Dark World Fusions + Link

[KH911]

I posted these cards a while ago but got no response so I thought I'd give it another shot. I used the AI image generator for the art, which is why it doesn't fit the Dark World theme, but it's better than nothing:

 

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Redd, Taxer of Dark World

Dark / Level 6

Fiend / Fusion / Effect

1 "Dark World" monster + 1 Fiend Monster

When you discard a card(s) by card effect: If it was discarded by an opponent's card effect, deal 400 damage to your opponent, otherwise, deal 200, then gain LP equal to the damage dealt by this effect. When this card leaves the field: You can add the materials used for this card's fusion summon from your GY to your hand.

ATK / 1200 DEF / 2800

 

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Bluu, Banker of Dark World

Dark / Level 6

1 "Dark World" monster + 1 fiend monster
When you discard a card(s) by card effect: if it was discarded by an opponent's card effect, draw 2 cards, otherwise, both players draw 1. When this card leaves the field: You can add the materials used for it's fusion summon from your GY to your hand.

ATK / 2700 DEF / 1400

 

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Yello, Advisor of Dark World

Dark / Level 6

Fiend / Fusion / Effect

1 "Dark World" monster + 1 fiend monster
When you discard a card(s) by a card effect: If it was discarded by an opponent's card effect, discard 2 cards, otherwise, discard 1. If this card leaves the field: You can add the materials used for it's fusion summon from your GY to your hand.

ATK / 2200 DEF / 0

 

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Ceruli, Chief Guru of Dark World

Dark / Up arrow

Fiend / Link / Effect

1 "Dark World" monster on your opponent's side of the field
Must be link summoned to your opponent's side of the field. You take no damage from battle involving this card, also this card cannot be destroyed by battle. When this card is link summoned: Your opponent draws 1 card then discards 1 card. When this card is sent to the GY: special summon 1 "Ceruli, Guru of Dark World"  from your GY to your opponent's side of the field. You can only activate each effect of "Ceruli, Chief Guru of Dark World" once per turn and you cannot summon monsters, except "Dark World" monsters, the turn you activate either effect.

ATK / 300   LINK - 1

 

[Messoras]

Hey there,

I think you hit the mark with where Dark World struggles and needs support, but you might have slightly overdone it. In a discard heavy deck obviously card advantage is a big thing, especially with an aggro approach such as Dark World. First we should probably clarify that Dark World recently received official support by Konami and is actually a solid rogue tier archetype by now. I think Dark World can make a board of Apollousa + Purple Grapha + I:P / Abyss Dweller with pretty much any hand already and even rip like 2 cards off the opponent's hand going first without going out of the way. In the course of a standard combo a Dark World deck usually discards over five times I would say.

As a Yugioh player you probably have heard of the expression "card advantage". This basically describes the number of cards in your hand and on your field in comparison to the number of cards in your opponent's hand and on their field. Cards like Elemental HERO Stratos, that stay on the field and search you a card, or Pod Of Greed, that goes to the GY, but gets you 2 cards are considered a "+1", because you end up with 1 more card than your opponent. When Konami started to realize those cards are really strong, they started limiting or restricting their effects, adding higher costs or including major downsides. Pod Of Greed is the perfect example for this. Since every single deck can play it and it simply increases your number of cards by 1, it's considered overpowered and got banned forever. On the other hand cards like Pot Of Desires were made, which actually still is a +1, but thins your deck by alot, limiting your deck building choices and making you vulnerable to deck-out. Cards that give you a huge advantage of +1 or even +2 should be created with caution to prevent another Firewall pass format.

So let's put all of this into a context. The first two of your Fusion Monsters give you a +1 each time you discard a card. So over the course of an entire combo, that would make about a +5 in total. This is a Maxx-C level of overpowered and it's actually even worse because your opponent cannot decide to not play and prevent you from generating advantage. Furthermore all the Fusion Monsters have a floating effect, that generates a ton of advantage again. adding 2 cards back is a flat +2. Even if you used a card to destroy your own Fusion Monster, it would still be a +-0, as you get 2 materials back. Also getting Dark World cards back to your hand is a pretty strong effect since discard fodder is very important in the deck and most of the discard triggers don't have a hard once per turn clause, which makes any discard very valuable anyway. So before going into the specific cards, I'd recommend a once per turn on all of the continuous effects.

