The Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG often revolves around the cards with the biggest impact.
The state of the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG has changed many times over its lifetime, usually due to the introduction of a new summoning mechanic or a rule alteration that changes how the game is played, but sometimes, the game changes with the release of just one card that makes such a large impact that it forces players to change their approach to gameplay.
For the most part, these individual cards become somewhat staple additions to player's decks due to either their power, ease of use, or the advantage they bring when played. Some of them are Monsters with complex effects, others are Spells or Traps that are somewhat convoluted but bring powerful changes to the field that can be a nuisance to deal with, but all of them changed how the game was played.
Before this powerful Dark Attribute Monster was released, players would attack their opponent directly in whatever order they wanted, as it made no difference which Monster attacked first and which attacked last unless effects were being taken into consideration. Gorz, however, forced a trend of players to attack with their monsters from weakest to strongest, as its ability to summon not only itself, but a Token with the same amount of ATK and DEF as the amount to damage taken meant that players wanted to deal as much damage as possible before the effect would activate.
Although Heavy Storm has been on and off the Forbidden and Limited List many times, there was one point in particular during its Limited status where players would play mind games with it which would be known as "pro set Heavy Storm." This involved setting it face down to make the opponent believe it wasn't available to play, giving them a false sense of security into setting their own Spell and Trap Cards before activating it on the subsequent turn after the opponent had overextended. This also resulted in players wising up and not setting all of their Trap Cards at once, just in case there was a Heavy Storm set on the opponent's side of the field.
Long before the rise of Extra Deck summons, the only options players had for easy to summon, powerful Monsters were either Fusion Monsters or Main Deck cards that required a tribute. While Treeborn Frog was a common Monster used for tributes due to its recursion effect, Cyber Dragon was also used as a much more powerful option.
Because of how easy Cyber Dragon is to summon when the opponent has a Monster on their side of the field, it caused players to think twice before summoning something while their opponent also had no Monsters, as their advantage could very quickly turn around if they had a Cyber Dragon ready to go.
XYZ Monsters weren't overly powerful when they were first released, with Number 39: Utopia being one of the only good generic Rank 4 Monsters available to players, but that all changed with the introduction of Number 101: Silent Honor ARK. This easy to summon Extra Deck Monster could absorb any opposing Monster at the cost of both of its XYZ Materials, but that Monster had to be in attack mode. This single prerequisite forced people to play some of their own powerful Extra Deck monsters in defense mode to prevent them from being removed so easily, something that wasn't necessary until Number 101 was released.
Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End may have had the biggest impact on the game in history, being partly responsible for the creation of the Forbidden and Limited List, but it wasn't alone in how it changed the game. Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning and Chaos Sorcerer had just as much of an impact on the speed of the game, being incredibly easy to summon and very powerful Monsters changed how every other player needed to not only play the game but build their deck as well.
The Synchro and XYZ era of Yu-Gi-Oh! saw a rise in a certain kind of Effect Monster that would later go on to be labeled by the community as Hand Traps, Monsters whose effects activated in the hand of the owner rather than on the field. Where an opponent with a hand full of cards was once a sign they had no playable options, cards like Maxx "C" and Effect Veiler were now legitimate hidden threats that forced players to think about how many cards were in their opponent's hand before beginning their strategy, as either one of those cards could quickly stop any potential plays.
Like Number 101: Silent Honor ARK, Evilswarm Exciton Knight was a generic Rank 4 XYZ Monster that changed how players would approach their gameplay for the foreseeable future. Like Black Rose Dragon, it had a very powerful ability to destroy all cards on the field, but only if the opponent had more cards in play than the person who owned Exciton Knight.
This simple clause in its effect meant players would purposefully waste resources to ensure they had fewer cards than their opponent, as well as forcing players to not overextend their plays in fear of losing it all in an instant to Exciton Knight's effect.
One of the few decks that isn't its own archetype and had a very successful run in its time was known as HAT, short for Hand Artifact Traptrix, which took full advantage of the new Artifact cards that could be set as a Spell or Trap Card rather than summoned as a Monster. This, alongside the fact that HAT was a very Trap heavy deck, meant that players couldn't simply use Mystical Space Typhoon in just any card in the Spell or Trap Card zone in fear of destroying an Artifact by mistake, all of which have effects that activate when destroyed in the Spell or Trap Card zone.
Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier was, and largely still is, one of the best Synchro Monsters of all time, being the strongest Synchro Monster in many player's decks for a long time. A retraining of the card for the Nekroz archetype, the first truly successful attempt at the Ritual Summon mechanic, was released as Nekroz of Trishula. While it had a largely similar effect to banish three cards from the opponent's hand, field, and graveyard, it had the downside of only being able to activate if the opponent had at least one card in each of those areas. This one card would result in players making sure their hands were empty when playing against Nekroz decks just to make sure this one card couldn't activate its effect, which was capable of winning duels by itself.
One of the most controversial cards in Yu-Gi-Oh! was around for quite a while before players realized just how powerful it was. Cards that have wide impacting effects for both players, otherwise known as Floodgate cards, have been popular for a long time in the form of Skill Drain and Royal Decree, but Vanity's Emptiness took it to a whole new level by stopping any and all Special Summons. Because nearly every deck would use a full playset in the Side Deck, players had to account not only for their own copies that could stop opponent's plays, but also the reverse scenario as the majority of decks focus on many Special Summoned Monsters.
Source: cbr.com
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