On ritual cards and decks

[cr47t]

I've never understood the rage behind them. I've always thought of them to be one of the most gimmicky and cumbersone mechanics of YGO (needing the ritual spell card, the monster, AND the tributes all at once to make it work). Sure, there are a few examples where they are notably efficient (think Gishki and Nekroz) but those aren't really versatile. (I also have personal objections to the idea of "ritual summons" but that's a topic for another thread as well as a topic I've discussed before.)

 

What do you think of ritual cards/decks? Should Konami scrap them? Try harder to revitalize them? Keep it how it is? Discuss.

[Expelsword]

Rituals used to be very inconsistent, so only the best ones were played.

 

Now they've got so many consistency cards that they can be more consistent than non "gimmicky" decks, and even dominate in some cases. It barely feels like the same mechanic.

 

People were maining Book of Eclipse just to answer the Djinn Releaser play.

 

Let me ask you this, Konami:

Where's my /Assault Mode Synchro consistency boost?

[Sleepy]

Dedicated boosts for Ritual Summoning have it easy to design around the shortcomings:
Advantage restoring materials that might dub as consistency boosters (Manju, Devirituals, etc),

Ritual Spells that save you from having to spend materials from your hand/deck or having to have the Ritual Monster in hand specifically (Nekroz Spells, Odd-Eyes Advent, etc),

and Ritual Monsters that can either dub as hand-traps (Sauravis, Nekroz, etc) or be Ritual Summoned from elsewhere.

That's without going the route of "high reward" cards like Chaos MAX Dragon's 4k ATK with target/destruction protection and x2 pierce. 

 

I wish there was a legit attempt at integrating them into the game on a broader sense. Konami just makes an archetype focusing on Rituals every one or two generations of Yugioh and then they fade back out once the archetype cycles out of the meta. Rituals do demand a little dedication that doesn't necessarily mix well with the different focuses of other mechanics (like how Links and Xyzs don't provide Levels to ladder into, just to name something). I'd like to be able to tech a Ritual in a non-Ritual-focused deck without killing the pace. 

 

I've always liked them as an underdog mechanic and in old school play it always felt special when I could bring out a BLS or a Relinquished, so overall it is a personal favorite of mine. I've even made a few fanart drawing of Nekroz of Gungnir xD