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There are a lot of misconceptions about Duelist Kingdom and that’s largely because the arc came before the card game even existed in real life, and was based on tabletop RPG games more than anything (think Magic The Gathering). However, that doesn’t mean there weren’t rules. In-universe, the rules of the game appeared in different iterations:
• Basic rules: These were used prior to Duelist Kingdom.
• Standard rules: These were used in the Japanese National Duel Monsters Championship (“Duel Monsters Tournament” in the manga, “Regional Duel Monsters Tournament” in the English dub) and in Duelist Kingdom. This set included additional rules on top of the Basic set. Field Power Bonuses and more types of cards were added, among other things.
• Expert rules: These were only used for the duels with the first version of Seto Kaiba’s Duel Disk that he debuted in Duelist Kingdom. This set was wildly different from the others in play style.
• Super Expert rules: Most fans are familiar with these rules as they’re the ones used for Battle City and most closely resemble the real life TCG rules. This set added concepts such as Tribute Summoning and increased the total Life Points to 4000 per player.
The rules also differed somewhat between the manga and the anime. For instance, the hand card limit was 7 in the manga while in the anime it was 6; all Spell Cards were considered Quick-Play in the manga while there were different types in the anime (although the anime followed the manga regardless in some cases). Duels took place on duel mats in the manga with small-scale holograms while the anime duels used large arenas with appropriately scaled holograms.
It’s important to note that the game was very different prior to the Duelist Kingdom (DK) and Japanese National Duel Monsters Championship (JNDMC) tournaments. Before those tournaments, Duel Monsters consisted of Monster and Spell Cards—Trap Cards weren’t a thing. Attacking a player directly was an option if a player didn’t have a defending monster. With the aforementioned JNDMC, the game expanded. Trap Cards, Equip Spell Cards, and Rituals were added to the card pool. An elemental system was created for Monster Cards, although it wasn’t fully fleshed out and not entirely consistent.
It was stated on the boat ride to Duelist Kingdom that special rules were created for the tournament, but a lot of fans miss this mention.
• Field Power Bonuses (usually 30%) were enacted on the island depending on the terrain the duel was taking place.
• Direct attacks were prohibited.
• Extra Decks were nonexistent and Fusion Monsters appeared to be several cards in play at once or a Token depending on the duel.
• Destruction effects caused damage in most cases.
• The level of a monster was largely irrelevant and only seemed to indicate a card’s rarity.
• TCG vanilla monsters often had effects in the anime and manga, i.e. Swordstalker and Mystical Elf.
The “meta” of the early game is another vital aspect to understand. It’s easy to look at Duelist Kingdom and think it’s weak compared to future arcs, but back then, this wasn’t the case. Duelists like Rex Raptor and Weevil Underwood were tournament finalists, meaning they were considered two of the strongest players in the game during the Duelist Kingdom era. Let’s look at most of the main duelists of the arc.
Rex employed a beatdown strategy and his deck contained only Monster Cards in the manga with the anime adding Dragon Nails as his one Equip Spell. His strongest card was Red-Eyes Black Dragon with 2400 ATK/2000 DEF, which he won in a tournament and was stated to cost a few thousand dollars (at least in the manga), so it’s clearly an incredibly rare card. Considering it wasn’t a Dinosaur type and how it was acquired, this wouldn’t have been a part of Rex’s typical deck. Serpent Night Dragon, the card Rex claimed he won at the JNDMC, was his next strongest card with 2350 ATK/2400 DEF, indicating it was yet another very rare card. In the manga, Serpent Night Dragon wasn’t used by Rex, and his strongest monster after Red-Eyes was Megasaurus with 1800 ATK/2000 DEF.
On the other hand, Weevil’s deck contained a plethora of Spells and Traps to make up for the fact that his strongest normal monster was Hercules Beetle, which had 1500 ATK/2000 DEF (he had Great Moth (2600 ATK/2500 DEF), but this was a Special Summon). His other monsters tended to top out at 1200 ATK. Again, Weevil was the winner of the JNDMC, so his deck would be considered powerful at the time.
