Top 10 Cards With Weird Pre-Errata Card Text in Yugioh [Part 2]

Early Yu-Gi-Oh had a lot of weird card text, or sometimes forgot to add stuff to their cards, which kind of explain what the card actually did. In this this will be continuing the series of going over early Yu-Gi-Oh card text, and pointing out the oddities of their text.

--The List--
Intro: (0:00)
10-Spellbook Organization: (0:16)
9- Ocean Dragon Lord - Neo-Daedalus: (2:07)
8- Goddess of Whim: (3:09)
7- Grave Robber: (4:05)
6- Bite Shoes: (5:32)
5- Fake Trap: (6:35)
4- Rocket Warrior: (8:22)
3- Penguin knight: (9:26)
2- Gilasaurus: (10:32)
1- Last Will: (11:38)

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#yugioh #top10 #YGOtop10

[Populon]

Duels in those old times must have been really strange. Imagine you summon your Goddess of Whim and spend the next 2 hours tossing a coin until she has like 10k atk. But then you accidentally mill a Penguin Knight from your opponents' deck, so they go full Kaiba style, whip out a suitcase full with cards and build a whole new deck in front of you.

[Peheal]

Penguin Knight: "Trough the effect of myself i grant the union of these 2, and now, the deck may kiss the graveyard"

[Kawaiisikkusu]

There's a spell card called "Question", with an effect that the opponent is not allowed to read or check the cards in your graveyard. Maybe who knows, on future there'll be card that prevent you to check or read your own spell/trap, and Fake Trap gonna counter that lol.

[AshbornXVI]

Ah yes, Frog the Jam. Also know as the mascot boy for the cards excluded from their own archetypes lol

[mill_ania]

"Unite your graveyard"
I see Penguin Warrior is an ally for the Oppressed People archetype.

[LeloTheUnamused]

I have a (ever-expanding) collection of old card with extremely weird/convoluted wordings, effects or summoning conditions, and it's a ton of fun to look at them. Definetly my favourite collection so far.
I'll list some that may be interesting to look at:

- Magical Hats: for quite some time and several reprints, it mentioned that the cards summoned as monsters by its effect were _destroyed_ at the end of the Battle Phase. This implied the actual possibility of preventing their destruction somehow, and getting a spell/trap card treated as monster on your field. The most recent errata specifically states that the two card "cannot remain on the field except during this Battle Phase"
- A Deal with Dark Ruler: it mentions "Level Stars", referring to monster levels
- Cost Down: the original text specifically says to " _downgrade_ all Monster Cards in your hand by 2 levels"
- Mystical Refpanel: it refers to spells that _target_ a player. Too bad cards that target players are both rare and hard to identify to this day in YGO, let alone spell cards specifically.
- Pyro Clock of Destiny: the only card in the game that manipulates the turn count. Except, the rulings for the card are extremely weird, leading to strange interactions. For starters, the Clock only works on cards that counts exclusively _turns_ in their effects, meaning stuff like Deck Devastation Virus or Final Countdown. Cards that count specific _phases_ (like, for example, Future Fusion) are not affected by the Clock. Furthermore, the Clock has crazy interactions with Time Magic Hammer, a card that counts turns but activates its effect in a specific phase of a said turn. Basically, Pyro Clock of Destiny can "skip" the turn, and so the Standby Phase, in which the monster banished by Hammer would be returned, effectively leaving it banished.
- An Unfortunate Report and Weather Report are the _only_ two cards in the game that specifically grant a whole second Battle Phase. _They_ are the reason every single monster that has certain effects in the Battle Phase always specifies "during _each_ Battle Phase this turn".
- Curse of Fiend: the only normal spell that can (only) be activated during the Standby Phase. It would be weird enough as it is, but recently DistantCoder tested it on Master Duel, discovering that the card also needs to be already set on the field to be activated during the Standby Phases (maybe because it is still a normal spell, and by modern ruling only quick-play spells can be activated from the hand in such timings? idk)
- Wall Shadow: not super weird, but the old text, after mentioning that it could only be special summoned by tributing Labyrinth Wall equipped with its spell, also specifies that "no other Tribute Monsters are required".
- ZERO-MAX: this is a relatively simple card, but I find it funny that its condition "Activate only if you have no cards in your hand" means that, if it is the only card in you hand, you have to set it before activating it, because rulings in YGO still count it as in your hand during your attempt at playing it (other card games work differently).
- Relinquished: in the first prints of this card the text was so long that it couldn't include the ritual summon conditions. Depending on the edition, the effect is also worded super weirdly ("This monster can take on the ATK and DEF of 1 opponent's monster on the field")
- Any of the first big three Toon monsters (Blue-Eyes, Summoned Skull or Manga Ryu-Ran): their effect were _a mess_ . In the oldest print, it's never specified how to summon them (it's only stated they can't be summoned unless Toon World is on the field), but the first errata they got made it even more confusing, stating "You can special summon this card (but tributes are required if it's level 5 or higher)". It didn't even specify the number of tributes, or what they were actually for.

