Generic Ritual Spell and Ritual Monster (Written)

[Sugar The Kid]

Hey,

The Ritual Monster is meant to be part of the same 'series' of Ritual Dragon tied to an Attribute-specific Ritual Spell that Sauravis and that random Level 9 WIND Dragon Ritual imply. I tried to design it so that it might see play in specific metagames or silly Ritual high roll decks like Drytron without being too toxic.

The Ritual Spell feels like an obvious extension of cards like Mutamorphosis- I don't think I know the monster catalog well enough to say with full confidence you can't do anything broken with it, but I'm curious if more inventive people that me can point out interesting things these cards enable. I was sufficiently scared of the Amorphage Ritual monster that I just blocked it out by level.

 

Ritcher the Gravesoil Drake
EARTH Level 8

Ritual/Dragon/Effect

ATK 2800/ DEF 2600

You can Ritual Summon this card with "Earth Chant". When your opponent activates a card or effect that would move a monster(s) in your GY to a different place (Quick effect): You can reveal this card in your hand; negate that activation then discard 1 card. Once per turn (Quick effect): You can target 1 face-up Spell/Trap your opponent controls; negate its effects and if you do, return this card to your hand.

 

Mutation Ritual

Ritual Spell

This card can be used to Ritual Summon any Level 7 or lower Ritual monster from your hand or Deck. You must also Tribute Fusion, Synchro, or Pendulum monsters from your field whose total Levels exactly equal the Level of the Ritual monster you summon, also, for the rest of the turn, you cannot Summon monsters without a Level. If a Ritual monster you control leaves the field by an opponent's card: You can banish this card from your GY and target 1 Ritual monster in your GY; Special Summon 1 monster with a lower Level then that target from your face-up Extra Deck or GY.

[Mzse1216]

16 hours ago, Sugar The Kid said:

Hey,

The Ritual Monster is meant to be part of the same 'series' of Ritual Dragon tied to an Attribute-specific Ritual Spell that Sauravis and that random Level 9 WIND Dragon Ritual imply. I tried to design it so that it might see play in specific metagames or silly Ritual high roll decks like Drytron without being too toxic.

The Ritual Spell feels like an obvious extension of cards like Mutamorphosis- I don't think I know the monster catalog well enough to say with full confidence you can't do anything broken with it, but I'm curious if more inventive people that me can point out interesting things these cards enable. I was sufficiently scared of the Amorphage Ritual monster that I just blocked it out by level.

 

Ritcher the Gravesoil Drake
EARTH Level 8

Ritual/Dragon/Effect

ATK 2800/ DEF 2600

You can Ritual Summon this card with "Earth Chant". When your opponent activates a card or effect that would move a monster(s) in your GY to a different place (Quick effect): You can reveal this card in your hand; negate that activation then discard 1 card. Once per turn (Quick effect): You can target 1 face-up Spell/Trap your opponent controls; negate its effects and if you do, return this card to your hand.

 

Mutation Ritual

Ritual Spell

This card can be used to Ritual Summon any Level 7 or lower Ritual monster from your hand or Deck. You must also Tribute Fusion, Synchro, or Pendulum monsters from your field whose total Levels exactly equal the Level of the Ritual monster you summon, also, for the rest of the turn, you cannot Summon monsters without a Level. If a Ritual monster you control leaves the field by an opponent's card: You can banish this card from your GY and target 1 Ritual monster in your GY; Special Summon 1 monster with a lower Level then that target from your face-up Extra Deck or GY.

I think Ritcher is well-made and fine as it is. It's useful, but also balanced. It reminds me of Sauravis, the Ancient and Ascended in that it's a Ritual and a hand trap. Good job!

Mutation Ritual needs some tuning, though. As it stands right now, you could use Instant/Ready Fusion to summon any generic Level 4 Fusion, or use any Pendulum engine, then go into Nekroz of Unicore and your opponent can't use Extra Deck monster effects. There's also several Gishki monsters that you could use to handloop the opponent before they can take a turn. I would make it destroy the monster during the end phase if it's summoned from the Deck and you can only use its first effect once per turn. This way it avoids potential abuse. That's my opinion. 

