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Mechanics or Concepts

  • The term "archetype", often used to describe a theme supported by having a specific name. Official sources in both the TCG and OCG have used "series" and "theme" inconsistently, but the use of "archetype" is just that widely used by the fanbase.
  • "Staples" are Boring, but Practical cards with good effects and no activation conditions, allowing them to be used in any Deck.
    • "DM staples" is a term used to refer to staples that specifically came out during the first series manga/anime, such as "Change of Heart", "Book of Moon", "Dark Hole", "Raigeki", and "Harpie's Feather Duster".
  • "Topdecking" or "Lucksacking" is a derogatory term used when a player at a major disadvantage draws that card that has shifted the advantage in their favor with minimal effort. note 
  • A "Vanilla" is usually a non-Effect Monster of any kind like a Normal Monster but sometimes can also be used to refer to cards that have no relevant effects on the field or don't do anything meaningful.
  • "Boss Monster" is often used to refer to any particularly powerful monster that's tied to an archetype and has a powerful effect that makes dealing with it difficult, as well as being difficult to summon and often requiring cards from said archetype to even get it on the field. Naturally, true to the name, once it's on the field, it feels like a Boss Battle trying to get it off the field.
  • "Solitaire decks", for decks that focus on winning turn one and/or not even letting the opponent get a chance to play. These decks put all their focus into a long combo that either leads to an FTK or a giant multi-negate endboard that keeps the opponent from playing, but fold if the opponent so much as successfully interrupts the combo at a good point. Regardless of outcome, it's not a fun experience (barring the catharsis of dismantling the combo). This playstyle also has the derogatory nickname of "playing with themselves."
  • "Beatstick" is often use to describe monsters that have a high ATK stat, are easily summoned, but don't have any outstanding effects, if any.
  • "Glorified Beatstick" is also used to describe monsters that are more difficult to summon, have high attack, and do have a variety of effects... but nearly all of said effects they have really aren't that useful to justify the summoning cost, or are incredibly easy to get off the field once summoned regardless.
  • "Floater" for any card that replaces itself in card advantage when it enters or leaves the field, such as Sangan, Mystic Tomato, the Gadgets, or Card Trooper.
  • Certain actions or concepts get named after the card that best represents them.
    • "Stratos" (named after "Elemental HERO Stratos") for any monster that adds a card from deck when summoned, and "ROTA" (short for "Reinforcement of the Army") for any spell that adds a card from deck when activated. Named as such thanks to both cards being some of the earliest and most iconic cards that carried the effects. Spells that add cards from a specific archetype can also be referred to as "E-Call" (short for "E - Emergency Call", the card that does this for Elemental HEROes).
    • Related to the above is "E-Tele", a Spell Card (sometimes, but not always a Quick-Play) that Special Summons a monster from your Deck at little to no cost. Named after Emergency Teleport, a Quick-Play Spell that summons a Level 3 or lower Psychic monster from the deck for free, which has become a powerful playstarter with the advent of viable Psychic decks with good combo starter targets.
    • While "milling" is a loanword from Magic: The Gathering that denotes the act of sending cards from the top of your Deck to the Graveyard, "foolish" (named after Foolish Burial) is for sending a card of your choice from the Deck to the Graveyard.
    • A "Towers" is a type of Boss Monster that possesses immunity to other card effects (or a combination of protective effects that comes close), and can only be outed by a Kaiju or a very big beatstick. Named after Apoqliphort Towers, which was a very prominent juggernaut in its prime.
    • A "Garnet" is a combo piece that you'd rather stay in the Deck. This stems from the Brilliant Fusion engine which is used to Summon Gem-Knight Seraphinite whose effect permits a second Normal Summon per turn — an asset so valuable that any Deck with some LIGHT monsters that benefit from being in the GY would also run 3 Brilliant Fusion and 1 token Gem-Knight to access this. However, Brilliant Fusion only used Materials from the Deck; if you drew your one Gem-Knight card the engine is dead without a way to shuffle it back. Garnet was almost universally ran as the token Gem-Knight, because he had the highest ATK of a Level 4 Gem-Knight, so that he could still serve as a beatstick if drawn.
    • "Book" is a card effect that forces a monster into face-down Defense Position, named after "Book of Moon" and its various derivatives.
    • The term "Circular" has started to see use to describe extremely swingy one-card combo starters that are a Game-Breaker in the context of the archetype they are in. The name comes from Mathmech Circular, an infamous card that single-handedly propelled Mathmech to top tier status due to the immense amount of advantage it generates merely by existing and is extremely accessible due to the presence of generic searchers such as Cynet Mining and Small World.
