29 replies to this topic

[SuperTrain]

Everyone's got a story, right? Maybe you saw the show and got into the game that way, or maybe your older sibling gave you a pack of cards because he/she didn't play anymore, or perhaps you saw the game at your local hobby shop while buying a stick of gum to get change for a $5. Been playing since LOB? Just got in two sets ago and have no idea what this "Chaos Format" or "Tele-DAD Format" is?

Let's hear it. I'll probably edit this post when I don't have a bunch of reading for class to add my story, too.

(hopefully this is 1-the right place to put this and 2-not a repeat of an older thread. I did try to search first)

[bobandjim]

I was a hardcore pokemon TCG fan, well as hardcore as a fourth grader can be.  Some other kids were playing YUGIOH, but I swore I'd never bother with it.  Pokemon cost enough of my allowance as it was.

Then one day my little cousin got Dark Duel Stories for the GBC and had no idea how to play the game.  He asked me to figure it out for him.  I messed around with it, vaguely figured out how the mechanics worked.  I was thumbing through the instructions when I learned you could type in numbers from cards to get them in the game.  That was it, I was about to go get me some YUGIOH cards.  I bought the Yugi and Kaiba starter decks, and the rest is history.  I still remember the first time I tried to MST a monster reborn in Yugioh World Wide edition.  I raged so hard, well as hard as a fourth grader can rage.

[Sho Shinjo]

Well, I started playing IRL around when LON was released, so some stuff was already established. Nonetheless, I know stuffs older than LON due to my own research xD But I think it was a good time to enter this game. Pre-PSV, stuff was too simple. PSV introduced lots of interesting cards, and LON introduced new mechanics, so it was a wonderful time to start as everyone was learning new things.

Anyways. A friend once introduced me to the game, since he had a Yugi Starter. We played and I found it pretty fun. Then he lent me the Stairway to the Destined Duel GBA game, and found out that some of the rules they used (mainly the "no tribute" rule xD) were wrong. From there, I grabbed my own Kaiba starter (because I liked BEWD a lot) and started to play, taking special care on knowing rules and card effects (and that's how I became a walking YGO library).

I ran a Deck with a bit of everything for a long while, then made a BEWD-based Deck, with Paladin of the White Dragon and stuff. Then I switched to a DARK Deck with Tomatoes and Witch's Apprentices xD I even ran some counterfeit cards at some point. What? My allowance was low! >> Nobody complained anyways. Not until I started to beat them often, then I decided to drop them and got only legal stuff.

After that, for some reason, I put my hands into a Dark Necrofear. I ran BEWD as well, but it eventually died and was sold xD I also had some OCG cards, since the Structure Decks Vol.2 were around. People loved them thanks to cheap Mirror Force, stuff like CCV and cheap Jinzos, but people often looked down on those.

I instantly fell in love with Necrofear though, so I got many stuffs just to make that card useful. Then I got a second Necrofear, and my Fiend Deck was born. I devoted so much time and effort to it, and used it as my main and only build for years after that. I also remember lacking several staples xD I didn't have Raigeki, and struggled a lot to get HFD and Imperial. Didn't have Premature until the reprint either, nor Torrential Tribute. I had Mirror Force at some point but it was stolen :/ Then the Advanced Format kicked in and suddenly I had a lot less cards to get xD After that happened, I remade my Fiends, started going to my locals regularly and then won 5 locals in a row. They were all like "WTF is with this kid, comes up from nowhere and kicks us". That and the fact I was beating Scientist OTK and Chaos with a devoted Fiend Deck was how people around started to know me. If you ask any old-timer on my locals back home about Fiends, they'll instantly think of me xD

Anyways, it was only until the Monarch format came around that I dropped my Fiend Deck for a bit. I ran Monarchs and Fiends for a long time, adding more cards to my repertoire little by little. Then I suddenly had stuff to make over9000 Decks, and once people started netdecking and taking big tournaments into account, the rest is as usual xD I remember I had Dark World, Archfiends and regular Fiends as my main builds besides Monarchs. I also remember making Archfiends work!

So yeah. Long story, but it was a fun ride. It still is! I'll probably play YGO until it dies, so I'll have more and more stories to tell as time passes.

...goddamit. Nostalgia everywhere xD Now I must make my Fiend Deck again!! *runs to deckbuild*

[TheLaughingMan-JDS]

I'll note now: I have never owned a game system. No Gameboy, no Xbox, nothing. I've been raised a book, board, and card kind of person I guess.

