Halcyon Archetype [Written]

[KDironclaw]

Hello! This is the first time I've posted anything in a looong time, but I've had a bit of inspiration for some cards and I wanted to get my ideas down. Given my relative inexperience with the forum, I'm not totally familiar with Realistic Cards' standards, nor am I wholly confident in my ability to design cards suited for the metagame. That being said though, any feedback is welcome and appreciated!

For context, this archetype is largely based on Zefraath. From a design standpoint, it's one of my favorite cards, and I've always loved the half-and-half light/dark aesthetic it had. So I decided I'd make a Pendulum archetype that sorta revolves around that. (As of now, these are only a few of the cards. I plan to design more to make the archetype more complete, but consider these as a base or 'proof of concept'.)

Halcyon Lightwyrm
Level 4 / LIGHT / Wyrm / Pendulum / Effect
ATK: 1200 | DEF: 1800 | Scale: 5

Pendulum Effect:
You cannot Pendulum Summon monsters, except "Halcyon" monsters. This effect cannot be negated. DARK "Halcyon" monsters you control cannot be destroyed by your opponent's card effects.

Monster Effect:
If this card is Pendulum Summoned: You can add 1 Level 4 or lower "Halcyon" monster from your Deck to your Extra Deck, except "Halcyon Lightwyrm". You can only use this effect of "Halcyon Lightwyrm" once per turn.

Notes: This is one of your Main-Deck Pendulums and one you'd want to set your scales with. It's monster effect helps to set up the Extra Deck for either a later Pendulum Summon or the cost of the deck's 'boss monster'.

 

Halcyon Darkwyrm
Level 4 / DARK / Wyrm / Pendulum / Effect
ATK: 1800 | DEF: 1200 | Scale: 0

Pendulum Effect:
You cannot Pendulum Summon monsters, except "Halcyon" monsters. This effect cannot be negated. LIGHT "Halcyon" monsters you control cannot be destroyed by battle.

Monster Effect:
If this card is Pendulum Summoned: You can add 1 Level 5 or higher "Halcyon" monster from your Deck to your Extra Deck, except "Halcyon Lightwyrm". You can only use this effect of "Halcyon Darkwyrm" once per turn.

Notes: Like Lightwyrm, this monster will help set up the Extra Deck; the difference being that while Lightwyrm loads Pendulum Summonable fodder, Darkwyrm loads the dual-attribute boss-monsters. You'll see why this is useful with our next card.

 

 

Halcyon Greatwyrm
Level 8 / EARTH / Wyrm / Pendulum / Effect
ATK: 3000 | DEF: 3000 | Scale: 3

Pendulum Effect:
You cannot Pendulum Summon monsters, except "Halcyon" monsters. This effect cannot be negated. If you have a "Halcyon" card in your other Pendulum Zone: You can add 1 Wyrm "Halcyon" Pendulum Monster from your Deck to your Extra Deck face-up, except "Halcyon Greatwyrm", and if you do, change this card's Pendulum Scale to be the same as that Pendulum Monster's, until the end of this turn. You can only use this effect of "Halcyon Greatwyrm" once per turn.

Monster Effect:
Cannot be Normal Summoned/Set. Must be Special Summoned (from your hand) by tributing 2 "Halcyon" monsters with different Attributes. While face-up on the field or face-up in the Extra Deck, this card is also LIGHT and DARK. You can shuffle 1 face-up "Halcyon" Pendulum Monster from your Extra Deck into the Deck, then, you can apply these effects, in sequence, depending on the Attribute(s) of the monster shuffled into the Deck.
• LIGHT: Target 1 monster your opponent controls; banish it.
• DARK: Target 1 Spell/Trap your opponent controls; banish it.
This is a Quick Effect if you have 2 "Halcyon" cards in your Pendulum Zones. You can only use this effect of "Halcyon Greatwyrm" once per turn.

Notes: This is the archetype's first 'boss-monster', and is where the inspiration from Zefraath really shines through. Its Pendulum Effect pays homage to said monster, and it shares a similar summoning condition, in that while it's a Pendulum card, it has to be summoned by tributing your monsters. Its main effect depends on the attribute of the monster you use to activate it, but if you use one of the 'boss-monsters', you can use both flavors of the effect at once.

