New strategy for playing Yu-Gi-Oh! in 2014: Stop paying for it.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about whether or not to continue pursuing this game. Yugioh is a very challenging game to master, especially if your like me and “refuse to buy expensive cards” as a guy at my locals so eloquently put it. The fact that I’m cheap has definitely had an impact on my performance when I play. I mean, the only reason I haven’t been running my Constellar deck is because I am too cheap to buy a playset of Constellar Sombres; the price on a set of 3 is around $40 right now. That’s entirely too much money to spend on a “childrens’ card game”.
Even ignoring the cost of cards, it costs me $5 a week just to play in my local tournament. In addition to that, I get nothing in return. All I do is help buy the packs for the winners. When I started playing a good while back, you got a pack of cards just for entering the tournament. Now however, since our store is no longer an “Official Tournament Store”, only the winners get packs. Looking back at how much I’ve spent every weekend, just to lose a tournament, its kinda crazy. If I play every weekend, that’s $20 a month. If I play every weekend for a year, its $260! I would be cool with it if I was winning now and then, or even coming close. But paying that just to lose time and time again is unacceptable.
Besides, with DevPro still working just fine, for FREE, why would I pay to play Yugioh? I have access to way more cards online than I do in person, and it costs me $0 when I lose a match. I also don’t have to listen to the few condescending people that frequent my locals. Very few people talk on DevPro which is definitely more my style.
I’m not sure why it took me so long to come to this conclusion, but I’m glad I finally did. I love playing the game, but I can’t understand why people will pay so much to play it. I don’t know how the other players at my locals will take my decision though. They like having me around, even if just because I’m an easy win. I might still go for trades and casual playing, but I think I’m done with tournament play for the foreseeable future.