History ScrappyMechanic / TabletopGames

* ScrappyMechanic/{{Pokemon}}

* The baby rule in the ''TableTopGame/{{Pokemon}}'' TCG, which forces you to win a coin flip before you can attack a baby Pokemon, generated a lot of flak due to adding yet another variable of luck to an already chance-heavy game. Combine with some of the more powerful cards being baby Pokémon and there's trouble. Eliminated in future sets.

** [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Missing_the_Timing Missing the timing]]. Not only does understanding this ruling mean one has to pay very close attention to the ExactWords on card effects, but it also means a lot of potential combos are ruined and a strategy can fall apart with one misplayed card that violates the rule (particular examples include using Guardian Eatos' effect with Celestial Sword - Eatos, her intended equip). A further annoyance with this conflict is that most newer cards have their wordings phrased so you can't miss the timing while older cards tend to have their effects worded so they can, contributing to the CantCatchUp problem outdated themes have against the faster new themes.
** The Special Summon rule when it comes to public knowledge locations (Graveyard and banish zone, principally). When a monster cannot be Normal Summoned, then it must be Special Summoned by a procedure specified on its card text (Extra Deck monsters included). However, there's a subset of cards that include a stipulation that allows you to "[[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Ignoring_the_Summoning_conditions ignore the summoning conditions]]". The issue being that even these cards can't summon those monsters from public knowledge locations because of some particular ruleset, basically contradicting written card text and originating multiple headaches for newer players.
** The "Harpie rule"; Harpie Lady #1, #2, #3, and Cyber Harpie, all have their names treated as Harpie Lady. This also means for purposes of deck construction, thus you can only have three of ''any'' of them in the deck. The card makers thankfully realized this was stupid and started using the mentioned naming mechanics listed under LoopholeAbuse in the main article.
** Archfiend Cards are known as 'Daemon' in the OCG (Not the ''Type'' Demon), but since the TCG [[NeverSayDie just couldn't print that]], they changed their names with no consistency to such. A few years later Demons became an archetype, with cards that support them as such. In the end: All old Demon cards (such as Summoned Skull) became Archfiends, but couldn't have their names changed and while they are treated as such in official games ''there was nothing on the card that actually says they are Archfiends'', so the only way to know that is to look it up on the Internet. Thankfully, reprints now have errata text that state plainly "this card is always treated as an Archfiend card."
** While not technically a game mechanic, the large number of OCG exclusives is infuriating for many TCG players, since there's often no indication of when the TCG will get certain cards, while in comparison, any TCG exclusives can be reliably found in the OCG's Extra Packs. The D/Ds suffered greatly from this (detailed below), the Frightfurs had been affected by the holding back of ONE single support card[[note]]The card in question, [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Frightfur_Patchwork Frightfur Patchwork]], took nearly two years to be imported to the TCG[[/note]], while most of the introduced cards from the Kastle Siblings pack took over ''three years'' to be imported.[[note]]Number 73: Abyss Splash was the only exception, and only then because its separately released Chaos form would have been unplayable otherwise.[[/note]] This ties into a rather cretinous, though not technically illegal business practice. It's common to have certain cards in the OCG be of one rarity for a while in Japan as a testing ground to see what kinds of combos or potential the card itself has. Then, when it's time to come to America, the rarity may very well change and as a result, the price jacks up abnormally largely. Cases in point: the Qliphorts (Common and Rare in the OCG, all-foil in the TCG), and Dragonic Diagram, a card that when revealed to have unbelievable combo potential with Dinosaur cards, became a secret rare in America worth close to $100.
** The New Master Rules was generally regarded as the weakest of the Master Rule sets, thanks to the way Links were handled being a very blatant use of CharacterSelectForcing on Konami's part.[[note]]This was the rule where all Extra Deck monsters were tied to Link Monsters. Not only did this make casual play far more difficult, the sheer PowerCreep that Links eventually went with made the game very restrictive.[[/note]] When Konami announced the April 1st 2020 Revision to the Master Rules, they were met with near [[WinBackTheCrowd unanimous praise]].[[note]]Fusion, Synchro and Xyz monsters now no longer require Links to be summoned, while Links and Pendulums still need to work with one another to be played, making them more balanced in regards to the other mechanics.[[/note]]
** Pendulum Monsters have a particularly annoying stipulation with how they interact with the Graveyard. There is a [[GuideDangIt "hidden"]] ruling where rather than always going to the Extra Deck when they leave the field, they are essentially treated as always having the text "If this card would be sent from the field to the GY, place it in the Extra Deck face-up". This allows them to get screwed by any card that overrides where cards go when sent to the Graveyard, such as the Spell Card "[[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Dimensional_Fissure Dimensional Fissure]]", heavily crippling Pendulum decks. Compare cards like "Crystal Beasts", whose effects to place themselves in the Spell/Trap Zone trigger on destruction and do not attempt to go to the Graveyard when destroyed.
** Time rules at a tournament usually dictate that a player with more LP when time is called is the winner. However, this means that you end up with games being decided on incidental burn damage or LP gain to ''just'' get the numbers advantage, and some players abuse the rule by stalling to overtime while they're ahead. This also consequentially makes the few decks that rely on paying LP as part of their game plan, such as P.U.N.K., Dinomorphia and Gold Pride, much more difficult to play since the player who's using them has to be extra careful to not lose because of the time rules.

* The game's ruleset is open enough to allow the player to select just about any sapient creature to act as their base race. The designers knew this, and decided to balance it out by adding in two rules: racial hit dice (essentially, most monsters stronger than baseline humanoids start the game with "levels" in whatever type of monster they are), and level adjustment (a boost to the character's effective level when calculating things like XP gain). On paper, this is reasonable; that guy who wants to play a stronger race like a drow or a half-dragon or even big monsters like a fire giant or mind flayer can do so, but he'll only be able to do so in a game where that level of power is on par with the rest of the party. In practice, however, racial hit dice proved to be EmptyLevels par excellence, since they provide literally nothing beyond the bare minimum of a new-level boost (i.e. extra HP, skill points, and attack bonus), and level adjustment was even worse, since it truly ''was'' an empty level that didn't even provide that. A 1st-level mind flayer psion is certainly far stronger than a 1st-level human psion, but not on par with a ''16th''-level one. Consequently, players rejected anything with a level adjustment higher than 1 or ''maybe'' 2 as gimping yourself, and playing as anything with racial hit dice (on paper, it's better, but monsters with racial hit dice almost always boast high level adjustment) is considered something only usable in the most casual games.

