I had fun with other spirit cards that were even more crippling.
But I agree, Yata was a stupid deck lock thing - though I managed to use that against someone. Stole his card with a trap during his turn, so of course it got returned to his hand, then I used another trap to empty his hand, then removed his graveyard from play
Edit: The Yata lock was basically his entire strategy and it worked on every battle for him. So people were shocked when I whooped his ***.