In a Pendulum Zone, a Pendulum Monster Card is treated as a Spell Card, targeting only Spell Cards. This can be confusing at first but eventually becomes clear. The two crystals with numbers below them are called “Pendulum Effects”.
Pendulum Monsters are half-monster, half-spell cards that can either be summoned or placed in a Pendulum Zone as a special kind of Continuous Spell called a Pendulum Effect. They can be activated from the hand as a Spell Card. However, if Pendulum monsters are taken out for cards to break boards like Kaijus or strong non-pendulum monsters like Apex Avian, the consistency lowers, which is the inherent flaw that caps the potential of Pendulum.
Pendulum Spells are Pendulum Monster Cards activated as Continuous Spells in a Pendulum Zone. They are not Continuous Spells but behave as a Pendulum Effect. If they are set the pendulum scale in the spell and trap zones, they would not be destroyed, as they are considered spell cards.
A Pendulum Monster can be used in two ways: as a Monster card (that can be Summoned/Set) or as a Spell Card by activating it in the Pendulum Zone. If they are set the pendulum scale in the spell and trap zones, they would not be destroyed, as they are considered spell cards.
In summary, Pendulum Monsters are half-monster, half-spell cards that can be summoned or placed in a Pendulum Zone. They have unique characteristics that set them apart from other types of Monsters, such as their color and ability to be activated as a Spell Card.
📹 Why Everybody Hates Pendulums | Yu-Gi-Oh!
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How do Yugioh pendulum monsters work?
A Pendulum Monster is a unique monster in Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel that can act as both a spell card and a monster card. It has both a monster text and a spell effect, which is active depending on its location on the field. Pendulum Summons can only be conducted when a Pendulum Monster is present in each of the Pendulum Zones. Each Pendulum Monster has a Pendulum Scale, which becomes active when the monster is face-up in the Pendulum Zone.
Once per turn, if a complete Pendulum Scale is present in both zones, you can summon as many monsters in your hand whose level lies between the numbers cited in the scale, not including the numbers used for the scale. However, you cannot summon monsters whose level is equal to the Pendulum Scale, so creating a Pendulum Scale of 3 and 4, 4 and 4, or any other similar combination will not allow you to conduct a Pendulum Summon.
Do pendulum monsters count as monsters on the field?
Pendulum Monsters are treated as Spells and apply their Pendulum Effects, but they are not treated as normal, continuous, field, Equip, quick-play, or ritual Spell Cards. They do not count towards the 5 card total in the Spell and Trap Card Zone and cannot be replaced like Field Spell Cards. They remain in the zone as long as not destroyed. There is no limit to how many times Pendulum Monsters can be placed into Pendulum Zones per turn as long as they are open. The Pendulum Effect and Pendulum Scales take up space in the bottom left corner of the card, along with the ATK/DEF values of the Pendulum Monster.
Are pendulum monsters treated as spells?
Pendulum Monsters are treated as Spell Cards in the Pendulum Zone, but they are not considered Normal, Continuous, Field, Equip, Quick-Play, or Ritual. Players can activate a Pendulum Monster from their hand in the available Pendulum Zone on their field. However, they cannot send cards in the Pendulum Zone to the Extra Deck face-up to activate a new one.
During the Main Phase, a player can perform a Pendulum Summon once per turn, Special Summoning multiple Monsters from their hand and face-up Pendulum Monsters in the Extra Deck. Pendulum Monsters can be Fusion, Synchro, or Xyz Monsters, which are face-down in the Extra Deck and can be Summoned as normal while face-down. Most Pendulum Monsters are Normal or Effect Monsters in the Main Deck.
Can you link summon with pendulum monsters?
The utilization of pendulums for the purpose of Link Summons is subject to restriction within the Extra Deck, a consequence of their designation as Link Materials. Pendulums can be utilized to summon monsters from the hand and subsequently recycle them, thereby conferring a distinct advantage in the process of summoning monsters.
What is the longest pendulum effect in Yugioh?
The game has three long-winded effects, with the longest card text being Gunken Sous-ship Shari at 116. Google’s services include delivering and maintaining services, tracking outages, protecting against spam, fraud, and abuse, measuring audience engagement, and enhancing service quality. If “Accept all”, cookies and data are used to develop new services, deliver and measure ad effectiveness, and show personalized content based on user settings.
Is pendulum summoning good?
Pendulum Summoning is a powerful strategy where a monster from your Extra Deck must go to either your one Extra Monster Zone or a Main Monster zone that a Link Monster points to. Unless you have a Link Monster, you can only summon one monster from your Extra Deck. However, you can still summon as many monsters from your hand as fit on the field. Flooding the field is always good, and keeping a Pendulum Monster out of play for more than a turn can be challenging due to their need to return from the Extra Deck in the next turn.
Can you strike a pendulum summon?
Solemn Strike can be employed to prevent the completion of a Pendulum Summon in the event of an encounter with the most dominant Weekend Deck, Performapal Pendulums.
When pendulum monsters are destroyed?
Pendulum Monsters, such as Odd-Eyes Venom Dragon Odd-Eyes Wing Dragon Odd-Eyes Rebellion Dragon A Fusion, a Synchro, and an Xyz Monster, can only be summoned through Pendulum Summoning. However, in 2017, the introduction of Link Monsters severely impacted Pendulum cards, requiring them to follow the same rules as Link Monsters and Fusion, Synchro, and Xyz Monsters. This led to the loss of the ability to swarm the board repeatedly each turn.
Pendulum Summoning is currently only used in dedicated decks, and there are no staple cards that can be used in any deck. Pendulum cards have lost their most powerful advantage, as they cannot be summoned outside of dedicated decks.
Is pendulum call good?
The Pendulum Call card is a highly effective search card that has been observed in numerous Odd-Eyes Magician decks that have been gaining popularity in Regionals. This card enables the player to search for two distinct Magician Pendulum Monsters with a single discard.
How do pendulums work?
A pendulum is a weight suspended from a pivot, allowing it to swing freely. When displaced sideways from its equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity, causing it to oscillate about the equilibrium position. The period of one complete cycle depends on the length of the pendulum and the amplitude of its swing.
Pendulums were used for timekeeping until the 1930s, with the pendulum clock invented by Christiaan Huygens in 1656 becoming the world’s standard timekeeper. It achieved accuracy of about one second per year before being replaced by the quartz clock in the 1930s. Pendulums are also used in scientific instruments like accelerometers and seismometers, and historically as gravimeters to measure gravity acceleration in geo-physical surveys.
In physics and mathematics, a double pendulum, also known as a chaotic pendulum, is a simple physical system with a strong sensitivity to initial conditions. The motion of a double pendulum is governed by a set of coupled ordinary differential equations and is chaotic.