* [=THAC0=] in First and Second edition was an infamously counterintuitive system. Every character has a [=THAC0=] score from 20 to 1 defined by their class and level, which is used to determine what they need to roll to hit an enemy. Take your [=THAC0=], subtract the target's Armor Class, and try to roll ''above'' that number. So the ''lower'' your [=THAC0=] is and the ''higher'' the target's Armor Class is, the better for you. Armor Class goes from 10 to -10, so this little mechanic introduced many kids to the concept of subtracting negative numbers. Funnily, the system is functionally identical to the attack-roll system introduced in Third onward, to the point that one could probably convert the numbers directly and use that system instead; it's just rendered in an oddly backwards way.

** On top of that, these editions also limited what classes non-humans could take. For example in First edition, both dwarves and halflings had to be fighters. The only the human characters were allowed to be any class until Third Edition.

** It has a ritual that lets you sacrifice XP (a level 1 template costs 1000 XP, a level 2 costs 3000, etc) to apply ''templates'' to your character. Kobolds are bad enough, but when you factor in that the character can drop from level 6 to level 5 and pick up the [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot Necropolitan, Half-Celestial, and Weretiger templates]] without much hassle, maintaining balance in a party becomes pretty much impossible.

* Missing the Timing. This is an oddly-nitpicky wording quirk that may leave you not able to activate an effect that met its trigger for seemingly no reason. This applies to "When" optional Trigger effects, as in the ones that say "When X happens: You can do Y" but not the other type ("''If'' X happens: You can do Y") or mandatory Trigger effects, even ones that say "When X happens: do Y". The given reason is that a "When" trigger must have its trigger be the exact ''last'' thing that happened (with a mostly arbitrary definition of 'last'). For example, Peten the Dark Clown's effect says "When this card is sent to your Graveyard: You can banish this card from your Graveyard; Special Summon 1 "Peten the Dark Clown" from your hand or Deck." However, say you tribute it for a Tribute Summon. It's been sent to the Graveyard, right? If it were an "If" effect, it would trigger after you Tribute Summon your monster. However, for the purposes of a "When" effect, the last thing to happen is ''the monster being summoned'', not Peten being sent. Too bad, you miss out on activating him completely. And no, you can't activate it between you tributing the monsters and playing the summon to avoid missing the timing. Being sent for a summon is just one condition that inevitably leads to missing the timing, some others being certain text conjunctions ('then', 'also, after that'), triggering during a cost, and chaining. In the end, even experienced players don't fully get it, and it can really suck to lose out on a powerful effect. Even more annoying, your opponent can force you to miss the timing! It's fair enough that you can't activate goes to the graveyard when effects when you tribute the monster yourself. That the opponent can use Soul Taker on your monster, and force its "goes to the graveyard" optional effect to miss the timing is horrible.
** One particular thing that would be really useful to do (and make a lot of sense) is to use Guardian Eatos' effect to destroy Celestial Sword Eatos to remove 3 monsters from your opponent's graveyard (gaining 1500 attack) and have the sword's go from field to graveyard effect add on another 1500, plus 500 for any previously banished monsters, to let Eatos swing for 5500+ mid game, or even more late game if other monsters are banished. This would be nice and awesome and like the anime, and it's clearly the whole reason the effect is worded that way. Problem is, Guardian Eatos's effect says "You can send 1 of your Equip Spell Cards equipped to this card to the Graveyard, THEN target..." The "then" conjunction causes Celestial Sword's effect to miss the timing if it's destroyed by Guardian Eatos' effect! Guardian Eatos was almost certainly written this way to make Butterfly Dagger Elma (or any other self recovering equip spell) miss the timing, but it also interferes with a very obviously intended use of that sword. If the sword's effect had been mandatory, or if it had said "If... then...", the effect would work fine, but as it stands...
** Inverted with certain ''Franchise/YuGiOh'' video games, where this rule becomes a ScrappyMechanic because it asks you if you want to use the effect ''if literally anything happens in the game''. [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard Except when it doesn't which is usually when it will actually benefit you to activate the card/effect in question.]]
* Back when the game first began, part of the power of cards like the Trap Hole set (which destroyed monsters on summon) was that you could block a monster from using its effect. However, because they activate when a monster is summoned and only destroy it (rather than actively negating its summon attempt), the monster is technically on the field first (this is the reason why it is impossible to destroy Jinzo, a monster which prevents traps from working for as long it's on the field, on summon with Trap Hole), so for some reason it was decided that the player should be able to use the effect of their monster regardless of whether or not it's about to be destroyed. This can result in some ludicrously powerful optional effects happening at a time when the monster should have been dead and buried, and is ''extremely annoying''. For the record, that is called ''Priority''. And as of March 19, 2011 (now etched in history as [[Anime/YuGiOhZEXAl the Exceed Rule Patch]]), this is now abolished and the ''Trap Hole'' cards regain their power of eliminating big threat monsters like Judgment Dragon and Dark Armed Dragon.
* There's also the "Harpie Rule", which only really affects the titular monsters, but is still fairly annoying.
** To wit, there are several monsters with effects that change their name to that of another monster, usually while it's face-up on the field. However, most all of the Harpie Lady monsters past the initial 2 don't specify ''where'' their effects treat their name as simply "Harpie Lady". As such, Konami has issued the ruling that these monsters are treated as having the name "Harpie Lady" ''for all intents and purposes, including deck construction''. What does that mean? Well, you can only have three copies of a specific monster in your deck at any one time, so with the other Harpie Lady monsters being treated as "Harpie Lady" all the time, instead of being able to have three copies of each one of them, you can only have three of any combination of them (i.e., two of one card, one of another, or one each of three different cards). This severely limits the potential of a Harpie Lady deck, even more so when you consider [[WhatCouldHaveBeen all of the awesome support they have]]... though that might be ''why'' they were given this treatment. This basically amounted to giving your Harpie Ladies effects that did nothing but weaken them to anti-effect abilities in exchange for different card art.
** Later Harpie cards wouldn't follow this rule, instead only changing their name to Harpie Lady when on the field or in the graveyard, making it possible to use more of them in the deck. And really, you don't ''need'' more than 3 combined copies of the OG anyway, since they're so old they're basically vanilla monsters (to the point that the vanilla Harpie Lady is probably the best one nowadays). This has also applied to future archetypes that used a similar concept.
* Archfiend Cards are known as 'Daemon' in the OCG (Not the ''Type'' Demon), but since the TCG [[NeverSayDie just couldn't print that]], they changed their names with no consistency to such. A few years later Demons became an archetype, with cards that support them as such. In the end: All old Demon cards (such as Summoned Skull) became Archfiends, but couldn't have their names changed and while they are treated as such in official games ''there was nothing on the card that actually says they are Archfiends'', so the only way to know that is to look it up on the Internet. Thankfully, reprints now have errata text that state plainly "this card is always treated as an Archfiend card."
* The obscure "[[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Mystical_Refpanel Mystical Refpanel]]" responds only to a Spell that targets a player and changes it to affect the other player. Seems straightforward... but Yu-Gi-Oh cards, even after the establishment of Problem-Solving Card Text, do not explicitly target players. So to figure out what can be affected by Refpanel, you had to reference a rulings page that will give you case-by-case basis answers for a lot of individual cards. This card's narrow and tricky windows of activation make it a huge pain to play.
* "Ignoring the Summoning Conditions" was a new mechanic introduced in Soul of the Duelist. The wording made perfect sense in how it was applied until the release of Level Modulation where it could special summon LV monsters from the graveyard that normally could not. The problem? The text does not indicate that it will not work on a monster if it was not originally summoned by its effect. What is even more irritating is that the wording appears to be inconsistent when you can special summon a monster from the deck, but not the graveyard because it was not summoned by its effect. Another one of Konami's hidden rules.