[Sugar The Kid]

On 11/20/2024 at 3:55 AM, Mzse1216 said:

I think Ritcher is well-made and fine as it is. It's useful, but also balanced. It reminds me of Sauravis, the Ancient and Ascended in that it's a Ritual and a hand trap. Good job!

Mutation Ritual needs some tuning, though. As it stands right now, you could use Instant/Ready Fusion to summon any generic Level 4 Fusion, or use any Pendulum engine, then go into Nekroz of Unicore and your opponent can't use Extra Deck monster effects. There's also several Gishki monsters that you could use to handloop the opponent before they can take a turn. I would make it destroy the monster during the end phase if it's summoned from the Deck and you can only use its first effect once per turn. This way it avoids potential abuse. That's my opinion. 

Ye, Ritcher's effects following the same pattern as Sauravis and Beaufort IX is intentional. Trying to find a niche for its hand effect that isn't either too specific or overshadows existing handtraps was difficult, so I'm happy it seems to have worked in your eyes. 

I'll push back a little on the Mutation Ritual thing (though I'll preface by saying i) this is hypothetical because its not like I had time to playtest this card or anything ii) you do make good points I hadn't considered)- we already have cards in Yu-Gi-Oh that can cheat out a variety of floodgates if you jump through a few hoops (Duality, Mutamorphosis, etc), and those don't seem to be seeing much play. As such, I wanted to push the envelope a little by putting a cheat effect on a card more searchable than the examples I gave, since there are a lot of cards that can search Ritual Spells. I don't mind the pay-off being powerful because, in my mind, non-engine space in modern Yu-Gi-Oh decks is king, and sacrificing 1-2 playsets of handtraps/power Spells to (sometimes) get access to Nekroz of Unicore- which can just be a big brick in the hand, hurts your own board if you use monsters Special Summoned from the Extra Deck, and doesn't win games as consistently as a card like Archlord Kristya- is a big deal for most decks. So, conceptually, I don't see anything too problematic in the interaction of Nekroz of Unicore you outlined- it would be annoying to stare down, but it isn't trivial to achieve.

You do bring a very important interaction with Gishkis to my attention- mainly, it doesn't sound fun to have to deal with Chimera tributing off one of their Chimera, the King of the Phantom Beasts to go into Evigishki Gustkraken and loop a card from your hand even before the end phase discard. I'm not sure how this card could be rewritten to avoid that interaction without weakening the card considerably- i.e. making it so you have to tribute monsters that match the Ritual monster's type and/or attribute or making it enforce a Nekroz of Trishula restriction where you can't tribute monsters whose original level matches the level of the monster you are trying to summon. The suggestions on balancing you make don't fix this issue since these effects activate on summon/you can fire on Ignition for Tetraogre. I'll have to ruminate on if this interaction is actually problematic enough to warrant balancing the card around it. 

Thank you for your comment.

[Mzse1216]

16 hours ago, Sugar The Kid said:

Ye, Ritcher's effects following the same pattern as Sauravis and Beaufort IX is intentional. Trying to find a niche for its hand effect that isn't either too specific or overshadows existing handtraps was difficult, so I'm happy it seems to have worked in your eyes. 

I'll push back a little on the Mutation Ritual thing (though I'll preface by saying i) this is hypothetical because its not like I had time to playtest this card or anything ii) you do make good points I hadn't considered)- we already have cards in Yu-Gi-Oh that can cheat out a variety of floodgates if you jump through a few hoops (Duality, Mutamorphosis, etc), and those don't seem to be seeing much play. As such, I wanted to push the envelope a little by putting a cheat effect on a card more searchable than the examples I gave, since there are a lot of cards that can search Ritual Spells. I don't mind the pay-off being powerful because, in my mind, non-engine space in modern Yu-Gi-Oh decks is king, and sacrificing 1-2 playsets of handtraps/power Spells to (sometimes) get access to Nekroz of Unicore- which can just be a big brick in the hand, hurts your own board if you use monsters Special Summoned from the Extra Deck, and doesn't win games as consistently as a card like Archlord Kristya- is a big deal for most decks. So, conceptually, I don't see anything too problematic in the interaction of Nekroz of Unicore you outlined- it would be annoying to stare down, but it isn't trivial to achieve.

