[Leaderboard] Admiral_Stalfos19 vs VCR Cat

[Nathanael D. Striker]

Rules:

All Leaderboard rules apply.
First to 3 votes or most votes by April 14th, 11:59PM PDT wins.
All voters must elaborate on their votes.
Both contestants and myself have the right to refuse votes, but must explain why we don't accept it.
Written cards are allowed. (Must be in written format, cards with blank pictures are not acceptable)
Card C Votes are allowed. 3 Card C votes result in a tie.

Create a Level 4 or lower WATER monster.

Rewards:
The winner gets a rep from the loser.
All voters get a rep for voting.

Card A

During your Main Phase: You can banish this card and 1 Continuous Trap Card from your Graveyard; the banished Trap Card's effect activates immediately (you must still pay activation costs), and remains active until your 2nd Standby Phase, or until this card is removed from the Banished Zone.

 

Card B

When this card is summoned, you can Special Summon 1 Level 3 or lower WATER monster from your hand. You can only Special Summon WATER monsters the turn you use this effect. Once per turn, when a face-up WATER monster you control is destroyed by battle or by card effect, you can activate this effect: This card gains ATK and DEF equal to the number of "Serene-Dippity" monsters you control x1000 until the end of this turn.

[Northern Sage]

Card A allows for a free activation of a Continuous Trap Card and take away its vulnerability to removal. There is a good amount of WATER support amongst them, but I think what makes this really interesting is Trap Monsters, as it will have the usual benefits Trap Monsters have without taking up as much space on the field. Especially Stungray, who is now only affected by monster removal.

Card B is meh. I suppose you have an all-purpose SS from the hand, but it isn't the best. Second effect is just plain inconsequential. To gain anything decent from it, you need 3+ monsters, including 2 copies of itself, and have the non-Serene-dippity monster destroyed. It's cute, but oh so meh.

Vote for A.

[Nathanael D. Striker]

1-0 Card A

[~Faytl~]

Skull Seal works with CotH and Abyssphere, though serving of note for Sphere: you won't be able to play spells for two turns and it won't destroy to trigger Abyssgunde since it's not faceup to blow up. CotH reuse that can't be destroyed is cool though.

Card B is bad. Water tour guide for a low number of water rank 3 monsters with a not very good atk gain effect.

Card A gets my vote.

[Nathanael D. Striker]

2-0 Card A

[VCR_CAT]

I hate to be that guy, but I would like to contest both votes.

Card A has a creative effect, I have to give it credit for that. You took a look at continuous traps and thought of a way to work with them. Both votes gave little elaboration or reason into why they vote for the card, but overall it functionally is not that great. For trap monsters, how would that work? The trap is being banished, so what is being summoned? How would this card work with Cloak and Dagger? As for still having the cost as a balance, this does not balance it at all. See: Mirror Wall, Fairy Box, Lose a Turn, Summon Limit, Macro Cosmos, VANITY'S EMPTINESS, Safe Zone, any trap with "Drain" in its name, etc. Continuous Traps are balanced by their ease of removal, yet by taking that out of the equation you've essentially made each and every one of those cards grossly imbalanced. The fact that it gets BANISHED makes it untouchable; how many decks have cards that can return banished cards from your opponent's side to the grave?! How many cards can do that that aren't limited or banned?!

Even more, this card is hardly water-themed. Yes, I understand you can use it with the Mermail trap, but this card is hardly themed for Mermails. In fact, the decks I can see actually using it the most would be some disgusting Zombie Lock decks. The card itself is basically a Zombie Card with a "Water" attribute slapped onto it; it actually has zero reason to be a water monster at all. It's incredibly imbalanced and not even completely functional looking at so many of the traps. This card isn't a card that would be run in a Water deck; it's Unizombie having a picnic.

Overall, the card itself has very little thought put into it regarding how it functions with many of these traps and is only a part of the tournament's theme because it has a blue icon in its attribute slot. If this were a Mermail card with an archetype-styled effect focused on only the continuous trap, THEN I could see it being reasonable in the contest. As of now, this card is grossly unbalanced and dysfunctional for its effect.

For both votes, neither has taken into good consideration the full implications of this card's effect, and this is my evidence as to why.

I'm aware my card isn't spectacular and this really is not a thing of me winning, but I can't remain silent about this. If this contest is about condoning good card design, that isn't the card to let win.

[Nathanael D. Striker]

Considering VCR Cat just broke anonymity, I have to end this now in Admiral_Stalfos19's favor. I can't accept people breaking anonymity in this tournament...

[Trebuchet MS]

Even more, this card is hardly water-themed. Yes, I understand you can use it with the Mermail trap, but this card is hardly themed for Mermails. In fact, the decks I can see actually using it the most would be some disgusting Zombie Lock decks. The card itself is basically a Zombie Card with a "Water" attribute slapped onto it; it actually has zero reason to be a water monster at all. It's incredibly imbalanced and not even completely functional looking at so many of the traps. This card isn't a card that would be run in a Water deck; it's Unizombie having a picnic.

The only restriction in this round was to create a WATER monster. Every other property of the card is free game, for better or worse.