📹 THE PENDULUM PROBLEM
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In my opinion, the main problem was power creep. Not just in terms of pendulum monsters, but Yu-Gi-Oh has had a huge problem with power creep that has only gotten bigger over the decades. I think a lot of people were reaching their limit around the Zexal era and the addition of pendulums with the new summons and extra effects and gamespeed just threw them over the edge. I know I was starting to feel the creep way back in the 5Ds era.
For me it was the effect it had on Spellcasters; we went form occasional Spellcaster support for Spellcasters in general or Dark magician to only support for pendulum Spellcasters or Dark Magician. It felt really shitty because if you had an older deck that isn’t Dark magician or a pendulum Spellcasters deck you basically went without any new cards for a time until link monsters came and brought out more Spellcaster support.
Pendulums weren’t what made me quit the game initially, I quit before pendulums due to life getting too busy and getting into MTG. However, pendulums WERE the thing that kept me from ever trying the game again until master duel. They are EXTREMELY anti-newcomer. Like, yes, once you know how they work, they aren’t actually all that complicated, but in a TCG, the more rules you have to learn from a rulebook that you cant figure out on the fly by playing the game, the worse of an experience for new players the game is. And with pendulums, you can take one look at a card and know you have no idea what it does and no amount of reading the card will change that. That is really, really bad for attracting people to the game. And I think the effect was just amplified for lapsed players. If you know the rules to yugioh but still cant figure out what a card does after reading it, you’re going to feel like the game just got away from what it was. Not trying to be all yugioh boomer, I’ve been playing master duel and find the game enjoyable even if I can’t play random normal monsters in defense mode and pass turn anymore. It’s a different game, but still fun. I just think them introducing pendulums into the game was a big mistake for player retention and for bringing in new players. It’s a really, really weird card type.
I felt it could be broken at the time but I also hoped it would make some slower decks more playable – like Steelswarm. The mechanic that actually turned me off was link monsters – restrictions for summoning anything from the extra deck and that made link monsters mandatory for the majority of decks. It was too restrictive in my opinion – even Konami backed it (mostly) down later. Now I think it is kinda nice as it is usually less restrictive (links monsters usually don’t have level requirementa for material, as an example).
As someone coming back in to the game for the first time in over ten years, pendulum was the only reason I even gave master duel a chance. It was fun to play, when I played my first few duels I just watched the other player spam out cards while the best I could manage was one or two. This archetype gave me a chance in a game that is nothing like it was the last time I played.
Yup, pretty much sums up my experience. Synchro summons were fun, like easier ritual monsters. Xyz was more difficult but the good effects were balanced with being limited by the overlays. Pendulums I understood the mechanic and it’s rulings, but it always felt like needlessly complicated pretending to be an exciting game mechanic. And yeah, when cards started getting an average of 3-4 effects each and getting covered in text I called quits. I want to have fun while playing, not study law…
I think a fairly big reason why people didn’t (or still don’t) pendulums, is how far removed they are from the rest of the game. Which ties in to how (un)intuitive they are, I guess. Synchros were… basically fusion monsters, with less restrictions, you could say. You have monsters on the board, and use those to make a bigger one by sending them to the grave.The main complaint about those, was their powerlevel. XYZ was sort of the next step, where the whole thing of keeping the materials on the card happened. That’s still similar enough to, let’s say, equipment cards. Yes, that’s probably a stretch, but I’m trying to get behind how people went to lengths to “rationalize” the cards’ behaviour. Pendulums… yeah. new zones and an existing zone being used differently and the cards don’t really behave like pretty much any other card, in that they don’t go to the grave when leaving the board? That feels like it’s an entirely different game. Link Monsters still have that extra zones stuff, though I guess after pendulums people were easier to accept them. But they’re still fairly intuitive by how the summoning works at least. Even their effects that apply to/from cards they point to (which I’d say is their main mechanic), those are entirely readable from the card itself, no need to grab a rulebook. Well, I guess the restriction on extra deck summons comes with them as well, but even that feels fairly tame after pendulums. All of them besides pendulums have something in common. They’re in the extra deck like regular fusions, they are summoned from the extra deck like others, they go to the grave like others.
I think part of the initial idea that you would throw time gazer and star gazer into any deck is at least partially due to how they were used in the anime, especially how in like episode 4 what’s his face just steals star gazer and time gazer and puts them into his deck (also the battle Royale segment of the tournament arc, where they just give generic pendulums to random decks). This is in contrast to how fusion synchro and xyz were pretty much used the same way in both the anime and actual game (although much slower and with worse monsters in the anime)
I loved pendulums at the start and I still do to this day. I love how they make the main deck choices really matter – they’re not just an engine to facilitate extra deck monsters. But also I’m torn between wanting more pendulum subthemes in other decks like what Lunalights and SHS got, and understanding that pendulums take a lot of mental effort to grok and it might not be worth it for only two cards.
If I were to explain a pend monster to an old yugioh player it would be something like: “It’s a monster, you draw it as a monster, it’s a monster in your hand, you summon it as a monster, etc. Then, all pend have a rule where, if destroyed, they go to the extra deck face up instead of the graveyard (but you still send them there when tributed or with card effects). Then they have another effect where you can activate them as spell cards in you P-zones, and then and only then they are considered cont. spell cards and you use their spell effect instead of the monster effect.” Then I’d explain pend summoning, why face up on the extra deck, and how link affects them.
Xyz is my favorite inclusion because it didn’t required special cards (like tuner monster or polymerization), was easy to use and reminded of how fusions were made in the start of the anime / manga (almost the mammoth arrow thing). Also, gave limited time effects to the monsters thanks to the material requirement. Was a indeed neat adition.
I personally always liked pendulums, and I never really hated a new mechanic in yugioh, until link monsters came…😒 Eventhough pendulums and links are the only ones restricted to linked zones now, the damage has been done since master rule 4. Link monsters are more OP than pendulums ever were and there’s no going back now, because they needed to make the link monsters so generic… There are actually some exceptions where I like link summoning like in @ignisters, sky striker or world legacy archetype. But yeah links were the first extra deck mechanic, that actually triggered me…
Re: point 2 The big problem, I feel, is that most of the other cards are mostly understood on first viewing. There might be some individual rule in the rulebook to remember with how to deal with individual bits and pieces of the card but they’re mostly understandable, even to an outsider/someone at least familiar with card games. Maindeck monsters just need to remember tribute rules for levels 5-6 and 7+, everything else is on the text of the card. Flip monsters just need to remember rules for how flip works (which most monsters can do), everything else is the text. Spells and traps only need to remember traps can’t activate the same turn. Fusion monsters just need to remember you need a Poly by default, and either Poly or the card itself will cover any additional weirdness. Synchros and XYZ need exact level requirements for levels, but list material criteria. Links need to remember what arrows mean and link rating, but otherwise is fairly easy to understand just from the card itself. … Pendulums… you need to understand what scale values mean, when each part of the text box is active, when they go to the extra deck, when you can set scales, what you can and cannot summon from the extra deck, when they count as spells and when they count as monsters… these are all elements not immediately obvious from looking at the card, and you’re forced to go to the rulebook to find out all of these mechanics, where most other card types are almost self explained by their design. And really, that’s sort of the beauty of Yugioh – some 90% of card mechanics can be understood by just reading the card – it’s very easy for a new player to pick up a pack of cards and at least get the jist of what they do without ever reading a rulebook.