** The rule that special summon only monsters must be special summoned properly before they can be special summoned by other means is a game rule and not on the card. (even though it IS actually on the card as "must first be special summoned by x" for a special summon only monster!) So "ignoring its summoning conditions" doesn't bypass it. It DOES, however, let you revive a monster that can only be summoned with its own effect (a Nomi), if it was summoned properly first, which other revival doesn't work on.
* [[LuckBasedMission Gamble effects]] usually rely on a coin flip or dice toss. A favorable outcome means you get a beneficial effect, a bad outcome instead gives a negative one. The issue with gambles is that they ''need'' to offer strong effects on a positive outcome to be worth the chance, and most of the cards that involve gamble effects do not. Cards designed around the mechanic (Arcana Force, Gamblers) in particular are notorious for how, in the best-case scenario, you get a benefit way too minor and in the worst case you lose almost instantly. The few ones with good effects require a situation way too specific to trigger and thus almost impossible to activate even once during a single duel (Case in point, the appropriately-named [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Gamble Gamble]]). The only exception to this was [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Sixth_Sense Sixth Sense]], whose gamble effect was so strong (and PowerCreep made the "negative" outcome a net positive in graveyard-centric decks) that it got banned extremely quickly.
* Link Summoning and the Extra Monster Zone. When the mechanic was initially introduced, it also came with rules that introduced the Extra Monster Zone, and if you were to summon any monster from the Extra Deck, it must go in the Extra Monster Zone, and each player only can control one. The exception to this is for Main Monster Zones that are being pointed to by Link Monsters. It immediately generated player outrage because this rule was a colossal nerf to many Decks at the time, as some of the strongest strategies at the time involved Summoning multiple Extra Deck monsters in a single turn. On top of that, the need to have Link Monsters to control more Extra Deck monsters made it extra blatant that [[CharacterSelectForcing players were being forced to run Links]], and you now had an opportunity cost between the number of Link Monsters you are running versus the Extra Deck monsters that you ''really'' want to play. Some defenders of this rule claim that it dramatically slowed down the Extra Deck spam of the ARC-V era, but as time went on it became apparent that it's just shifted all the Extra Deck spam into Link spam. Konami went on to create a number of generic Link monsters to support all manner of Decks to varied reception, and eventually in April 2020 the rules were changed to allow players to Summon their Fusion/Synchro/Xyz Monsters into their Main Monster Zones without needing Links.
* This trope is the main reason for why Victory Dragon is banned in tournaments. Its effect is that it's tricky to summon and has mediocre stats, but if it attacks directly and wins in a "best of three" match, it's treated as winning the overall match. AwesomeButImpractical in regular play, but it's a ''headache'' for judges, since its ability raises a ton of questions. For instance, if a player loses two duels (which would normally decide the match) but they have Victory Dragon, should they be given a third duel anyway because Victory Dragon could potentially win it for them? [[labelnote:Answer]]No, a best of three match ends when two duels are won, and Victory Dragon can't reach outside of the game before it's even played to allow a duel that otherwise wouldn't happen. People who say otherwise are munchkins, though they did convince some judges.[[/labelnote]] Is it legal to cut your losses and forfeit before your opponent can attack with Victory Dragon? [[labelnote:Answer]]Yes in the TCG, which explicitly allows concession at any time, no in the OCG, because your opponent can (and certainly will) refuse to accept your surrender, and you can only override that by conceding the match anyway.[[/labelnote]] On top of that, the decks that ''could'' use it effectively were able to effectively invalidate tournament results in the OCG. Add in the fact that Victory Dragon decks tended to be based on stalling as long as possible until they could draw it, which (when combined with the above two issues of surrendering and always getting three duels) would frequently result in the game going into overtime, and you have a mechanic that singlehandedly ensured that [[PromotionalPowerlessPieceOfGarbage all future Match Winners would be merely prize cards with text that explicitly renders them illegal.]]
* Twin-Headed Behemoth was this ever since its release. Its ability is supposed to represent it having [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin two heads]] and when one is cut off it comes back with slightly less power. Sounds straightforward right? Unfortunately, to prevent the thing from continually reviving itself after its first "head" was cut off (due to the way the ability is worded, it would have triggered every time it died even if it came back with its own ability rather than revived), the rider "only once per duel" was added. This ended up opening a whole can of worms as it suggested that this only applied to that one instance of a Twin-Headed Behemoth, and that when one behemoth died, any others could still use this ability. How to keep track of which identical card used its once-per-duel ability? For instance, what if one Behemoth got shuffled into the deck, and then the opponent played another one that could be the original but also could be a second copy? To solve this, the card was limited to 1 and currently the ''only'' card to have ever been limited not because of power, but because of poor wording. Newer errata'd versions of the card now contains the correct wording, noting that one Behemoth using its ability shuts down the other two as well, thus somewhat resolving the issue, but no card with a similar wording has ever been printed since.
* By a similar token, Question, a card with a pretty basic effect: guess what card is at the bottom of your Graveyard, and you can summon it, otherwise it gets banished. Seems reasonable... except it's the only card in the game that cares about the order of cards in the Graveyard. Since the order doesn't otherwise matter, players tend to rearrange their Graveyards without even noticing, and therefore, Question is exceptionally easy to cheat with. With how Grave-heavy some decks can be, figuring out whether or not the opponent ''did'' cheat is quite difficult unless someone on the sidelines has been recording every move.
* Talking of easy cheat material, Infernities have a mechanic where most of their cards can only do their thing when the player's hand contains no cards. A central part of its playstyle is to empty your hand as quickly as possible, usually in part by Setting all your Spells and Traps. Some players, however, would set excess ''monsters'' in the Spell/Trap zone (which, bar a handful of cards, is an illegal move). What made this problematic (on top of the fact that Infernity was a naturally powerful deck) was that despite its blatancy and ease, there wasn't a way to easily catch an opponent in the act aside from blindly destroying backrow, and they would usually concede in the TCG just so they could scoop and avoid showing the card, denying your proof (this wasn't nearly as much of an issue in the OCG, as you could refuse their surrender and force your Mystical Space Typhoon to resolve and reveal their cheat unless they conceded the match). Some unofficial tournaments even issued a rule that players had to reveal their Set cards at the end of the Duel, just to try to curb this. Ironically, a few years later, Artifacts would turn this into their core mechanic.
* While floodgates in general are heavily disliked for their tendency to promote a lack of interaction between players, Mystic Mine in particular is worthy of note for just how universally despised it is. Its ability makes it so the player who controls more monsters cannot activate monster effects OR attack, essentially allowing its user to stall the game indefinitely until they can draw an out to their opponent's board (as most Spell/Trap removal that doesn't come in monster form is relegated to the side deck these days due to being useless against most combo decks). While that on its own wouldn't make it so hated, what makes Mystic Mine so much more despised is that it's a Field Spell, whereas most other popular floodgates are continuous traps. This not only makes it highly searchable, as there are numerous generic cards that allow you to search ANY field spell, as well as letting you play it directly from your hand without having to set it on your field and wait a turn, there are some cards that allow you to activate it DIRECTLY FROM YOUR DECK ON YOUR OPPONENT'S TURN.
* Pendulum Monsters have a particularly annoying stipulation with how they interact with the Graveyard. There is a [[GuideDangIt "hidden"]] ruling where rather than always going to the Extra Deck when they leave the field, they are essentially treated as always having the text "If this card would be sent from the field to the GY, place it in the Extra Deck face-up". This allows them to get screwed by any card that overrides where cards go when sent to the Graveyard, such as the Spell Card "[[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Dimensional_Fissure Dimensional Fissure]]", heavily crippling Pendulum decks. Compare cards like "Crystal Beasts", whose effects to place themselves in the Spell/Trap Zone trigger on destruction and do not attempt to go to the Graveyard when destroyed.

