Chapter 232. Old Man Ai's Last Will! The One Forbidden Card That Nearly Destroyed Yu-Gi-Oh Is Exposed!
All the Duelists across every world stared blankly at the short video.
The commentary for "Final Battle!" had fully concluded.
Even though the Duelists knew.
This card was almost certainly never going to see a future reprint.
They still held out a little hope.
What if?
Even if the effect got tweaked before being released!
Maybe it could still shine in some casual decks, right?
But if it just stays locked away in the river of history forever, like Pot of Greed and Graceful Charity…
Wouldn't that be a bit too much…
With that thought.
The group chat launched into a discussion about unbanning this particular Forbidden card.
The first to speak was Joey Wheeler.
Joey Wheeler: "Man, what a shame. So many cards we can't use anymore. Dog-K, just change the effects and let 'em out already!"
Aster Phoenix: "Odds are low. From the way K-snake has handled Forbidden/Unlimited moves in the past, this doesn't benefit them."
Yusei Fudo: "Yeah. Can you imagine what things would look like if 'Final Battle!' got released?"
Yusaku Fujiki: "All that said… I feel like Pot of Greed could be freed, right? Make it Limited and add 'you can only activate 1 Pot of Greed per Duel.' If everyone has it, it shouldn't break anything."
Aoi Zaizen: "Forget it. Doesn't concern us. Life without a Forbidden/Limited List is great!"
Even though plenty of Duelists in the chat wanted some ancient Forbidden cards back.
They also understood.
K-snake has nothing to gain from that.
Therefore.
The odds of unbanning are way too low.
If it's a card that fits a specific archetype, then maybe it could be altered and released.
But if it's not archetype-bound—if it's one of those strong, generic Spells/Traps—
It's probably dead on arrival.
While they were debating.
On Sei Yuki's side, he had already noticed that the "Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Card Explainer" channel's homepage had a newly uploaded short.
He originally wanted to skip it.
But after a moment's thought, he still chose to play it.
The video title immediately appeared across every Duel World.
"Old Man Ai's Last Will! The One Forbidden Card That Nearly Destroyed Yu-Gi-Oh Is Exposed!"
Seeing the two characters for "Old Ai."
Every Duelist across every world felt their hearts lurch!
They already guessed the video's topic would be cards related to the sealed Exodia the Forbidden One!
But!
What's this "Last Will" business?
Hold up!
Wait a second.
That rings a bell!
Is this about those ancient early-days Yu-Gi-Oh metagames around 1999–2000?!
With that thought!
Duelists one by one turned curious eyes to the short.
And the breakdown.
Began at once.
Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Card Explainer: "Welcome, cardheads, to today's video."
Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Card Explainer: "Lately a lot of viewers have asked about how the so-called 'Last Will Exodia' deck used to operate."
Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Card Explainer: "To be blunt, the 'Last Will Exodia' strategy really revolves around a single card!"
"This card is Last Will!"
"Its effect: during the turn a monster on your field is sent to your Graveyard, you can Special Summon from the Deck 1 monster with 1500 or less ATK."
"As we all know, Yu-Gi-Oh has been with us for over 20 years."
"And Last Will…"
"When Yu-Gi-Oh was only seven months old, it almost destroyed the entire game!"
"You might think I'm fearmongering."
"Some of you may be asking."
'Huh? Just this ordinary Spell Card, Last Will!'
"Does it really have that much power, that much destructive impact?"
"My answer is: yes."
"So in this episode, we're going to center on Last Will and look at the uproar it caused in the meta back then!"
"'99: the five pieces with unclear intent."
"In other words, what we know as the five Exodia pieces were already out."
"When these cards first dropped!"
"Veteran cardheads knew exactly what these five represented."
"But because the card pool was too shallow, it was very hard for Exodia to pull off anything fancy at the time."
"Until Witch of the Black Forest and Sangan were released!"
"These two became the guiding stars for Exodia decks back then."
"At that time, they could search no matter where they were sent from to the Graveyard, and neither had a 'once per turn' limit."
"They've since been errata'd, so they don't look nearly as strong now!"
"But back then."
"I won't say anything else."
"Listen to this combo with your modern ears and tell me how it feels."
"Activate Graceful Charity: draw 3, discard 2."
"The two discards are Sangan and Witch of the Black Forest!"
"Both trigger in the Graveyard; you search two more cards and go massively plus!"