I recently tried to get back into yugioh… and I played back when it first came out. And The moment I opened the starter deck I bought. I looked at it and, sure the art was cool… but I never played with it. Because I came back in after all the generations were there… I was overwhelmed and never tried again… the stuff looks overly complicated from a time when I played. Maybe that’s my age, but I just don’t have the patience to learn the meta of it all… I have recently been listening to lore theories of Yugioh and that has been insane to experience. I knew Yugioh as a cool show about a cool card game based on something called the Shadow Games. And now I learn there is time travel, powering cities with summoning, plane shifting, big baddies being fragmented, and all that has been fascinating to listen to in my free time. Who knew a show about a card game can get so crazy. Anyway, cheers.
I think my biggest problem as a returning casual who dropped out around the time when XYZ/Zexal was getting started, isn’t understanding the new mechanics. Link Evolution does a good job walking people through the basics. It’s that there’s SO MANY cards and strategies and decks and card sets that it’s overwhelming to even consider making my own deck from scratch. Unless I were to just unlock every card possible and go through them all one by one, looking for cards that go well with each other, I’d have to go on a long google dive of looking up specific sets of cards, their general abilities, and other cards that might go well with them. It feels like a lot of work just to get to the starting line. And while I’m fine using a deck that I found online for the story mode of LE, there’s a lot more to learn when I’m thinking about dueling other actual people who have way more experience and knowledge than I do. Also, I hate Link Summoning. Even the tutorial it gives you is just special summoning like 20 different monsters in a row until you get to a vaguely powerful card that wins the game for you.
When I first saw the early Pendulum Monsters, and thought it was a brilliant idea since they were all Normal Monsters. I thought it was a great way to make them viable (as a spell cards, or as a monster when you needed it.) But then that ended quickly when they became Effect/Pendulums near exclusively, thus power creeping. Pendulum Summoning however was what made me quit competitive Yu-gi-oh. Because it turned the game into a war of attrition. Something that, even with archetypes being able to summon half their deck in one turn, the game was NOT designed for, thus throwing off what balance remained. (Need I remind you of that one deck that was tier… -2! And took about 2-3 emergency banned list to take down.) Then MR4 tried to fix thing, but it ended up funneling everyone into Link Monster, and I gave up on the physical game all together. Now I play the digital versions exclusively (From Gameboy Color to Switch).
When pendulum first came out, I was more confused than upset. I got into the game when xyz monsters first appeared so its not like I had old school yugioh attachment as some of the veterans, but I understand where they were coming from. For me, I was still trying to master xyz summoning with my zexal deck, and by the time I made xyz my ace summon method, pendulums came out then boom, basically have to learn the game all over again. However, despite that, I can never say I was bored or irritated by pendulum cards. It was a new mechanic, and even when I was 12 at the time, I knew konomai did this to spice up the game, and good on them for doing so. I never really saw it as broken, as most decks at the time were still functional without them. Sure, it was kinda repetitive seeing TG magician and SG magician with odd-eyes every time, but that the flow of the game with new mechanics. Learning, for me at least, was made easier when I saw the anime, but of course, not all things translate to real dueling. To this day, while I am an XYZ master, I am still trying to master pendulum summoning as my second go-to. I have made this trickster-style performapal deck to help me out, but I wish I could go all out like we used to during rule 3. Mastering pendulum now was made even harder for me since links first came out, which is a summoning method I will never enjoy. In conclusion, my personal ranking of summoning styles mainly focuses on the more recent ones (except links), but I still found a way to enjoy each and every single one, no matter how much I prefer one over others.
I didn’t mind synchros, XYZs, or link monsters they are quite fun and this is coming from someone who usually played either mainly fusion heavy decks or decks that used ritual monsters (I’m so excited for the new magikey monsters a combination of ritual, fusions, and synchros count me in). I didn’t like them when they were first introduced and quite frankly being able to summon five “monsters” on one turn was quite dumb and infuriating. I’m fine with them adding in new things, like link monsters to me is a really cool mechanic, I just did not enjoy seeing pendulum monsters. I am very excited about the new magikey cards
When I first found out how to Pendulum Summon, I was excited, but I also realized how broken the new mechanic is/could be. I still like Pendulum monsters and I’m happy when I can Pendulum Summon, but bringing out up to 5 monsters each turn is very broken. Congratulations on getting married by the way, Dzeef!! I wish you a happy marriage.
Hey man, may be two months ago but congratulations on getting married! Not a competitive TCG player, but my wife and I play occasionally, as do I and a few of my old friends who used to duel on the school yard “back in the day.” In all seriousness, 90% of that interest stays fresh because of the nostalgia we get from your website. Hope you and your spouse also find some “old school” fun in this game you’ve kept fresh for many years!
I was always intrigued by pendulums when they came out. I liked the fact that normal monsters could be pendulums and not be complete bricks, but have an effect AND have the privilege of normal monster support. In the end nothing super interesting came out from it, but I can’t say I dislike the mechanic even if I’ve never truly used a pendulum deck. I was so excited for Draconia Support…
When I started playing Yugioh I actually started playing with the Duelist Kingdom rules. (Which me and my friends played with until GX generation when we had to learn how the actual game was played.) I liked how simple and straight forward those rules were. Modern Yugioh has evolved to favor specific prestructured decks. As a result I’m seeing people play with the exact same decks over and over again. Very few surprises especially when you see the first card they play and you can predict their exact strategy. Pendulum summons is when I quit playing the official game and returned to the duelist kingdom rules. It’s just a simpler game. Duelist Kingdom rules include: Draw phase: replenish your hand to 5 cards. (This means the more cards you use the more you have to draw) Summoning: normal monsters and most effect monsters can be summoned without tributes based on stars (if the card says it has special summoning requirements then you follow) Fusion summons cannot be targeted by card effects that specifically designate 1 monster as they’re a fusion of two or more. Battle: you can only attack with 1 monster per turn. Also card elements are applied. (Light/Dark, Fire>Earth>Wind>Water). Advantage elements gain 500atk/def during attack phase. The rest of the game plays pretty much the same. ((Needless to say some cards become incompatible with this rule set, but other cards that would be otherwise completely useless suddenly have value.
