User blog comment:Natsu Fury/Yu-gi-oh vs Buddyfight/@comment-11372432-20140527154405

As stated below, since you already have a deck for yugioh, you don't need to buy anything, provided that you don't decide to play on a competitive level. I have decided to stop buying new packs, but I play online on YGOpro, however I will still play IRL, as long as it's a casual game.

It is far, far too expensive to just bother anymore with packs. The only card I want out of the new pack that badly in Madolche Anjelly to complete my deck that I've had since over a year ago, but meta sheep along with Konami's rarity bump made it a $50 card and it's something to play at three copies. The most expensive cards here are at most like $20 and that's something like Asmodai since a lot of people need him at five and he's a RRR. If that happened in yugioh he would have been over $70 easy.

In short, you can play yugioh cheap, just not competitively and if you don't go for new cards right away. This is all coming from someone who's played the game since the beginning, by the way.