The Lightwave Archetype - Senetdulums!

[Tojin]

Boy howdy it has been a while since I posted anything here! Hopefully, though, that'll change soon, starting with these lovely little guys. They're a super-aggressive archetype of LIGHT Pendulums that can all move around your five monster zones with the greatest of ease, even switching places with another monster! They also all have incredibly powerful pendulum effects, but they can only activate when you control a full field of Lightwave monsters, sorted from lowest level to highest level.

 

I'm actually kinda concerned that the archetype is a bit too powerful in its current incarnation, so feedback would be much appreciated!

 

P.S.: All the cards in the archetype are named after a song, which are all located in this playlist in order (except for Parousia). Have a listen, if you like!

 

P.P.S.: The monsters are a bit of a text clusterf*** (sorry), so to ease that, I've reduced a few phrases that show up on each card to "clauses", which are inside the monsters folder.

 

[spoiler=Monsters (7)]

Activation Clause: “Once per turn, if you control 5 “Lightwave” monsters that are arranged from lowest Level to highest Level, you can destroy this card:...”

 

Restriction Clause: “You cannot activate “Lightwave” monsters in your Pendulum Zones the turn you activate this effect.”

 

Zone Swapping Clause: “Once per turn, you can move this card to an adjacent Monster Zone. If a monster is already in that zone, you can place it in the Zone this card occupied previously.”

 

Lightwave Loadstar

Level 2

LIGHT

0/0

Scale 1/1

Pyro/Pendulum/Effect

Pendulum Effect: Activation Clause: Gain LP equal to the number of “Lightwave” cards you control x400, then inflict that much damage to your opponent. Restriction Clause.

 

Monster Effect: Zone Swapping Clause. When this card is destroyed while in a Monster Zone, you can target 1 monster on the field: Special Summon 1 “Lightwave” monster with a Level equal to or lower than the targeted monster’s Level from your Deck, except "Lightwave Loadstar", then you can apply one of the following effects:

• Gain LP equal to the targeted monster’s Level x200.

• Inflict damage to your opponent equal to the Level of the targeted monster x200.

 

Lightwave Lune

Level 3

LIGHT

0/1700

Scale 8/8

Fairy/Pendulum/Effect

Pendulum Effect: Activation Clause: All face-up monsters you control gain 800 ATK, and cannot be destroyed, also if a "Lightwave" monster you control destroys a monster by battle this turn, you can add 1 "Lightwave" monster from your Deck to your hand. You can activate this effect during either player's turn. Restriction Clause.

 

Monster Effect: Monsters you control that are adjacent to this card gain 500 ATK and cannot be destroyed by battle. When this card is Summoned: you can add 1 "Lightwave" card from your Deck to your hand. Zone Swapping Clause.

 

Lightwave Holy Knight

Level 4

LIGHT

1800/100

Scale 1/1

Warrior/Pendulum/Effect

Pendulum Effect: Activation Clause: destroy all cards your opponent controls. Restriction Clause.

 

Monster Effect: You can activate the following effects, depending on the level of the monster(s) adjacent to this card.

• Level 3: Target 1 Spell/Trap card you control: destroy it, and if you do, add 1 "Lightwave" monster from your Deck to your hand.

• Level 5: Target 1 card on the field: destroy it. This effect cannot be negated.

You can only activate each effect of “Lightwave Holy Knight once per turn. You can only control 1 face-up “Lightwave Holy Knight”. Zone Swapping Clause.

 

Lightwave Saika

Level 5

LIGHT

2000/1600

Scale 8/8

Warrior/Pendulum/Effect

Pendulum Effect: Activation Clause: This turn, “Lightwave” monsters you control can attack directly, and if a “Lightwave” monster you control would be destroyed this turn, you can return it to your hand instead, also halve all battle damage your opponent takes this turn. Restriction Clause.

 

Monster Effect: This card can attack your opponent directly. Once per turn, when a “Lightwave” monster in an adjacent Monster Zone inflicts battle damage to your opponent, you can target 1 card on your opponent's side of the field: return it to the hand. Zone Swapping Clause.