** Inverted with certain ''Franchise/YuGiOh'' video games, where this rule becomes a ScrappyMechanic because it asks you if you want to use the effect ''if literally anything happens in the game''. [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard Except when it doesn't which is usually when you will actually benefit you to activate the card/effect in question.]]

[[/folder]]

** Later Harpie cards wouldn't follow this rule, instead only changing their name to Harpie Lady when on the field or in the graveyard, making it possible to use more of them in the deck. And really, you don't ''need'' more than 3 combined copies of the OG anyway, since they're so old they're basically vanilla monsters.

** The rule that special summon only monsters must be special summoned properly before they can be special summoned by other means is a game rule and not on the card. (even though it IS actually on the card as "must first be special summoned by x" for a special summon only monster!) So "ignoring it's summoning conditions" doesn't bypass it. It DOES, however, let you revive a monster that can only be summoned with its own effect (a Nomi), if it was summoned properly first, which other revival doesn't work on.

* [=THAC0=] in First and Second edition was an infamously counterintuitive system. Every character has a [=THAC0=] score from 20 to 1 defined by their class and level, which is used to determine what they need to roll to hit an enemy. Take your [=THAC0=], subtract the target's Armor Class, and try to roll ''above'' that number. So the ''lower'' your [=THAC0=] is and the ''higher'' the target's Armor Class is, the better for you. Armor Class goes from 10 to -10, so this little mechanic introduced many kids to the concept of subtracting negative numbers.

** On top of that, these editions also limited what classes non-humans could take. For example in First edition, both dwarves and halflings had to be fighters. The only the human characters were allowed to be any class until Third Edition
* Level adjustments are almost never worth it due to being obscenely overpriced. For example, playing a vampire looks awesome on paper, since you get huge stat bonuses and awesome powers like a healing factor, turning into mist at will, and draining your opponents' life with a touch. Trouble is, that will set you back ''eight'' levels in a system where the usual level cap is twenty. The end result is a character that can't cast worth a damn, hit the broad side of a barn, or survive blows even the SquishyWizard can tank.
* Savage Species is an entire Scrappy Book of poorly-balanced concepts. It's one book almost no sensible DM will allow.

* After several editions of averting ContractualBossImmunity, 5th Edition has introduced it in the form of Legendary Resistance. Essentially, a limited number of times per day, powerful creatures can automatically resist any effect that requires a Saving Throw. In theory, this prevents disabling and status inflicting spells from ending fights immediately without making them [[UselessUsefulSpell completely worthless in important fights]]. In practice, it creates 2 different HP pools (actual HP and Legendary Resistance uses). Since classes like Fighter and Barbarian can't cause Save based effects without taking certain subclasses, while classes like Monk and Bard are very reliant on Save based effects, it's easy to end up in situations where players who are supposed to be on the same team are racing against each other.