Anyway, it started with school. Like with Pokemon before, there was a YuGiOh card craze. Trading, stealing, cheating, people playing by their own rules... The works. Think I got my first couple cards off another kid for pocket change. If I remember correctly, two of them were Uraby and Drooling Lizard (I be OLD in dis).

So before I was actively playing, I began collecting. That was around the time Magic Ruler packs hit stores in the area. Most of my stuff I got from Wal-Mart with a five-finger discount. I started paying for a few of them when Pharaoh's servant was out, but... Hey, stealing was easier than getting money. I was able to build something resembling a deck, and got the basic rules of the time from the Starter Deck Rulebooks, but I was never in the competitive/tournament/public playing scene. No idea about ban lists and the like.

In hindsight, I don't think I ever actually finished a decent duel in real life until much later, after Soul of the Duelist. By then I had switched schools and met some new, more intelligent people who were into the game. As opposed to the reaching-for-your-cards-while-you're-looking-in-the-other-direction crowd from early on.

Sometime around '04 is when I figured out a deck type I liked to play - Water. Given the lackluster dueling of rl, it eventually occurred to me to look for online versions of the game and places to learn from. This and that, and I was drawn to XC and YVD by a clan called "Titans of the Sea". Through there/here, YVD, and being able to read set lists online, I discovered how the game REALLY works - how it's REALLY supposed to be.

My best decks and the time when my dueling/deckbuilding skills were at their prime was, I have to admit, after I switched to using BYond and playing the "Duel Monsters" games available there, where you could walk around and face people (as opposed to purely chat-based). One game only had sets up to Pharaonic Guardian or so, but with the majority of card interactions pre-programmed, and npcs to duel if wanted. The other main game required you to perform the interactions yourself -  it, however, had every card released in ocg and tcg, some anime, and a few player-created. Both of these gave me a certain greater amount of freedom and better interaction than previously, in a way it occurs to me I COULD have gotten if I'd ever played the handheld vidya games like some of you have mentioned.

Currently, I'm somewhat kind of in a way maybe possibly sorta "retired" from dueling. I do still enjoy deck and card-making, and looking at modern card combinations, but... I have an addictive personality, and it would be better for me not to get too caught up in the scene again.

tl;dr - Collecting at school -> Dueling online

[JoeTheSwap]

I was about to post I barely remember stuff from back then, but the posts so far refreshed my memory somewhat~ Let's post what I remember before I forget again~

I started playing around the time of LON. Back then, lots of boys at school had stopped playing the Pokemon TCG (which I had played before too), and started playing this game. I think the YGO DM show had started on local TV too, which might have been a factor. Anyways, back then most people at my school used mostly counterfeit cards, including me. After a while, though, those with more money started getting the legal ones. I was friends with someone who had bought a Yugi Starter and some MRL packs, and after I helped him with something (don't remember what) he gave me a MRL Hyozanryu and a SDY Celtic Guardian for the trouble. The latter was traded away soon, but I still have the worn down Hyozanryu~

So then... I started trading around stuff (YGO cards, old Pokemon cards, and other stuff), and my collection grew. Just a few days after LOD came out, I finally bought some real cards of my own: two packs of LOD. I don't remember all of what I got, but I remember getting Injection Fairy Lily from one of those packs~ Also, upon checking a spoiler list of LOD, I somehow became obssessed with Creature Swap, and that's how I got my username, even though I didn't know what the word Swap meant at the time~ xD

Some time after that, one of the guys who sold the counterfeit cards outside school started selling random legal cards too, including OCG stuff. I got OCG versions of Terrorking Salmon and Giga Gagagigo, then I looked at a Legendary Ocean card I had gotten from those LOD packs, and that's how the legend of the Water Master started~! *cue epic music*

Yeah, then I played around with mostly WATER Decks, and my Main Deck was centered around ALO. I became probably the best at school when it came to dueling, and I did pretty well in other places I went to. I also became sort of a walking YGO encyclopedia because I spent a lot of time reading YGO stuff, and I collected all sort of WATER monsters. During my last year at school, basically everyone else at school who played the game (and some cousins who live next door) quit YGO, and when I started going to University next year, I didn't have time to go to the usual game center anymore (45 mins away from home, but in the opposite direction of Uni), so I had to quit playing YGO irl too. I think I quit playing the TCG completely around the time of Phantom Darkness' Sneak Preview. Some time before that, though, I had started the XCG project, which is alive until now, so I never really left the game in a sense~