see i started yugioh around late 2013 early 2014 and ngl pend summon was weird for me till a few months after they were around and i ended up really liking them however the too much text i definitly get it took forever to read a card and the only thing i hated about pendlum was the fact that pepe existsed (performal/performage/solemn) however i ended up very much disliking link format and i dont know if thats just the in general some yugioh plauers hate new rules but i genujnely felt like that destroyed a lot of decks except well other link decks
For me, I lost my job shortly after nats 2013 and while I got a new job less than a month later, I had to adapt to a new commute and schedule that prevented me from playing the game for at least a few months. When looking at what new cards had come out in the months I was away, Pendulums were announced in Japan, and with it came the restructuring of the field of play. Having played the game from Metal Raiders all the way to that point, considering myself “pretty much done” after qualifying for nats in 2011 with that tournament taking place in my backyard and knowing that I’d be proposing to my own girlfriend a month later, and “accidentally” qualifying for 2013 nats at the end of 2012 because I went to a regional with a longtime friend right before they moved away… I was done. Too much change for someone that really didn’t have as much time, money, or interest in keeping up. Pendulums weren’t the only reason, but they were definitely the nail in the coffin.
I’ll be honest, there is a lot of bull every time I try to play Yu-gi-oh exclusively due to pendulum monsters but I actually can appreciate the effect somewhat if it didn’t allow you to summon up to five every turn. The reason I dislike the whole game isn’t any individual effects but rather the combination of old and new effects that create auto-win conditions. I have watched players beat older and newer decks with cards that basically allowed them to use every card in their deck in the second turn of the duel. Because A summons B, B summons C, C can sacrifice A and B to do a ridiculous amount of damage but that activates the effect of trap card D which allows you to resummon A and B from the graveyard and you can use the effect of spell card E to summon something else at the cost of two monsters. I hate this because it doesn’t end and rather than limiting the total number of special/synchro/pendulum/such and such summons you can do in one turn as they did in 1st gen yu-gi-oh with normal summons, instead, they just made more decks/cards capable of embracing this strategy of constantly summoning so almost every deck nowadays has to be a meta deck to have any chance of surviving past the second turn.
I remember when Pendulums came out, I was in middle/elementary school. I never went to my local card shop, or play any type of yugioh competitively. My experience of yugioh was through the anime, and playing friends at school who bought cards at target or online etc. Saturday morning cartoons got canceled, so no ArcV on TV. Didn’t understand the pendulum mechanic at all, like is it a spell and a monster how do you scale? It didn’t make sense at first glance and there was no show to explain it to me. Completely killed my interest in yugioh as a kid.
Pendulums were part of the reason why I quit Yugioh, or at least it reaffirmed my decision to not play it. They were weird, they were intimidating to learn, confusing, too much text, I was mad that they introduced a new type of card instead of improving old cards that needed buffs (like rituals), etc. But recently, I’ve gotten back into Yugioh, and I decided to force myself how to learn Pendulums, and they’re actually fun to use, and powerful. But all of my previous complaints are still valid, it really doesn’t matter how great they are, Konami should have understood how they were power creeping the game, and changed things to compensate. They should have split the game into two new formats. Advanced style and Classic style. The latter would have banned all these new cards, no syncros, xyz, pendulums, link monsters, etc. Maybe make some small changes to the rules as well. I still think Ritual Monsters should have been re-worked so that they are in the extra deck from now on, and all you need to summon them is the ritual spell and tributes. Something like that.
When I saw Pendulum monsters were coming in didn’t even give it a chance. I had fallen out of love with the game when they reduced the amount of fusions you could have and how XYZ monsters had made Synchos worthless. It was easy to get out of playing and collecting at that point. Part of me regrets it
I only ever played a little bit of casual yu gi oh with borrowed decks for fun and only up to synchro summoning made sense at the time but now I play duel links and they recently added pendulum summoning to it and it makes perfect sense. Things are a bit different with the smaller field and character skills but I at least was able to understand something super foreign in a short timespan with the help of how changes are displayed automatically like atk/def boosts and when effects can be used. Link monsters still mystify me to this day tho
So I came back to the game in late 2015 after a 10 year hiatus and had to learn Synchro, Xyz and Pendulum Summoning all at once in combination with the new master rules and new deck building style as I was still used to Goat style deck building. My experience with the mechanic is that at first sight the cards are indeed overwhelmingly confusing to look at, so to their visual card design definitely could have been better. When I actually sat down and read the mechanic and looked up some tutorials (Hardleg has some great tutorial articles), it all came down to simple memorization like any other rule and simply putting in the effort to learn them. Once I actually learned them and started playing them, the mechanic is actually very easy to play. The only hurdle I had to overcome was how to properly deck build with pendulum monsters because you are still dealing with cards that have a buttload of text and comprehending the synergy between their effects and recognizing which ones are good and which are not isn’t easy if you don’t fully understand the mechanic, but even that is something that didn’t take me too much time to learn. In the end my take is that if you are an experienced player and you really like the game you will put in the effort to learn the new rules and new mechanics instead of complaining about everything new that comes up. By this point you should know by now that new things will be added to the game and that the way the game is being played keeps on changing over time and complaining about it is wasted time.
Just seen the title and came to say I love pendulums and have been saddened ever since they crippled the board. Not to mention the several bans that have essentially made them unplayable. Thankfully I don’t play tournaments and just with my friends but they hate pendulums and complain whenever I bring them for a session.
Thanks for doing these articles, they’re really telling the facts, and aren’t biased like others. In my opinion, Pendulum is unfairly hated by the community and probably Konami at some extend (or they’re just lazy at dealing with them, as with other stuff), just because of stuff that could be fixed, instead of just complaining like crying babies. Also people really like to complain about stuff like too much text, but when you really read it, it really isn’t that much text once you look at it, also they complain about modern cards having walls of text, when in old school Yu-Gi-Oh! you could see stuff like the redundancy of Ritual Monsters, telling the player the levels needed to Ritual Summon, when those requirements were also in their respective Ritual Spells (look for the oldest prints of Relinquished and you’ll see), and the unneeded text for Polymerization and Monster Reborn, that was really too much text, not anything printed at today’s age. Pd: Congratulations on your wedding, I hope you and your wife get a lovely and healthy relationship.
As someone who only learned of Pendulums last year, after being out of collecting and playing for a good decade, I was intrigued by them. I find them a fairly nifty mechanic, and definitely can facilitate all sorts of extra deck plays. My main complaints are that it took me forever to figure out how they properly work, and that it’s very hard to remember all the details of their effects due to how long the texts can be. They can definitely be confusing and frustrating, but then again I know people who thought the same of Synchros and Links. Also, congrats on the wedding.