 

Lightwave Outsider

Level 6

LIGHT

1200/2200

Scale 1/1

Spellcaster/Pendulum/Effect

Pendulum Effect: Activation Clause: Destroy all Spell/Trap cards your opponent controls, then you can Set 1 of the destroyed cards to your side of the field, also all of your opponent’s monsters lose ATK and DEF equal to the number of cards destroyed x300. Your opponent cannot activate cards or effects in response to this effect. Restriction Clause.

 

Monster Effect: Once per turn, you can target 1 "Lightwave" monster you control and 1 monster your opponent controls in the same column: switch control of them until the End Phase. The other monster's Level becomes 6 and it is treated as a “Lightwave” monster until the End Phase. Zone Swapping Clause.

 

Lightwave Leviathan

Level 7

LIGHT

Scale 8/8

2600/1800

Sea Serpent/Pendulum/Effect

Pendulum Effect: Activation Clause: Set all cards your opponent controls, also if a “Lightwave” monster you control attacks this turn, your opponent's cards and effects cannot be activated until the end of the Damage Step. Monsters set by this effect cannot change their battle positions. Restriction Clause.

 

Monster Effect: When this card attacks, your opponent's cards and effects cannot be activated until the end of the Damage Step. If this card and “Lightwave” monsters adjacent to this card attack a defense position monster, inflict piercing damage to your opponent. Zone Swapping Clause.

 

Lightwave Lucitan

Level 8

LIGHT

Scale 1/8 (1 in the left zone, 8 in the right zone)

2900/2000

Fiend/Pendulum/Effect

Pendulum Effect: Once per turn, if your other Pendulum Zone is empty, you can move this card into it. This card gains the following effects depending on which Pendulum Zone it’s in:

• Left: “Lightwave” monsters you control gain 500 ATK and cannot be targeted by card effects.

• Right: You can Special Summon this card from your Pendulum Zone during your Main Phase if you control a face-up "Lightwave" monster.

Monster Effect: This card cannot be Normal Summoned or Set. Must first be Special Summoned by its own effect. Once per turn, you can place this card in any Monster Zone you control. If a monster is already in that zone, you can place it in the Zone this card occupied previously. Once per turn, if you control 5 “Lightwave” monsters that are arranged from lowest Level to highest Level, you can banish 1 “Lightwave” monster from your Extra Deck or your side of the field: activate its Pendulum Effect, ignoring its activation conditions. “Lightwave” monsters you control are unaffected by the effects of cards in the same column as them. You can only control 1 “Lightwave Lucitan”.

 

[spoiler=Spells (5)]

Lightwave Moon Halo

Continuous Spell

"Lightwave" monsters you control gain 500 ATK. When a "Lightwave" monster you control destroys a monster by battle, you can add 1 "Lightwave" monster with a different Level from all face-up "Lightwave" monsters you control from your Deck to your hand. You can only activate this effect of "Lightwave Moon Halo" once per turn.

 

Lightwave Precipitation

Continuous Spell

When a “Lightwave” monster(s) moves to another Monster Zone, you can inflict 300 damage to your opponent for each monster that moved, and if you do, gain that much LP. You can only control 1 “Lightwave Precipitation”.

 

Lightwave Entrance

Quick-Play Spell

Special Summon 1 “Lightwave” monster from your Deck with a different Level from all “Lightwave” monster you control. It cannot move to a different Monster Zone this turn. If you control no monsters, the summoned monster must be Level 4 or lower. You can only activate 1 “Lightwave Entrance” per turn.

 

Lightwave Genesys

Field Spell

“Lightwave” monsters gain 400 ATK and DEF. Thrice per turn, when a “Lightwave” monster you control moves to a different Monster Zone, your opponent loses 500 LP, and you gain 500 LP. If this card in the Field Zone is destroyed and sent to the Graveyard: You can add 1 “Lightwave” card from your Deck to your hand.