** Inverted with ''Franchise/YuGiOh'' video games, where this rule becomes a ScrappyMechanic because it asks you if you want to use the effect ''if literally anything happens in the game''. [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard Except when it doesn't which is usually when you will actually benefit you to activate the card/effect in question.]]

* Talking of easy cheat material, Infernities have a mechanic where most of their cards can only do their thing when the player's hand contains no cards. A central part of its playstyle is to empty your hand as quickly as possible, usually in part by Setting all your Spells and Traps. Some players, however, would set excess ''monsters'' in the Spell/Trap zone (which, bar a handful of cards, is an illegal move). What made this problematic (on top of the fact that Infernity was a naturally powerful deck) was that despite its blatancy and ease, there wasn't a way to easily catch an opponent in the act aside from blindly destroying backrow, and they would usually concede in the TCG just so they could scoop and avoid showing the card, denying your proof (this wasn't nearly as much of an issue in the OCG, as you could refuse their surrender and force your Mystical Space Typhoon to resolve and reveal their cheat unless they conceded the match). Some unofficial tournaments even issued a rule that players had to reveal their Set cards at the end of the Duel, just to try to curb this.

* Options for how to roll for attributes evolved greatly over the editions due to general discontent. In the First Editions, the rules recommended simply rolling a straight 3d6 right down the line, meaning that your stats are utterly random and could produce a character that is either not the type you were hoping to play or simply unplayable. This mechanic was largely seen as bad only in retrospect, as the rule encouraged players in the dawn of tabletop gaming to see their characters as expendable. Over the years, more accommodating options were introduced to give players more control of their character's strengths and ensure that they have ''some'' decent stats, encouraging more long-form, character-driven campaigns.

** The Jester is a role which wins if it's voted out by the Town, which is disliked because it's often too easy (an annoying or inept Jester will be voted out very early on) as well as punishing the Town for acting properly and voting out non-townsfolk, since the Jester is one of a very few roles which don't need to at least pretend to be Town to win.

[[folder:Magic: the Gathering]]
''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' has got its share of Scrappy Mechanics over its over twenty-five years, many of which appear in a single set then never again due to unpopularity. In fact, ''Magic'' R&D termed a "[[http://mtg.gamepedia.com/Storm_Scale storm scale]]" (named after the [[GameBreaker game-breaking]] mechanic) as a measure of likely a mechanic will see a reprint in future Standard sets, with a 1 being guaranteed to reappear, a 10 being basically impossible. There are a number of reasons mechanics end up with a high score, but common ones include being overpowered, confusing, tedious, un-fun (whether to use or play against), or underwhelming. Although some are high on the scale because "better" implementations of the mechanic have been made since (for example, Devotion is essentially an updated, more popular version of Chroma, meaning it's extremely unlikely Chroma will ever return). Notably, "bands with others" is rated an 11 on this scale, beating out even the Storm Mechanic.

[[AC:Types of mechanics]]
* Players like to ''play'' their cards, and tend to react negatively to mechanics that encourage them not to do that, such as the "Wisdom" abilities that give you bonuses for having seven or more cards in your hand (which encourages you to let your cards sit in your hand instead of using them) and Hellbent abilities giving you bonuses for having no cards in hand (which encourages you to get rid of your hand instead of using it).
* [[https://edhrec.com/top/salt EDHREC's list of cards voted the most frustrating to play against]] has a lot of mass destruction and prison effects on it. Mass destruction is disliked for how much it sets back the players, and prison effects are considered frustrating because their strategy amounts to "stop you from doing anything".
* "Chaos" cards, which have effects like replacing every permanent in play with random stuff, killing or sparing creatures based on the outcome of coin flips, or just stuff like "if heads, you draw a card, if tails, you take damage". There are players who enjoy this, but these effects are mostly disliked for making a mess out of the game, often adding an excessive amount of luck and unpredictability, and/or leading to overly-complicated board states. Their effects can also also be cumbersome -- for instance, [[https://scryfall.com/card/m12/153/scrambleverse Scrambleverse]] requires to you take every nonland permanent in play and randomly select who gets to control it, which takes some time in and of itself and leads to hassle later (you have to make sure that destroyed permanents go into their original owner's graveyard, and that everyone gets their cards back at the end of the game). Some chaos effects also have the problem of largely invalidating what happened before they're used.
* In early ''Magic'', enemy-colored cards were rare and support for enemy-colored decks was underwhelming. While this was a flavorful way to show that these colors don't work well together, it shut down a lot of cool deck ideas, and Wizards eventually went back on this design choice and provided many more options for players who wanted to run enemy colors.
* Color hosers are effects that penalize your opponent for using a specific color, which often leads to variance issues, as their effectiveness depends so much on the matchup. While color hosing is still around, Wizards has deliberately scaled back on it and strived to avoid making "you're using color X, and I have its hoser, so I win" effects. Problematic color-hosing mechanics that have been abandoned include:
** Giving colors access to off-color effects as long as they target an enemy color. This did show the colors' opposition to each other, but led to gameplay problems and watered down the flavor of the colors, so it was abandoned relatively early on.
** Landwalk prevents your opponent from blocking if they are using a specific type of basic land (or occasionally something else or something more specific). This ability either does nothing or makes the creature far more efficient than it should be, and which one you get is completely determined the moment your opponent chooses their deck, as most decks can't change their manabase to outright remove a type of basic land. As a result, landwalk as a whole has been obsoleted.
** Fear and its successor Intimidate, which prevent opposing creatures who lack the desired colors from blocking your creature. While this has a little more room for counterplay (your opponent can bring in some artifact creatures, which ''can'' block the creature), the strength of the creature is still determined when the decks are paired, and there is no architecture to allow players to prepare for it because color changing is no longer a common mechanic. Neither mechanic is printed on new cards as of 2015, with the more universally useful Menace replacing them.
* The SelfParody un-sets are intended to be light and fun, but some of their mechanics were the opposite:
** The Gotcha mechanic penalized certain player actions, with seven of them penalizing you for saying certain common words and one penalizing you for ''laughing''. The most efficient way to avoid getting Gotcha'd is to clam up and not talk or interact, which did not exactly lead to a light, fun and friendly format. Only appearing in ''Unhinged'', this single mechanic is widely blamed for the set's commercial failure and the thirteen-year wait until the next silver-bordered set ''Unstable''. Gotcha was so bad that it ended up naming the [[https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Gotcha_Scale Gotcha Scale]], a version of the Storm Scale specific to parody sets.
** Two ''Unglued'' cards have to be torn "into pieces" during activation. Both were hated because players didn't want to physically destroy their cards just to use their effect once.
** Denimwalk is most likely never coming back because it often encourages players to remove their pants.