I never understood the hate for pendulums. “They swarm” so does every single meta deck in the game. “Their effect is long” so is 90% of cards in this game. We really out here acting like cards has Pot of Greed length effects before pendulums? Plus, it’s a good thing you can ignore 50% of their effect depending on where the card is. Cause it’s not like the spell effect is going off when it’s in the monster zone, and Vice Versa.
When I was playing Yugioh in 2014 ish, from what I could tell from my locals was there was very few decks that just spammed out a full 5 row of monsters, and if they did, they have an annoying-ish or RNG requirement, Like lightsworns at the time. Having 1 day going to my locals, having literally every deck just spam 5 monster over and over it felt like with zero drawback or RNG involved i literally lost interest. At the time I swear there wasn’t that many decks that spammed out a full row (That might of changed now with the meta) But at the time, it wasn’t (Only in a few cases) It was just boring to face, uninteresting. I actually ended up quitting around the time pendums came out, maybe I just didnt like the game or it pushed me over the edge. But it really bored me to face. I haven’t played Yugioh since but i dip into yugioh content every once in awhile
Pendulums killed the game for me. I played a lot back in master rule 2. XYZ took a second to grow on me, but once I got used to them I loved them. They added a new depth to the mechanics of the game by making Levels something you focused on. I had an extremely effective Evol deck built of almost entirely level 4 monsters and I won lots of games with it. In those days, getting 4 or 5 monsters on the field in one turn was an accomplishment. I felt impressed facing an opponent who managed it. That all changed once Pendulums hit the scene. If I didn’t go first, I’d be faced with a wall of monsters full of negation effects I couldn’t counter. Qli was the worst. I lost in two turns against every Qli deck I came across. I remember specifically it was an OTK Qli deck that was my last duel. It’s only gotten worse since then. If you tried playing Nibiru back when I played, it’d brick your hand. Now it’s played at 3 in every deck. I’ve kept up with the game, because I used to love it, but I haven’t played since.
When I came back, I understood how Synchro and XYZ Summoning worked. Pendulum summoning makes no sense to some who grew up with the card game after taking a hiatus from it. To make it more confusing, Pendulum cards had a new spot on the playing field for them. Then, when you look at the cards themselves, they are a mixture visually between normal monster and spell cards.
I love pendulums because I am attached to performapal I love how they look play the flavor of the cards I don’t even run many cards that aren’t performapal. They do rely heavily on the backrow which is why I have to plan every move I make more than usual they are still my favorite archetype in the game
When I got back into Yugioh in 2018 I saw Pendulum monsters and was really confused. I looked up how they work but forgot it literally an hour later and decided to just ignore them like my friends did. We just played like we did in like 2010 and ignored Link and Pendulum. Guess we are like the “when I was young everything was better” Grandpa everybody knows
Pendulums are what brought me back to Yu-Gi-Oh. I played super casually, and because of that when playing online I’d get absolutely destroyed by almost every deck I’d come across. Whether it was them summoning ridiculous amounts of creatures or just board wiping me and eating me alive. I recently discovered D/D/D, and now I feel like I finally have a chance, not only can I hold my own against some of the better decks out there, if I play my cards right I can even win. Pendulums in modern era aren’t hard to deal with, just pop their scales and they usually start to flounder, then you put pressure on them and they can’t recover usually as to even attempt to pendulum summon you have to go -2. Everyone wants to complain about how they are resource less but fails to take into consideration how much of your deck has to be devoted to performing the summons because if you can’t get out good scales then you’re done for.
My biggest gripe with pendulums is the dying and going onto the extra deck thing, Not so mutch because of the massive pendulum summons of your dead monsters (Althogh that was pretty nasty before MR5) But more on the fantasy element of the game, like what is happening when your pen mon dies, what does this simulate in a RP sense? when you fuse you combine monsters, offer sacrifices to get a ritual monster, xys and synchros are hard to pin down but are at least dimension and time themed respectively. Pens tho?! They open up a gate to the pendulum netherealm?
Great article, you excatly captured the feelings of the Players That had problems with pedulum when it first came out. But I feel like the title should be „Why everybody hated pendulum” since you mainly Focus on when that timezone during its release, I don’t think it is still as hated as it was back then.
Honestly I never really cared about pendulums, and looking back I feel like they made several mistakes when designing the mechanic. (And the UGLY Performapals artworks!) But nowadays, some people are entirely dedicated to pendulums, and some of their cards are very cool ! So I think it’s safe to say that Pendulums are an important part of the game and add even more variety than there already is.
I was getting back into casual Yugioh a year or so before links got revealed after not really playing since I was younger, and I always really liked pendulums. I think they’re such a cool way to special summon, the fact they were basically a spell and a monster card depending on how you use it was interesting, and it was just so cool to do. I do understand why other casuals didn’t like them, it is kinda overwhelming at first, it made no sense to me when I was got back into it, and it did kinda signal the start of the massive amount of card text to be more common, which can also be a bit much. All in all, I thought they were cool. Also congratulations on your marriage!
I think the main reason is that they were yet another summoning mechanic in a game that didn’t really need any more summoning mechanics. There were plenty of ways to make the game feel exciting and refreshing again, and a new summoning mechanic (especially from the extra deck) was not necessary. Duel Links for example had the Skill mechanic which added a lot of flavour to decks without overcomplicating things.
i only play these kinda deck on master duel’s solo mode and the pendulum mechanic is really confusing, because you should be able to summon any monster in your hand in-between the levels stated on the 2 pendulum cards, right? for example if you have a 1-8 pendulums you should be able to summon all level 2-7, but most of the time master duel won’t let you… or might be just a bug on master duel
I don’t have a problem with Pendulum cards, I actually have a Qli deck which uses Pendulum to a limited extent. However, I despise the Pendulum Spellcaster Deck with cards like ‘Endymion’ and ‘Jackal King’ because not only is it terribly broken to summon many monsters from the deck in a single turn and negate effects but it also takes ages in online battles because it relies on Spell Counters.
Well, Master Rule 4 was because Konami wanted you to buy more cards so they invalidated all your old cards unless you bought the new ones. It’s the same reason there’s a new identical iPhone every year. They want you to buy stuff while you’re old stuff still works, so they make the old stuff stop working.
I can’t deny, pendulums kept me from the game for years. Now that I know how they work, they’re one of my favorite mechanics in the game. It turning away casual fans is very relatable sadly. Now that I’ve gotten back into the game, long text isn’t what should scare people. The words “special summon” and “negate” should.
With some hindsight and master duel to mess around I admit that pendulums and links are more balanced and also more simple than I ever gave them credit for. While I personally haven’t messed around with pendulums, dueling someone in ranked still felt reasonably okay. Links making me need to care about columns is a bit hard to get used to but even in the low tier jank trash I run I can usually fit 1 or 2 links in my extra deck and while not used consistently, they are pretty okay when I find an opportunity to bring one out.
