Yu-Gi-Oh! (Tabletop Game)/Tropes A-N

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Due to the large amount of examples in the main page, it was split into subpages.

This page contains examples from Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game, tropes A to N.

  • Achilles' Heel: Some cards have deliberate weaknesses to keep things interesting and/or keep them from becoming too powerful.
    • The Earthbound Immortals are all very strong, unable to be attacked and can attack the opponent directly, but automatically destroy themselves if there's no Field Spell card on the field.
    • Cloudians must remain in attack position or they also destroy themselves.
  • Action Girl: Several. There are lady warriors, witches, demons, spirits, fairies... and each of them can kick just as much ass as the male cards, or in some cases even more!
  • Alien Invasion:
    • The point of the Alien monsters.
    • The Worms are this in the first part of the Duel Terminal storyline.
    • The Graydles are another examples, which combines both the "grey" and "parasite" types together.
  • Amazonian Beauty Brigade: The Amazoness archetype. Loads of scantily-clad, athletic, muscular warrior women.
  • Another Dimension: The D.D. (Different Dimension) cards.
  • Antimatter: Word of God is that the Xyz monsters are made up of this.
  • Artificial Stupidity: The gimmick of the Karakuri archetype is that they must attack if able (even if it would get them killed) and always shift into defense when attacked (even when their DEF is lower, and they would survive if they counterattacked).
  • Attack Reflector:
  • Awesome but Impractical: Has its own subpage here.
  • Awesome McCoolname: Super-Nimble Mega Hamster.
  • Awesome Yet Practical: As a rule of thumb, if a deck had ever dipped into the tournament scene and succeeded, then it automatically becomes a valid example by default. As for individual cards:
    • Beast King Barbaros, a 3000 ATK monster that can wipe out all opposing cards if you Tribute Summon it with three tributes instead of the normal two. What makes it awesomely practical is that it can also be Summoned from the hand at 1900 ATK (the standard ATK margin for "very strong Level 4 monsters") with no Tribute, so it's never useless in the hand if you have no Tribute fodder, many other high-Level monsters. Its ATK will also "reset" to 3000 if its effect on the field is negated (e.g. with Skill Drain) so you could potentially drop a 3000 ATK monster on the field with no Tributes. Better yet, instead of Skill Drain, equip it with the Axe of Fools, so in addition to giving it 1000 ATK, it will also negate the effect, and thus giving you a 4000 ATK monster with only two cards.
    • Thunder King Rai-Oh. It can Tribute itself to negate a Special Summon, disallows player to add cards from their Decks to their hands outside of drawing, shutting down searchers like Sangan, and it has 1900 ATK, enough to run over almost anything that aren't boss monsters. It's also a level 4, has no Summon restrictions, and is LIGHT-Attribute to support decks that utilize them (such as Chaos).
    • The HERO super-archetype had become this in later years of the game, thanks to them being given cross-archetype supports between all the different HEROs. Depending on the build, they can play aggro, lockdown, control, or even good ol' Fusion beatdown. On the competitive side, they even had their time in the spotlight from the late 2000's to mid 2010's, with Elemental HERO Stratos, Destiny HERO Diamond Dude and Masked HERO Dark Law being famous monster names in the card game's metagame history.
  • Badass Adorable: Several Fairy cards. For example, see Dancing Fairy. Take a good long look at that picture and then move down to its stats.
  • Badass Grandpa: For example, Grandmaster of the Six Samurai.
  • Badass Normal: Literally with Normal monsters like Alexandrite Dragon and Gene-Warped Warwolf for breaking the "Level 4 or lower monsters with 2000 ATK or more getting a negative effect" rule, and of course we can't forget to mention these three guys, the former being this game's best example for having the highest ATK of all Normal Monsters.
  • Barrier Warrior:
    • Big Shield Gardna, Mid Shield Gardna, Shield Warrior… Okay, pretty much anything with the word "shield" in its name. Millennium Shield is a Warrior-type… and a literal shield.
    • And, of course, there are many monsters that can't be destroyed by battle, like Marshmallon, so they're essentially a pseudo-unbreakable shield.
    • Total Defense Shogun is probably the best example, as it's the first of two cards stated to be able to attack while in Defense Position.
    • The Superheavy Samurai takes Total Defense Shogun to its logical extreme, being an entire archetype of monsters that are able to attack in Defense Position
    • Some monsters cannot be targeted for attacks if there is a certain other monster on the field, or keep the opponent from attacking monsters of certain types (Solar Flare Dragon, Marauding Captain, Morphtronic Magnen) while it's on the field. Getting two or more of the specific card(s) can block nearly all potential attacks.
  • Battle Royale With Cheese: All the rules only ever reference two players, but slight modifications have been made (primarily thanks to the Tag Force games) to allow 2 vs 2 games typically called Tag Duels.