 

Lightwave Parousia

Quick-Play Spell

Activate only if the combined ATK of your opponent’s monsters are higher than your LP. Special Summon as many “Lightwave” monsters as possible from your Graveyard or face-up in your Extra Deck. Cards and effects cannot be activated in response to this card’s activation, or in response to a “Lightwave” monster’s attack during the turn you activate this card. You can only activate 1 “Lightwave Parousia” per turn.

 

[spoiler=Traps (2)]

Lightwave Requiem

Continuous Trap

Once per turn, when a 'Lightwave' monster you control is destroyed by your opponent's card (whether by battle or by card effect), you can activate one of the following effects:

• Destroy 1 monster on the field.

• Add 1 'Lightwave' monster from your Graveyard or Extra Deck, except for the destroyed monster, to your hand.

 

Lightwave Friction

Continuous Trap

When a “Lightwave” monster you control battles an opponent’s monster, negate that monster’s effect until your next Standby Phase. When a “Lightwave” monster inflicts Battle Damage to your opponent, you can banish 1 card from their Graveyard or that is face-up in their Extra Deck.

[Tojin]

Bump!

[Tojin]

Bump.

[leafbladie]

I just wanted to say, Monster Zone swapping has been tried before, but it died out since there were no official rulings stating that you can or can’t move your cards around, partly because a lot of people just slap cards down without much order to them unless they’re using a mat. Anyway, enough of that, onto to the review.

 

Loadstar:

 

Pendulum: 2800 burn and heal is pretty nice, but the restriction clause means that you wouldn’t be able to activate it the turn you used it, because placing a Pendulum Monster in a Pendulum Zone is activating it, so that means you’d have to wait until next turn to use it, which is much too long, especially if you want to finish off limping opponents.

 

Monster Effect: Burn/self heal is decent, however, you could use it to summon itself from the Extra Deck, and if you found a way to loop its own destruction, you could continually summon it to burn your opponent for 400 damage over and over. Put a HOPT on its effect. Although, there is a problem with this card, if your opponent decides to attack your other monsters first, it won’t really matter that much, maybe giving this card a clause that your opponent must target it for battle or something would be helpful. Also, some slight PSCT errors, replace that comma following “Monster Zone” with a colon, and replace the colon following “field” with a semicolon.

 

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Lune:

 

Pendulum: This feels like it should honestly just be a continuous effect, not something you activate. As it is right now, you can only activate it during your turn, when you’d honestly need it a lot more during your opponent’s. Complete destruction immunity may seem strong, and it kind of is, but it’s not inherent to the monsters, if this card is destroyed, that protection will go away.

 

Monster: Nice, this synergizes well with Loadstar, because it’ll protect your higher level monsters, so your opponent may just have to destroy this first. However, as it’s the second lowest on the list, one of the one’s you’re probably protecting from battle is Loadstar, so that’s not so great. Feel like this should’ve been the effect on the Level 5, as it has the most versatility in where it can be placed.

 

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Lightwave Holy Knight

 

Pendulum: Well that escalated quickly. The effect is pretty nice for a Pendulum Zone effect, just wipes your opponent’s board clear, with all the destruction protection/floating we have though, this isn’t as great as it used to be, but its still pretty nice, and I’m a sucker for nuke effects. Also, same changes as I mentioned with Loadstar’s in the PSCT.

 

Monster Effect: The destruction effect is decent, with a reasonable activation requirement. However, none of your lower level monsters seems to help promote the consistency of your archetype, which is a big issue, as that’s usually the expectation of lower level monsters to have effects that will make your win condition easier to reach. Also, the PSCT is a bit off, replace the comma following “card” with a colon, and replace the colon following “controls” with a semicolon. Just a tidbit of information, colons always precede costs, and semicolons always follow costs, and targeting is always a cost. Also, you capitalize after a colon, but keep lowercase after a semicolon, unless the word would be capitalized regularly.