Seto Kaiba was noted to have only obtained his Blue-Eyes White Dragons somewhat recently, and behind those three, his monster lineup wasn’t that much more powerful than Rex’s. Judge Man, Swordstalker, and Rabid Horseman (a Fusion Monster) each hovered in the very low 2000 ATK range while Kaiba’s other monsters were generally in the mid-teens. What made Kaiba a much stronger opponent than Rex and Weevil, however, was his impressive Spell and Trap lineup, which included Crush Card Virus, Shadow Spell, Monster Reborn, and Negate Attack.
Mai Valentine was another duelist similar to Weevil in that she used Spells and Traps to help her decently strong monsters become very strong. In the anime it was stated Mirror Wall was one of the rarest Trap Cards. Mai focused on Harpie Lady, a normal monster with 1300 ATK/1400 DEF, supporting it with cards like Cyber Shield, Rose Whip, and Elegant Egotist; in case of emergency, she could summon Harpie’s Pet Dragon, a 2000 ATK/2500 DEF monster with an effect that could potentially boost it up to 2900 ATK. Mako Tsunami didn’t use any Spells or Traps, his strongest monster being Kairyu-Shin with 1800 ATK. Bonz’s only two Spells, Call of the Haunted (Spell Card in this arc) and Stop Defense, were loaned from Bandit Keith. Bandit Keith himself was a “career player” and said to be the best in the United States, where Duel Monsters originated from, with his strongest monsters ranging from 2000 to 2600 ATK, and his Spells and Traps were also strong.
Regarding Yugi himself, many fans like to shit on his deck for lacking a theme or cohesion, but for the arc, it’s one of the best. While not all of his monsters were very powerful, his Dark Magician, Summoned Skull, Gaia the Fierce Knight, and Curse of Dragon could all be Normal Summoned and each had at least 2000 ATK. His Spells and Traps included Mirror Force, Spellbinding Circle, Dark Hole, Swords of Revealing Light, Brain Control, Polymerization, and Monster Reborn. On top of all those, he had Magician of Black Chaos and Black Luster Soldier, two Ritual Monsters with 2800-3000 ATK. Being that this was originally Grandpa Moto’s deck, it’s not hard to see why there were so many strong cards in it.
Joey’s deck was actually the most normal out of everybody’s when you stop to think about it. He was given Time Wizard by Yugi and used that to win Red-Eyes Black Dragon from Rex. He traded with other players on the boat to Duelist Kingdom to obtain Salamandra, Shield & Shield, and Kunai with Chain, and during the tournament was given Lava Battleguard by Tristan (in the anime). Strangely, Joey possessed quite a few strong monsters, including Axe Raider (1700 ATK/1150 DEF), Battle Steer (1800 ATK/1300 DEF), Flame Swordsman (1800 ATK/1600 DEF), Garoozis (1800 ATK/1500 DEF), Giltia the D. Knight (1850 ATK/1500 DEF), and Rude Kaiser (1800 ATK/1600 DEF); perhaps his training with Grandpa Moto had its privileges. Mind you, before Joey underwent training for Duelist Kingdom, his deck consisted entirely of monsters, the strongest being Destroyer Golem with 1500 ATK/1000 DEF; the rest of his monsters topped out at 1000 ATK.
Judging by these characters’ decks, monsters with ATK in the mid-teens were considered beatsticks, and because the Spells and Traps in this era were fairly powerful, they were rare and seen as a big investment for duelists, forcing duelists to choose between a lot of Monster Cards or a lot of Spell and Trap Cards. Quite a few cards weren’t printed in high numbers either. For example:
• There were only four copies of Blue-Eyes White Dragon in the world.
• Red-Eyes Black Dragon and Serpent Night Dragon were tournament prize cards.
• Toons were only made for Pegasus himself.
• Pegasus printed the Gate Guardian pieces specifically for the Paradox Brothers.
• Weevil had never physically seen the Exodia pieces before, implying each piece was short-printed and getting them all would no doubt cost thousands of dollars.
Next time you wonder why a player didn't use this card or that card, it's probably one or both of the following reasons:
• The card was rare and/or too expensive.
• The card hadn't been released yet.
This also helps to explain why Kaiba sought after the Blue-Eyes White Dragon so much (aside from his Ancient Egyptian connection). 3000 ATK in a meta where that was about double the ATK power of a tournament-level player’s strongest monster, and not many people wielded Spells and Traps, was like having a “virtually invincible” monster, as the card’s text indicated (consider that throughout the arc, there was no monster able to be Normal Summoned that broke 2600 ATK). Having three copies that could be summoned without tributes was madness.