 

 

Halcyon Starchart
Field Spell

Effect:
If you control no monsters, or all monsters you control are "Halcyon" monsters, you can Pendulum Summon "Halcyon" monsters from your Extra Deck to your Main Monster Zones. If you do, you cannot Special Summon monsters from the Extra Deck, except "Halcyon Monsters". Once per turn: You can reveal 1 Level 5 or higher "Halcyon" monster in your hand; shuffle it into the deck, and if you do, add 2 Level 4 or lower "Halcyon" monsters with the same Type as the revealed monster, but with different Attributes, from your deck to your hand. You can only activate 1 "Halcyon Starchart" per turn.

Notes: This is the Field Spell of the archetype. I thought since the archetype focused so much on adding to the extra deck, they'd benefit from an effect that allows them to circumvent the pendulum-link clause, with the trade-off that they wouldn't be able to do any crazy extra-deck plays afterward. (While this may not be worth it with the current cards alone, the effect would only become more powerful the more cards I add, so I believe such a restriction is necessary.)
If you notice, the card has a little bit of built-in future-proofing. I plan to release the monsters as 'sets of three' that share the same type. For example, Lightwyrm + Darkwyrm = Greatwyrm, which was my idea behind the shuffle n' search effect.

 

 

Halcyon Duality
Normal Spell

Effect:
Send 1 face-up "Halcyon" monster you control or 1 "Halcyon" Pendulum Monster in your Pendulum Zone to the Extra Deck face-up; add to your hand 1 "Halcyon" monster with the the same Type as that monster, but with a different name.

Notes: This one is a way to generate a small bit of advantage while setting up your Extra Deck. You can either dump a boss-monster in your Pendulum Zone to use as cost later, or dump a low-level monster to add a boss-monster to your hand to summon.

 

 

Halcyon Eclipse
Counter Trap

Effect:
When a monster effect is activated while you control LIGHT and DARK monsters among the "Halcyon" monsters you control: negate the activation, and if you do, destroy that card.
 

Notes: Here's a counter trap for the archetype. You can easily activate it when you control a 'boss monster' such as Greatwyrm.

 

 

Closing Notes: This is very much WIP, and before you scoff, cringe, and lose your lunch over the unimaginative names, I haven't thought of good names for the cards yet, so these are what I'm rolling with for now. I'm not super familiar with PSCT yet, so if there's anywhere I can fix my card-grammar, feel free to let me know! Any other advice is appreciated to. I'm already thinking about adding some searchers to the mix, but we'll see how this does so far. Thanks for reading!

 

Changelog:

2/20/21:
• Fixed the ATK/DEF values of the little monsters.
• Added a clause to Greatwyrm so it can't summon itself from the Extra Deck.
• Revised Duality's effect.

[Messoras]

I gotta be honest. These seem pretty damn fine to me. I really like the concept you are going through with the Attributes. even though the boss monster(s) make(s) it relatively simple to fulfill the DARK and LIGHT conditions. For the PSCT, I don't see many mistakes. Just some small errors like non-capitalized "Level"s or "deck" in Greatwyrm's effect, where it should be "Deck". The coloring of the card names kinda confused me on first sight since I usually use them to visualize the card type, so don't wonder why I'm changing their colors in my comment. I assume the Scales for all the monsters will always be 0 or 5, except for the boss monsters which have some scale-manipulating effects. This makes me think that either the lower pendulum scale or the "You cannot Pendulum Summon, except Halcyon monsters" is superfluous. I'd probably change the lower pendulum scales to 3, but maybe you want to add more lower leveled monsters, so don't mind me in that case.

Halcyon Lightwyrm seems to be a pretty standard Pendulum "starter" as in more casual Pendulum builds, that don't use the Endymion engine and setup links before Pendulum Summoning. Adding a second baby Halcyon for followup plays (or as Normal Summon to Tribute for a boss monster) should be quite useful, but not to strong. The protection effect is interesting, as the DARK ones seem to be the monsters with higher DEF and lower ATK stats and the bosses receive both protections anyways.

On the other hand Halcyon Darkwyrm adds a boss Halcyon, which seems to be much more valuable for the deck, since you can then Special Summon it by Tributing just 2 of your Halcyons (and sending them to your Extra Deck). I think the battle protection targeting the lower DEF and higher ATK monsters is fine here, anyhow I'd say effect protection is far more useful than battle protection, so you would probably never activate this one in the scales if you don't have to and rather try to Special Summon it.

Halcyon Greatwyrm, the boss monster of this subset definetely reminds of Zefraath, with its Scale copying effect. Anyway I think it is more useful when it's in the monster zone, as a Quick Effect banish basically without any significant cost is a big threat to the opponent. The Special Summon condition seems to be fine, as it doesn't kill your advantage, as the monsters go to the Extra Deck, but also affects the card balance. You need to specify from what location it can be Summoned from though - something along

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Must be Special Summoned (from your hand or face-up Extra Deck) by tributing 2 "Halcyon" monsters with different Attributes.

