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Article 9: Mana, or Tributes?

Well...this would be yet another short article of mine. Remember while you read this article, I'm just thinking of card games from my head, I don't play and research on each and every card game in the market, and really some of them I don't have any idea what the heck they are...

Anyway, as most of people that knows me knew that, I'm a person who, goes to various and numerous forums on different things (from Card Games to just "spamming" forums). As I look at some Yu-Gi-Oh forums, I sometimes (not often) saw this kind of post:

"Let's Wizards take over Yu-Gi-Oh, they would make the game better"
"Let's just change up the game, the system of Yu-Gi-Oh is too "broken", too cheap..."
"Magic: the Gathering over Yu-Gi-Oh because they got a better system of playing cards, which led to more variety and more thinking"

As you read them, you know what I'm going to talk about today: comparing the two type of "cost" system of two major card game.

First, for those expert players, or people play variety of card games, they would know how to play Magic and how they discover the "mana" system. For those who don't know...it's just a type of "cost" that, by tapping some card, you would get some "mana" that you could use to play cards, or, if you don't have enough "mana", you cannot play a card. The system is use by the biggest card game in the world: Magic the Gathering (don't start to bash me, but admit the fact, Magic is bigger than Yu-Gi-Oh in size no matter what, it's a card game that came out 10 years ago...). Many card game use this system (not exactly, but close to it), the closest resemblance I could think of is Gundam War, Pokemon, VS System, and Duel Masters (that's not all, most of the card game use this system). What I mean it's not exactly, but close is all of them have some kind of "you need so and so on this to play that"

The "tribute" system of Yu-Gi-Oh, which I call it by the "bringing upper Level monster, you need to sacrifice" rule. I don't think much game use this kind of "evolve and play free" system (maybe .hack//ENEMY could be one, but it's not exactly). Well, in this type, most likely the other cards could be play "free", and there're most likely limit of types of cards on the field/put to a card.

Actually, there's third major type of "cost" system, it's close to the "mana" system. This type is the my word so called "Pool" system, where you have a number of counters/manas/whatever to start with, you start to count down, each turn it would go up, etc. I believe this was use by Ophidian and Yu Yu Hakusho.

Anyway, stay on topic...

So, when you just "see" the system, you would think of the "mana" system works the best, right?? Yeah, it seems to be. In Yu-Gi-Oh, there's lifepoints, there's hand, there's cards on field, and there's deck, but that's IT. So, you feel it's not much disadvantage in playing them, right? And it would make cards like "staples" and "broken", right? First of all, I cannot define the word "broken" in card game as from Dictionary.com:
1. To cause to separate into pieces suddenly or violently; smash.
2. To divide into pieces, as by bending or cutting: break crackers for a baby.
3. To separate into components or parts: broke the work into discrete tasks.

I don't see how a card would be "broken" except those cards from M:tG fun booster Unglued. Also, lifepoints IS a cost, Hand IS a cost, so, no cost??

NAH...
Although it may have one less type of cost (talking about the number of mana), in reality, a COST is a COST, no matter which type is it.

Now to the monster "cost", many people seems to have problem with people reborning Shocker or Vampire Lord over and over and over...yeah, I have problem with that too, but really...
1. In real card game, if you have more than 1 monster stay on the field for over 3 turns, you probably won
2. It's really hard to find a "tribute bait" in real card game.

So, unless you're really suck, or your opponent is really dumb, really, I don't see why I have to tap 6 Dark Mana to bring out Shocker...