  • Big Damn Heroes:
    • Some cards have effects that emulate this trope. For example, Gorz the Emissary of Darkness is Special Summoned when you take damage while having nothing on your field, and Starlight Road negates the destruction of two or more cards and Special Summons a Stardust Dragon from you Extra Deck. Not surprisingly, both cards were part of the Metagame during their heyday for that exact reason.
    • The Constellars are a group of holy space knights that descended into the Planet to help all the tribes defeat the corrupted Evilswarm monsters that are destroying the Duel Terminal world.
  • Black Holes Suck: Dark Hole.
  • Black Magician Girl: Trope Namer, known in English as the Dark Magician Girl.
  • Black Knight:
  • Blind Idiot Translation: Frequent on the early cards, many of which seem to have been translated by people who had absolutely no idea what they were doing. Among the most obvious examples is Dunames Dark Witch, which is a LIGHT-Attribute Fairy. Its original Japanese name is actually "Dynamis Valkyria". Seeing that another similar card got the same treatment, it's easy to see the root of this mistake. They seem to have noticed this later, and similarly-named cards in the future got the proper translation (except Dark Contract with the Witch, but that's most likely because it's supposed to pay homage to the early translation).
  • Blow You Away:
  • Boring but Practical:
    • Normal Monsters, at least in the early days of the game. They have no effects but often have good combat stats, and there's a lot of support for them, including lots of ways to Summon them from the Graveyard, so decks based around them focus on brute force rather than anything fancy. However, as the game shifts more and more toward Effect Monsters, Normal Monster beatdown decks got left in the dust, and later decks that utilize Normal Monsters tend to use them as parts of specific engines rather than focus on them specifically.
    • Gadgets for a long time plays on this. The goal of the deck is to make the game as simple as possible by playing one-for-one destruction cards, using the Gadgets' self-replenishing effect gain advantage. Such deck can be really boring to play with (or against) but can be really effective when played correctly.
  • Bottomless Pits: Bottomless Trap Hole.
  • Bowdlerize:
    • In Japan, the Fairy-Type is actually the Angel-Type (Tenshi-zoku) and the Fiend-Type is actually the Demon-Type (Akuma-zoku).
    • The Archfiends are known in Japan as Daemons (Dēmon).
    • Yu-Gi-Oh! 3D Bonds Beyond Time brought us the Sin archetype, known internationally as Malefic monsters. "Sin" was written in English on the Japanese cards, with furigana as a pronunciation guide; further, there is no explicit "Si" sound in Japanese, and "Shi" is a usual stand-in, so the furigana guide was written as "Shin" - Word of God takes this as an intentional pun between "Sin" and "Shin", a Kanji denoting "Truth". The pun was unfortunately Lost in Translation.
    • Many cards in the OCG that portray nudity, religion, guns, blood, bustiness, etc. were modified in the TCG release. Modified cards are listed here.
    • Generally, if you see a card with "Des" as part of the name (Except for Dark Ruler Ha Des), chances are that it was "Death" in the OCG.
  • Brought Down to Badass: A 3000 ATK monster with no effects is still a 3000 ATK monster; nothing to sneeze at. Skill Drain also happens to negate any negative effects the card may have, too, so a surprising amount of monsters actually benefit from Skill Drain.
  • Brought Down to Normal: Almost literally; the Continuous Trap Skill Drain negates the effects of all monsters on the field.
  • Bullet Seed: Seed Cannon gains counters every time a Plant is Summoned (and Plants are fairly good at swarming); sending the card to the Graveyard damages the opponent the more counters are on it.
  • Butt Monkey:
  • Buffy-Speak: There's a card named Interplanetarypurplythorny Dragon. Later, Interplanetarypurplythorny Beast follows suit.
  • Captain Ersatz:
    • Does Battlestorm look familiar?
    • There are not one, but two for Spawn. The first one is an indirect example, because it's based on a fictional superhero comic from the manga, that was based on Spawn. The second one was directly based on Spawn himself.
  • Cast from Hit Points: Many cards require a payment of LP to activate.
    • Nearly taken to an extreme with Toon World; the entirety of its text is "Pay 1000 Life Points to activate this card." That's it. Sure, now you can summon your Toon Monsters [1], but other than that, it just kinda sits there waiting to be destroyed.
    • This is practically one half the Psychic-Type's main gimmick (the other half being Banishing), with frequent payments to either fire off or maintain their effects. To balance this out, a good amount of their support cards involve healing and/or making use lost LP.
    • Some cards, like the Archfiend archetype from Dark Crisis, require a constant LP payment to keep them on the field. A payment that is not optional.
  • Cherry Tapping: Sparks does a measly 200 damage to the opponent— that's it. Most video games in the franchise actually reward you with a bonus if you ever manage to finish off the opponent using the Spell. They give a similar bonus if you manage to finish off the opponent with a Skull Servant, but at least you can give Skull Servant some good Equip Spell Cards to boost its power.
  • Chess Motifs:
  • Collectible Card Game: But of course.
  • Colorful Theme Naming: The Dark World archetype. Complete with an Overlord called Reign-Beaux.