I have a love-hate relationship with Pendulum monsters. I think they should have been futureproofed and balanced better. Powercreep hit them really hard. I love some of the more balanced Pendulum decks. Abyss Actors will be in my top-ten list of archetypes for a long time. Balanced properly, I really enjoy them. But the massive pendulum pile that ended on 4+ negates through interaction was never something I enjoyed, for hopefully obvious reasons.
The inclusion of Pendulums wasnt was killed the game for me though it definitely did not help. on announcement, i thought it really wasnt that much of a deal, maybe something i would get over and come to like about the game like synchros and xyzs (admittingly these 2 also had me and my friends contemplate quiting until we actually got to try it and ended up being fun). When pendulums came out however our locals became a shitshow where 3 guys literally made an entire room of 50 people quit the game by how oppressive the deck was taking the top 3 spots. our form of removal was still mass destruction like mirror force and torrential tribute, but ofc if you take them out this way… lol doesnt matter they come back for free, destroy their scales? nope they get effects on destruction to grab another scale or summon a boss monster that is annoying to kill, ignore it? nope they will destroy it themselves for gains and get their things anyways. and this is coming off from regularly fighting full power dragon rulers every week and actually making something that can beat them. but…. What truly was the end for me was the restriction on one synchro/xyz/fusion at a time, when you became that invested in a part of the game only for them to restrict it so hard made me think that they didn’t care about the player base at all aside from forcing people to invest into their new toy. Master rule 5 had me thinking about wanting to come back since links look fun but I have been removed from the game so long that I would need to rebuy literally all my decks.
Pendulums are the mechanic which got me back into Yugioh and playing it a lot more. With the release of the Arc-V anime it peaked my interest in the game and I got into the more competitive scene because of Pendulum summoning and trying to make it work. Because of it a lot of people at my school who played Yugioh in secret became more open about it and played a ton. The mechanic is not as hard as people make it out to be as well as how the pendulum monsters themselves work. They are monsters a majority of the time unless they are in the pendulum zone. A lot of my favorite decks were pendulum archetypes like Performapal, Odd-Eyes and the Magicians plus Dinomist and others. Sure pendulum summoning was busted but only in those pendulum decks and I do think having the pendulum zones now in the S/T zone is good because it limits the amount of back row you would have plus most Pendulum decks don’t run many back row cards to begin with from what I’ve seen. The mechanic I would say is not anti-beginner friendly at all because they are just different main deck monsters rather than an extra deck monster. The only thing I feel can get complex is when it does and doesn’t go to the face up extra deck. I think the limitations to only being able to bring them back from the extra deck to the Extra Monster zone or a zone a link monster points too is good for the game as well and not the limiting the cards in the extra deck like alot of people say because they just want to kill the mechanic. Also the main thing I do agree is alot of text on the cards but it’s not just limited to pendulum monsters there’s lots of just regular monsters with a ton of text on them and of course most of the time a pendulum monster only has 1 good either monster or spell effect and that’s the main thing you need to worry about.
As someone who quit roughly around that time (because my locals closed, not because of pendulums). One has to remember what an absolute clusterfuck the game was at that time. We went set after set with a new stupid bullshit costs a ton archtype into another just turboing the game out insanely (Mermail into Firefist into dragonruler/judgement into hat into bujin into sylvan artifact.) Just a bomb after bomb after bomb on one’s wallet. It was just a terrible time to pay actively. At such massive negative energy spinning around, making a new busted speed boosting mechanic was a really bad call.
Can confirm, Pendulums are BS, when they were released and players were able to summon 5x monsters from on top of their extra deck for free. That was it for me and I called it quits. You’ve got to realize at the time you were only really summoning maybe 2-3 times per turn. Pendulums came in and just completely threw the format onto it’s head. If you weren’t playing them, you weren’t winning.
If i have 1 problem with the community is people still get mad at pendulums existing for what they did in their personal fomat and then I look at the very existence of master rule 4 and the fact they had to remake nea format rules again just so decks can play bormally but kept the restriction on pendulums which is fine and healty but still hate on pendulums for what they did in the past dispite being taken out back like 3 times but see links as a perfectly good thing to ignore because they dont have 2 sentence at most more of text compared to other cards
As an old school duelist, looking at a textbook worth of text seems like absolute gaming hell. Especially when you’re playing a deck you’ve just made so you gotta read it to make sure you aren’t misremembering the ability, 5 minutes later you finish reading and play it, then your opponent has to read it. It just seems so disruptive to the flow of game
When pendulums and then after links were announced, they felt cheep. You can summon five monsters for free, or you only need three monsters to summon a link monster Fusion, Xyz and synchro monsters had restrictions or certain conditions those monsters needed to meet. Idk if it’s true, but it felt like the older summoning Methods would become less worthwhile to use.
Latecomer to this discussion, but back when Pendulums were first released, I felt like Pendulums were built for that one snobby kid that kept summoning multiple Blue Eyes White Dragons without any specific support or any tributes. Like, he just slapped a high level monster down and would make up other rules on the spot to prevent you from winning the duel. Oh, you managed to destroy my monster? Too bad they’re not in the grave they’re actually in the extra deck where I can summon them back like nothing happened. They just had this bad vibe that already spit in the face of what little resource management the game had left at that point.
When pendulum summoning was introduced, I quit. I know it was meant to be something to make the main deck monsters relevant again, but the focus on the extra deck was already putting me off the game pretty much entirely as it meant you began the game with twenty cards in hand rather than five, and this was a horrendous overcorrection. I then snarked, “what’s next, unbanning Raigeki?” Sure enough, not only did they do that, but people even kept telling me Raigeki wasn’t a good card. You really have to stop and think about that one: the very idea that a free asymmetric wrath is not a good card. How utterly ridiculous has your game’s power creep become when you can say that?
I ended up building nearly every Pendulum deck during MR3, absolutely loving the mechanic. Yeah, there were a few broken decks, but it wasn’t horrifically broken like everyone thought it would be. MR4 devestated me, and the continued hatred for Pendulums by Konami depresses me greatly. I saw this article and hoped to get some understanding of why Pendulums were so hated. But all this article did was tell me that people bitched and moaned about the mat being changed and never got past initial skepticism about the mechanic that was invalidated by the end of MR3. And saying its summons a bunch of monsters and thats bad is utterly asinine considering that has been the core strategy of meta decks since Blackwings and is still extremely prevalent today. Basically, people are whiny bitches who hate a mechanic they don’t have to use and isn’t played that regularly. Pendulums getting blamed for MR4 rubs me the wrong way as well. The “Wall of text” argument is the only one that is sorta kinda valid, but is still more of a nitpick than anything else. Overall, just seems like people hate it because its different, and thats stupid.