  • "Brick" is a term loaned from poker, used to describe a hand full of unplayable cards or just a card that you can't use at the moment.
  • "Win more" cards, for cards that, while not bad in their own right, require a good deal of setup that, if you could get them onto the field and/or make the most of their effects, you likely could have won without them anyways.
  • "Trample" was commonly a nickname for the mechanic the game now refers to as "piercing".
  • "Handtraps" are cards that can be used from your hand on your opponent's turn to disrupt them, and need not necessarily be Trap cards.
  • "Floodgates" are cards that prevent effects or Summons.
  • "Turbo" describes a strategy focused on playing a specific card (frequently a boss monster) as fast as possible, and using as many draw power or search cards as needed to get to the necessary cards.
  • It is not uncommon for a series or archetype, especially those used by prominent anime characters, to get new support several years after the cards were initially introduced, likely to appeal to fans that are nostalgic towards such cards and/or characters. Fans have often dubbed such cards as "legacy support", especially if they were introduced in an era much later than the one the character whose deck they support originally hailed from.
  • The New Master Rules are often simply called "Master Rule 4", following on from the previous series' "Master Rule 3".
  • As the name of the next iteration of the Master Duels introduced alongside the Rush Duel format and Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS is somewhat unwieldy (Master Rules April 1st 2020 Revision), many have taken to referring to it as 'Master Rule 3.5', since it combines mechanics from pre-New Master Rules with the New Master Rule. Others call it "Master Rule 2020", or "Master Rule 4/20", or simply just "Master Rule 5".
  • An "engine" or "package" is a collection of cards that aren't big enough to define a Deck on their own, but work in tandem with themselves or supplement a strategy to provide additional advantage that can be used to further your plays or put out a threat.
  • "T-Set" describes the act of Setting 1 monster and 1 S/T on the first turn, which looks like a T when both cards are in the same column. It's a hallmark of the older, slower play style, but it can also indicate that someone's bricked.
  • "Jumpmas" (Jump + Christmas), for the monthly period of card reveals from the OCG coinciding with the release of the V-Jump magazine, which is sometimes likened to a Christmas gift.
  • The "waifu Deck" has been a term adopted for the Deck Build Packs, which release three new themes, and one of these themes is always one made up of cute or attractive female monsters. Examples include The Weather, Sky Striker, Mayakashinote , Witchcrafter, Dragonmaids, Rikka, Evil/Live Twins, Solfachords, Exosisters, Labrynth, and Mikanko.
  • Effects that can't be responded to are known as "Spell Speed 4" as a spinoff of the Spell Speed system that dictate what effects can be used in response to others (with the scale normally going up to 3, currently used only by Counter Traps to ensure that only other Counter Traps can respond to them).
  • "Soft once per turn" and "Hard once per turn" are community-coined terms to distinguish between the different ways cards restrict themselves. A "hard once per turn" is shorthand for "You can only use the effect of [card name] once per turn," which means that you can't use repeat instances of that effect for the rest of the turn, even off other copies. A "soft once per turn", usually just written "Once per turn:" can be easily reset by the card leaving and re-entering the field or playing another copy.
  • "Starters" are cards that have impactful on-Summon effects, often the one important Normal Summon that your game plan banks on. "Extenders" are often cards that Special Summon themselves or other cards, letting you continue to make plays if your combo gets interrupted.
  • "Custom card" is sometimes used to describe excessively overpowered cards, comparing them to fan-made custom cards which are often horrifically unbalanced due to player bias.
  • "Whiffing" refers to a card effect that successfully resolves but for one reason or another has no effect.
  • A "first turn kill", commonly abbreviated to "FTK", is a deck strategy that allows the player going first to win on their first turn, usually by causing an excessive amount of effect damage or executing an extremely long combo that involves setting up an Instant-Win Condition. Some board setups are also loosely referred to as "FTKs" despite not quite literally being a "first turn kill", as they are considered so oppressive that the opponent has effectively lost the game before they can even start playing.
    • There is also such thing as a "zero turn kill", or "ZTK", which involves a player going second winning on their opponent's first turn, but this is nearly impossible and can only realistically happen if the player happens to draw all five pieces of "Exodia, the Forbidden One" in their starting hand, which has a 1 in 658,008 chance of ever happening assuming a properly-shuffled 40-card deck.
  • An Extra Link is also referred to as "U-Link", since the most convenient way to establish an Extra Link is to control five co-linked Link Monsters arranged in a U formation.note 
  • A "retrain" is an Effect Monster that has the same stats as an older Normal Monster, and generally represents a stronger version of the same creature.