 

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Saika:

 

Pendulum Effect: Oh geez, I’m really not a big fan of that effect, that’s just asking for dumb OTKs. Honestly, I think that should be toned down a bit, like your opponent takes half damage this turn, or each attack only does 800 Damage, because even at 800, you’d be dealing 4000 damage all at once.

 

Monster Effect: That effect is much too strong, and way too splashable. Not only does it serve as a Heartlandraco that’s splashable in nearly any pendulum deck, and can attack directly for 2000 Damage. It also has a bounce effect on top of it, that seems to have a restriction, but since you can attack directly with it, you’ll likely be able to bounce whatever you need, whenever you need, whether it’s a stronger monster your opponent is sitting on, or something else. This doesn’t even acknowledge the fact that you can bounce your own cards, so that means you can reuse Fiendish Chain, or bounce your Vanity’s Emptiness, proceed to summon a bunch and make an amazing field, and then set Vanity’s Emptiness to activate on your opponent’s turn to royally screw them over. There are a few things you need to do to improve this card, 1. Restrict it to the archetype more, make it also require a “Lightwave” monster in order to attack directly, like have it target 1 “Lightwave” monster you control with a higher level, and make it unable to attack or activate its effects this turn, and then this card can attack directly, but the damage is halved. Then you can keep the bouncing effect, but limit it to your opponent’s cards, as self bouncing effects are pretty OP, especially in the event of pendulums, as they offer an easy way to reset scales.

 

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Outsider:

 

Pendulum: So basically a “Masked Hero Acid” effect that combines with a “Toadally Awesome” snatch effect. Honestly, as backrow isn’t much of an issue, in this game, except for against Metalfoes, this effect doesn’t seem too bad, but your archetype could really use some instant Spell/Trap destruction to handle Solemn Strikes, as they’ll severely hamper you, if not end you, if you happen to summon all 5 Pendulums at the same time when they activate it. Remove the ability to set a Spell/Trap you stole, and it honestly seems fine as is.

 

Monster Effect: I really like the snatch effect, as it’s a pendulum, it’ll go back to your Extra Deck when destroyed to use again, honestly reminding me of the “Creature Swap” with a Spirit monster combo. But this also means that your opponent can put their most valuable monsters to the rightmost zone (from their perspective) to prevent this from being as useful. Again however, you need to tie it to the archetype better, restrict it more, and by god, please give it a HOPT so it can’t be abused. I feel like the best way to do this would be to do it as so:

 

“You can target 1 monster your opponent controls, and 1 “Lightwave” monster you control that is in the same column and with the same Level as the first target: Switch control of those monsters, also the first target is treated as a “Lightwave” monster. You can only use this effect of ”Lightwave Outsider” once per turn.”

 

Leviathan:

 

Pendulum: Honestly pretty nasty, sometimes setting your opponent’s cards can be more crippling to them than destroying them. However, you might want to make it so “Monsters changed to face-down Defense Position by this effect cannot change their battle position.” since it has such an extreme activation cost. Also, the Armades PSCT has been changed, now it’s “If this card battles, your opponent’s cards and effects cannot be activated until the end of the Damage Step.”

 

Monster Effect: Pretty standard, but appreciated, however, it’d actually be: “If this card or “Lightwave” monsters adjacent to this card attack a Defense Position monster, inflict piercing battle damage to your opponent.”

 

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Lucitan: Before I get into it, I want to say, don’t make asynchronous scales, while I understand it seems like Konami may do it in the future, they haven’t yet, and for Advanced clause, we follow the standard set by them, even if it is a bit silly at times. I’m not saying this to be mean, it’s just the expectation here.

 

Pendulum: The Left effect is neat, granting targeting protection to your monsters goes hand in hand with the destruction protection offered to them. However, the right effect is a bit problematic, you could splash this in any Rank 8 deck, and use its effect for some easy Xyz Material. So fix that, and make it more restricted to the archetype.

 

Monster: Decently interesting effect based on the column nature, and cool that it allows you to use more of the Pendulum effect. That unaffected bit is nice, fitting the archetype, though it is laughably situational.