There is literally nothing I dislike more about yugioh than reading card text. I’m a slow reader and my brain takes a long time to process words into meaning. I’ve never been good at effectively skimming text either. Pendulums make the process significantly harder. Walls of information to that need to be quickly digested is a major accessibility issue. That’s my biggest qualm.
Because Pendulum monsters ruined the game worse then Synchro monsters did. I remember when XYZ and Synchro monsters came out and I thought “The game is way to easy now.” Then Pendulum monsters came out and I could almost consistently win in the first 2 to 3 turns. No strategy at all, just speed run the match. I use to love Yu-Gi-Oh up before Synchro monsters came out. I did think the XYZ fusion monsters where cool, but they where easier to summon than other fusion monsters. Card text amount has been long in a lot of old cards before XYZ, Synchro and Pendulum cards ever Existed. Long before 2014. I never found it complicated at all. I thought it was interesting that they where spell and monster cards as well. But like I said I hate Pendulum cards because it is way to easy. Honestly I didn’t need all Pendulum monsters, just a good amount. The rest could be regular or effect monsters.
For me Pendulum cards were really hard to get into because they ARE confusing, even with a thorough read of the rules. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy using them sometimes, but they have issues. Despite you first having to have both Pendulum zones occupied prior to summoning, you can in fact still summon a shit ton of monsters all at the same time and consistently do so every turn. It’s hideously OP when you actually know what you’re doing. Then, there’s the layout of the cards’ design. Yes, the rules to clearly state what the Pendulum scale is and blah blah blah, but having 2 spots on each card to indicate its Pendulum scale makes it seem like it’s scale is X when on the left and X when on the right, implying that some Pendulum cards have differing scales on each side, which simply isn’t true. Basically I saying that it’s a pointless and misleading flaw in the visual design of the Pendulum cards. There’s also the obvious complaint in how much text these cards have, because they factually have the most text per card out of all card types. And finally, my personal biggest complain (which is the only one that STILL bothers me about Pendulums) — they’re inconsistent in when they go to the Graveyard. Sometimes they go the Extra Deck when leaving the field, sometimes to the Graveyard. Before trying to explain the mechanics to me, understand that I have in fact read the rules and have practiced in actual duels countless times. Yet, sometimes, rarely, when destroyed by card effect they go to the Graveyard when they’re supposed to go to the Extra Deck — reversely, rarely, when a card text specifically states that it “sends a card to the Graveyard” rather than “destroy,” the Pendulum ends up in the Extra deck instead.
I honestly think Pendulum both broke the card game and completely in a way killed the entire strategy mechanic behind the game when it was originally introduced. Since Pendulum monsters depending on the scale level between the two allows you to summon powerful monsters in the blink of an eye and as many as possible, including monsters with star levels that are 5 or more without a sacrifice. To me that completely eradicates the main purpose of the game when sacrificing other monsters to summon more powerful ones. I know some people say that mechanic was destroyed when synchro’s and xyz cards were introduced but I don’t think those broke nor killed it but to me, pendulum did.
i’ve only just now started to find my way back.. and looking back, it was literally the start of pendulum era that i disappeared synchro and xyz, while power crept above “old school yugioh”, felt compatible and natural with the old style, and in their own way fulfilled the fantasy of fusion monsters way better than regular fusion monsters did pendulums, in comparison seemed to play like a totally different game, shoe-horned in to this one. and it felt like existing decks would not be compatible with them. you either get a whole new deck, or your old one becomes obsolete :/ and in the early days of pendulum, there weren’t exactly many options for pendulum decks lol
“pendulum isnt complicated” sure. I guess not on a base level. But a pendulum summon letting you activate 2 spell cards, special summon 2 or 3 monsters, activate their effects, send them to the graveyard to activate their graveyard effects, synchro xyz and links summon, then used those effects to special summon. Mind you, your opponent has to watch, draw cards or take life point damage as this combo comes out. All of this happening on one turn. Not on the very first turn, but just one turn changing the course of battle.
just look at the themeing. 1st fusion (combining matter and energy) 2nd synchro (sound and resonance) 3rd xyz ( space and antimatter) 4rth Pendulum ( time) The theming of time usually muddies any sort of media work up. that was the cardinal mistake they made honestly. then again, maybe Konami could have implemented their theming idea better and possibly with cleaner presentation to keep players. i certainly did not want to deal with that and that was all it took for me to be inactive with the game indefinitely.
I left Duel Links because of the implementation of XYZ/LINK/Pendulum (I was able to push, accept and even use Synchro monsters through) Me and my relatives still don’t use these as a rule, and only now considering using synchro in real life. These break the game and make lots of fun cards/decks unusable. Casual play is the way to go, as its fun, as the game is meant to be. “fun”
Truthfully, the first time that I heard about pendulums, I thought it was complicated, long text etc but I thought “Meh, some new stuff, that’s cool”. Then I participated in the only tournament I’ve ever done when I finished perusal 5Ds, I got trashed by every person who played pendulums and never played physical YGO ever again and stopped playing YGO until Master Duel. Looking back at it, I still find it as the worst addition to the game
I’m one of those weirdo’s who personally always loved the pendulum mechanic, their aesthetics and archetypes were some of the most fun to actually play and I had a blast with them during mr3. I was extremely disappointed when mr4 came around because decks like Abyss Actors, Majespectors and Igknights didn’t work anymore due to the new rules. That being said I completely get why people didn’t like them.
I’m a returning player, for the second time and I tried to return about the time of master rule 4 and was completely confused. Ended up quitting the second time. Now that I’m back with master rule 5 I still refuse to play pendulum cards. I’m just happy that much of the restrictions on extra deck monsters have been lifted.
Man I hated Pendulums. I started Yugioh in the synchro era found my strive in xyz and basically quit during Pendulums. My first encounter with them was when a dude at my school used them and I was basically helpless when he destroyed me like 2 turns in. Summoning like 5 monsters in 1 turn just shouldn’t be a thing.
Interesting. I was not bothered by Pendulums at first. I had more of an issue when the playmat used the spell and trap zone for pendulums since I liked to use a DDD deck. I left yugioh after LINKs were introduced. Due to the new restriction on extra deck cards. But if the rule have changed in concerns to syncs, Zexs, fuss card. maybe I will make a return.
Pendulums and their massive wallS of text was thr reason I never bothered getting back into the game when I started to get interested again. I saw how many things now happen in one turn and just thought “Would I not have to pause my opponents turn to read each and every of those cards?” as getting back into the game obviously means I have no idea about what the cards do and I came to the conclusion that the 10 to 20 minutes turns of my opponent caused by me having to read all the cards would be too annoying to for me to get trhough.