"And what do you search?"
"Obviously, Exodia pieces."
"So with these two cards helping, Exodia decks took shape!"
"Just look at the decklist and you'll see how insane it was."
As the Exodia decklist appeared in the short!
Three Graceful Charity! Three Pot of Greed! Three Witch of the Black Forest and Sangan!
Plus three Monster Reborn and three Swords of Revealing Light!
Seeing those cards!
Duelists across every world jolted upright!
Old school is old school!
They recognized them all.
No doubt about that!
But—seriously?!
How did those cards combine into chemistry this ridiculous?!
In the DM world.
Every Duelist's expression changed drastically! One by one they started to feel sick!
No way!
Those cards!
They all exist in the DM world!
Any Duelist could put that pile together!
The only thing missing!
Was the five Exodia pieces!
And so!
Weevil Underwood, Rex Raptor, Seto Kaiba and the rest took a deep breath and felt a chill of fear!
If Yugi Muto still held all five pieces of Exodia.
Plus that suite of cards.
What would the aftermath look like?
It was unimaginable!
What Yugi himself hadn't realized was!
Graceful Charity working with Sangan and Witch of the Black Forest!
Could produce such miraculous chemistry?!
Only now.
Did Yugi Muto realize he might have overlooked a lot of interesting combos!
He'd focused too much on Dark Magician!
So he'd missed quite a bit.
In the GX world.
Jaden Yuki and Aster Phoenix were completely thrown by this line of play!
What?
Dueling!
Can be played like this?
Those two cards! Could really team up to enable that many cheeky lines?!
"Curse it! How did I never think of that?!"
"But then again."
"In our world, monsters with 1500 or less ATK…"
"Aren't exactly that strong!"
Manjoume beside them ground his teeth, muttered a complaint, then cooled down.
Even if the idea is busted!
It didn't mean much for their world.
First, not everyone had Exodia.
Second, their deckbuilding didn't need those cards to search!
Even if they did.
What would they be searching?
HERO decks searching Fusion materials to Fusion Summon?
Ojama decks searching the Ojama Trio to Fusion Summon?
No matter how you look at it, it felt absurd!
Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Card Explainer: "Of course, that was only the beginning of the nightmare."
Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Card Explainer: "The real nightmare came right after."
Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Card Explainer: "Which is what I mentioned earlier."
"The card that nearly destroyed Yu-Gi-Oh!"
"Last Will enters."
"Let me spell out how strong this is!"
"1 card becomes 2, with no activation-count limit."
"Consistent access to anything 1500 or less!"
"Well, now we're cooked."
"With power like this! I won't belabor it."
"I Normal Summon Sangan, crash it to self-destruct!"
"Sangan hits the Graveyard and searches an Exodia piece."
"Last Will triggers; I Special Summon a second Sangan from the Deck!"
"That Sangan crashes too, Last Will pulls a third Sangan!"
"We already have two Exodia pieces in hand."
"And so on and so forth!"
"Back then, Sangan and Witch of the Black Forest had no activation limit!"
"So with six copies total, you could fully meet the five-piece requirement for Exodia!"
"Meaning you could casually assemble Exodia and win by Special Victory!"
"Boom—'Last Will Exodia' was now a meta deck."
"Back then, who dared attack in Attack Position?"
"Everyone just sat in Defense Position!"
"Attack into that board, and you were handing your opponent the win!"
"Some might ask."
'Wasn't there any counterplay?'
"My answer is: there was."
"But after 'Last Will Exodia' appeared!"
"The entire meta was Exodia or Exodia!"
"Even anti-Exodia Cannon Soldier burn shells only moved the needle a little!"
"Before Last Will, Exodia might've feared the Morphing Jar engine!"
"But with Last Will, what's there to fear?"
"Because 'Last Will Exodia' could also run Cannon Soldier!"
"This card's effect lets you Tribute 1 monster on your field to inflict 500 damage to your opponent's LP."
"With Cannon Soldier having no activation limit back then!"
"Plus Last Will, it was easy to finish with burn!"
"And so, in that dark era…"
"Exodia decks became an invincible engine!"
… … …
No way?!
There was dirty play in Dueling! There were downright filthy lines!
In that instant!
After hearing how Last Will functioned inside Exodia!
The Duelists who had been marveling at the Graceful Charity + Witch/Sangan combo—
Completely broke.
In other words!
As long as you had Last Will plus either Sangan or Witch of the Black Forest!
