What changes would you make to make these mechanics good?

[KH911]

So there's 3 mechanics in Yugioh that are very interesting and I've tried to make several deck with mechanic to no avail. I think they have alot of potential, but Konami kind of butchered the execution so I'm going to attempt to fix these mechanics (as the title suggests you guys are also free to make suggestions/changes):

 

Union - Can either be summoned as monsters or equipped from the hand as equip spells (in which case they're treated as equip spells). Since they behave like pendulums, they should have a similar frame to the pendulum cards - a box for their monster effect and a box for their equip effect. This would improve readability and also make it so that you're not wasting a summon to equip a union monster. Also the fact that there's barely any union monsters in the game means they can reprinted to fit this new design choice without much of an issue. Unions can unequip from a monster to special summon themselves, but not on the same turn that they were equipped. It would also help if Unions had better effects but that's not really a problem with the mechanic itself.

 

Gemini - Geminis are treated as normal monsters in the hand, deck, and GY. This way they can benefit from all the good normal monster support like Unexpecting Dai. You can also normal summon 1 face-up Gemini monster in addition to your normal summon/set, this would be known as a "Gemini Summon". This way you can normal summon a Gemini and have it's effect live in the same turn. This also opens up a line of support cards that interact with "Gemini Summons" as they would be treated as a unique kind of summoning mechanic. I would also remove all the text that describes the gemini mechanic from gemini cards to improve readability and have it be an inherent thing. Once again it would help if Geminis had better effects but that's not a problem with the mechanic.

 

Spirit - Honestly I don't know. The whole concept of spirits returning to the hand is what makes them so fun, but it's also what makes them so bad. Any changes I make to this will completely kill the mechanic. One thing I would do though is remove all the text describing the spirit mechanic from spirit cards and just have it be an inherent thing to improve readability. Maybe have it so when spirits return to the hand in the end phase, they return all cards in their respective column to the hand? Or make spirits' returning to the hand be an optional effect? Or allow you to summon spirits in response to your opponent summoning a monster? This is the one I'm most excited to see what people come up with.

 

Again I'm open to any suggestions and if there's other forgotten/abandoned mechanics like these that you would like to see, what changes would you make?

[Sleepy]

My fix:
[Union]
Once per turn, you can either: Target 1 face-up monster on the field; equip this card from your hand/field to that target, OR: Unequip this card and Special Summon it. If the equipped monster would be destroyed by battle or card effect, you can destroy this card instead.

^This would be in the rulebook and just putting [Union] in the text box of the card would encompass all the above. This improves:
-It makes the protection effect of Unions optional instead of mandatory like it currently is, forcing a single protection to pop all Unions at the same time in a very dumb way.
-It makes Unions equippable from hand but you cannot unequip them that turn as it remains part of the "equip or unequip" effect.
-You can legally equip something to the opponent's field if a card ever wants to and it is a correct target.
-Since it says "from your hand/field" this applies to your S/T Zone, so you can choose the equipping action while it is already being equipped to something else, without having to go through the "Summon and equip to something else" dance.
-All Unions are retroactively affected by this definition once stated in the rulebook, and it can still work with older ones that are meant to work with specific names via a quick wording of the details. It should still free up a lot of text space of repetitive instructions.

Example of an old card:

Y Dragon Head
[Union] Equip only to "X Head Cannon". The equipped monster gains 400 ATK/DEF.

^easy, simple, short. What do you think?
I think it doesn't warrant something as drastic as a change in the card's layout a la Pendulum, personally.

- - - - -
I'd do the same thing for Gemini. They waste 80% of their text on the mechanic's instructions. Though I'd adopt 1 change you suggest: The one where they are treated as Normal everywhere until they gain the effects and get to take advantage of vanilla support completely.
Though I don't think I am a huge fan of the suggestion you have of giving the game a Gemini Summon. That makes the mechanic pretty redundant. 

- - - - -

While Gemini are pretty consistent in the way they work, and Unions are only inconsistent in how they tried to get updated and so the oldest ones were too old and powercrept to be reprinted and updated..... Spirits are different, more similar to but not as bad as Toons in how much they don't work the same from one another. Some can only be Special Summoned, a lot cannot be Special Summoned, and there's even at least one somewhere that doesn't go back to the hand at all.