That brings me to the skill level of these players. Starting from the top, Yugi and Kaiba were the undisputed masters. They possessed the most pure dueling skill in terms of strategy and card knowledge. Kaiba lost to Yugi in their first duel by the extreme luck of Exodia being assembled, and then lost to Pegasus due to the latter being able to see every card Kaiba possessed and reading his mind. Yugi lost to Pegasus in their video duel by time running out, and refrained from attacking Kaiba in their second duel, which caused him to lose by default. Both duelists lost only twice in this arc.
Joey was repeatedly stated to be an amateur and struggled in all of his duels, often relying on Yugi’s advice to win. Prior to Duelist Kingdom and training with Grandpa Moto, he lost at least four times to Tea, someone that had very little experience with Duel Monsters in the first place, and of course to Yugi. He did beat Mai Valentine after he saw through her “aroma tactics,” which effectively let her see which card she would draw into and plan ahead of her opponent that way. He won using the effect of Time Wizard, though, which relied on pure luck rather than skill. Joey again relied on Time Wizard to beat Rex, having no other option to overcome Red-Eyes Black Dragon, which was further powered up to 3000 ATK by Dragon Nails. Admittedly, this was the first duel Joey opted to fight completely on his own without accepting advice from his friends. He nearly lost to Bonz, winning again with a last-minute upset. He got crushed by Kaiba when they used the Duel Disk V1, not understanding how to play like that and generally being inferior overall. He held his own against Bandit Keith and Yugi in Pegasus’ castle, though, showing fair growth.
Mai is often treated as a particularly skilled duelist by fans, but if anything, she was above average at best during Duelist Kingdom. She relied on her “aroma tactics” technique to get wins, allowing her to predict which cards she would draw, giving her an unfair advantage. This is how she duped Rex out of his private room on the boat to Duelist Kingdom. Her only wins during the arc were against Rex and a couple of unnamed scrubs off-screen. She legitimately lost to Joey, admitting in her duel against Yugi that she indeed tried her hardest and was devastated when she lost. She lost to Panik, although that’s more understandable. In the anime she fought Tea for Star Chips, but forfeited (Yugi accepted the Star Chips in the manga with no duel necessary); she lost to Yugi in the castle once he put his mind on their duel. The fact that she beat a couple of unnamed duelists off-screen showed she wasn’t the average player, and Pegasus did compliment her Harpie deck during the duel with Yugi, saying it “held no weaknesses,” so there was that.
It was previously noted that Weevil was the winner of the JNDMC, thus making him a legitimate threat, and Rex was runner-up. There isn’t much to say about Mako Tsunami since he only dueled once against Yugi, but he did participate in the JNDMC and lost to either Rex or Weevil off-screen, coming in third.
In terms of Pegasus’ hired goons, Panik was able to take out Mai, but this was largely due to his cowardly strategy of only attacking from the darkness where she was unable to see his monsters. He was no match for Yugi, who figured out his strategy and turned it against him. The Paradox Brothers’ entire strategy relied on confusing opponents by using their Labyrinth Wall card to changing the gameplay into a boardgame-like state rather than the tabletop/duel arena stage players were used to. Relying entirely on dueling as a team, complete with decks that played off one another, these two were apparently only dangerous in a tag team setting where their cards were at maximum strength.
Bonz was less than noteworthy without the help of Bandit Keith’s advice and cards, but with said aids and the Graveyard Field Power Bonus, he was capable of overwhelming Joey up until the final turn of their duel. Keith himself was the previous United States Duel Monsters champion, but after to losing to Pegasus’s proxy at the Intercontinental Championship in New York City, he began cheating in his duels. During the final phase of his duel with Joey in Pegasus’ castle, he resorted to hiding cards in his wristband, but ultimately lost regardless.
It was explicitly stated that since Pegasus had relied for so long on his Millennium Eye, his dueling skill had diminished considerably. Without his Millennium Eye, it would stand to reason that he would probably lose to most of the tournament-level participants like Weevil, Rex, Mako, and Bandit Keith. He certainly would have lost to Kaiba or Yugi had he played fairly from the beginning.
Undoubtedly, the game was a different beast before and during Duelist Kingdom. The rules and card pool were vastly different from what would come after Duelist Kingdom, thus the players had to form their styles accordingly. It wasn’t that players were weak or didn’t know how the game worked. That was simply the meta back then.