[[AC: Individual mechanics]]
* Affinity for artifacts, although often acknowledged as a fair mechanic in a vacuum, gained infamy through its association with the "Ravager Affinity" deck that dominated the format at the time, so much so that its key cards were banned from tournament play. The backlash was strong enough that when ''Scars of Mirrodin'' revisited Mirrodin, the designers chose not to bring it back in fear that its new incarnation would inherit the Scrappy legacy of the mechanic.
* Ante was a mechanic that made each player put a random card from their deck into the Ante zone, with the winner permanently taking all the ante cards. The mechanic was heavily disliked (people didn't want to risk losing their favorite cards every time they played), potentially ran afoul of anti-gambling laws, and was not particularly well-balanced (with one such card, Contract From Below, being arguably the most powerful black-bordered card ever printed). While Ante was intended to be the default, "No Ante" games quickly became the primary way of playing, and any cards which reference Ante have never been legal in any competitive format, with only nine such cards ever created.
* Banding is somewhat infamous as probably the most over-complicated mechanic in all of ''Magic'''s history, with even many people claiming to understand it messing up the rules. According to Mark Rosewater, the point when the development team realized they had to stop using Banding was during an early World Championship, when the competitors, who were supposed to be the ''best players in the world'', frequently had to get clarification on how exactly Banding worked in a given situation.
** And even for people who actually do understand banding, there are so many things that can unintentionally make it far more complicated, like abilities that give or remove banding. There's also [[BlatantLies "bands with other legends"]], which is infamous because (1) it's a more restricted version of banding, and (2) before the 2010 rules changes, it had the hilariously counter-intuitive effect of only letting the creature band with ''other legends that also have the "bands with other legends" ability'' (instead of just other legends in general), which also hilariously lead to a creature with probably the most useless ability in ''Magic'' history, the ability to remove "bands with other" abilities from another creature. In short, banding got far too complicated far too quickly.
** Another major issue banding ran into was when reminder text started being printed on cards and printed rulebooks in every starter became a thing of the past. Once you grok banding it's relatively understandable, at least at the level need to play a game, but actually trying to quickly ''explain it'' is very hard. Each card's text box has pretty limited space, and while most reminder text blocks were only a dozen or so words, while the Oracle reminder text for banding comes in at 56 words, enough to take up basically the entire textbox of a card. The worst part is that's supposed to be the "quick" reminder of how an ability works, an actual in depth explanation covering common situations and edge cases would be FAR longer.
* In the Storm Scale article discussing it, Cohort was named the lowest-rated mechanic in ''Magic'''s history since they began doing market research. Cohort abilities are characterized by requiring you to tap the creature and another Ally you control, which is clunky and overly restrictive -- you need to run multiple creatures of an uncommon type, get out two of them, then wait until at least one of them doesn't have summoning sickness, and then tap both of them.
* Coin flips. Cards that require them have consistently been among the least popular cards in their respective sets, according to Wizards of the Coasts's market research.
* Companion. The original version of the mechanic let the player cast one Companion creature from their sideboard as long as their deck met a deckbuilding restriction, many of which weren't that to fulfill or had enough loopholes to work around them. This meant that from the start of the game, your opponent had guaranteed access to an extra card, which led to repetitive games, and worse, several of the Companions were {{Game Breaker}}s in all sorts of formats. Companion drew so much ire from both casual and professional players that Wizards outright ''nerfed the entire mechanic'', changing it to "you can pay 3 mana to put it into your hand from outside the game" (which made it more expensive to use and easier to interact with). Even then, it still attracts hate due to bad memories of its initial iteration, the impracticality of the rules change (as this means the reminder text on printed cards is no longer accurate) and the fact that some Companions are ''still'' strong after the nerf.
* Countering. A countered spell or ability simply fizzles. All the costs of it must still be paid (and sometimes, that's much worse than just mana), but the user gets nothing. This is very frustrating and the methods to get past it are rarely obvious to new players. This is a big reason scrubs say "no blue". In fact, countermagic is so unpopular that R&D has deliberately been reducing its effectiveness.
* Devoid is considered to be one of the larger missteps Magic Design has taken. The keyword makes certain Eldrazi-related cards colorless, despite still needing colored mana to be cast. While such cards can be noteworthy for some specific deck types, the set it was introduced in, Battle for Zendikar, had insufficient support for those sorts of interactions, so the keyword was seen as a mechanic that doesn't do anything. It has since become one of the go-to complaints about the block.
* Epic spells repeat themselves on each of your turns, with the massive downside that you can't cast ''anything'' else. As a result, players generally found them unfun to use. It didn't help that most of them were AwesomeButImpractical, and the one that ''was'' considered usable had the problem that if your opponent cast it, the outcome would be either "you have the answers for it and win" or "you lose because you don't have the answers for it".
* Flip cards are gimmicky 2-in-1 cards that can be rotated 180 degrees to switch between their two text boxes when something is triggered. These cards were considered ugly, and worse, they led to confusion about which version they were, especially when tapped. The last nail in their coffin was the introduction of transforming double-faced cards, which avoid both of these issues and are widely seen as a better take on the transformation concept even though those also have their share of detractors.
* Forecast lets you pay a cost and reveal a card from your hand to get an effect. This mechanic was disliked for leading to repetitive play patterns, and because it was hard to interact with -- only black with its access to forced discard effects can really stop it.
* Graveyard order. While most formats don't have to worry about this, there are a few old cards that care about the order of the graveyard. This means that if you're playing a format that includes them, you have to make sure the cards go into the graveyard in the correct order just because they ''might'' come up. Not only is this annoying on its own (if you use a mass destruction spell, the spell itself may go above or below your destroyed stuff depending on exactly how it destroys stuff), it also means that you're not allowed to rearrange your graveyard for practical reasons like putting spells you can cast from the graveyard on top. All of that for the sake of a few old, underwhelming cards no one uses anyway.
* When a card with Haunt dies (if it's a permanent) or goes to the graveyard after resolving (if it's not), it's exiled "haunting" a creature, which will repeat the card's effect when the haunted creature dies. This mechanic was too complex and clunky for its own good, and players had trouble remembering what it even did.