I sort of decided to come back to the YGO TCG somewhat recently (I'm no longer the all-knowing sage from back then, but I kept watching all the YGO Animes, checking Shriek frequently and playing around in the XCG, so I wasn't completely lost). I'm playing only online, of course, but since my unexplainable dislike of the #yvd channel is still there after all these years, and duel requests are forbidden in the forums, I have trouble finding opponents outside of my XCG peeps~ Maybe I should do something about that... or try somewhere else~

[Stomach The MachoPony]

being fifteen i got into the competitive scene just as synchs were new
i went to a few locals pwned all with my epic MAcroMonarchs and didnt go anymore (CBA)
i still have it (crappy for todays meta) and i dotn play IRL and i dont plan to until im a lot older (and can get a decent income)

[Rothon the Keymaster]

@joe use pms, join torunaments or play on DN, i don't use yvd as much but i don;t plan on leaving xc any time soon.

will have to put up own story soon, gotta go for dinner first.

[JoeTheSwap]

Rothon the Keymaster, on 28 February 2012 - 06:00 PM, said:

@joe use pms, join torunaments or play on DN, i don't use yvd as much but i don;t plan on leaving xc any time soon.

Forgot about PMs, so I might try that in certain situations. Tournaments... Not sure if want. DN I might have to start using, I just need to learn how to do stuff outside of the Deck Constructor~

[MyBlackwingPlaylist]

Oh dear. When did I start playing Yugioh...

It was shortly after the series premiered in North American (Spring 2002?). My brother received an Armail and Summoned Skull (yeah, I actually remember that) from a kid at school. Then my dad bought us the Yugi Starter Deck (and, later, the Kaiba one. He was extremely supportive of my card addiction.) I still have a lot of cards from it, in horrible condition but still.
Then, we each got a pack of cards later on. I remember pulling Mammoth Graveyard (zomg, Yugi has this card!), Malevolent Nuzzler, and Black Illusion Ritual. At that time, I though I could summon Black Luster Soldier with Black Illusion Ritual, so I pretty much won every duel with my brother, sister, and babysitter. Though, I didn't even have a Black Luster Soldier, so Hayabusa Knight subbed in.
I never played competitive (and, wasn't really even aware of it). I did manage to amass some pretty good cards, like Mirror Force, Raigeki, and several Exodia pieces. Eventually, me and my siblings were role-playing Yugi and the gang and whatnot.
I also got a lot of the video games. I have 2 copies of The Eternal Duelist Soul (my sister once deleted all of our hard-earned data and me and my brother were SO angry), as well as Dark Duel Stories. I also once got Forbidden Memories and was so psyched to be getting REBMD, Metalmorph, and Harpie's Pet Dragon, only to discover that the case was cardless. (REBMD ended up getting reprinted so it's worthless to me now, I would later buy Metalmorph for $40, and I have never had a Pet Dragon). I also have some of those games that strayed from the actual card game (Falsebound Kingdom <3).
Anyhow, I watched the original show faithfully, up until the World Grand Prix saga though I still watched the occasional episode. I randomly ended up flicking on the last episode one day. GX I watched wholly while it played on Cartoon Network (then it went on CW11 and the schedule was riddled with repeats.). Of course, around the time ep. 128 came out in Japan, I discovered *gasp* Japanese episodes. I had a heck of a lot of fun watching 10 episodes ahead of time. Season 4 was epic, nuff said. A few months prior, I would discover card stores, which was where I started spending REAL money on cards.
It was also that time, where I was in middle school, that I managed to make a whole Yugioh circuit in school. I had several friends playing and betting and whatnot (I was the best player though ). It peaked around 2008, when TDGS came out and Synchros were a huge hit.

[Gunnybear]

I started in early 2003 or 2002 I think, I had watched the show (Duelist kingdom) and thought it was kinda cool. I was with my parents in the mall and I saw a store selling boosters (MRL), so I bought a pack. Pulled a Horn of the Unicorn, which became the best card of my deck (Till Axe of Despair came out). For 4 years on and off, whenever I played it was the good old 1800/1900 vanilla beatdown. This was back when I thought Infinite Cards let you draw as many cards from your deck as you wanted xP. But yeah, I ran a Slifer deck, using a copy a Japanese friend of mine won in a tournament. Then came GX, after a few months of which I immediately made a Cyber XYZ (That's XYZ Dragon Cannon) machine deck, which became my pride and joy. That is, till some jackass from a nearby Catholic School (Yes I wanna specify that, there was some intense rivalry those days) stole it, and I couldn't get it back cuz of the lack of evidence >_>

