They tried to stave it off by putting colored mana activations on cards to guide cards like Cranial Plating away from being easy inclusions
Custodi Lich is fairly good as you get rewarded each time you get the monarch, and on top of that, you become the monarch when it ETBs
Penny does this for only Basic Pokemon but that works great with the many large HP Basic-ex Pokemon that flooded the era, such as Terapagos-ex
you cannot Special Summon monsters from the Extra Deck for the rest of this turn, except Xyz Monsters, also Special Summon up to 3 Baby Spider from your hand and/or Deck, and if you do, their Levels become 5, also they cannot be used as material for an Xyz Summon, except the Xyz Summon of a DARK monster
As a casual player back then, I remember our local LGS couldnt fill the demand for Circle of Protection: Red as our answer to the variations of Red Deck Wins played in our town