When I first started to return to Yugioh I found a lot of new card types and play styles that I didn’t recognise. Synchro was the first that I encountered. I used Legacy Of The Duelist on Xbox as a teacher.

When I first saw an opponent use a Synchro summon I thought it was massively unfair. Using two fairly rubbish Monsters to pull a great Monster from the Extra Deck without needing Polymerisation was a complete cheat in my opinion, especially when the Synchro Monster was better than a lot of the Fusion Monsters I could remember.

To comfort myself I tried to tell myself it was just tributing two Monsters which made Synchros more bearable to face. I then realised Spell cards that effect Tribute Monsters has no effect on Synchro. This still seemed unfair to me.

With a Fusion Monster you need two specific Monsters and Polymerisation, with a Tribute you need your desired Monster in your hand but with Synchro you need two specific Monster types (Tuner and non-Tuner) which makes them incredibly easy to summon. This seems massively unfair still.

Then I noticed the rule that your Tuned Monsters has to have specific levels which made Synchros seem fair. You have to use weaker, lower level Monsters in your deck to summon a lot of the Synchros. This means you’re gaining the strength of Synchro Monsters in your deck while giving up overall deck power. It works out as fair with that balance as an opponent could just destroy all your weak Monsters and a Synchro summon could never happen.

Overall, even after some initial frustration I can see that Synchro Monsters are a reasonable addition to the game.