Necrovalley – most influential card? - Baneful
May 2014

 

I might be forgetting some other options, but at this moment, I can't think of a single card that has influenced the game of YGO more than the card Necrovalley.

 

Okay, yeah, there are cards like Pot of Greed, Mirror Force and BLS Envoy, but those are quality cards.  Not so much innovation.  They sped up the game and added building blocks to it, but Necrovalley changed the entire mindset of the game.

 

In my article about the rule changes, I mentioned how Field Spells used to be indiscriminate nature-based environments like oceans and forests.  But generic stat boosters just didn't affect the game much.  It was Necrovalley that set the standard for our archetype-based game now.

 

It was a strong card with a specific strategy.  Yes, A Legendary Ocean came out first with it's levelling-down abilities but it was too general.  Nowadays, archetypes are specific with specific strengths and specific weaknesses.  Necrovalley totally shook up the game.

 

Granted, initially, Konami shied away from it.  Archfiends with Pandemonium didn't do well at all so they put a hold on it.  In the GX/Fusion/EHERO era, there were theme types but none of them beat out plain old chaos/beatdown. 

 

I think it's moreso the past few years (from 2010 onward) where Konami looked at Gravekeepers and said "holy crap.  We haven't made a good theme deck in a while.  Let's go back to this."  So, cards like Madolche Chateau were created.

 

Chateau wasn't just created like Legendary Ocean where you just so happen to discover monsters that could benefit from returning to your hand.  No, it was designed FOR Madolches.  Tenki was designed FOR Fire Fists.  And so on.

 

90% of decks out there today, rely a lot on some card.  Due to the specific nature of archetypes nowadays, there is less room for serendipity.  But today there is also a lot of doors open for different kinds of decks and play that never existed before.

 

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