You do bring a very important interaction with Gishkis to my attention- mainly, it doesn't sound fun to have to deal with Chimera tributing off one of their Chimera, the King of the Phantom Beasts to go into Evigishki Gustkraken and loop a card from your hand even before the end phase discard. I'm not sure how this card could be rewritten to avoid that interaction without weakening the card considerably- i.e. making it so you have to tribute monsters that match the Ritual monster's type and/or attribute or making it enforce a Nekroz of Trishula restriction where you can't tribute monsters whose original level matches the level of the monster you are trying to summon. The suggestions on balancing you make don't fix this issue since these effects activate on summon/you can fire on Ignition for Tetraogre. I'll have to ruminate on if this interaction is actually problematic enough to warrant balancing the card around it. 

Thank you for your comment.

You're welcome! I understand your reasoning for disagreeing with me. I was more worried about the possibility summoning some kind of floodgate and also future-proofing the card, so that was what my suggestions were based on. Maybe you could put a type/attribute restriction like you said, or change it to only require Fusions/Synchros? Pendulums are much easier to summon and give more card advantage, so I could see them being more likely to abuse this. 

[Sugar The Kid]

5 hours ago, Mzse1216 said:

You're welcome! I understand your reasoning for disagreeing with me. I was more worried about the possibility summoning some kind of floodgate and also future-proofing the card, so that was what my suggestions were based on. Maybe you could put a type/attribute restriction like you said, or change it to only require Fusions/Synchros? Pendulums are much easier to summon and give more card advantage, so I could see them being more likely to abuse this. 

Ye, I see your point, and discussing things like this almost makes me want me to finally start plugging my customs into DB to playtest instead of going off vibes, but I lose enough time to Yu-Gi-Oh as is... I think we just have different perceptions of how threatening Pendulums are, and it is bit difficult to cross that gap without sitting down and testing. I would be more afraid of decks like Melodious or Chimera converting a used Level 6 Fusion into the handloop than Pendulum Magician putting a mutual ED Skill Drain on the field with Nekroz of Unicore. I do want the card to be used in certain Pendulum decks (namely Odd-Eyes), so I wouldn't want to change that aspect of the card for that reason. In the end, I think I'm torn between fearing the worse case scenarios we've discussed (and probably ones neither of us have realized) and wanting to honor the spirit of the original Metamorphosis, letting you turn used monsters into crazy and unexpected Fusion monsters. Difficult to find the balance between the two.

[Alien Nation]

On 11/19/2024 at 6:44 PM, Sugar The Kid said:

When your opponent activates a card or effect that would move a monster(s) in your GY to a different place

Very situational. Make it either GY or your opponent GY would be great, but also add HOPT.

Edited November 22 by Alien Nation

[Sugar The Kid]

1 hour ago, Alien Nation said:

Very situational. Make it either GY or your opponent GY would be great, but also add HOPT.

I see your angle, but I wanted to keep it a soft OPT to fit in with the monster that inspired it, Sauravis (Side note, I though Beaufort IX, Sauravis's Wind Counterpart, was a soft once per turn like Sauravis... but I double checked there and it isn't. Even though I feel both of its effects are worse than Sauravis. All I can say now is 'how odd'). I worry if I make it able to prevent movement from either GY, it would just be equivalent to or better than Ghost Belle in 9 out of 10 match ups (whether or not it being a better Belle is problematic, but I feel one shouldn't try and make just better versions of existing cards, especially non-archetypal handtraps), and I wanted to keep it Niche, similar to how Sauravis has a niche handtrap effect. I was envisioning it, as is, having a possible role in decks like Drytron or DLink as something to search early on if your hand is good to protect you from killers like the Bystials.