From then on I think I made Spellcasters, DMG, Sorcerer, everything. Then one day while waiting in line at school someone bumped into me and I dropped all my cards. Like a swarm of scarabs all the cheap people who couldn't afford cards piled on it and before I knew it I lost half my cards (DMG included, which is probably why I collect it now ) At that point I stopped playing, and moved onto other stuff like Soccer and Hockey. Then in 2008 my aunt bought me that one structure with Caius without knowing I quit (News travels slow in our family), and thus I got hooked again...

There was a pause in 2009-2010 when school began to intensify, and I found YVD. Bardo360 introduced the new meta (Blackwings/Sabers/Infernities), so I built Blackwings and here I am now.

(Gasps for breath, grabs some water and returns to the shadows)

[Rothon the Keymaster]

well i sadi i'd tell you, and i guess i will.


I can't remember exactly It all started when my best freid from preschool started talking about the cards, he and his freind had started in on the show and card game. I soon started watching the show and finnaly the day came when when i went shoping at the mall my grandmother bouoght me the Yugi starter deck (I still have the dark magician from that deck). Thats when i finally began to buy cards. this was beack around the times of late lob to mid MRD so i guess you could say i've been with the game for 10 years now. However to say i've been dueling for ten years is a bit of a stretch. At first i had no clue how to play the game at all being to young to read and comprehend the complexities of the game i knew a bit about attack,defense magic (as it was called back then) and traps from what i had been told by my friends and watching the show. eventually i learned to read and happened to read the rulebook and finally i understood how the game worked. Then around the time Pojo realeased their frist magazine, i had gotten a structure (the one with Exxod) and it was beating the crap out of my deck which was really just a mishmash of cards. thats when i realized that to build a deck I should use similar cards together in a strategy. So i built my 6 elemental decks and was finally dueling with a little bit of skill. I would only play myself though as i lacked the social skills to join a league or find others who played. Then pojo's second magazine came out and i was introduced to the ban list, but paying by myself just kinda ingored it. Anyhow it continued like this up to the point of th first 5ds structure deck. By then i had three to five major decks, At the top was my warriors the 5ds structure and the water deck i had. below that was a light based maloseum build, and a rfg build.  Soon after that i had gotten my Nintendo ds, I had always been behind in the gaming department even though I loved videogames to death.  Up to that i had had only 2 yugioh videogames, the first being duelists of the roses which while being very spinoffish taught me the basics of dueling, and dark duel stories for the gbc which i had only gotten recently. Needless to say one of my most important buys for the DS was the yugioh worldchampionship games. This was the begining of synchros and i ran a warrior deck true to the fact that i loved the warrior structure deck. It abused captain+synchron into goyso like no ones buisness and got me through the entire game. Then warriors got nerfed and i began runing disasterdragon for my second wc game, which again got me pretty far. It was about this timei took another search for an online yugioh game. After failing to get KCVDS to work i found xerocreative and yvd in november 2010. It was here thati then finally began to develop into a good duelist, my skills improving drasticlly till I outstripped my neighbor who i had been playing up the street. this bring me to today where i have the most recent worldchampionship for the ds and began to play a=my anti attack burn deck. So realy it was you guys that made me a strong duelist and it is for that that i beleive i will alway love XC. As for the card games i play very infrequently in real life now but I am considering making a comeback as i have recently met some friend who i may be able to duel with. So yeah thats my dueling story and my history with the game. I've been here for a long time but only now am i finally reaching my full potential thanks to you guys.

So all in all I LOVE XEROCREATIVE!  and I LOVE YU-GI-OH!  You got a problemn wit that punk?!?

Also thats why my three favorite deck are burn warriors and dragons with koa'kis and ojamma's coming next.


Also will edit this soon as i find time to fix my mistakes.

[Mattimis]

I started during the whole Battle City arc in the original Yu-Gi-Oh! anime. (That was when I was in 4th grade, 2004.) Iono, I thought the show was really cool, and I watched it every afternoon afterschool. Before actually getting physical cards, I even created strips of paper with the name of the cards in the anime and their anime effects, and duelled my younger brother's cards-that-were-actually-strips-of-paper.