I'd say there's not a blanket way to improve them with a unified update of text in the mechanics. This would need a more studied approach and to keep in mind some intended goal in specific. Like, eliminating the "no special summon" would make weird things to Amaterasu, Hino Kago Tsushi, Yamata Dragon, Yata Garasu, or Amano Iwata perhaps Tsukuyomi too.... and restricting them all would also hurt some of the support that came out back in the "Duelist Genesis" expantion's days. I'll hold on this one xD
 

[KH911]

3 hours ago, Sleepy said:

My fix:
[Union]
Once per turn, you can either: Target 1 face-up monster on the field; equip this card from your hand/field to that target, OR: Unequip this card and Special Summon it. If the equipped monster would be destroyed by battle or card effect, you can destroy this card instead.

^This would be in the rulebook and just putting [Union] in the text box of the card would encompass all the above. This improves:
-It makes the protection effect of Unions optional instead of mandatory like it currently is, forcing a single protection to pop all Unions at the same time in a very dumb way.
-It makes Unions equippable from hand but you cannot unequip them that turn as it remains part of the "equip or unequip" effect.
-You can legally equip something to the opponent's field if a card ever wants to and it is a correct target.
-Since it says "from your hand/field" this applies to your S/T Zone, so you can choose the equipping action while it is already being equipped to something else, without having to go through the "Summon and equip to something else" dance.
-All Unions are retroactively affected by this definition once stated in the rulebook, and it can still work with older ones that are meant to work with specific names via a quick wording of the details. It should still free up a lot of text space of repetitive instructions.

Example of an old card:

Y Dragon Head
[Union] Equip only to "X Head Cannon". The equipped monster gains 400 ATK/DEF.

^easy, simple, short. What do you think?
I think it doesn't warrant something as drastic as a change in the card's layout a la Pendulum, personally.

- - - - -
I'd do the same thing for Gemini. They waste 80% of their text on the mechanic's instructions. Though I'd adopt 1 change you suggest: The one where they are treated as Normal everywhere until they gain the effects and get to take advantage of vanilla support completely.
Though I don't think I am a huge fan of the suggestion you have of giving the game a Gemini Summon. That makes the mechanic pretty redundant. 

- - - - -

While Gemini are pretty consistent in the way they work, and Unions are only inconsistent in how they tried to get updated and so the oldest ones were too old and powercrept to be reprinted and updated..... Spirits are different, more similar to but not as bad as Toons in how much they don't work the same from one another. Some can only be Special Summoned, a lot cannot be Special Summoned, and there's even at least one somewhere that doesn't go back to the hand at all.

I'd say there's not a blanket way to improve them with a unified update of text in the mechanics. This would need a more studied approach and to keep in mind some intended goal in specific. Like, eliminating the "no special summon" would make weird things to Amaterasu, Hino Kago Tsushi, Yamata Dragon, Yata Garasu, or Amano Iwata perhaps Tsukuyomi too.... and restricting them all would also hurt some of the support that came out back in the "Duelist Genesis" expantion's days. I'll hold on this one xD
 

I like your idea for unions, but the reason I suggested 2 effect boxes pendulum style is that unions have both monster effects AND their equiped effects. So how would you make it clear which effect is which?

 

As for Geminis, I wasn't actually suggesting a new type of summoning mechanic, it's just a naming convention for clarity. The idea is that you can normal summon a face up gemini in addition to your normal summon/set each turn. I'm pretty sure there are some cards that trigger off of this so by calling it "Gemini summon" it can clear up the text a little.

 

Now spirits...yea it's a weird one. But the one thing almost all spirits share is that they return to hand. Spirit support is all centered around that concept. From their equip spells returning to hand with the monsters, their continuous trap bouncing opponents with your spirits, the Shinobird effects, and spring of rebirth, the common theme for spirits is that they return. So if we had to rework the mechanic to be centered around your own monsters returning to hand, how would you? I actually just remembered an interesting "archetype" of pendulum spirit monsters, who return to hand at the end phase that they were scaled or pend Summoned. That can be a good starting point.