[Leaderboard] yugiohcreator876 vs KoolGoldfinch

[Nathanael D. Striker]

Rules:

All Leaderboard rules apply.
First to 3 votes or most votes by May 10th, 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. If the deadline passes with Card C leading, then it's a tie.

Create a card with banishing as a secondary focus.

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

Card A

Once per turn, you can Special Summon 1 monster from your Graveyard to the field, then banish 1 monster on your opponent's side of the field.

 

Card B

Activate this card when your opponent has at least 4000 more LP than you. When this card is activated: Roll a six-sided die once; destroy all face-up monsters whose Levels/Ranks are equal to or higher than the result. As long as this card remains active: The ATK & DEF of all face-up monsters becomes equal to the original ATK & DEF of the face-up monster with the lowest ATK & DEF. If this card is destroyed by an opponent's card effect: Flip a coin and call Heads or Tails; if you call it right, banish all of your opponent's face-up monsters. If you call it wrong: Banish all monsters you control.

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

I should bring up the mention of Card A's name already existing on a real card, which can be found here, so a bit of point deduction here.

Anyway, it's essentially a generic Book of Life (except the banish happens on the field, so depending on the time/situation, can be better or worse).

 

Then we have the possibility of abuse in multiple copies. Just remember that "Once per turn" only applies to that card; not to any other copies of the card with the same name.

Although no one's brought up that situation with Book of Life, from what I recall.

 

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Card B requires that you're losing LP-wise, and depending on how things go, either can blow up your opponent's boss mons, or if you get unlucky with a low roll, you get screwed over.

Additionally, it forces monsters onto the same playing field (well, makes it equal to the weakest monster on the field), and any stat boosters don't help.

 

Last effect is again another gamble; if you get it right, your opponent gets screwed. If not, you are.

 

 

Hmm, a Book of Life effect vs a banishing version of Lightning Vortex that activates when you're behind AND "equalizes" things.

 

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In this instance, I'll have to choose card C.

 

I have some reservations abou A being a walking BoL (and abusable as such). If this card had a hard OPT, I wouldn't have reservations on voting for it. Also, the name.

 

B requires you to be behind on activation, and if things backfire (either with the die roll or coin toss on destruction), it does more harm than good.

For the most part, it also turns things into draws (by stat value); yes it's good for stalling for a while.

 

However, there are some ruling things that I should probably mention; given it requires both ATK/DEF of the weakest monster.

What will happen if the monster has the lowest ATK or DEF, but not in the other one?

[Nathanael D. Striker]

1-0 Card A

0-0-1 Card C

[VCR_CAT]

Card A is very busted. It only has a soft OPT and it banishes your opponent's monster without targeting, all while having no cost of any kind, and it can summon itself from the grave and enable a lot of disgusting OTK's and R4 plays. (you didn't notice this, Sakura?) The design itself is fairly dry; it doesn't really do anything new or creative and its effect itself is kind of boring, besides being completely and utterly busted.

Meanwhile Card B tries to do too much. The dice-roll Dark Hole is an interesting effect, but the ATK/DEF modified doesn't make too much sense for what the card is trying to do, while the coin flip adds a little too much. If this card had more focus on what it was trying to do, did less overall, and was made less of a lucksack card in design, I would be for the design more. As it is, I don't think this card would be run anyways as the situations where it would be optimal to use are few and far between.

I vote Card C. Between Card A's complete and utter lack of balance and Card B's questionable usability (among other reasons for both), I'm voting for the draw.

[Tinkerer]

I also have to go with Card B.

Card A is way too abusable. Non-target banishing with only a soft OPT? it's pretty crazy. Not only that, but the lack of restriction on what it revives (meaning you could revive another one and proceed to use its ability again) gives it even better usability than Noden. With the fact that it is also searchable through RotA, well, it's just too much.

Card B just looks as though the creator wanted to put a die roll and coin toss on one card. To be honest, the steep LP difference is the biggest downside to this card since it means that it takes a good amount of effort to be live. Initially it is a limited dark hole. If you are losing by 4000, it probably implies that a dark hole that leaves only the weakest monsters might be useful, no? Then all monsters become as powerful as the weakest monster currently on the board. This delay would get your opponent to destroy it, which would trigger the third effect. What I think is good about the card is simply that each effect leads to the next. The conditions are the only thing that really kills it.

[Cool Girl]

Oops! Really, my bad! I didn't think that when I was designing the card, I copied an "actual card". My deepest apologies!

[Trebuchet MS]

Let's consider the condition - secondary focus. What's it mean? To me, that's anything except the card's main job. Like icing on a cake. And the icing here is banishing stuff. So, with that in mind...

 

Card A

I don't think I need to mention a proper printed card going by that name.

 

So, you get free revival and banishment at the same time. Simple and powerful. Most of the time, such free revival comes bogged down with a drawback or something. Not here - you get an extra plus on the way. And based on the wording, it doesn't look like it targets.

 

If there's nothing to banish, do you still get to revive, or vice-versa? That's a question that needs to be addressed clearly with proper wording.

 

Since it's part of the main effect, I'll consider the banishing part of this card as its primary focus as well, and thus this card will immediately fail the "secondary" part of the requirement.

 

Card B

When you need to be losing pretty badly to activate this card, we expect something that helps you stabilize. Regardless of the die result, this will hit all Level/Rank 6 or higher monsters at minimum, giving you a bit of a reprieve and potentially averting death. And barring very bizarre circumstances, you need at least 4 on the roll to reliably wipe the board, so we're looking at 66% chance of your bacon being saved if it goes off successfully.

 

The other effect makes it nigh-impossible to proceed with the game, though. When everyone's the same size, it's impossible for either side to push for damage unless they clear one side's field. Considering you just wiped the board at Spell Speed 2, this might just present your chance to turn things around before the opponent can begin fielding things.

 

The final effect (and this is how a "secondary focus" would be done) feels terribly unstable. It's like Time Wizard all over again, only that it banishes. Very few are fond of such luck-based effects since failing not only means you don't get anything beneficial, but you also get screwed over. Having a card do nothing on failure would be a significant enough downside.

 

The Verdict

Card A is too powerful and outright fails the criteria. But does that mean Card B wins by default? I doubt it. You're already losing when you have this card activated, and when your opponent inevitably pops this card in hopes of finally being able to push for damage, you have odds of either being able to stabilize a second time or just losing outright, and that's all down to a coin flip. Might as well run something that is more consistent with its outcomes. Something like Mirror Force.

 

Card C gets the vote here.

[Nathanael D. Striker]

1-1-2 Card C

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

@VCR: I knew about the R4 plays, and I even mentioned that it's a Book of Life for most intents and purposes.

Although that in mind, I had other things to deal with at the time I was voting; so that's why I likely voted for A, despite having reservations on its design.

 

And if it doesn't target, which it apparently doesn't, then yeah it's broken as hell.

 

Upon further review of both cards [my remarks on B stand], I'm changing my vote to card C for this one.

(I usually don't like that option, but suppose I need to do it here. Next time, vote on things when you're not preoccupied with final projects)

[Nathanael D. Striker]

Alright, that makes this 0-1-3 Card C. That's game.

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

Alright, I'll go ahead and lock this.

Don't forget about the voter reps, Striker (since a few of us took the time to grade stuff here).