Good day.
• Basic rules: These were used prior to Duelist Kingdom.
• Standard rules: These were used in the Japanese National Duel Monsters Championship (“Duel Monsters Tournament” in the manga, “Regional Duel Monsters Tournament” in the English dub) and in Duelist Kingdom. This set included additional rules on top of the Basic set. Field Power Bonuses and more types of cards were added, among other things.
• Expert rules: These were only used for the duels with the first version of Seto Kaiba’s Duel Disk that he debuted in Duelist Kingdom. This set was wildly different from the others in play style.
• Super Expert rules: Most fans are familiar with these rules as they’re the ones used for Battle City and most closely resemble the real life TCG rules. This set added concepts such as Tribute Summoning and increased the total Life Points to 4000 per player.
The rules also differed somewhat between the manga and the anime. For instance, the hand card limit was 7 in the manga while in the anime it was 6; all Spell Cards were considered Quick-Play in the manga while there were different types in the anime (although the anime followed the manga regardless in some cases). Duels took place on duel mats in the manga with small-scale holograms while the anime duels used large arenas with appropriately scaled holograms.
It’s important to note that the game was very different prior to the Duelist Kingdom (DK) and Japanese National Duel Monsters Championship (JNDMC) tournaments. Before those tournaments, Duel Monsters consisted of Monster and Spell Cards—Trap Cards weren’t a thing. Attacking a player directly was an option if a player didn’t have a defending monster. With the aforementioned JNDMC, the game expanded. Trap Cards, Equip Spell Cards, and Rituals were added to the card pool. An elemental system was created for Monster Cards, although it wasn’t fully fleshed out and not entirely consistent.
It was stated on the boat ride to Duelist Kingdom that special rules were created for the tournament, but a lot of fans miss this mention.
• Field Power Bonuses (usually 30%) were enacted on the island depending on the terrain the duel was taking place.
• Direct attacks were prohibited.
• Extra Decks were nonexistent and Fusion Monsters appeared to be several cards in play at once or a Token depending on the duel.
• Destruction effects caused damage in most cases.
• The level of a monster was largely irrelevant and only seemed to indicate a card’s rarity.
• TCG vanilla monsters often had effects in the anime and manga, i.e. Swordstalker and Mystical Elf.
The “meta” of the early game is another vital aspect to understand. It’s easy to look at Duelist Kingdom and think it’s weak compared to future arcs, but back then, this wasn’t the case. Duelists like Rex Raptor and Weevil Underwood were tournament finalists, meaning they were considered two of the strongest players in the game during the Duelist Kingdom era. Let’s look at most of the main duelists of the arc.
Rex employed a beatdown strategy and his deck contained only Monster Cards in the manga with the anime adding Dragon Nails as his one Equip Spell. His strongest card was Red-Eyes Black Dragon with 2400 ATK/2000 DEF, which he won in a tournament and was stated to cost a few thousand dollars (at least in the manga), so it’s clearly an incredibly rare card. Considering it wasn’t a Dinosaur type and how it was acquired, this wouldn’t have been a part of Rex’s typical deck. Serpent Night Dragon, the card Rex claimed he won at the JNDMC, was his next strongest card with 2350 ATK/2400 DEF, indicating it was yet another very rare card. In the manga, Serpent Night Dragon wasn’t used by Rex, and his strongest monster after Red-Eyes was Megasaurus with 1800 ATK/2000 DEF.
On the other hand, Weevil’s deck contained a plethora of Spells and Traps to make up for the fact that his strongest normal monster was Hercules Beetle, which had 1500 ATK/2000 DEF (he had Great Moth (2600 ATK/2500 DEF), but this was a Special Summon). His other monsters tended to top out at 1200 ATK. Again, Weevil was the winner of the JNDMC, so his deck would be considered powerful at the time.
Seto Kaiba was noted to have only obtained his Blue-Eyes White Dragons somewhat recently, and behind those three, his monster lineup wasn’t that much more powerful than Rex’s. Judge Man, Swordstalker, and Rabid Horseman (a Fusion Monster) each hovered in the very low 2000 ATK range while Kaiba’s other monsters were generally in the mid-teens. What made Kaiba a much stronger opponent than Rex and Weevil, however, was his impressive Spell and Trap lineup, which included Crush Card Virus, Shadow Spell, Monster Reborn, and Negate Attack.