  • Combining Mecha:
  • Contest Winner Cameo: Quite a few cards are designed by fans.
  • Continuity Drift: Early cards with banishing (then "remove from play") effects, such as Bazoo the Soul Eater and Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer, implied that monsters removed from play had their souls obliterated. Within a year, cards started using the flavor that those monsters are actually sent to another dimension with the Different Dimension (D.D.) series.
  • The Corruption:
  • Crazy Prepared: "Toolbox" is a type of deck that specializes on searching monsters with many unique (and sometimes situational) effects directly from the Deck or Graveyard to counter your opponent. For example, Gladiator Beasts can "Tag Out" after a battle and bring any other Gladiator Beast from the Deck, and Koa'ki Meirus can use some cards to get any monster they want, including a quartet that can literally stop anything.
  • Creation Sequence: Depicted in Terraforming.
  • Crippling Overspecialization:
    • Some cards exist simply to counter other, very specific cards. Anti Raigeki exists only to counteract Raigeki, White Hole only exists to counteract Dark Hole, Jar Robber only exists to counteract Pot of Greed, and both Call of Darkness and Call of the Grave exist only to counter Monster Reborn. When the problem cards were banned, these cards became worthless; and if the problem cards were unbanned, that was a sign that they were no longer problem cards, and thus these cards keep becoming worthless.
    • However, not all specializations are crippling; for example, "G.B. Hunter," designed to lock down a Gladiator Beast deck, still has enough DEF to serve as a desperate defense.
    • The Allies of Justice appear to be an entire archetype based around overspecialization. Their effects almost exclusively revolve around the opponent's monsters being LIGHT-attribute or face-down. If they're not facing something with those criteria, they're in a lot of trouble. Note that the Worms are all LIGHT-attribute monsters with a lot of flip effects, meaning the Allies of Justice were designed to just fight this one enemy and nothing else.
  • Crossover Cosmology: There are cards based on Egyptian, Japanese, Greek, Roman, Celtic, Chinese, Indian, Incan and Norse mythology, among many others.
  • Cute Is Evil: Several Fiend-Type or DARK-Attribute cards can be this. The Traptrix are an obvious example; the cards Trap Trick and Traptrix Trap Hole Nightmare] to be seductive spirits who lure men to their doom, although whether this is to eat them themselves or feed them to their pets is debatable.
  • Cute Monster Girl: A few, but probably the best example is Tour Guide from the Underworld, because she's, you know, a demon. Other examples include the Harpy Ladies and Traptrix.
  • Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: A major part of Gagagigo's story, before being redeemed by an old friend.
  • Dark Is Evil: The DARK attribute has the greatest portion of evil-seeming monsters. However...
  • Dark Is Not Evil:
  • Deader Than Dead: Banished cards generally won't be seen again for the rest of the duel unless your deck is specifically designed to recycle them.
  • Death or Glory Attack: Meta-version: the Spell Card Power Bond often inflicts such hefty damage on its user that when used, so most prefer to end the game on the turn it's used. There's the tangentially-related Limiter Removal, which destroys all monsters it affects at the end of the turn. Naturally, the two are often combined with powerful cards such as Cyber End Dragon or Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem, betting on them to either crush the opponent in a single turn or suffer duel-costing damage when it fails.
  • Death World:
    • The Venom Swamp Field Spell will slowly kill everything on the field except the native Venom monsters.
    • Zombie World causes everything to count as Zombies (even in the Graveyards!), so it could be called an Undeath World.
  • Dem Bones: The Skull Servant and related cards, along with numerous other Zombie-Types.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: The "Ninjitsu Art" cards and Thunder King Rai-Oh. "Ninjitsu" means "Ninja Art" and "Rai-Oh" means "Thunder King".
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Some monsters' relative ATK scores aren't exactly what you'd expect. For example, the supreme god of the Duel Terminal planet can be literally punched out by a train or a giant koala[2].
  • Difficult but Awesome: The Koa'ki Meiru monsters all have high attack power and incredibly useful anti-meta effects and support cards. What makes them difficult to use is that they all destroy themselves at the end of the turn if you don't discard the Iron Core card or reveal a card in your hand that's the same type as the monster on the field (and there are many different types of Koa'ki Meiru monsters!). It's difficult to have more than just one Koa'ki Meiru out on the field at any given time, though they can still be quite effective if you splash them into another deck full of the same monster type as them so they don't self-destruct.
    • It gets worse: the Iron Core itself is completely useless, but is required to use powerful Spell or Traps, so sooner or later you're bound to have to decide between a monster or keeping a way to use your Spell or Trap. Even worse, a few of those need the Core in your Graveyard instead, so if you're using those, you could end up with no ways to use the ones that need them in your hand.
