions of magic also spelled everything out. Vigilance and haste weren't a named ability until much later.
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u/Milotorou 9d ago
Yugioh is 22 years old though. So how "much later" are we talking about here ?
MtG is like 30 years old its not that much older 😅
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u/sudden_aggression 9d ago
I played from when magic came out until the early 2000s. Sold my cards a few years ago.
Once in a while I would look at newer sets and find them confusing as fuck because they would refer to tons of mechanics that I had never heard of before. But looking back at the super early sets, they would use walls of text to explain what burying or sacrificing a creature vs killing it meant.
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u/Milotorou 9d ago
Same here ! Started around 2004-2005 and sold my cards in 2018, just didnt have time to go out to play anymore, played MtG arena for a good 2 years but I got bored... online just doesnt feel the same.
I played YGO from 2001 to like 2012, enjoyed it a fair bit as well but eventually dropped it because I got fed up with the INSANE powercreep, which is even worse nowadays as I have friends still playing, its now literally a competition of who can make the game into "Solitaire - YGO edition" on turn 1.
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u/cockmanderkeen 9d ago
MTG also has some crazy combinations now that let you win on turn 1 with a relatively lucky draw.
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u/Milotorou 9d ago
Yeah new MtG is kinda powercrept too :(
Although at least turns dont take 10+ mins like in Yu-Gi-Oh
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u/sawbladex 5d ago
... 24 years old in Japan.
And Yeah, the Sixth edition update for M:tG created the stack system as we know it, and pre-sixth smells like what YGO! is now, rules wise.
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u/minev1128 9d ago
Always wanted to try Yugi oh when I was younger but it was so text heavy that I just stuck with MTG.
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u/phenotype76 9d ago
Eh, it's two different philosophies when it comes to card text. The Yugioh card looks like a poorly-formatted novel, but if you were to sit down and try to play, knowing nothing about the game, you could probably figure out exactly how the card works just by reading the text. Whereas the MTG card looks a lot cleaner, but you're dependent on a lot of background knowledge. What's First Strike? What's Vigilance? How does Flying work? There's no way to know without some sort of external source of information.
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u/myatomicgard3n 9d ago
As a Yugioh player, that is true, but also everyone has to constantly read their cards cause they cant remember a specific wording or period vs a comma ruling.
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u/Farpafraf 9d ago
There's no way to know without some sort of external source of information.
A worthy trade given you'll learn the meaning of those words in your first day of playing the game and it will spare you from having to read insanely long descriptions.
I would also guess this is one of the reasons you can't play limited formats in yugioh, imagine having to stop the game 5 minutes to read every damn card...
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u/Archaon0103 9d ago
Not really, most cards in Yu-Gi-Oh actually only do 1 or 2 things. The rest are restrictions like once per turn to prevent FTK.
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u/TonberryFeye 9d ago
If it has a smaller word count than War and Peace, is it really a Yu-Gi-Oh card?
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u/Dynasuarez-Wrecks 8d ago
I don't play either of these games (anymore), but I can only presume that Magic: The Gathering has a more robust glossary that minimizes the need to explain effects on the card itself. In this example, the Yu-Gi-Oh! card has even started to do that. In earlier prints, the card would have said something like, "When this Monster attacks a Defense position Monster with DEF lower than this Monster's ATK, inflict damage equal to the difference between them to your opponent's Life Points." Now it just says, "inflict piercing damage" because "piercing" in Yu-Gi-Oh! has a known definition. It did the same thing for some other effects, like "remove from play" becoming known simply as "banish." Magic: The Gathering is apparently just much more efficient at it.
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u/That_Jammed_Guy 9d ago
Am I weird for preferring Yugioh text? I'd rather pay a bit more attention to a longer but simpler text than having to pull out a dictionary to translate each keyword
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u/lellololes 9d ago
I haven't played Magic in a long time and I immediately comprehended everything the Magic card did. The are a bunch of keywords on it but it's also all common stuff to white. On simpler cards they usually explain things a bit more.
If I tried to play with the textual descriptions of the card I'd need to read through it like 8 times every time I wanted to understand it.
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u/RiKSh4w 9d ago
Akroma isn't a card for new players. And more specifically, this printing isn't for new players.
You would only find this in the hands of a new player were it at the helm of a deck that had other cards featuring all these effects. So you can learn these keywords from your smaller cards and put it all together.
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u/Darth_Rutsula 9d ago
Yu-Gi-Oh has a lot more cards focusing on how they are played. Yu-Gi-Oh cards are generally strong imo but they also tend to call out specific card types (specifically names) a lot more often than magic does. For example a Yu-Gi-Oh monster could have "if this card is summoned from the GY..." Plus they tend to have a lot more summoning conditions compared to mtg.
I like both games, but a Yu-Gi-Oh deck in magic would be busted. Also mtg has a resource system, Yu-Gi-Oh doesn't. So there's that.
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u/HylianHawk 8d ago
The resource used to be 'one summon per turn', but special summoning went bananas.
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u/Darth_Rutsula 8d ago
Mtg is limited by one land per turn, but depending on the format, it isn't something that happens alot (unless you play a lands deck). So it isn't that different.