 

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Moon Halo: Okay, just going to say something straight away, unrecyclable Equip Spells really aren’t good. You should probably have some way for this to be retrieved from the Graveyard, maybe by destroying one of your scales, which would be beneficial to you if you wanted to use a different Pendulum effect. Also, this should probably help more with the win condition, why not make it so that you can change the Level of the equipped monster to be 1 Less or more than one adjacent to it, or to be the same as the monster in the opposing column if you want to switch control with Outsider’s effect. Maybe make it so that when it destroys a monster, you can summon 1 Token of any Level from 1 to 8 in any of your columns, to help act as defensive fodder, and make reaching the activation condition easier, or maybe just have it add a Pendulum monster of the same Level as they destroyed monster.

 

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Precipitation: Feels like something better for a Field Spell in all honesty. This is your major consistency booster to help you get your combo pieces, so you’re going to want to use it as much as possible.

 

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Entrance: Decent consistency booster that can also serve as recovery, no idea why you have it as a Quick-Play though, there’s no real reason for it that I can see.

 

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Genesys: That burn effect is a bit annoying. It’s basically asking you to waste time just shuffling your cards around to burn the opponent for 1500 each turn. Also, as a burn effect without a HOPT, it’s probably going to be looped somehow. I think this effect would be better suited for the Continuous Spell. That float effect though is a bit underpowered, if you don’t want it to get the Field Spell, that’s fine, but at least let it retrieve from the Deck, I mean “Kozmotown” has shown while annoying, it’ll be fine. Speaking of that, you should probably specify that this card needs to be in the Field Zone when destroyed so you can’t use shenanigans like “Magical Hats” to use its effect. Look at “Kozmotown” to see how you’d word it.

 

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Parousia: I mean it might be interesting as a one-off, and it works better than Soul Charge since Pendulum don’t usually get to the Graveyard, but still pretty hard to pull off. Also, for all the massive Special Summoning, you probably should at least include a “You cannot conduct your Battle Phase the turn you activate this card.” clause. One more thing, since “Lightwaves” burn the opponent and heal yourself, it’s going to be a lot harder to reach this condition, maybe consider some other way to have an activation requirement that fits with the archetype.

 

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Requiem: Fine enough as an alternate option, with a full field you could burn your opponent for 2500 each turn, 2000 if you wanted to keep them in the same positions by moving two cards adjacent to each other twice. However, that destroyed by opponent’s card clause is a bit wonky, as that means you could attack into them with your own monsters for some more burn, so attacking into a “Kaiju” or something means you could potentially deal 5000 burn damage in one turn.

 

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Friction: Pretty nice effect honestly, helping to deal with Pendulums or floating cards pretty nicely. Not really much else to say.

 

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Overall: These cards are pretty interesting, with a lot of effects that could be devastating to the opponent. However, the big problem with them is that they aren’t quick enough. This deck feels like a “Sophia” deck, sure it’s capable of single handedly winning you the duel with its amazing effect, but it’s a gigantic pain to summon. You mentioned worrying about them being too powerful, and while I agree there’s some annoying amount of power capable here, the issue is you probably won’t last long enough in a duel to see the potential power it has. I’d try to make the conditions for these monsters easy, like maybe for some you only need to control 3 monsters who are sorted by level or something. Make it so there are options when your fields aren’t at their specified win condition, that being having 5 “Lightwave” monsters on the field. Make the deck more consistent by adding search effects. All the power in the world won’t matter if you can’t consistently pull it off.

[Tojin]

Thanks a lot for the extensive review! I would have replied earlier, but I've had quite the busy week so far.

 

Loadstar: I get the complaint about its pendulum effect, but I'm not really sure how to change it. I tried to relate all of the monsters' pendulum effects to their monster effect in some capacity, like how Holy Knight goes from field nuke to 1-card destruction, but short of having some kind of mass Special Summon effect, I'm unsure of how to make Loadstar's effects similar.

