Or rather, the kind of early anime era draw engines represented by Pot of Greed. Pot of Greed let you draw two cards from your deck with no conditions, a blunt and simple effect that earned it a permanent ban in real life play and a sentence that would never be lifted within any reasonable lifetime.
Its fellow sufferer was Graceful Charity, which let you draw three cards and then discard two from your hand. After Yu-Gi-Oh! evolved into an era where the graveyard and hand were treated almost as the same resource, a draw three with built in dumping was even more dangerous than Pot of Greed.
These cards were not taken very seriously by duelists in the DM anime period, but by the GX era they had clearly started to notice their strength. In GX you could already see protagonists running at least one Pot and one Charity, and in the duels of the female lead Asuka Tenjoin you could even see one Pot of Greed drawing into another Pot of Greed, which was brutal to watch.
When it came to monster cards, Yugen started to feel stuck. After scanning the entire pool, he could not find a single monster he truly liked.
As a reincarnated card player, he had no interest in monsters that required careful tribute setups just to summon a vanilla body with a bit over two thousand attack. There were better monsters, but many of them were valuable without supply and simply could not be bought.
The first one that came to mind was Jinzo, one of the signature monsters of the previous generation's protagonist team member Katsuya Jonouchi. It was a Level 6 monster that only needed one tribute, had a solid 2400 attack, and carried an early era trap locking ability that stopped all trap cards while it stayed on the field.
Yugen remembered that in this period of real life play it was also a very strong standalone card and a common choice in top tournament decks. But when he searched for it, the result was simple.
Out of stock.
Jinzo was classified as a highly rare card and had been unavailable for a long time. There was no way to buy it.
That left Yugen feeling frustrated, and he quickly realized another key difference between the anime world and real life play. Card availability here was completely different.
In real life, players could always see the full pool of the current format and use almost any card to build any strategy. Duelists in the world of Yu-Gi-Oh! did not have that convenience.
There were also cards he wanted but abandoned the moment he glanced at their prices. He could only take a sharp breath and move on.
Goodbye.
Yugen understood very clearly that cards in this world were almost the same as weapons and personal power. He had already prepared himself to spend heavily to obtain necessary cards, no matter the cost.
But seeing the insane prices on some rare cards, he realized that even selling himself might not be enough to afford them. This was not exaggeration, but a literal assessment.
The gap between common cards and rare cards in this world was absurd. Ordinary cards and normal packs cost about the same as in his previous life, affordable to almost anyone, but some rare cards were worth as much as an entire house.
And that was for rare cards you could actually buy. For cards like the famously limited Blue-Eyes White Dragon, of which only three existed and all were owned by Seto Kaiba, there was nothing to discuss at all.
As he kept reading, he learned that in addition to car loans and home loans, this world even had something called card loans. As the name implied, you could take out a loan just to buy cards.
"So this is what it feels like to be card poor," Yugen said with a curl of his lip.
Even with these restrictions, he was still able to piece together a rough deck concept using cards he could realistically obtain. The prototype for this idea was the first World Championship winning deck in the competitive history of Yu-Gi-Oh!.
Hand Destruction.
Many new duelists who entered through the anime carried unrealistic fantasies about the game, imagining clashes of high attack bosses, fierce back and forth exchanges, and straightforward battles that ended with a satisfying good game. But that was a false version of Yu-Gi-Oh!.
The real Yu-Gi-Oh! was this. At a table with two players, only one of them actually got to play.
The safest way to win was always to erase every possible line of the opponent's strategy, leaving them unable to play any cards at all. This idea held true from the earliest formats and remained true even now.
Hand Destruction was a deck built entirely around that philosophy. As the name suggested, its goal was to destroy the opponent's hand so they had nothing to play, forcing them to sit there doing nothing from the very start.
Anyone facing this deck would have their understanding of dueling completely overturned, and within minutes would run through a rapid sequence of rising blood pressure, disbelief, and the urge to declare an attack with their own fists. If there was one clear flaw to this type of deck, it was that the user's personal safety could be hard to guarantee.
Of course, Yugen could not possibly remember the full list of such an ancient championship deck, and some rare cards were beyond his reach anyway. He only borrowed the core idea and built a new deck of his own.
As for the empty slots, he decided to fill them with more trap cards that had acceptable standalone value. Some of them were not especially efficient in his view, but having more traps made it easier to break the opponent's composure.
He was not a devil and did not enjoy upsetting people for its own sake. Psychological pressure was part of dueling, and sometimes breaking the opponent's mindset before reducing their life points was an effective tactic.
Yes. That was all it was.
As he continued browsing without much thought, his eyes suddenly stopped on one listing.
Jinzo, stock remaining: 1.
Yugen immediately scrolled back and clicked to check the details, only to be blocked by the page. The message read, "No access permission."
"Academy division exclusive card."
Yugen froze for a moment. Academy division? What was that supposed to be?
After another round of searching, he finally understood. The so called academy division referred to Duel Academy, the world's largest dueling academy personally established by Seto Kaiba, who had even bought an entire island to serve as its campus and poured massive resources into it.
Students on the island had priority access to newly released packs and channels to purchase rare cards that were completely unavailable elsewhere, all at heavily discounted prices. Even without considering the facilities and teaching staff, the rare cards and discounts alone were enough to make anyone jealous.
Top performing students could even exchange grades and credits directly for cards, which saved an enormous amount of deck building cost in a world where a single card could be worth a fortune. Graduates from Duel Academy also carried the most respected credentials in the dueling world, gaining priority recommendations whether they aimed for professional play, Kaiba Corporation, or positions at Industrial Illusions.
Scrolling further, Yugen even caught sight of Chaos Sorcerer.
Chaos Sorcerer was a Level 6 monster with 2300 attack that could be Special Summoned by banishing one Light and one Dark monster from the graveyard. Once per turn, it could also banish one monster on the opponent's field from play.
Because it shared similar summoning conditions and effects with the more famous Chaos Emperor style card, it became a lower tier replacement after that card was banned and earned the nickname "Little Envoy." In the current environment, it was considered top tier power.
In this world, the true Chaos Envoy was an ultra rare card, with only one known copy owned by Muto Yugi, and another exhibition copy in a replica deck shown in GX. Beyond that, none had ever been seen.