    • All of the above problems are partially addressed by the way the TCG's releases have approached the Rock-Type Koa'ki Meiru monsters. The OCG, at most, has 3 Koa'ki Meiru for each Type, which makes it slightly difficult to try to use a Koa'ki-monster-heavy deck yet avoid the nigh-uselessness of the Core itself. One thing the OCG did bring to the table early was Boulder - a recruiter that never needs to be maintained via core or card-revealing. That, combined with the trend set by Guardian and Sandman in terms of activation negation, led to what may be the most significant thing Koa'ki Meiru has right now - a means of game control via stopping activations. The TCG continued that trend by releasing another maintenance free Koa'ki (Prototype), and another activation-stopping Koa'ki (Wall). This leaves the Rock-Type branch with five members on this side of the Pacific - all of which either help control the game or give you resources.
    • Another ideology to use with the Ko'aki Meiru monsters is to throw them into decks among their own types. Bergzak gets excellent mileage among Warrior decks.
    • Vennominaga the Deity of Poisonous Snakes requires a lot of set-up; a reptile-based deck, a card like "Damage = Reptile" to easily summon its predecessor Vennominion, a pre-set "Rise of the Snake Deity" to summon Vennominaga when Vennominion gets destroyed, a card to destroy Vennominion and perhaps a use of "Snake Rain" to flood your Graveyard with Reptiles to boost Vennominaga's attack. Once all that is said and done, however, Vennominaga is virtually unstoppable since it is completely immune to all card effects, and it needs only to damage the opponent three times for an instant win. The only hope the opponent has is to either summon a monster that Vennominaga can't overpower, or to find a way to get those reptiles out of the graveyard (such as with "Zombie World" or "Soul Release").
    • Sophia the Creator is considered this for having harsh summoning requirement of banishing one Fusion, one Ritual, one Synchro and one Xyz on the field. However, once it hits the field, all other cards on the field, graveyard and hand are banished except itself. Not to mention its summon and effect cannot be negated.
  • Dinosaurs Are Dragons:
    • Generally averted. The two have been completely separate categories since the very beginning.
    • Played straight with a the Evol series: Reptiles evolve Dinosaurs that further evolve into Dragons.
  • Disability Superpower: The Infernity archetype is a variation of this trope. Typically, not having cards in your hand would be considered a bad thing, as it would require you to constantly draw the cards you need from the top of your deck with no backup plan, but Infernities actually benefit from this situation, which the player needs to constantly be in to use most of their powerful effects.
  • Discard and Draw: Many cards use discarding as part of a cost for an effect (eg. Magic Jammer, Lightning Vortex, Destiny Draw and Hand Destruction) or the effect itself (eg.Graceful Charity and Dark World Dealings).
  • Eldritch Abomination:
  • Elemental Powers: The idea behind monster Attributes, and the specialty of certain archetypes like the Charmers or the Elemental HEROes.
  • The End of the World as We Know It:
  • Equippable Ally: The Dragon-Type Dragunities are this, as well as Attack Animals.
  • Everything's Deader with Zombies: The Zombie-Types monsters, of course.
  • Everything's Better with Penguins: The Penguin archetype.
  • Precious Puppies: Outstanding Dog Marron
  • Evil Twin:
  • Evil Versus Evil: There is a war between Dark Ruler Ha Des and Dark King of the Abyss. Ha Des tricked Dark King out of his throne with Demotion. Dark King got his revenge and killed Ha Des, but was himself killed later by the Revived Ruler Ha Des.
  • Evil Weapon: Word of God says the Equip Spell Wicked-Breaking Flamberge - Baou holds the dark power of Baou, its Guardian spirit. When Warrior Dai Grepher later wields it, he is overcome by the dark energy. He becomes a rampaging monster, transforming more and more until, at the height of his mutation, he was completely unrecognizable as his former self.
  • Evolutionary Levels:
    • Pretty much any monster with LV in its name. Their main shtick being weak cards replacing themselves with stronger and stronger versions of themselves.
    • The Evol archetype also plays around this concept.
  • Exact Words: The effect wordings are (in)famous for this. Some examples:
    • An interesting side-effect of Equip Spell Cards that give Piercing, is that you can inflict damage to your opponent by equipping them to your opponent's monsters. When your opponent attacks one of your Defense Position monsters with an ATK greater than your monsters DEF, they will take the difference. After all, even though it's your opponent's monster, it's your Spell Card, and thus it's your opponent — not you — who takes the extra damage, due to the wording on the cards.
    • Some continuous effects have linkage to another monster cards such as Future Fusion and Call of the Haunted. However, when the monster is removed from field other than being destroyed, the continuous effect remains on the field meaninglessly.
    • Due to the complexity of deciphering certain card effects, both the OCG and TCG later established rigid wordings for card effects that reinforce this trope, down to the usage of words such as "when", "then", "or", and even symbols like colons and semicolons. While it might take a while to get used to as new players, it prevents cards from being vague and keeps effect formulations uniform across the thousands of cards in the game.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Infinite Cards
  • Exact Time to Failure: Once you activate the "Final Countdown" card, your opponent has exactly 10 of their turns to beat you or you win.
  • Explosive Overclocking: The theme of the Overworked card.