 

As for the monster effect, I actually had it SS from the Deck originally. Not sure why I changed it, to be quite honest; leaving it as-is would resolve a lot of issues you had with it, I think. I'm certainly going to slap a hard OPT onto the SS effect, though.

 

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Lune: Yeah, Lune's pendulum effect is pretty lackluster. I wasn't certain of how to make it better, but I think your review gave me the solution: make it activatable on either player's turn! I think you may have misunderstood it a little though; Lune doesn't have to remain on the field to apply the effect, and in fact destroys itself as a cost.

 

As for the monster effect, I was considering adding a "When this card is Summoned: you can add 1 "Lightwave" card from your Deck to your hand" effect onto it, and modifying the pendulum effect to let you search when a Lightwave inflicts damage to your opponent during that turn. Would that be any good, d'you think, or would that make it too good?

 

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Holy Knight: I was considering redoing its monster effect entirely, actually. The version I have so far is something like this:

 

"You can activate the following effects, depending on the level of the monster(s) adjacent to this card.

• Level 3: Target 1 Spell/Trap card you control: destroy it, and if you do, add 1 "Lightwave" monster from your Deck to your hand.
• Level 5: Target 1 card on the field: destroy it. This effect cannot be negated.

You can only activate each effect of 'Lightwave Holy Knight' once per turn. You can only control 1 face-up 'Lightwave Holy Knight'."

 

Would this work, or would it be too over the top?

 

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Saika: I can certainly see how that pendulum effect would cause problems, yeah. I think halving the battle damage would work fine in this case.

 

For the monster effect, I think limiting the bouncing effect to only adjacent Lightwave monsters, and making it only target your opponent's cards, would solve most of the problems with the card.

 

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Outsider: Honestly, given that backrow really isn't that much of an issue in this game, I think the pendulum effect is just fine as is, because you're likely not going to be stealing anything that useful. The stealing is optional, besides.

 

For the monster effect, I like your suggestion, but I think it may be too specific still. I was thinking a version that matched the levels of the monster you stole with the one you gave away, but returned control of both monsters at the End Phase, and returned the other monster's level to normal. A hard OPT is definitely warranted, though.

 

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Leviathan: So, add the bit that made Quaking Mirror Force so famous, and fix up the PSCT. Got it!

 

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Lucitan: Aww, I like asynchronous scales. =c I'll not make any more though. I think requiring another Lightwave to be already on the field for Lucitan to summon itself would be a good requirement.

 

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Moon Halo: I think I may just make this a continuous spell, honestly. Might make the ATK buff universal for Lightwaves, and add that search-on-destruction bit you mentioned.

 

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Precipitation: What I'm thinking here is to swap Precipitation's current effect with the burn/heal bit on Genesys, and not have a restriction on how many times it can activate in a turn. I'd also reduce the damage to something like 300, or maybe less, since with all the zone swapping, that damage will definitely add up. That kinda invalidates Requiem's existence, though... Hmm.

 

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Entrance: The reason for Entrance being a quick-play is just in case you suddenly find yourself without any protection from your opponent's monsters during their battle phase. It's pretty specific, but I felt like they needed at least some kind of way to rebound a bit from a Raigeki or something.

 

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Genesys: Yeah, the float is honestly kinda lame. Think I'll make it like on Kozmotown, like you said.

 

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Parousia: This card wasn't really intended to be run at more than 1, since it is basically an in-archetype Soul Charge. I think I may just change it to "If the ATK of your opponent's monsters is higher than your LP", to make it more flexible.

 

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Requiem: Since Precipitation pretty much makes this card redundant with its current effect, I was thinking of making it more like this:

 

"Once per turn, when a 'Lightwave' monster you control is destroyed by your opponent's card (whether by battle or by card effect), you can activate one of the following effects:

• Destroy 1 monster on the field.
• Add 1 'Lightwave' monster from your Graveyard or Extra Deck, except for the destroyed monster, to your hand."

 

 

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Friction: Yeah, not much to say here. This card is probably my favorite of the bunch, actually.

 

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Again, thanks a ton for such a detailed review! I really appreciate it!