Mai Valentine was another duelist similar to Weevil in that she used Spells and Traps to help her decently strong monsters become very strong. In the anime it was stated Mirror Wall was one of the rarest Trap Cards. Mai focused on Harpie Lady, a normal monster with 1300 ATK/1400 DEF, supporting it with cards like Cyber Shield, Rose Whip, and Elegant Egotist; in case of emergency, she could summon Harpie’s Pet Dragon, a 2000 ATK/2500 DEF monster with an effect that could potentially boost it up to 2900 ATK. Mako Tsunami didn’t use any Spells or Traps, his strongest monster being Kairyu-Shin with 1800 ATK. Bonz’s only two Spells, Call of the Haunted (Spell Card in this arc) and Stop Defense, were loaned from Bandit Keith. Bandit Keith himself was a “career player” and said to be the best in the United States, where Duel Monsters originated from, with his strongest monsters ranging from 2000 to 2600 ATK, and his Spells and Traps were also strong.
Regarding Yugi himself, many fans like to shit on his deck for lacking a theme or cohesion, but for the arc, it’s one of the best. While not all of his monsters were very powerful, his Dark Magician, Summoned Skull, Gaia the Fierce Knight, and Curse of Dragon could all be Normal Summoned and each had at least 2000 ATK. His Spells and Traps included Mirror Force, Spellbinding Circle, Dark Hole, Swords of Revealing Light, Brain Control, Polymerization, and Monster Reborn. On top of all those, he had Magician of Black Chaos and Black Luster Soldier, two Ritual Monsters with 2800-3000 ATK. Being that this was originally Grandpa Moto’s deck, it’s not hard to see why there were so many strong cards in it.
Joey’s deck was actually the most normal out of everybody’s when you stop to think about it. He was given Time Wizard by Yugi and used that to win Red-Eyes Black Dragon from Rex. He traded with other players on the boat to Duelist Kingdom to obtain Salamandra, Shield & Shield, and Kunai with Chain, and during the tournament was given Lava Battleguard by Tristan (in the anime). Strangely, Joey possessed quite a few strong monsters, including Axe Raider (1700 ATK/1150 DEF), Battle Steer (1800 ATK/1300 DEF), Flame Swordsman (1800 ATK/1600 DEF), Garoozis (1800 ATK/1500 DEF), Giltia the D. Knight (1850 ATK/1500 DEF), and Rude Kaiser (1800 ATK/1600 DEF); perhaps his training with Grandpa Moto had its privileges. Mind you, before Joey underwent training for Duelist Kingdom, his deck consisted entirely of monsters, the strongest being Destroyer Golem with 1500 ATK/1000 DEF; the rest of his monsters topped out at 1000 ATK.
Judging by these characters’ decks, monsters with ATK in the mid-teens were considered beatsticks, and because the Spells and Traps in this era were fairly powerful, they were rare and seen as a big investment for duelists, forcing duelists to choose between a lot of Monster Cards or a lot of Spell and Trap Cards. Quite a few cards weren’t printed in high numbers either. For example:
• There were only four copies of Blue-Eyes White Dragon in the world.
• Red-Eyes Black Dragon and Serpent Night Dragon were tournament prize cards.
• Toons were only made for Pegasus himself.
• Pegasus printed the Gate Guardian pieces specifically for the Paradox Brothers.
• Weevil had never physically seen the Exodia pieces before, implying each piece was short-printed and getting them all would no doubt cost thousands of dollars.
Next time you wonder why a player didn't use this card or that card, it's probably one or both of the following reasons:
• The card was rare and/or too expensive.
• The card hadn't been released yet.
This also helps to explain why Kaiba sought after the Blue-Eyes White Dragon so much (aside from his Ancient Egyptian connection). 3000 ATK in a meta where that was about double the ATK power of a tournament-level player’s strongest monster, and not many people wielded Spells and Traps, was like having a “virtually invincible” monster, as the card’s text indicated (consider that throughout the arc, there was no monster able to be Normal Summoned that broke 2600 ATK). Having three copies that could be summoned without tributes was madness.