* Inspired sounds simple: it's an effect that triggers whenever a creature gets untapped. Unfortunately, it didn't work out well in practice. It's surprisingly hard to track, as players are used to untapping and then quickly moving on to the draw step. It also suffers from slowness, as in most cases the creature has to be cast, survive the turn, attack on the next turn, survive the attack, and then make it through yet another turn before there's any payoff. Additionally, it's seen as flavorless (it's supposed to represent divine inspiration, which didn't really come across).
* Land destruction is often seen as frustrating to deal with because of how much it can set a player back, ''especially'' if it's cheap enough to leave them unable to even participate in the game because they can't produce enough mana to cast their spells. There's also mass land destruction, which is even more hated, especially when used to drag out games. As a result, R&D has depowered land destruction so that it can still be used to answer specific problematic lands, while not letting you outright lock your opponent out of the game.
* Landhome, which almost always showed up as the Islandhome variant, was an answer to the question of how Blue's iconic sea creatures were supposed to live and fight when there was no sea: if your opponent controls no Islands, they can't attack, and if ''you'' find yourself controlling no Islands, you lose the creatures. While this might be a flavorful solution, it turned out not to be very fun for players, with most future sea creatures released without these restrictions. Landhome was such a scrappy keyword that it eventually ended up losing its status as a keyword entirely, with its effects listed out as rules text on the cards that it was on.
* Licids can change back and forth between creatures and creature enchantments, which turned out to cause a bunch of rules headaches. Their concept was later revisited with the similar Reconfigure mechanic, which involves equipment instead of enchantments and went over better.
* Megamorph was once the lowest-scoring mechanic of all time since ''Magic'' began doing market research. It's seen as a completely unnecessary addition to the game, as it's identical to morph except that the creature gets a +1/+1 counter on it when it's turned face up.
* It's a major irk to many Commander players that the Nephilim, the first four-color creatures in ''Magic'', are not legendary. While AwesomeButImpractical in every other format, their large color spreads and bizarre yet powerful effects would make them a perfect choice for a commander if only they were legendary. "Legalizing" them is one of the most ubiquitous house rules among groups, with many wishing that Wizards would simply say "screw it" and errata them already. Somewhat mitigated by the ''Commander 2016'' supplemental set releasing five decks with four-colored legendary creatures.
* Poison, which causes creatures with relevant abilities like Infect to put out -1/-1 tokens equal to their power instead of dealing damage and which cause players to lose the game when they accumulate ten of these tokens, has been the scourge of many ''Magic'' players for years, since it's pretty easy to spread poison counters around and nearly impossible to get rid of them. It's also fair to note that, by Rosewater's own admission, [[CreatorsPet he's a passionate and enthusiastic fan of the mechanic, brought it back from obscurity when he had the power to do so, and lost all perspective overpushing it during the ''Scars of Mirrodin'' block. He also hates the one card that's ever been made to counteract Poison, Leeches, using his influence to make sure it will never be reprinted]].
* Radiance abilities affect a target creature and all creatures that share a color with it. The problem is that this is hard to process, especially considering the existence of multi-colored creatures and the mechanic's awkward property of being able to affect ''anyone's'' creatures as long as they have at least one of the required colors. It also had the issue of its flavor not working as a representation of the Boros Legion.
* Regeneration, a way to save a creature from dying, suffers from being wonkier and more complicated than the name suggests[[labelnote:effect]]The next time this creature would be destroyed this turn, it isn't. Instead tap it, remove all damage from it, and remove it from combat.[[/labelnote]] -- especially pre-''Sixth Edition'', when it was a confusing ability that could only be activated in the damage prevention step. Worse, before ''Ninth Edition'', Regeneration was not explained on the cards, leaving players confused about what exactly it did: some thought it could save creature spells from being countered, save creatures from being sacrificed, bounced or exiled, or even revive long-dead creatures from the graveyard. It's also easy to forget that regenerating a creature taps it. In 2005, Vice President of Design Aaron Forsythe admitted that the mechanic would never have been greenlit at the time, and was only still around thanks to the GrandfatherClause. It was finally retired with 2016's ''Kaladesh'', being replaced with the more intuitive "gain indestructible until end of turn".
* Cards with the Rhystic mechanic have the drawback that they do little or nothing if your opponent pays a cost. Players already tend to find countermagic frustrating, and these cards essentially come with built-in counterspells to be exploited by your opponent. It also leads to unfun play patterns, as it encourages you not to play your cards so you can afford to pay for your opponent's Rhystic spells. As a result, the mechanic was very poorly received by players.
* Sweep is a weird mechanic that lets you return lands to your hand as an additional cost, and the more you return, the stronger a spell's effect will be. It's basically using land destruction on ''yourself'' just to get an effect. This mechanic is only remembered for being a frequent sight on lists of the worst ''Magic'' mechanics.
* Transform cards are the first to have different backings. These cards need to be able to flip over during play, so they ''must'' be sleeved or else count as marked cards (and are thus illegal in tournaments and any casual group with a shred of common sense), but de-sleeving a card to flip it over can be a hassle and puts it at risk of more damage. The solution is to print placeholder cards that garbage up booster packs, with Transform cards held in a pile off to the side. Since all the Transform cards had to be printed on the placeholder, they are few in number--meaning your opponent has a pretty good idea what deck you're running when he sees you have a pile of Transform cards off to the side. They have also caught some flak for making the game more complicated, as the players have to keep track of what both sides do.
* Tribal was a card type with a major debut in the Lorwyn block, which focused on synergies within creature types. Tribal expanded on this design space to grant creature types to noncreature spells. The Tribal tag ultimately didn't amount to much, as some of the most popular Tribal cards like [[https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=571402 Bitterblossom]] were valued for factors that didn't include the Tribal tag. On top of that, other themed cards didn't get the Tribal tag -- for instance, why is [[https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=48215 Goblin Cannon]] not a Goblin Tribal Artifact? Ultimately, while Tribal is not exactly frustrating in gameplay, it proved to be very frustrating for card design, and Wizards eventually retired the card type by the Innistrad block as it was too much legwork to re-label cards with a few words that don't do much.
[[/folder]]

