It’s not often you have Dark Driceratops vs Great Moth

With Yu-Gi-Oh! Having its 25th anniversary, I decided to crack open a couple of the old school packs that were re-released. It doesn’t take long to realize there’s not much use for many of these cards other than some nostalgia, but this got me thinking. 

I love being solutions oriented and wanted to come up with a way to enjoy these classic cards even further. It was at this moment I remembered “Pack Wars” for MTG, a format where both players open a pack of MTG cards, shuffle in two lands of each basic land type and then battle one another with 15 life instead of 20, and with no mulligans. 

I thought to myself, “why not Yu-Gi-Oh!?”

Well, Yu-Gi-Oh! is a different beast and traditionally not very friendly to alternative formats as MTG is, but even so, I wanted to take a crack at it, so here we go.

Here’s my 100% playtested, flawless, and completely awesome pack wars for Yu-Gi-Oh! 

Game Rules

1. Both players open a pack facedown and shuffle (players should consider sleeving cards and playing from the same set or similar)

2. 2000 Life Points instead of 8000

3. 3 card starting hand instead of 5

4. No drawing on first turn (as is modern Yugioh ruling)

5. Any monster can be normal summoned, ignoring any special criteria it would normally have

6. A player may lower the cost of any monster’s level they play by 2 at the time of summoning. If they do, that monster can’t attack the turn it's played.

7. Any card that indicates a specific name, instead can use any card of the same type. 

8. Any card may be used as a Quick Spell that reads “Increase 1 face-up monster's ATK by 300 points until the end of this turn.”

All other rules remain the same!

The fun of pack wars can’t be underestimated. Players head into a duel not knowing what awaits them, with each game being completely new and different. You could even keep your packs for future pack wars against friends and family for some quick duels for that sweet classic Yu-Gi-Oh! Feel! 

Hopefully you get some joy out of this fun new way to play Yu-Gi-Oh! 

Be sure to hop into our Discord community if you haven’t yet, where we discuss Yu-Gi-Oh!, our TTRPG inspired by Yu-Gi-Oh! (Banishment), Dungeon Dice, Monsters Reborn, our other games and more! 

Don’t forget to become a vscriber for free, for free gaming content! Be sure to tag us on Instagram or me on Twitter with your pack wars!

Stay awesome! 

Vincent 

p.s. If you need some more rules clarifications, check below for some examples: 

p.p.s. I was inspired to make this format from the 25th anniversary packs and thus, tested it with “old school Yu-Gi-Oh!” in mind. Pack Wars may work for newer Yu-Gi-Oh! given the rules making it easier to summon and use cards regardless of specific naming, but this will need further testing.

Examples

4. Example: Great Moth would normally need you to tribute “Petit Moth” on the 4th of your turns after “Petit Moth” has been equipped with “Cocoon of Evolutions.” With this rule, you can simple play it by Tributing two Monsters or by lowering its level to 6 (rule 5) and Tribute one Monster, by forgoing Great Moth’s attack this turn.  

5. For example, if you have a Battle Steer in your hand (level 5), you can lower its level to 3, and normal summon it without Tributing a Monster. However, you can’t attack with Battle Steer this turn.

6. Example: Magical Labyrinth for example is an Equip Spell that can normally only be equipped to “Labyrinth Wall” and allows you to Tribute the equipped monster to special summon “Wall Shadow.” In this instead, the card types are “Monsters” so you can equip Magical Labyrinth to any Monster you control and Tribute it to special summon any other Monster from your deck using the effect of Magical Labyrinth.”

Note: Monster Types aren’t considered as “specific names,” so Dragon Capture Jar would still only affect dragon type monsters.