  • Eyes Do Not Belong There: A couple, including but not limited to Big Eye, Thousand-Eyes Restrict, and Hundred Eyes Dragon.
  • Fallen Angel: The Darklords.
  • Family-Friendly Firearms:
    • Many OCG cards with realistic guns in the art had them replaced with lasers, fanciful guns, or even knives, with varying success.
  • Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Famous mythologies, local folktales, references to other fantasy works, completely original creations, you name it; there's a high chance that at least an element from them is referenced in this game.
  • Feathered Fiend: A number of winged monsters, but the Blackwings stand out.
  • Flaming Sword: A lot, but a classic example is wielded by the Flame Swordsman.
  • Fragile Speedster: Some decks focus on getting out monsters as quick as possible, swarming the field. To balance this out, they tend to not have very high ATK power.
  • Frogs and Toads: These fellas. The Frog archetype is usually Weak but Skilled; they are mostly-all low-level monsters with sub-par attack, but have devastating support effects, like Des Croaking which blows away all cards controlled by the opponent, or Toadally Awesome which can casually negate effects.
  • Fusion Dance: Fusion was a gameplay feature since the early days of the game, with many themes specializing around it. Some famous examples include the Elemental HERO, Gem-Knight and Shaddoll archetypes.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation:
    • Many cards have slightly different effects between the anime and the physical card game; what would be a game-breaker might be Nerfed when it becomes real, or vice-versa. Sometimes the rules are a little different as well; Summoning monsters in face-down Defense Position rarely happens in the anime, but is a basic knowledge and main gimmick of a number of decks in real life.
    • As for a more direct example, Normal monsters. Take Maiden of the Moonlight for example. Powers beyond mortal comprehension, huh? That 1500 ATK certainly says otherwise! Sure there are some examples where it fits, like the famous Blue-Eyes White Dragon (it has the highest ATK among Normal Monsters), but the "flavor text vs. real life" segregation is just ridiculous for the most part. In fact, this is what made Shapesnatch such a Memetic Badass on the TCG side.
  • Gang of Critters: Can be seen in here and here.
  • Giant Germs: The Giant Germ card.
  • Gladiator Games: The Gladiator Beasts, a set of monsters that are Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and has the gimmick of "tagging out" with each other after a battle. Bonus points for Konami showing their work by using real gladiator types, equipments and battle tactics for most of the cards, as well as real-life legendary Roman figures for the namesakes of the more powerful monsters of the theme.
  • Glass Cannon:
    • The Lightsworns were designed as this with a combo of Fragile Speedster. Most of their monsters are quite powerful, and a good Lightsworn deck will probably win very quickly... or not win at all. This is because almost all of them send cards straight from your deck to the Graveyard at the end of the turn, meaning your deck will burn itself out after a while.
    • There's also quite a few monsters that have high ATK but pathetic DEF. The mighty Rainbow Dragon has 4000 ATK and 0 DEF, for example. Similarly, the Steelswarm monsters all have 0 DEF. If a clever player runs cards that can switch battle position or the ATK/DEF stats, or outright nuke low-DEF monsters, these monsters are toast.
  • God Save Us From the Queen:
  • Gotta Catch Em All: This is practically impossible in real life (unless you're insanely rich and have a lot of spare time on your hands, and even then Tyler the Great Warrior is truly one-of-a-kind). However, it's quite possible if you're playing any of the various Yu-Gi-Oh! video games that are released every couple years.
  • Gratuitous English: At this point, the OCG probably has more cards and booster packs with English than Japanese names.
  • Gratuitous Japanese: In the first few booster packs, UDE's policy was that cards with English names would have their names translated into Japanese. They've since stopped, but the old policy left us with iconic classic card names such as Jigen Bakudan.
  • Harping on About Harpies: The Harpie Lady and related monsters.
  • Hermaphrodite: Yubel
  • Holy Hand Grenade: A good amount of LIGHT monsters are this.
  • Humongous Mecha: Many of the Machine monsters, especially some of their Fusions.
  • An Ice Person: The "Ice Barrier" archetype and related cards.
  • Instant Win Condition: Several, listed on the Useful Notes page.
  • In the End You Are on Your Own: Regardless of what the TV series would have you believe, friends don't mean much in a standard 1-on-1 game. Averted in team plays and Tag Duels, naturally.
  • Invulnerable Knuckles: An important gameplay aversion. If your monster attacks an opponent's Defense Position monster, and the defender has more DEF than the attacker has ATK, the attacker's side takes damage; think of it like punching a brick wall with your fist and getting hurt. This is one of the reasons why monsters can be Set or Special Summoned in face-down Defense Posotion; the attacker doesn't know what he's in for. Some decks can be built around this, with hi-DEF monsters that flip themselves back down and the Spell Shifting Shadows in play that lets you randomize the positions of your face-down monsters.
  • Henshin Hero: The Masked HERO archetype, whose gimmick involves having your monster "transform" into a Masked HERO with the same Attribute as it, mainly through the Spell Mask Change.
  • Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: A lot of card artwork and card titles form sequential stories. Figuring out which cards go with which and in what order can be a challenge, and what each one means is often debated. Some have later been given official explanations via Japan-only guides or Master Duel's tutorial, but most have not.
  • Kill'Em All: Some cards are able to wipe out everything on both sides of the playing field (or just all cards on the opposing side). A couple of cards take it even further by also wiping out every card in the players' hands.
  • Kill Sat: Satellite Cannon.
  • Knight Templar: The Vylons are so focused on creating a world of Perfect Pacifist People that they are willing to make a World of Silence to accomplish it (although to be fair, they were under the lswarm virus at the time, which twisted and cranked the unified desire of their hivemind into the extremes).
  • Kraken and Leviathan:
  • The Last of His Kind: The Last Warrior from Another Planet
  • Leeroy Jenkins: Some cards have compulsory attack effects, the most famous probably being Berserk Gorilla.
  • Leet Speak: There's a card called Mind Haxorz. No, really.
  • Lethal Joke Item: There's a good number of these. Some notable examples:
    • The Ojamas are a bunch of weak monsters with 0 ATK and humorous artworks, but a number of their support cards allow them to turn the table on the enemy by locking them down, destroying their things and mounting a surprise counterattack.
    • Gift Card grants your opponent a whopping 3000 LP, but if you combo that with Bad Reaction to Simochi or Darklord Nurse Reficule, you've just dealt a serious blow to your opponent.
    • Grinder Golem had proven not once, but twice that it's more than meets the eye. As context, Grinder Golem is a 3000 ATK monster that can be Special Summoned to your opponent's field. When it does, it gives you 2 Tokens with 0 ATK.
      • The first of its danger combos is with Inferno Tempest and D.D. Dynamite. Ramming one of the Tokens Summoned by its own effect toward Grinder Golem instantly count toward Inferno Tempest's activation requirement, enabling you to use a Spell that banishes all monsters in both player's decks and Graveyards. Then you can activate D.D. Dynamite, which damages the opponent by 300 for each of their banished cards. While the combo is very situational and unreliable (it requires 3 unsearchable cards a game state good enough for Dynamite), it can put a huge dent into your opponent on the right timing.
      • The second, and more serious combo comes with the Link era. Link Summon are generally more generic than other Extra Deck Special Summon methods, and thus the two Tokens Summoned by Golem can lead to chaotic chains of Link-laddering involving Akashic Magician that usually end in a board full of nasty Link Monsters, including but not limited to Saryuja Skull Dread and Firewall Dragon. For this very reason, Grinder Golem had been Forbidden from both the OCG and TCG tournament environments.
  • Light Is Good: Most monsters of the LIGHT Attribute seem to be heroic, but...
  • Light Is Not Good:
    • Seems to be the theme of the Arcana Force monsters and the Worm archetype.
    • The Vylons become this after they accidentally caught the lswarm virus.
  • Limited Special Collectors' Ultimate Edition: Reprint sets and compilation tins function like this, as they often contain reprints of valued cards, usually at dolled-up "Collector's" rarities such as Gold Rares or Ghost Rares.
  • Loads and Loads of Characters: As of Fall 2019, there are officially 10.000 different cards printed in the OCG, which were celebrated through the release of Ten Thousand Dragon. The numbers have only increased since.
  • Loophole Abuse: Many older cards are worded in such a way to allow this as the game and its strategies have progressed and evolved in ways the card game back then couldn't have foreseen. For example, Mind Control lets you take control of an opponent's monster, but it can't attack or be Tributed. When it was first released it didn't have a lot of uses, mostly just Fusion (which was rarely used) and getting a monster out of the way. Then came Synchros and Xyz, which state their summoning methods don't actually count as Tributing...and so it was Mind Control is now Limited.
    • Two old school revival cards have this. Premature Burial states that when it is destroyed, the monster it revived is destroyed. Its effect says nothing about the monster dying if the card is just removed from the field, most famously by returning it to the hand to be played again. Call of the Haunted meanwhile says that when the monster it summoned is destroyed the card itself also goes, but as with Premature Burial it doesn't go if the monster is removed from the field, leaving Call of the Haunted face-up and useless, unless you have something like Scrap Dragon. Be sure to pay attention to if a card specifically says removed from the field or destroyed, it makes a huge difference.
    • Specific wording means everything. Oh, you say your card has an effect that triggers when discarded? Does it say it has to specifically be from the deck or hand? Does it specify it has to be discarded to the graveyard? Does it say it has to be discarded due to an opponent's card effect? Does it matter if it's discarded for a cost or by an effect?
    • One of the reasons why Dandylion is so useful. It doesn't matter how it hits the grave. Sent from the hand or the deck? No problem. Here's your two fluff tokens.
  • Luck-Based Mission: No matter how you build it, running an Arcana Force deck inevitably turns into this.
