The Myth of Unsearchable Once-Per-Turn Spells
The Numbers#
A somewhat common sentiment online, when it comes to analyzing a new spell in Yugioh, is that it would be much stronger without a name-based use/activation restriction, or much weaker with one. An extremely strong effect could be balanced with a once-per-turn restriction. There are of course exceptions, but this is often near nonsense.
Some basic numbers, assuming a 40-card deck and 3 copies of the spell in question:
- Going first, you have a 33.8% chance of opening at least 1 copy
- Going first, you have a 3.6% chance of opening at least 2 copies (thus a 30.1% chance of opening exactly 1 copy)
- Going first, you have a 0.1% chance of opening all 3 copies
- Going second, you have a 39.4% chance of opening at least 1 copy
- Going second, you have a 5.4% chance of opening at least 2 copies (thus a 34.1% chance of opening exactly 1 copy)
- Going second, you have a 0.2% chance of opening all 3 copies
Semi-limited cards (like Lightning Storm, at the time of writing) are more severely impacted - going second, it's a 28.1% chance to open 1+, but only a 1.9% chance to see both.
In other words, being able to activate a second/third copy of a given spell will only rarely come up. Having a 3-5% chance of being able to activate a second copy of some spell does not suddenly turn it into some super-OP thing. Unlimiting ROTA/Monster Reborn/Change of Heart/One for One would make them stronger/more useful, but not because they lack restrictions - it would largely be on their own merits, uses in relevant decks, and improving consistency. They are not on the limited list because they lack a once-per-turn restriction. Focus on the actual effect.
People play 3 copies of HOPT spells because drawing multiples is unlikely, and drawing your key cards consistently is important.
That's not to say all name-based restrictions are pointless, though. Two main factors can make spells much stronger when they don't have restrictions:
- Being consistently searchable (then, if you open 1, you can use it and search another)
- Your deck draws a lot of cards, making multiples more likely to turn up
Playing 3 Dark Corridor in Dark World, for example, is a bit risky - it's a strong effect, but you're likely to draw into multiple dead copies later. Swordsoul Emergence would get much better in its deck - you can search Mo Ye to start your plays, and (in MD) proceed to get Emergence->Protoss off Chixiao. It's also another thing if the card has multiple exclusive effects, particularly a field+GY effect. In that case, removing the restriction would often allow you to use both in the same turn and give it much more value.
Conclusion#
Use/activation restrictions on spells necessarily makes them weaker - it's a restriction, after all. But for many cards, it's not to any relevant degree. Most of the time, you're better off focusing on the actual effect when determining if a spell is good or not.
Allure of Darkness is strong if you don't mind banishing DARKs from your hand (and have a decent number of them). Adding a HOPT would not make it particularly weaker. Stake your Soul! would be about as good if it wasn't HOPT.
If a spell/trap on the forbidden/limited doesn't have a once-per-turn restriction, assuming it's not weak enough to come off already, adding a once-per-turn restriction wouldn't change that (unless, like Mass Driver, that's the whole point of the card). Reasoning no-errata at 3 is virtually the same outcome as HOPT Reasoning at 3.
You can fairly safely ignore most of the people online analyzing a new card by saying anything along the lines of-
- "Not OPT, so this is definitely good"
- "It would probably need a HOPT to be balanced"
- "I think the OPT restriction kills it"
They probably don't know what they're talking about and are just falling back on a basic binary checkbox. Unless, of course, the effect has some specific interaction with multiple copies/is searchable in a relevant archetype.
Notes#
I still would generally recommend, from a design standpoint, having HOPT restrictions on spells. They don't make the card much weaker, and make it safer long-term - there's less risk of some searcher being printed in the future, or some other way of easily accessing/looping/abusing the card. It's also just easier to learn cards if the restrictions are relatively uniform - keeping track of which cards are/aren't HOPT can be annoying for a newer player.
Monsters are a bit of a different case - they are highly accessible from the Deck and GY, so non-HOPT effects become much more abusable. It still obviously depends on the effect (Dark Crusader isn't doing anything worth worrying about), but proper restrictions are more important.