To use this card's full potential, you'd probably need a way to remove it from the Pendulum Scale (I'll adress that later).

The Field Spell of the archetype, namely Halcyon Starchart actually seems to be the strongest card in this whole set. Completely taking away the biggest weakness of Pendulum monsters in Master Rule 4 & 5 in addition to a once per turn +1, which actually ends up being a +2 if you Pendulum Summon an added Darkwyrm, to get the dropped boss monster back and most likely a +3 as you 'd probably be able to Pendulum Summon another added baby Halcyon to get another search off. The restriction is probably the only thing that 'd keep this card off the banlist. It definetely makes this deck playable and could probably even push it beyond rogue and up into top tiers.

Halcyon Duality is a good idea to generate something like a slight advantage for the deck (by replacing a card on the field and stacking the Extra Deck), but could probably be more useful, if it either added the card to the hand or allowed you to place it in the Pendulum Scale, as the baby Halcyons trigger their effects when they are Pendulum Summoned only. Here also comes in what I said earlier about Greatwyrm. How about

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Send 1 face-up "Halcyon" monster you control or 1 face-up "Halcyon Pendulum" Monster in your Pendulum Zone to the Extra Deck face-up; add to your hand 1 Halcyon monster with the the same Level as that monster, but with a different Attribute.

This way you could use Greatwyrm's effect to stack your Extra Deck and then send it away to Special Summon it by its own effect later.

Halcyon Eclipse is a pretty standard Counter Trap, as almost every deck has one. It negates monster effects only (which are of course the most important), atleast requires you to control 2 baby Halcyons or 1 boss Halcyon and also is not searchable so far, so I'd call it balanced but nothing special.

All in all the archetype wields a really nice concept and should be quite fun to play, as it grinds not to bad due to the Field Spell making your whole Extra Deck live and boss monsters being easily searchable (and Special Summonable). It doesn't spam out 20 negates so even with up to 4 Quick Effect banishes (2 bosses) it shouldn't feel to itchy to play against. Good work KDironclaw!

Greets,
Messoras

[KDironclaw]

Thank you so much for the advice! (I knew those notes would come in handy!)

 

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I'd probably change the lower pendulum scales to 3, but maybe you want to add more lower leveled monsters, so don't mind me in that case.

Correctamundo! When I add more monsters, the lower ones are probably gonna range from level 1-4, hence the scales.

 

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The protection effect is interesting, as the DARK ones seem to be the monsters with higher DEF and lower ATK stats and the bosses receive both protections anyways.

Y'know, you're totally right! I must've flip-flopped the ATK/DEF values while I was writing, but I'd meant to make the DARK ones have more ATK and the LIGHT ones have more DEF. Definitely adding that one to the to-do list!

 

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On the other hand Halcyon Darkwyrm adds a boss Halcyon, which seems to be much more valuable for the deck, since you can then Special Summon it by Tributing just 2 of your Halcyons (and sending them to your Extra Deck).

Aboouut that... As you mentioned a little later in the reply, I did flub a bit on writing Greatwyrm's summon effect. I'd intended it to only be summoned from the Hand, as being able to summon it straight from the Extra Deck would probably be a bit much, especially considering how easy it'd be to send it there. Darkwyrm's effect is pretty much intended to send monsters like Greatwyrm there for cost-fodder. I might add a card to allow you to add your monsters from your Extra Deck to your Hand, but I'll certainly look into fixing Greatwyrm's card text to clarify that!

 

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Pendulum monsters in Master Rule 4 & 5 in addition to a once per turn +1, which actually ends up being a +2 if you Pendulum Summon an added Darkwyrm, to get the dropped boss monster back and most likely a +3 as you 'd probably be able to Pendulum Summon another added baby Halcyon to get another search off.

I hadn't even realized how much advantage the card could generate. A possible once-per-turn +3 with just these cards is certainly a bit of an oversight. I might think about revising the shuffle/search effect, either make it on-activation or only search one monster.

 

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Send 1 face-up "Halcyon" monster you control or 1 face-up "Halcyon Pendulum" Monster in your Pendulum Zone to the Extra Deck face-up; add to your hand 1 Halcyon monster with the the same Level as that monster, but with a different Attribute.

Even though the boss-monsters aren't technically supposed to Special Summon themselves from the Extra Deck, I still think this effect would be a pretty cool way to generate advantage. I'll keep it in mind!