Formats

Different metagames over time are remembered by the most dominant Deck at the time — for instance, "Chaos Format" for when the Envoys dominated. Some break the naming scheme or are significantly more popular among the community:
  • "Playground Yu-Gi-Oh!", while not literally a format, is a nickname for how most children from the early 2000's played the game based on assumptions stemming from the notoriously loose rules used by the early anime such as "Duelist Kingdom" rules, rather than the actual rules that were ever rarely understood by a child (despite the game being marketed towards children). This includes stuff like being able to play high level monsters without Tributes, being able to summon multiple times per turn, making up effects for monsters that either only had flavor text or were vaguely worded, and so on and so forth.
  • "Caveman Yu-Gi-Oh!" describes formats in the game's infancy, where effect monsters were scarce, combos were nearly non-existent, and the best strategy is "beat up the opponent with your biggest monsters."
  • "Goat Format" denotes a format dated circa 2005, established after the banning of Chaos Emperor Dragon, and including cards up to The Lost Millennium. Named for one of its dominant Decks, "Goat Control", which used Scapegoat as a major stalling tool and a material for Metamorphosis to Thousand-Eyes Restrict. It's loved by players looking to experience the competitive scene from that time, and by those who preferred slower-paced games from the earlier days.
  • "Edison Format" is named after the Shonen Jump Championship which took place in Edison, New Jersey in April 2010. It includes cards up to Absolute Powerforce, and is fondly remembered for the high variety of viable Decks, without any one clearly dominant strategy.
  • "TOSS Format" is the early 2019 format, shortly after the banning of problem Link cards like Topologic Gumblar Dragon and the pre-errata Firewall Dragon. In that time, there was a large variety of Decks that topped tournaments, though this Format was named after the four most prominent Decks — Thunder Dragons, Orcust, Sky Strikers, and Salamangreat.
  • Any format where Tearlaments are running rampant is nicknamed "Tear Zero".

Cards or Decks

  • "Cookie Cutter" was a term from the early 2000's, when archetypes were largely under-developed and beatdown was the reigning strategy. The term describes how every deck looked the same, with at least half the deck consisting of "staples". It got an extended form, "CCCC", meaning "Cookie Cutter Chaos Control" after the introduction of the Envoys and before the banlist was implemented.
  • "PACMAN" stands for "Pure Advantage Camel Munches All Noobs", and is a Deck that focuses on a trio of cards from Pharaonic Guardian: Des Lacooda, Swarm of Scarabs, and Swarm of Locusts. These three cards can flip up and down, slowly dismantling the opponent's field while you stay fresh on options until you can chip down the opponent with your normally-frail monsters.
  • Sakuretsu Armor was nicknamed "the poor man's Mirror Force" due to its Common rarity, as opposed to the harder-to-find Ultra Rare Mirror Force.
  • Chaos Sorcerer was nicknamed "the poor man's Chaos" due to its Common rarity, as opposed being Secret Rare like the Envoys.
  • "Trish" for Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier. Partly to keep its name short, mostly because people have found it fun to treat it as female.
  • When decks are mixed together, they often take the suffix from one group. All Shaddoll variants end with 'dolls,' (ie, Shaddolls + Plants become Plantdolls, Trains + Shaddolls become Traindolls), Lightsworn variants end with 'sworn,' etc.
  • It’s common for fan-created archetype hybrid decks to get unique names, like “Plant Synchro”. Some of them are more creative and reference other works like the aforementioned Pepe (referencing the frog), Phantom-Knights/Burning Abyss was named “PK Fire”, or Lyrilusc + other winged beasts got called “Bird Up”.
  • "Perfect Circle" is a Monarch Deck that made use of Destiny HEROes — particularly Malicious, Disk Commander, and Destiny Draw — to maintain hand advantage and keep up Tribute Fodder for the Monarchs themselves, thus creating the "perfect circle" of advantage.
  • Performages and Performapals are an exception to this; they're called Performages & Pals. Also called EM-Em among Japanese circlesnote , and Pepe among English-speakers. The latter has become the most popular.
  • "Pay 8, feel great" is a popular catchphrase originally coined by Royal Oppression but later popularly associated with Qliphort Scout. In both cases, the effect involves paying 800 LP for an extremely powerful payoff, the former being a floodgate and the latter being an archetypal searcher.
  • "HAT" denotes a Deck from 2014 that uses three different engines to check the opponent with removal and accrue adventage over time: Hands, Artifacts, Traptrix.
  • Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring has acquired the nickname "Fivehead" due to her prominent forehead. She also gets called "Ash Blossom & Joyous Feet" as her art depicts her barefoot, with her alternate art giving it prominence.
  • The Witchcraft monsters, primarily due to Witchcraft Master Verre, have been dubbed the "smug loli(s)".
  • Crystron Halqifibrax is an odd example. When the card was revealed in the OCG, the name was translated as Crystron Needlefiber. People testing the card got used to that name as this card took over two years to be ported to the TCG. So while it has an official TCG name, many still call this card "Needlefiber" (and because it's a lot easier to remember and say than "Halqifibrax"). Some also opt for just calling it "Halq" instead.
  • True King of All Calamities gets nicknamed "Very Fun Dragon" from its OCG name mixed with a side of Fun with Acronyms on top of how difficult it was to beat for the (relative) ease of accessing it.
  • "Rhongo Bongo" for "Number 86: Heroic Champion Rhongomyniad". Picked up steam after the release of Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel due to players realizing that the card is not banned in the OCG or Master Duel like it is in the TCG and discovering how unfair of a boss monster it tends to be, especially in decks that can consistently turbo it out on the first turn with 5 or more Xyz Materials like Phantom Knights or cheat it out with cards like Numbers Evaille.
  • Salamangreats is shortened to "Salads" thanks to a streamer calling it that as a joke and it just caught on. The other reason is its consistency is comparable to making salads: easy to use/make but boring to play/eat.
  • The Adventurer Token theme often gets called by its initial fan translation, Brave Token, due to it being faster to say than its localized name.
  • Small World introduced the term "bridge", which refers to the card that is used to link the card in your hand to the card you are trying to search.
  • "Dragon Link" is a common name for a deck archetype that predominantly revolves around the Rokket/Borrel archetypes combined with a large mishmash of generic Dragon monsters that have great synergy with each other to create extremely long, non-linear combo games that have the ability to play through disruption and end on a large number of powerful Dragon boss monsters and Extra Deck negates.
  • "Tax Dragon" is used to refer to Masquerade the Blazing Dragon due to requiring the opponent to pay 600 life points to activate just about anything. This often extends to Red-Eyes Flare Metal Dragon and Black-Winged Assault Dragon as well (which damage the opponent for making a move instead of forcing the opponent to pay).
  • "Brick-Eyes" for Blue-Eyes, due to the deck's tendency to open with terrible starting hands because of their reliance on high-level monsters that often can't summon themselves easily (particularly Blue-Eyes White Dragon itself).
  • "Pile Decks" are Decks that consist of multiple generic value engines that have no thematic cohesion or internal synergy. Named for a typical reaction to seeing the Deck list: "This isn't a Deck, it's just a pile of cards!" One such Deck was named "BASED" for its engines — Brave Token, Artifact Scythe lock, Magician's Souls, Destroyer Phoenix Enforcer, Rose Dragons.
  • The Swordsoul archetype gets the funny nickname "SwoSwo". Depending on the specific player you may also hear "swoswoswo" or even "swoswoswoswo".
  • Floowandereeze are abbreviated to "Flunder" for being easier to remember, spell, and say. Alternatively, simply calling them "the birds" gets the point across just as well.
  • "Halqidon" (Or Halqdon) - a portmanteau of both Crystron Halqifibrax and Mecha Phantom Beast Auroradon's names, referring to a Link laddering combo using the aforementioned cards that is easily splashable in many decks. The combo is met with derision due to how much resources they generate for massive Extra Deck Monster summoning (usually Synchros) and can be made with very little investment in almost any Deck.
  • "Pizzahut" for Bystial Magnamhut, due to Inherently Funny Words on top of Magnamhut's delayed search being compared to a delivery service.
  • Kashtira are nicknamed "Cashtira" after the TCG rarity-bumped their cards and the February 2023 banlist shot down the reigning Tearlaments and Spright Decks to encourage players to buy and build Kashtira. Also applies to their Master Duel print, where a vast majority of their cards are of Ultra Rare quality, making it one of the most expensive decks to build in the entire game.
  • "Maxx 'C' minigame", a term originally coined by Yugituber Farfa in regards to Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel but can also be applied to the OCG as a whole, referring to the first two turns of a duel where you attempt to guess whether or not your opponent has opened Maxx "C", a card so meta warping that it can singlehandedly win games if it resolves and what the OCG (and Master Duel by extension) has based its entire format around, and if you yourself have drawn into one of its counters to see if you actually get to play the game or not. Related is the "Maxx 'C' challenge", a fan term for the act of attempting to beat your opponent by summoning more times on your turn than your opponent has cards in their deck after they resolve Maxx "C", causing them to lose by deck out.