That brings me to the skill level of these players. Starting from the top, Yugi and Kaiba were the undisputed masters. They possessed the most pure dueling skill in terms of strategy and card knowledge. Kaiba lost to Yugi in their first duel by the extreme luck of Exodia being assembled, and then lost to Pegasus due to the latter being able to see every card Kaiba possessed and reading his mind. Yugi lost to Pegasus in their video duel by time running out, and refrained from attacking Kaiba in their second duel, which caused him to lose by default. Both duelists lost only twice in this arc.
Joey was repeatedly stated to be an amateur and struggled in all of his duels, often relying on Yugi’s advice to win. Prior to Duelist Kingdom and training with Grandpa Moto, he lost at least four times to Tea, someone that had very little experience with Duel Monsters in the first place, and of course to Yugi. He did beat Mai Valentine after he saw through her “aroma tactics,” which effectively let her see which card she would draw into and plan ahead of her opponent that way. He won using the effect of Time Wizard, though, which relied on pure luck rather than skill. Joey again relied on Time Wizard to beat Rex, having no other option to overcome Red-Eyes Black Dragon, which was further powered up to 3000 ATK by Dragon Nails. Admittedly, this was the first duel Joey opted to fight completely on his own without accepting advice from his friends. He nearly lost to Bonz, winning again with a last-minute upset. He got crushed by Kaiba when they used the Duel Disk V1, not understanding how to play like that and generally being inferior overall. He held his own against Bandit Keith and Yugi in Pegasus’ castle, though, showing fair growth.
Mai is often treated as a particularly skilled duelist by fans, but if anything, she was above average at best during Duelist Kingdom. She relied on her “aroma tactics” technique to get wins, allowing her to predict which cards she would draw, giving her an unfair advantage. This is how she duped Rex out of his private room on the boat to Duelist Kingdom. Her only wins during the arc were against Rex and a couple of unnamed scrubs off-screen. She legitimately lost to Joey, admitting in her duel against Yugi that she indeed tried her hardest and was devastated when she lost. She lost to Panik, although that’s more understandable. In the anime she fought Tea for Star Chips, but forfeited (Yugi accepted the Star Chips in the manga with no duel necessary); she lost to Yugi in the castle once he put his mind on their duel. The fact that she beat a couple of unnamed duelists off-screen showed she wasn’t the average player, and Pegasus did compliment her Harpie deck during the duel with Yugi, saying it “held no weaknesses,” so there was that.
It was previously noted that Weevil was the winner of the JNDMC, thus making him a legitimate threat, and Rex was runner-up. There isn’t much to say about Mako Tsunami since he only dueled once against Yugi, but he did participate in the JNDMC and lost to either Rex or Weevil off-screen, coming in third.
In terms of Pegasus’ hired goons, Panik was able to take out Mai, but this was largely due to his cowardly strategy of only attacking from the darkness where she was unable to see his monsters. He was no match for Yugi, who figured out his strategy and turned it against him. The Paradox Brothers’ entire strategy relied on confusing opponents by using their Labyrinth Wall card to changing the gameplay into a boardgame-like state rather than the tabletop/duel arena stage players were used to. Relying entirely on dueling as a team, complete with decks that played off one another, these two were apparently only dangerous in a tag team setting where their cards were at maximum strength.
Bonz was less than noteworthy without the help of Bandit Keith’s advice and cards, but with said aids and the Graveyard Field Power Bonus, he was capable of overwhelming Joey up until the final turn of their duel. Keith himself was the previous United States Duel Monsters champion, but after to losing to Pegasus’s proxy at the Intercontinental Championship in New York City, he began cheating in his duels. During the final phase of his duel with Joey in Pegasus’ castle, he resorted to hiding cards in his wristband, but ultimately lost regardless.
It was explicitly stated that since Pegasus had relied for so long on his Millennium Eye, his dueling skill had diminished considerably. Without his Millennium Eye, it would stand to reason that he would probably lose to most of the tournament-level participants like Weevil, Rex, Mako, and Bandit Keith. He certainly would have lost to Kaiba or Yugi had he played fairly from the beginning.
Undoubtedly, the game was a different beast before and during Duelist Kingdom. The rules and card pool were vastly different from what would come after Duelist Kingdom, thus the players had to form their styles accordingly. It wasn’t that players were weak or didn’t know how the game worked. That was simply the meta back then.
Good day.