You could reliably assemble all five Exodia pieces?!
What kind of genius Duelist cooked up this combo?!
On top of that!
Looking at the full Exodia build!
It had absurd draw power!
Plus the Last Will lines!
They didn't even want to think about it!
The success rate of "Last Will Exodia"! Was it over 90%?!
If that were true!
What else would anyone play? Just pick Exodia and be done with it!
Hold it!
Could it be!
Those suddenly forming suspicions made the Duelists grasp what the video title truly meant!
Seto Kaiba: "So you're saying the thing Last Will destroyed… was the meta as we know it?"
Yuma Tsukumo: "Must be. The format must've been nothing but Exodia."
Yuya Sakaki: "Masaka! I don't even want to imagine it. What's the point of Dueling then?"
Lefty: "There isn't any. If you told me every opponent I face is Exodia, I'd lose it."
After a round of sober discussion in the group chat.
The veteran Duelists grew ever more enlightened!
"Last Will Exodia" really was destroying Yu-Gi-Oh!
Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Card Explainer: "Of course, you think that was peak Exodia?"
Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Card Explainer: "In reality, the whole Exodia engine still bricked sometimes."
Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Card Explainer: "Because the five Exodia pieces weren't Limited to 1 at that time."
"So a lot of lists ran two copies of various pieces!"
"In other words, you could still brick a bit."
"Open with two Left Legs, two Right Legs, and one useless card."
"That's tough to recover from."
"So in January 2000!"
"A new pack dropped, and one card grabbed Exodia players' attention."
"That card was Thunder Dragon!"
"Why?"
"The reason's simple."
"Run three Thunder Dragon; drawing one means you plus two for free!"
"First, it compresses your Deck."
"Second, it combos with Graceful Charity!"
"With the three Thunder Dragon added, Exodia's power spiked yet again!"
"Without dedicated counters!"
"Exodia straight-up collapsed the format!"
"Pretty much whenever you sat down to play Yu-Gi-Oh, your opponent was 'Last Will Exodia'!"
"Yeah—people just quit Dueling en masse!"
"Someone recommends Yu-Gi-Oh to you? You just roast it as 'Exodia-mon' instead?"
"With the playerbase plummeting and the format reeking!"
"It looked like Yu-Gi-Oh's fate was sealed!"
"Thankfully, K-snake sobered up for a moment and didn't keep milking Exodia."
"Or maybe players were quitting and Exodia stopped selling."
"Right away, a Forbidden/Limited List dropped: all Exodia pieces to Limited 1!"
"Draw power was hammered, Last Will got Limited!"
"Even harsher—"
"Sangan and Witch of the Black Forest had their text updated to only trigger when sent from the field to the Graveyard!"
"So for the newer players who don't know why those two cards' effects changed, now you know!"
"In short, after that round of hits!"
"The once-explosive Exodia deck exited the stage of history!"
"Afterward, things weren't great for Sangan and Witch of the Black Forest either!"
"Because they worked with Chaos—"
"The 'Chaos' decks I discussed before!"
"They were Forbidden in September 2004."
"Sangan came back in 2005, then was Forbidden in 2013!"
"Not until much later—after both were errata'd again—were they released."
"Which is to say, they have the current effects we see today!"
"As for Last Will, there's more story there!"
"We'll cover it next time."
As expected!
Exactly as suspected!
After hearing the breakdown!
Duelists across every world all wore that "so it really was like that" look of shock!
They had already envisioned how rancid the format would become!
They couldn't imagine.
A format made entirely of Exodia players would be that terrifying!
It was a nightmare!
Yes.
For the DM world.
Weevil Underwood, Seto Kaiba, Maximillion Pegasus, and Joey Wheeler all had the same first reaction!
Exodia deck equals Yugi Muto.
And then all the surrounding Duelists were also on Exodia.
Which meant… every Duelist around them… was Yugi Muto on an ultra-high Exodia success rate!
At that thought—
Every time they'd run into a Duelist, it'd be Yugi Muto-level Exodia consistency!
Weevil Underwood almost foamed at the mouth and fainted on the spot!
The memories he thought were dead were still flogging him!
"Absurd!"
"Way too absurd!"
"Isn't this basically saying the whole format is Blue-Eyes White Dragon?!"
Mokuba Kaiba swallowed hard.
You call this… Dueling?
Is this still… Dueling? …
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