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u/CrumbsCrumbs 9d ago
The Yu-Gi-Oh version's piercing battle damage will never activate because any card with defense lower than its attack will be destroyed before damage calculation.
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u/Redtinmonster 9d ago
"..than this cards ATK", maybe it would be readable if it wasn't size 1 font
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u/CrumbsCrumbs 8d ago
Yes. If it attacks something with defense lower than its attack, it destroys that enemy before damage calculation. Then, after the damage calculation that doesn't happen, any excess damage is dealt to the opponent.
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u/Beard341 9d ago
I absolutely hate what yugioh has become. Too much text for all those effect monsters. I’m not about to read a fucking essay each turn just to understand what’s going on and I certainly don’t have the stamina to memorize so many of them, too. Just insane to me. But maybe I’m just old.
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u/Archaon0103 9d ago
Most of the text on Yu-Gi-Oh cards are restrictions like once per turn clause. Older cards are simpler but at the same time are extremely overpowered due to having no restriction. There's a reason why Pot of Greed is still banned until this day and that card have like 3 words.
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u/a_casual_observer 9d ago
Way back when I played a lot of Spellfire and thought some of those cards got too wordy. They aren't nearly as bad as this.
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u/Cliff-Walker 9d ago
This, and commander duels are the reason MTG is just a straight-up better game at this point imo
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u/Demibolt 9d ago
Yeah but you have to know what all the names mechanics mean. I barely recognize magic cards today. So many bizarre, named mechanics.
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u/fartboxco 9d ago
Yeah magic the gathering has been doing it much longer.
There wouldnt be enough room on the card to explain all of those abilities. (even on the yugioh explanation to entry level player they wouldn't understand)
I remember before the rules and definitions were online. Everyone that played the new regenerate ability with their zombie deck would just revive anytime they want even 10 turns later.
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u/gigantuar 9d ago
Early YuGiOh was great. As power creep kicked YGO just didn’t handle it great and made increasingly complex cards. I tapped out when fusions became a thing which is when it really felt like the cards became a novel.
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u/scottmonster 9d ago
i tapped out when fusions became a thing
So you tapped out in the first set. Didn't really give it a chance
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u/iNsAnEHAV0C 9d ago
For real. Pendulum had me starting to waiver and links are when I was done. Nothing against those that like them, but link summoning just didn't make since to me. I've tried playing them dozens of times and it just never clicked for me. Synchro and Xyz? Love those and I had been playing since OG.
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u/scottmonster 9d ago
But links summoning is the easiest summoning mechanic to understand you just need bodies
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u/iNsAnEHAV0C 9d ago
You're Probably right, but something about it just doesn't click for me. I don't hate it or think it ruined the game it just doesn't make sense the way it works with the arrows and all that. It was probably for the best as I just don't have the time to play anymore anyway. I just collect now. It's all good, I am glad people enjoy it and the game has continued to evolve. One day maybe I'll get back into it
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u/derega16 8d ago
Maybe OCG players? Fusion came a few months after launch in OCG (Just it was shit and nobody used it for several years)
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u/master_cheech 9d ago
This one kid used to come to my house and I would steal his cards. I was so jealous of the kid with the holographic chinese one. I remember stealing them from toys r us and opening them in the bathroom. I remember trying to steal some at the flea market and my mom caught me, I never played yugioh ever again.
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u/shifterkrieg 9d ago
The amount of assumed knowledge on a MTG card vs. a Yugioh card is generally very different, and MTG tends to assume more.
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u/Accurate-Cap3894 9d ago
Finally, a card game that accurately reflects real life. Just try using a stapler to summon an ancient dragon, I dare you.
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u/ArkBeetleGaming 8d ago
Summon Reactor SK can attack her since his effect contain flying from "Flying Fortress SKY FIRE"
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u/Fehafare 8d ago
I think the most glaring and amusing difference here, speaking as someone who is reasonably well versed in YGO (while having only very rudimentary Magic knowledge) is that I skimmed the YGO version for about 3 seconds and quickly concluded "Okay, this card literally does nothing." I guess being unaffected by Dark is kinda neat, but not like it can't be easily removed anyway while not really being a threat/asking for immediate removal.
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u/Powerman293 5d ago
I know the Yugioh card looks like a mess, but there's a reason. While Yugioh does have keywords, a lot of how the game works and its various interactions are built on how it specifically handles an effect. Making keywords for all these slight variations would be nigh impossible.
For example take two effects in the Yugioh style:
"You can discard 1 card and target 1 card your opponent controls; destroy that target."
"You can target 1 card your opponent controls; discard 1 card, and destroy that target"
These are basically two different effects, entirely based on where you put things in terms of cost vs effect. If you negate the activation of the first effect, you lose a card from your hand as part of the activation cost(before the semicolon). The second effect you don't have to discard until the effect goes through(after the semicolon).
Subtle nuances like this can lead to cards like Mathmech Circular, which are very unquiely Yugioh. Which as part of its activation cost sends a Mathmech from deck to graveyard. Meaning even if your opponent negates the Circular they still sent a monster to the GY.
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u/Mautos 9d ago edited 9d ago
Unrealistic af. The yugioh card didn't have a super specific summon condition that only works with its own decktype