    • Also, Lightsworns. Lightsworn cards send cards from the top of the Deck to the Graveyard, and abuse this with plenty of monsters whose effects activate in Graveyard. Of course, many key cards, including the Game Breaker Judgment Dragon need to be in the hand to use. Running Lightsworns is just hoping you get the right cards in your Graveyard and the rest in your hand. Just as Arcana Force, you can try to build them to get around this, but most of the time it's better not to.
    • Tour Guide From the Underworld summons a second monster when she comes into play, with lots of limitations on what you can do with it. But, of course, it doesn't forbid you from using the monster with mechanics that were added to the game later, like XYZ summons...
  • Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Millennium Shield. Big Shield Gardna too, considering his pose.
  • Luck Manipulation Mechanic: Second Coin Toss, and Dice Re-Roll.
  • Lunacy: Mystical Moon. It powers up Beast-Warrior-type monsters.
  • Made of Explodium: Scrap monsters are always either being destroyed by their own effects or the effects of their support cards. Fortunately, their secondary effects usually kick in after this, allowing you to recycle other Scrap cards.
  • Mad Scientist: Kozaky and the Magical Scientist. Some card artworks suggest that these two are actually best buds.
  • Magical Girl: A number of all-girl themes are this, with varying flavors.
  • Magical Land: Well, it's only advertised as a citadel, but if you look closely, it actually houses an entire little kingdom inside the magical barrier. And then there's also the Secret Village of the Spellcasters.
  • Magic Knight:
  • Magikarp Power:
    • The LV monsters are weak in their base forms, but after fulfilling certain requirements, they can replace themselves with much stronger versions. Notable ones include both the Silent Swordsman and the Silent Magician, the Winged Kuriboh and the Armed Dragon.
    • There are also cards that slowly build up power over time (usually by generating Tokens or Counters, or waiting a couple turns) with strong effects that trigger once they're properly "charged up".
    • As a meta example, a lot of old weak themes will often receive new support cards in sets released years later that suddenly make them much more viable.
  • Magma Man: Lava Golem
  • Man-Eating Plant: Literally, but note that it is considerably less frightening than your usual Man-Eating Plant because it only has 800 ATK; on the other hand, we have the Gigaplant. Predaplants are an entire archetype of them.]
  • Married to the Job: Poor poor Kozaky...
  • Mask of Power: Not too many, but enough to count as a series.
  • Matryoshka Card: Tomato Matryoshka allows you to summon another Tomato Matryoshka from your hand or deck when it's Normal Summoned.
  • Meaningful Name: Most of the cards' names are these, usually coupled with Punny Names.
  • Mechanical Evolution: The Machine King. Its youngest form is labeled as being from the year 3000 BC!
  • Mechanical Monster: Many Machines resemble living creatures, like the Cyber Dragon monsters. On the flip side of things are the Scrap monsters, which clearly look mechanical but technically count as just about everything except Machines, be it Insects, Beasts, Dragons, and so on.
  • Metagame: Very prevalent on the competitive side of things. With literal tens of thousands of cards and new ones being released almost on a monthly basis, there bound to be a couple decks that rule over the tournament scene for some time before being replaced by newer ones. The Forbidden/Limited lists that change every a couple months also tend to both reflect, shape up and change the Metagame for the near-future.
  • Metaplot: There was an attempt to have one for a while, based on the artwork of the Gagagigo, Inpachi, Goblin cards, Royal Cards, Different Dimension cards, as well as various monsters appearing in the art of other cards. The lack of flavor text on most cards meant that any story that might have been present was completely lost. More recent cards still reference each other in the artwork, but there doesn't seem to be any attempt to build a coherent plot. A fair chunk of Fanfic is devoted to spinning a coherent story out of the various references.
    • The new Duel Terminal arcade game's card archetypes seem to have this going for them, as evidenced by a few cards both within the Duel Terminal and outside it. [3]
    • World Chalice and its related archetypes form a very long and very complex story. How long and complex? The very short and abridged version takes six minutes to explain, the full version can take an hour.
  • Meteor Of Doom Destruction
  • Mighty Glacier: Some decks require a lot of set-up before you can bring out the big offensive guns. One example is the Destiny HEROs, who are almost all defensive monsters that help the player increase their hand and field presence. This is because their two trump card monsters, Plasma and Dogma, require three Tributes to summon (but are so powerful they can really hamstring the opponent once finally out).
  • Mind Control: One of the main features of the Aliens is infecting opposing cards with A-counters (called "A-cells" in lore) which they can then take control of. Mind control effects are often limited in some way, so if you can avoid destroying your stolen monsters, they might come back to you.
  • Monster Clown: A literal example! Mystic Clown... Dream Clown... Crass Clown... Saggi The Dark Clown... as you might have guessed none of these guys are very pleasent. Luckily, most clown cards are fairly weak or have no effects. Most.
  • Mook Maker: Anything that generates Tokens regularly, like "Goka, the Pyre of Malice".
  • Mushroom Man: There are cards specifically named Mushroom Man #1 and #2.
  • Mutual Kill: Both monsters are destroyed when they have the same ATK and attack each other.