There's a ton more, obviously, but I don't want to make this post even longer lol

[dorugoramon]

Pre-Errata Seal of Orichalcos was broken, it let you take your opponents soul.

[bensell]

How about Top 10 strangest Flavor Text on normal monsters. Mekk-Knight Avram in the OCG had a completely normal lore profile of the monster. The TCG changed the flavor text to "Check THIS Out"

[Nerobyrne]

The irony here is that pigeonholing (no D, btw) has a connotation of being externally forced. As in, it implies that the person/group having this done to them don't have a choice and might prefer it to be different.

So, the translator actually did a great job, it's just that the phrasing is awkward and the term is mostly retired.

[Tricks]

One thing I always loved about “Orca Mega-Fortress of Darkness” is that it capitalizes tribute in one of its effects and not the other despite them both being identical

[discreetuser]

I remember the original text from Magic Drain where it said if your opponent cannot immediately discard a magic card... my friends would poke fun of the situation every once in a while and say: your original spell is negated since you took too long deciding...

[jaynajuly]

Magical Hats is pretty interesting. It looks like the location of where you shuffle the cards was somewhat unclear - originally, you might assume you shuffle them in your hand, but a later errata specifies on the field.

[NicholasSunderland]

Charm of shabti also referenced monsters taking battle damage. This text gave me a headache as a kid.

"Discard this card from your hand to the Graveyard to make the damage inflicted to monsters that include "Gravekeeper's" in their card name 0 until the End Phase of the current turn. However, the damage to your Life Points is calculated normally. "

[ianmathwiz]

9:20 I think one of the Gravekeepers used to refer to monsters taking battle damage. It had a Kuriboh-like effect except it protected your Gravekeeper monsters instead of your lifepoints. I remember my copy of the card used to say that its effect decreased the battle damage taken by your Gravekeepers to 0.

[Zetact_]

Penguin Knight also specifies it must be sent "directly" from the deck to the GY, as if people might think, "So I have this card that banishes a card from the opponent's deck and then moves it from the banish zone to the GY. Will it trigger the effect? It's indirectly sending it from the deck to the GY."

[CrBRZzZz]

This is such an interesting series please keep it going

[runningoncylinders]

Regardless of position,
some old cards basically explained mechanics of the game.
Even though we're still missing a lot of PSCT, what we have by this point is quite the upgrade!

[andrewmattar]

I think that "reverse trap" also had confusing text for me as I never understood what the card did until I saw it in action.

[admiralrhino]

When You were discussing the vampire cards, I would also like to bring up that they also changed "red moon baby" to "vampire baby" so that it COULD be effected by vampire support

Really wish they would have changed "Patrician of Darkness" to "Vampire Patricianer" or something, love that card, and it's a very vampire looking card. Seriously look at him

[josephmay]

It would be extremely funny if they had some sort of reverse shifting shadows where you can re arrange your opponents face downs without them looking. Though that would be a ruling nightmare