Redd, Taxer of Dark World would easily rip your opponent's entire hand if you can make him alongside your standard combo to achieve 2-5 interruptions. Imagine having your whole hand discarded while not playing a GY-based deck and having to play with 1 card into 2+ interruptions. That's not only unfun, but absolutely unbalanced. I've already been handripped by the standard TCG version of Dark World, but giving them another option to do it basically for free pretty much takes any chance away from you to counter the going 1st combo with 1-2 handtraps.

Bluu, Banker of Dark World is a little less problematic, since he still generates a ton of advantage, but would atleast not be so frustrating to play against, since you get to keep your own cards. But I still think that drawing 1 card for each discard is to strong. I'd like to compare the effect to T.G. Hyper Librarian for demonstration: Hyper Librarian draws you 1 card for each Synchro Summon. You usually put 2 monsters into each Synchro Summon, so even tho we're talking about a non once per turn advantage generating effect, it is kind of in balance as each Synchro Summon is still a net +-0 as you put 2 cards into a synchro monster and a drawn card. Anyway Hyper Librarian is still limited to 1, because plussing on every single Synchro Summon would end in an empty deck followed by some form of unfun FTK. Since discarding a card only takes you 1 effect and already is the "downside" of that effect (which usually either gets you a card or gets rid of an opponent's card), it would result in a +1 on every card played, which in my eyes shouldn't exist in the game.

Yello, Advisor of Dark World seems actually not to overpowered, as he only enables your DW monster's bonus effects, but regarding the fact, that those can be pretty damn crazy (I'm lookin at you Sillva), I'm unsure if it would produce healthy gameplay. I mean there already is Ceruli, Guru Of The Dark World to achieve the "discarded by opponent" effects with some extra steps and people still play this brick just to get their additional effects off, so it might be a bad idea to enable them so easily.

Ceruli, Chief Guru of Dark World again feels a little bit overkill-ish. I understand that the efford to put into a Ceruli doesn't always pay off for the 1 special effect you get for it, but getting 3 of those in instead of 1 and also basically allowing 2 direct attacks in addition by only playing this card in your Extra Deck is way to crazy. I imagine it like this: play your normal combo to discard Sillva with Ceruli and rip 2 cards, then linking it away for a Chief Guru to discard another Sillva and ripping another 2 cards, while also drawing 1 card. Then attacking into this for basically free damage (-300), triggering it to Special Summon Ceruli again, gaining another extra effect and enabling another attack into Ceruli for free damage (-100). Also I find the mechanic of Link Summoning to the opponent's field pretty impractical. I would probably rather make it a normal Link Summon and include an effect like this:

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Neither player takes any battle bamage from attacks involving this card. Once per turn: You can give control of this card to your opponent. If control of this face-up card is changed: Your opponent discards 1 card.

All in all I see why you made those design choices, but I think that they are hard to balance, as a simple once per turn on all of the effects would probably work, but not help the deck. If you can find a way to balance the cards, I'd be happy to review them again. For now I hope this was helpful and you understand my point. Keep it up mate.

 

Greets,

Messoras

[KH911]

On 4/17/2023 at 6:29 AM, Messoras said:

Hey there,

I think you hit the mark with where Dark World struggles and needs support, but you might have slightly overdone it. In a discard heavy deck obviously card advantage is a big thing, especially with an aggro approach such as Dark World. First we should probably clarify that Dark World recently received official support by Konami and is actually a solid rogue tier archetype by now. I think Dark World can make a board of Apollousa + Purple Grapha + I:P / Abyss Dweller with pretty much any hand already and even rip like 2 cards off the opponent's hand going first without going out of the way. In the course of a standard combo a Dark World deck usually discards over five times I would say.

As a Yugioh player you probably have heard of the expression "card advantage". This basically describes the number of cards in your hand and on your field in comparison to the number of cards in your opponent's hand and on their field. Cards like Elemental HERO Stratos, that stay on the field and search you a card, or Pod Of Greed, that goes to the GY, but gets you 2 cards are considered a "+1", because you end up with 1 more card than your opponent. When Konami started to realize those cards are really strong, they started limiting or restricting their effects, adding higher costs or including major downsides. Pod Of Greed is the perfect example for this. Since every single deck can play it and it simply increases your number of cards by 1, it's considered overpowered and got banned forever. On the other hand cards like Pot Of Desires were made, which actually still is a +1, but thins your deck by alot, limiting your deck building choices and making you vulnerable to deck-out. Cards that give you a huge advantage of +1 or even +2 should be created with caution to prevent another Firewall pass format.