  • My Death Is Just the Beginning: A number of the new Psychic types from Extreme Victory practically exist to be sent to the graveyard. (Namely Serene Psychic Witch, Silent Psychic Wizard, and Hushed Psychic Cleric. Overmind Archfiend also has this going for it, although it's powerful in it's own right.
  • Names to Run Away From Really Fast: There's a list on the Trivia page.
  • Negate Your Own Sacrifice: The popular Stardust Dragon can sacrifice itself to prevent some other card on the field from being destroyed, but it can also bring itself back every turn it does this.
  • Nerf: A really big Nerf occurred when Synchro monsters were introduced. The "Fusion Deck" became the "Extra Deck," and instead of having an unlimited number of Fusion monsters in it (barring the "no more than three with the same name" rule) players were now limited to 15 cards (Synchro or Fusion monsters). This is because Synchro monsters are generally unspecific as to how they can be summoned and it would be too game-breaking to allow an unlimited number of them in there, but this was a major blow to Elemental HERO decks (and only HERO decks), since there are way more than 15 different possible Elemental HERO fusion combinations.
    • Since they can't re-write the rules as written on a card once it's been issued, sometimes Konami will limit how many of certain powerful cards you're allowed to have in your deck, sometimes just 2, 1, or none at all. These "limited/forbidden" lists change every six months as new cards are introduced that change the balance of the game.
    • Errata have actually been issued for some particularly notorious cards. Most of these are wording reworks with no rules impact or corrections to errors in translation, as Konami prefers to print worse versions as separate cards, but some cards that are otherwise so broken they would eternally be banned have had their effects changed. Of particular note is Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End and Makyura the Destructor being two notable ones that would have never left the ban list without it.
  • Never Say "Die": Any monster with the word "Death" in its name has it changed to "Des" as a deliberate transliteration, hence "Death Frog" is "Des Frog" (and "Death Koala" is "Des Koala").
  • New Season, New Name: After 5D's cards began appearing in the game, "5D's" was added to the name of the game in the box logo and in some other places. The same for Zexal and ARC-V. Since the VRAINS era however, the branding returned to the general Yu-Gi-Oh! logo, with only products directly relating to the appropriate anime getting said anime's respective logo.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Quite a few cards can be used to Special Summon a more powerful monster upon the death of the first. For example, Rise of the Snake Deity can be used upon the death of Vennominon, the King of Snakes to summon Vennominaga, the Deity of Poisonous Snakes which gets 500 ATK for each Reptile in the graveyard, can't be the target of abilities, can come back from the dead with the sacrifice of a Reptile from the graveyard and causes an instant victory in 3 attacks.
    • Yubel is probably the best example: If you attack it, then you take damage instead and Yubel itself survives. If you destroy it, then it becomes stronger. The only way to destroy it is... waiting: Yubel needs a sacrifice each turn to stay alive, and being destroyed this way won't bring up its stronger forms. Unless, of course, your opponent abuses the many reusable Tribute fodders in the game; then you're screwed.
    • The Meklord archetype is considered this if you are playing a synchro deck.
    • Also, Berserk Dragon can only be summoned by a spell card that can only be used if one of your Level 8+ monsters is destroyed.
  • Ninja:
  • Non-Human Undead: Quite a few, due to the wide array of different Zombie monsters. One of the most iconic examples is Red-Eyes Zombie Dragon.
  • Not Quite Dead: There are quite a number of cards that either recover or revive monsters from the Graveyard, though not so much that Death Is Cheap. Zombie monsters are particularly fond of these effects.
  • Nothing Is Scarier:
  • Not the Intended Use: A number of instances. For example:
    • Barrel Behind the Door was initially meant to bounce back damage done to you by effects. However, it works just as well in bouncing non-cost damage from your cards to your opponent.
    • One of the most famous examples is G.B. Hunter. As the name implies, it was designed to defeat Gladiator Beasts, which return to the Deck to activate their effects. Turns out, she's great at preventing your monsters from returning to the Deck or Extra Deck. Monsters like, say, the Majestic Synchros, any of the Neos Fusions, or, ironically, your own Gladiator Beast Extra Deck monsters, like Gladiator Beast Octavius.
  • Nuke'Em: Shown in the artwork of Final Destiny. Not to mention it is one of the very few cards that lets you wipe out the whole field.
  • Numerical Theme Naming: The Karakuri archetype. In Japan, their names are actually numbers: "Karakuri Soldier Nisamu," for example, is written with the kanji 弐参六 (236). In the US, the dual nature of their names is retained by translating the kanji as both a model number and the actual reading thereof (or a variation); e.g. "Karakuri Soldier mdl 236 'Nisamu'".
  1. ↑ some don't need it to be in the field to be…well, on the field
  2. ↑ of course, said god's effect makes actually getting out said train or giant koala an uphill battle
  3. ↑ That stuff Mist Valley Thunder Lord is holding? They're the broken pieces of a Catastor.
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