Kinda fell out of Yu-Gi-Oh! after middle school, then rediscovered it about a year ago. It started with a gradual "man, I should be a kid while I still have the chance" feeling (since this is my senior year in high school), and now...well, it's more than that now. =P

[Hoiguyyami]

SO MANY WALLS OF TEXT

My story is simple. my cousin got me into it when i was young, like 8, and i got a pegasus (I think) starter deck, and played by our own made up rules, like most people. Then i sort of didn't play for about 6 years, due to living in the middle of nowhere (seriously, look up Alice Springs, Australia on google earth, then go about 1000 kilometers west of that). Then i moved to Ireland and made a few friends who happened to play it (which was very coincedental, tbh). So i went to a locals with them, built a shitty venom deck, and now i'm here.

[Abyss]

Well I started out after I watched the anime somewhere around 2001?..got a pack(Don't remember what it was) and just stared at the cards,admiring their awesome color and then just went with the flow I guess.

Edited by Abyss, 29 February 2012 - 10:31 AM.

[Gearfried the Omnipotent]

I've been playing since I saw the advertizements for the original yugioh anime/card tie in on what use to be the foxbox on the WB network in 2001. I was in 7th grade when it first aired. I started with the yugi starter deck and four packs of LoB. Exodia's right leg was in one of them as a 1st edition.

There wasn't alot of variety in the beginning. However my favorite deck at the time was fiend/spellcaster beatdown with the yami field spell. In 2003 onward I switched over to burn decks and haven't stopped playing them since! My other favorite decks are Gemini varient (big one), dragunity, machina, and spell counter spellcaster decks.

[Rothon the Keymaster]

LOL Fox box, havenn't heard that name in a long time.... one of the oldies such as kidswb. Thank you sir now i feel old.

[MyBlackwingPlaylist]

Mattimis, on 29 February 2012 - 03:36 AM, said:

Before actually getting physical cards, I even created strips of paper with the name of the cards in the anime and their anime effects, and duelled my younger brother's cards-that-were-actually-strips-of-paper.

Oh jeez, I did that too. How else was I supposed to get a Garoozis? xD

[Mattimis]

MyBlackwingPlaylist, on 29 February 2012 - 05:48 PM, said:

Mattimis, on 29 February 2012 - 03:36 AM, said:

Before actually getting physical cards, I even created strips of paper with the name of the cards in the anime and their anime effects, and duelled my younger brother's cards-that-were-actually-strips-of-paper.

Oh jeez, I did that too. How else was I supposed to get a Garoozis? xD

The one card I specifically remember me making a paper strip of is Jinzo. It was so boss back then. =P

[EeL]

I saw the TV show and wanted to play the game they were playing. Because of my location, we didn't have the cards yet or at least I didn't see them in the stores so me and a friend who also watched the show decided to make the game and use normal playing cards to represent the monsters. We just assigned a card to a card and gave the effect, I still remember some of the crazy effects that I gave to the cards it was hilarious.

Anyway, after a few months I finally found the Kaiba starter deck and bought that. Most people seemed to be into Yugioh at the time so we'd try and duel in school but they didn't allow card games in school and would take your cards away. Then I'd seen my cousins dueling while over at their house, so we'd duel each other they had the Yugi deck and none of us knew how to play the real game. We just based it on the show... not sure when exactly I figured out how to duel properly but I did eventually obviously.

Honestly, I really liked how the game was when it just came out the simplicity was appealing. The decks I went through before quitting (note they were all decks consisting about 50% that theme and the rest was whatever I could get my hands on) so it was the Kaiba deck, then a Water themed deck with Tornado Wall/Umi and Legendary Fisherman. Then it moved more towards Fiend and then Insects. When they brought out Insect Queen tins and Insect Princess, I went berserk lol. Eventually I quit dueling because I thought that because I was growing up I should forget about stupid childish games but now that I'm older I appreciate the game much more now. I missed Cyber Dragon, Monarchs and everything after all the way to whatever was popular a few months ago.

PS: I just read other people's stories and then I remembered that I was actually trying to construct a field for Labyrinth Field style of playing (I just got a Labyrinth Wall and Wall Shadow from MRD) so it actually had small walls and pathways and they stayed up but then I think someone stepped on it and it took way too long for me to rebuild so I never bothered.

Edited by EeL, 29 February 2012 - 08:56 PM.

[RuneKing]

Nothing to original about my story, started playing around the release of the first yugi and kaiba starter decks since a bunch of friends in the neighborhood were playing and have been playing ever since.