  • "Monke flip" is a derogatory term that describes decks that run many floodgates. They would frequently start by setting all their floodgates, and flip them up at first opportunity to prevent the opponent from playing properly, and then win by repeatedly attacking with the few monsters they have while the opponent is too paralyzed to counterattack. The play style is so simple that "a monkey could do that."
  • Underworld Goddess of the Closed World is nicknamed "White Woman Jumpscare" (first coined by MBT) for her extremely pale complexion, Master Duel summon animation, and tendency to catch players off-guard by using their Nigh-Invulnerable monster as material.
  • Baronne de Fleur is sometimes jokingly called "bar on the floor" or "bear on the floor" (depending on pronunciation of choice), both of which are a Mondegreen of her name.
  • Branded Fusion is often given the derogatory name "Braindead Fusion" due to the two b-words sounding similar and due to how much advantage the Branded Fusion user gets from just resolving the card once.
  • "Plan B" is for Number 41: Bagooska, the Terribly Tired Tapir, a generic Rank 4 with a passive negation effect that's difficult to answer and often greatly weakens the opponent's ability to build an endboard. He's not the main play line of decks that run him, but when the main combo gets interrupted or threatened, he can always be counted on as a backup plan.
  • Due to its comically unfortunate acronym, Accel Synchro Stardust Dragon gets the nickname "ASS Dragon".
  • "IKEA" is a nickname for a popular Labrynth variant that eschews the intended Trap control design of the archetype for a midrange combo deck focus that involves playing multiples of the "furniture" Labrynth cards, including Labrynth Cooclock, Labrynth Chandraglier and Labrynth Stovie Torbie in order to set up on the opponent's turn going second.
  • Chaos Ruler, the Chaotic Magical Dragon got the nickname "Pepega Ruler" from content creator DB Grinder for the Random Number God nature of its mill effect.
  • Scareclaw Light-Heart tends to get referred to as a "Funko Pop" thanks to being a Super-Deformed version of Scareclaw Reichheart.
  • "Shizuku shuffle" is a nickname for a popular technique utilized by the Sky Striker archetype regarding the cards Sky Striker Ace - Shizuku and Sky Striker Mecha Modules - Multirole. Because both cards are optional Ignition effects that can be triggered during the End Phase, the "shuffle" can be performed by activating Shizuku's effect to search out a Sky Striker Quick-Play Spell of your choice. Once Shizuku's effect resolves, this changes the game to an open game state where players can respond to the resolution of Shizuku's effect, whereupon the turn player can immediately activate the Sky Striker Quick-Play Spell they just searched. Upon resolution of that Chain, the turn player can then activate Multirole's effect on a new Chain and Set a Sky Striker Spell from their Graveyard, which can include the Quick-Play Spell that was just sent there after being activated.
  • Upon reveal, the "Raika" archetype received the acronym "RIP" for their macabre-style artwork and the three Types represented by the archetype: Reptiles, Insects, and Plants.
  • Due to a shorthand naming conflict with the preexisting "Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring", "Snake-Eye Ash" is typically instead shortened to "Snash", a portmanteau of "Snake" and "Ash".

Other

  • "Yugiboomer" — the derogatory Fan Community Nickname for players who grew up with the anime or the game in its early stages, stopped playing, and tried to resume playing only to be met with years' worth of Power Creep and additional mechanics. These players typically have the Nostalgia Filter warping their perception of the game, and would prefer to complain rather than re-learn and adapt.
  • "Komoney" has been picking up steam after the ban list where Konami not so subtly killed off all the major competitive archetypes of the early ARC-V era. It's now used frequently whenever Konami does something that blatantly "encourages" people to buy new archetypes, and only got worse after their gaming controversy. Via the BEMANI fandom, the deliberate spelling "Konmai" also appears when they make a downright stupid decision, especially related to the banlist.
  • Players of the "Rescue-ACE" archetype have adopted the nickname "R-ACEists", after the acronym printed on the Japanese cards (itself named after the fire safety acronym "R.A.C.E.").
  • 2023 has been dubbed the "Year of FIRE". This is due to Konami printing a ton of powerful support for the oft-neglected and historically underpowered FIRE attribute, including new archetypes like "Rescue-ACE" and "Snake-Eye", solid support for existing archetypes like "Salamangreat", "Fire King", and "Volcanic", and generic support cards like "Infernal Flame Banshee", "Bonfire", and "Promethean Princess, Bestower of Flames".

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