Even though I don't play the game as frequently as I used to it was never hard to keep track of the meta cards was never an issue since all of them have common traits (speciall summoning, effects, trigger conditions, etc) that they need to have in order to be meta in the first place, so learning even just one archtype you've virtually learned how other meta archtype works. If you play serious competitve YGO the amount of homework you have to do is not as big as you would believe because since competive YGO focuses on selective meta decks, the poll of viable of decks at most is just about 4 at a given format and as I said above they have common traits to be meta.
Yes, the speed of the game has been nuts (Yusei would be proud) and I FUCKING LOVE THAT!!
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Lately I've been taking a look at older formats, in part for research but mainly for a bit of nostalgia and...there were some nasty bs, how could I've forgotten the infamous Yata-Garasu lockdown
? That's arguably the most broken play YGO has ever had in all its history.