As an OG yugioh Player who was on it since the pokemon craze began to settle…I took a several year hiatus sometime after CHAOS EMPEROR DRAGON meta. I log onto dueling Network as a friend told me about it. I SWEAR, IF IT WASNT LIGHTSWORN IT WAS PENDULUM OR ANOTHER CHEESE BROKEN TOP DECK OR BURN DECK. Seeing the title of the article restored my faith in humanity
its not that its complicated but that these newer cards change the game too much to the point of making the original yugioh game completely different. as before synchros, no matter how advanced your deck was even a starter deck would be able to fight back but nowadays these newer decks have too much pressure to follow the meta to the point of having any different strategies otherwise to be unviable.
I might be weird because I got back into Yu-Gi-Oh around pendulum summon (I was an OG) And I thought that all the new mechanics were insanely fun! I remember playing old Yu-Gi-Oh on the playground and there’d be turns where nothing happens or your cards didn’t have any synergy. Now people have entire decks that combo together and can play 10 cards per turn
It’s simple…Pendulum was what set Konami over the edge in Power Creep. Synchro were just Fusions with the same level restrictions Rituals had making them a Hybrid. Cool. Xyz were a meh attempt to replicate Synchro success by removing the Tuner Requirement, avoiding the Poly req of Fusions, and dodging the Spell req of Rituals. Then along struts Pendulum…Making early Boards neigh untouchable if you had the cards in hand. If you had cards to set the scale and summon cards with Negates or Untargetable…or summon to dance through Extra Deck Summons…I remember perusal a dude summon for 4 minutes on turn 1…By the end I had lost 1500 LP, had 5 cards milled, 2 cards discarded by effect, and he had negates on the board. So rather than realize they fucked up Konami was like…”Shit we need something to be even more powerful to stop these powerful combos. In comes Link…A mixture of XYZ, and Pendulum as they lock down board zones. They corrected this, but now the game is so bonkers they come up with cards like Dark Dragoon to stay relevant for old Archtypes. Dragoon is a high Atk Mon with a Negate, Untargetable and Indestructable, and gains perma increases to atk. Now if you don’t take 5 minutes to play your turn, well, you die…
I THINK link summon also got a huge hate, but it was lucky. It followed “pendulum”, a mechanic that made a lot of people quit for good and never even try to play the game again. So lets say pre-pend, playerbase is at 100%. Then pend releases, playerbase drops to 40%. That 60% never came back. The 40% accepted pend, they will stay for whatever sh!t konami feeds them. Link releases, playerbase stays at 40%. Whenever I talk with OG yugioh players, what they want is either GoaT format, meaning vanilla yugioh or at least ban all links and pendulums. Some are iffy with xyz.
Yu-Gi-Oh in my times: oh this is level 6 so one tribute. Lvl 8 two tributes. I shouldn’t put to many of these into my deck. Oh Synchro? Ok if I want to summon this Synchro I would need a tuner of level x in addition to this monster I’m already playing. Yu-Gi-Oh with pendulum: forget Yu-Gi-Oh we now play a game of sudoku to decide which cards make sense in your deck.
I been playing yugioh since 2001 and I hate pendulums. I was a XYZ player with rank monsters just chilling with my gimmick puppet deck I made. Then come’s the most broken thing to ruin yugioh. Pendulum!!!!! It was a blight plague of my life. I stop playing yugioh for years for this reason. I played Magic the Gathering Commander and yugioh online.
What frustrated me most about Pendulum Monsters is how they felt like a non-sequitur for extra deck monsters. Like, Synchros are basically Fusion monsters but more interesting and easier to use… Xyz are even easier to use AND use Xyz material as ammo/conditions, which is fun… Pendulums are unlike any other extra deck monster mechanic and are kinda unwieldy. And while it causes its own problems, having a mix of archetype specific and generic Xyz and Synchros added a lot to gameplay and declbuilding. Pendulums are parasitic in how un-splashable they are. I mostly play YGO digitally, and I find it SO cumbersome to consider all the effects on Pendulum monsters even with the convenience of digital YGO.
When I last played Yu-Gi-Oh the game was still on the ancient Egypt kick and all this Link, XYZ, Synchro, and Pendulum shit hadn’t been introduced. All my cards are first gen with the spell cards explicitly labeled as Magics instead of Spells and the rarest cards I own probably being Cyber Jar, Millennium Shield, and Magic Drain.
Honestly yeah it makes alota sense if you throw 2-6 pendulum monsters in a brd deck (black rose Dragon) it’s well not gonna do much but if all your monsters are pendulum then congrats you have a hoard of OK monsters? While sacreficing 2 of your spell trap zones I believe its fairly balanced. Certainly not what some wanted to happen as hoard decks just seem….well boring and can be nullified by most 4 star 0/atk 2000+/def monster…. Tho is pretty funny. I see its implications, I am not a competitive player but I don’t see pendulum based decks being amazing in the competitive scene
I personally have not played since Gx but watched Og, Gx, 5D’s and a couple episodes of Zexal. I recently downloaded Yu-Gi-Oh VR like a week and saw how quick I lost in 2 rounds by a dude doing crazy summoning. His first round mans had 3 monsters on the field. I don’t even know if I want to continue playing due to how much the game changed.
I got into the game right before pendulums came out and while it was kinda jarring to see some opponents just shit out 4-5 monsters in a turn, it was easy to understand and didn’t ruin the game for me. HOWEVER, I absolutely hated Links. They were hard to understand and they fucked over any deck with a heavy emphasis on the Extra Deck, which were the decks I ran. They were what ruined the game for me and I didn’t seriously play Yugioh again, besides Duel Links cuz no Links, until Master Duel came out. Because now I both understand Links and the Master Rule 4 revisions happened.
As an old school player who did quit (about middle of the way through synchros before XYZ) came out I quit because I couldn’t afford the game, but still enjoyed it. I tried to come back, and while I don’t like the pendulums, XYZ or God fuck links it’s more the speed of the game. I don’t want to go back to summon, set trap end, I liked the speed around synchro time. My issue is in a matter of 30 seconds 18 special summons have happened, I have to worry about 7 GY effects, 4 monsters, 3 hand traps, 5 negates, 18 destruction effects, holy shit. If I don’t completely blow my opponent out of the water (or wven get to play the damn game with how much crap they have to stop anything from happening) I just lose and thats not fun. Same as if I did that I can watch my opponent literally attempt to play for 3 minutes as I negate every card, thought, family member, grocery list, and even punch in at their job to just see them scoop. It’s no fun on either side
Personally, I’m a casual player and I honestly found Pendulum to be cool when it first came out. Though even back then I could understand how it can be confusing to some people. And thinking back, yeah, it basically was a bit too overpowered at the time. Even now I still find myself doing way better with decks that use Pendulum Summoning than decks that have no Pendulum cards.