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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/DeepFake369 on 2024-01-31 18:33:43.

This write-up was inspired by u/MisterBadGuy159’s Yu-Gi-Oh write-ups, particularly their write-up about the history of Firewall Dragon, the Link Monster that got everything around it banned. This is my first write-up here, so bear with me, and please don’t hesitate to tell me if you notice any mistakes or if anything is unclear; I only started playing Yu-Gi-Oh at the tail end of the period I’m covering, so nearly everything I know about it is through independent research.

For now, though, it’s time to talk about Mystic Mine, one of the most controversial Yu-Gi-Oh cards ever printed.

It's Time For Your I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-Introduction!

First, some context. In case you’re unaware of what Yu-Gi-Oh is, it’s a trading card game: namely, a de-fictionalized version of the card game from the manga of the same name, and one whose popularity competes with Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering. The goal for each player is to either reduce their opponent’s Life Points (functionally, their health) to 0 or render them unable to draw any cards. To do this, players summon monsters to their side of the field, as well as play Spell Cards and Trap Cards to supplement those monsters: the former can usually be played right away, while the latter must usually remain face-down on the field for a turn before being used. (Naturally, the game is a lot more complex than that, but most of it’s irrelevant to the topic at hand, so I won’t go into depth on the rules here.) Furthermore, Yu-Gi-Oh is split into two different regions, each with a different banlist and certain exclusive cards: the Original Card Game (labeled as the OCG from here on out) covering Japan, China, South Korea, and other nearby countries (and often getting new cards first), and the Trading Card Game (labeled as the TCG from here on out) encompassing everywhere else. (For reference, this drama takes place in the TCG format.)

One of the key differences between Yu-Gi-Oh and many similar card games is that the game does not utilize a hard resource system, such as Magic: The Gathering’s mana or Pokémon’s energy cards. The only resources players need to worry about are the cards themselves, which often have no restrictions other than only being able to have their effects used “once per turn.” As you might expect, this means the game plan of most decks is to get as many good cards on the field as quickly as possible, and the rate players can do this has only escalated as power creep took hold of the game.

However, while the combo-oriented nature of Yu-Gi-Oh has led to its fair share of drama over the years, that’s not the side of the game we’ll be focusing on today.

Nope, today we’ll be focusing on a deck that strove to do the exact opposite of combo.

The Fields of Change

One of the unique mechanics of Yu-Gi-Oh’s playing field is the Field Zone, which is used to play specific spells known as Field Spells, which stay on the field until they’re either destroyed by a card effect or replaced by another Field Spell. Initially, there was only one for both players to share, but Master Rule 3, implemented in 2014, changed the field so that each player had their own Field Zone, meaning both players could control a Field Spell at the same time.

For a long time, this didn’t mean very much, because most early Field Spells were… not very good, to say the least. However, starting in approximately late 2016 with the release of Union Hangar, the number of powerful Field Spells in the game began to increase dramatically. Many of these new Field Spells simply allowed the player to search one of their archetype’s monsters when it was played, which made getting the cards needed to start powerful combos much easier. At the time, this often came packaged with a bonus effect, such as SPYRAL Resort granting its archetype’s cards protection from targeted effects, or Trickstar Light Stage preventing your opponent from activating a face-down Spell or Trap Card once per turn.

However, just because a Field Spell doesn’t allow you to search a card doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t powerful. Some Field Spells instead have floodgate effects, which is an umbrella term to describe an effect that attempts to prevent the other player from playing the game the way they want to. These were less common, but many of them led to quite a bit of frustration whenever they hit the field. Domain of the True Monarchs required a deck to be built around it but could lock many decks out of summoning their best monsters with ease. Necrovalley could lock decks reliant on the Graveyard out of the game entirely as long as it stuck around. Secret Village of the Spellcasters made both itself and the Spellcaster monsters enforcing its effect difficult to remove from the field and invalidated a full third of the card pool for anyone playing against it. All of these cards could potentially win games on their own, and all of them were the subject of their fair share of ire whenever they became relevant.

But none of that compares to the sheer hatred that was directed at Mystic Mine.

Unleashing the Monster (Underminer)

Allow me to set the stage. It’s May 2019. Players have settled into what is now known as TOSS Format, one of the most well-loved formats of the modern era. Yu-Gi-Oh’s disastrous 2018, one filled with absurd combo decks and ludicrously broken new monsters, has finally been put behind it. While remnants of its power still linger, the game is in as good a place as it’s been since Link Monsters were introduced back in 2017.

Then, Konami releases the set Dark Neostorm in the TCG, consisting of one hundred entirely new cards. As expected, the vast majority of them go on to do nothing. However, a precious few of them are good enough to enter the competitive scene immediately. One of these cards is the Field Spell Mystic Mine, also known as Spell-Mining Cave in the OCG.

Mystic Mine had two effects. The first was a floodgate that could affect both players, preventing the player who controlled more monsters from activating monster effects or attacking. Its second effect caused it to destroy itself at the end of each turn if both players controlled the same number of monsters.

Players were nervous as soon as they saw this card. As you might expect, just about any deck that uses monsters requires those monsters to be able to attack to win, meaning Mystic Mine seemed capable of putting any strategy on hold as soon as it hit the field. Furthermore, almost all of the best cards used to handle problematic Spell and Trap Cards at the time, such as Knightmare Phoenix, Knightmare Unicorn, and Tornado Dragon, were monsters, meaning that Mystic Mine rendered all of them functionally useless. As a result, players knew, or at least suspected, that Mystic Mine was about to change the game as soon as it was released: they just didn’t know how much.

All those fears would soon be confirmed: to say Mystic Mine had a monumental impact on the game was an understatement.

You Are Now Entering the Mines

The majority of Yu-Gi-Oh cards see competitive play rarely, if ever. Even amongst those that do, many of them only see play in certain types of decks. For instance, Cynet Mining, a powerful Spell Card that was also introduced to the game in Dark Neostorm, only saw competitive play in decks utilizing the Cyberse monsters it could search. However, Mystic Mine had no such restrictions, and it made its presence known in a hurry.

Mystic Mine’s first appearance in a topping deck was piloted by Joshua Oosters, who utilized the card in a Sky Striker deck just three days after Dark Neostorm was released in Europe to win the Netherlands National Championship. Mystic Mine would swiftly become a mainstay in Sky Striker strategies; not only did they rarely control more than one monster at a time, making it unlikely Mystic Mine would ever impact them, but their goal was already to control the field with their archetypal Spell Cards, which synergized quite well with Mystic M...

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