** The Cult is a faction which recruits members and aims to win the game by making up a majority of the players. They usually have a Leader who needs to induct all members personally. Cults are hated nowadays, primarily because they're too unstable: either they recruit members faster than the Town can eliminate them, while depriving the Town of the power-role players, or their Leader dies too early and the Cult members are left in limbo for the rest of the game, if not outright killed off. Recruiting Mafia is also an easy GameBreaker for Cults, as the former Mafia Goon can simply tell them who the other Mafia are. The Leader could die immediately if they tried to recruit a Mafia member, but that'd be annoying if it happened too early, or the Cult could be the only non-mafia faction, but that makes trying to find pro-Town players pointless as they could all be turned into enemies of the Town. Besides all that, they rely on changing allegiances, which makes former Townsfolk efforts useless and causes players who are outnumbered to try to join the Cult instead of fighting it.

** Dishonest or irritating mechanics, such as lying to players about their alignment, secret winning conditions and alignment changes, are called "bastard" by MafiaScum members.

** The Cult is a faction which recruits members and aims to win the game by making up a majority of the players. They usually have a Leader who needs to induct all members personally. Cults are hated nowadays, primarily because they're too unstable: either they recruit members faster than the Town can eliminate them, while depriving the Town of the power-role players, or their Leader dies too early and the Cult members are left in limbo for the rest of the game, if not outright killed off. Recruiting Mafia is also an easy GameBreaker for Cults, as the former Mafia Goon can simply tell them who the other Mafia are. The Leader could die immediately if they tried to recruit a Mafia member, but that'd be annoying if it happened too early, or the Cult could be the only non-mafia faction, but that makes trying to find pro-Town players pointless as they could all be turned into enemies of the Town. Besides all that, they rely on changing allegiances, which makes former Townsfolk efforts useless and causes players who are outnumbered to try to join with a Cult instead of fighting it.

** The Cult is a faction which recruits members and aims to win the game by making up a majority of the players. They usually have a Leader who needs to induct all members personally. Cults are hated nowadays for many reasons:
*** They're too unstable: either they recruit members faster than the Town can eliminate them, while depriving the Town of the power-role players, or their Leader dies too early and the Cult members are left in limbo for the rest of the game, if not outright killed off.
*** Recruiting Mafia is a GameBreaker for Cults, as the former Mafia Goon can simply tell them who the other Mafia are. The Leader could die immediately if they tried to recruit a Mafia member, but that'd be annoying if it happened too early, or the Cult could be the only non-mafia faction, but that makes trying to find pro-Town players pointless as they could all be turned into enemies of the Town.
*** They rely on changing allegiances, which makes former Townsfolk efforts useless and causes players who are outnumbered to try to join with a Cult instead of fighting it.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Abyss}}'': Several reviews have singled out the ''Kraken'' expansion's Sanctuaries as a dubious addition to the game. When you take one of them, you'll draw cards from the loot deck that can give Influence Points and other bonuses. You can stop at any time, and if you get two copies of a card, both are discarded, which loses you their points (but not their other bonuses). The problem is that this is quite swingy -- these Locations can provide anywhere from 0 to 20+ points (most Locations give around 7-14) depending on when you stop and on your luck, so a lucky draw can win you the game and an unlucky one might be impossible to recover from. Worse, the Sanctuaries' ''average'' performance is good enough that players will often feel like they should go for them, making more games decided by luck. This is generally seen as a worse design than the original Locations, which are more strategic. Thankfully, unless you're playing a DigitalTabletopGameAdaptation, you can just remove the Sanctuaries from the Locations deck and use the rest of the expansion elements normally.

* Poison is pretty unpopular even years later, but it was overtuned to the point of being oppressive at release, in part because, by Rosewater's own admission, [[CreatorsPet he was a huge fan of it and lost all perspective overpushing it]].

* This trope is the main reason for why Victory Dragon is banned in tournaments. Its effect is that it's tricky to summon and has mediocre stats, but if it attacks directly and wins in a "best of three" match, it's treated as winning the overall match. AwesomeButImpractical in regular play, but it's a ''headache'' for judges, since its ability raises a ton of questions. For instance, if a player loses two duels (which would normally decide the match) but they have Victory Dragon, should they be given a third duel anyway because Victory Dragon could potentially win it for them? [[labelnote:Answer]]No, a best of three match ends when two duels are won, and Victory Dragon can't reach outside of the game before it's even played to allow a duel that otherwise wouldn't happen. People who say otherwise are munchkins, though they did convince some judges.[[/labelnote]] Is it legal to cut your losses and forfeit before your opponent can attack with Victory Dragon? [[labelnote:Answer]]Yes in the TCG, which explicitly allowed concession at any time, no in the OCG, because you can only surrender on your turn and Victory Dragon is attacking on your opponents.[[/labelnote]] On top of that, the decks that ''could'' use it effectively were able to effectively invalidate tournament results in the OCG. Add in the fact that Victory Dragon decks tended to be based on stalling as long as possible until they could draw it, which (when combined with the above two issues of surrendering and always getting three duels) would frequently result in the game going into overtime, and you have a mechanic that singlehandedly ensured that [[PromotionalPowerlessPieceOfGarbage all future Match Winners would be merely prize cards with text that explicitly renders them illegal.]]

* Talking of easy cheat material, Infernities have a mechanic where most of their cards can only do their thing when the player's hand contains no cards. A central part of its playstyle is to empty your hand as quickly as possible, usually in part by Setting all your Spells and Traps. Some players, however, would set excess ''monsters'' in the Spell/Trap zone (which, bar a handful of cards, is an illegal move). What made this problematic (on top of the fact that Infernity was a naturally powerful deck) was that despite its blatancy and ease, there wasn't a way to easily catch an opponent in the act aside from blindly destroying backrow. Some unofficial tournaments even issued a rule that players had to reveal their Set cards at the end of the Duel, just to try to curb this.