So let's put all of this into a context. The first two of your Fusion Monsters give you a +1 each time you discard a card. So over the course of an entire combo, that would make about a +5 in total. This is a Maxx-C level of overpowered and it's actually even worse because your opponent cannot decide to not play and prevent you from generating advantage. Furthermore all the Fusion Monsters have a floating effect, that generates a ton of advantage again. adding 2 cards back is a flat +2. Even if you used a card to destroy your own Fusion Monster, it would still be a +-0, as you get 2 materials back. Also getting Dark World cards back to your hand is a pretty strong effect since discard fodder is very important in the deck and most of the discard triggers don't have a hard once per turn clause, which makes any discard very valuable anyway. So before going into the specific cards, I'd recommend a once per turn on all of the continuous effects.

Redd, Taxer of Dark World would easily rip your opponent's entire hand if you can make him alongside your standard combo to achieve 2-5 interruptions. Imagine having your whole hand discarded while not playing a GY-based deck and having to play with 1 card into 2+ interruptions. That's not only unfun, but absolutely unbalanced. I've already been handripped by the standard TCG version of Dark World, but giving them another option to do it basically for free pretty much takes any chance away from you to counter the going 1st combo with 1-2 handtraps.

Bluu, Banker of Dark World is a little less problematic, since he still generates a ton of advantage, but would atleast not be so frustrating to play against, since you get to keep your own cards. But I still think that drawing 1 card for each discard is to strong. I'd like to compare the effect to T.G. Hyper Librarian for demonstration: Hyper Librarian draws you 1 card for each Synchro Summon. You usually put 2 monsters into each Synchro Summon, so even tho we're talking about a non once per turn advantage generating effect, it is kind of in balance as each Synchro Summon is still a net +-0 as you put 2 cards into a synchro monster and a drawn card. Anyway Hyper Librarian is still limited to 1, because plussing on every single Synchro Summon would end in an empty deck followed by some form of unfun FTK. Since discarding a card only takes you 1 effect and already is the "downside" of that effect (which usually either gets you a card or gets rid of an opponent's card), it would result in a +1 on every card played, which in my eyes shouldn't exist in the game.

Yello, Advisor of Dark World seems actually not to overpowered, as he only enables your DW monster's bonus effects, but regarding the fact, that those can be pretty damn crazy (I'm lookin at you Sillva), I'm unsure if it would produce healthy gameplay. I mean there already is Ceruli, Guru Of The Dark World to achieve the "discarded by opponent" effects with some extra steps and people still play this brick just to get their additional effects off, so it might be a bad idea to enable them so easily.

Ceruli, Chief Guru of Dark World again feels a little bit overkill-ish. I understand that the efford to put into a Ceruli doesn't always pay off for the 1 special effect you get for it, but getting 3 of those in instead of 1 and also basically allowing 2 direct attacks in addition by only playing this card in your Extra Deck is way to crazy. I imagine it like this: play your normal combo to discard Sillva with Ceruli and rip 2 cards, then linking it away for a Chief Guru to discard another Sillva and ripping another 2 cards, while also drawing 1 card. Then attacking into this for basically free damage (-300), triggering it to Special Summon Ceruli again, gaining another extra effect and enabling another attack into Ceruli for free damage (-100). Also I find the mechanic of Link Summoning to the opponent's field pretty impractical. I would probably rather make it a normal Link Summon and include an effect like this:

All in all I see why you made those design choices, but I think that they are hard to balance, as a simple once per turn on all of the effects would probably work, but not help the deck. If you can find a way to balance the cards, I'd be happy to review them again. For now I hope this was helpful and you understand my point. Keep it up mate.

 

Greets,

Messoras

I actually hate generic ED monsters so I don't use Apollousa, or IP, etc. unless it fits the theme of the deck. So when I designed these cards, I didn't include those cards in the equation. That said, I had a feeling my initial designs generated too much advantage so I reworked their effects so they're still in-line with what they had before but a bit more interesting and/or balanced. I edited the original post with the updated effects, the changes are highlighted in green.