not naze Posted January 20 Report Share Posted January 20 (edited) Old topic: So I designed this little archetype like half a year ago and never posted it because i struggled a lot and lacked time to make the artwork for it. As usual, I generate and edit the artworks with free AI tools (Canva and Pixlr this time) and end up by reworking them a bit with Photofiltre 7. I'm not an artist, and I'm not even good with AI tools so please don't judge them too severely. I designed 8 cards in total for it, but I only finished the 4 main ones yet. The other 4 are some kind of supports that I'm not yet proud of, so I'll add them later in the topic when I made the artworks for them and reworked their effects. Justice don't look anything like the other 3 knights too and it makes me really unconfortable too, I might change his picture too. Usually, I like to comment each cards and how the archetype play, along with their strength and weakness, and their design philosophy, but Im too exhausted to write it now, and I think it would be better to make it when all the cards are done. So I'll just give a general description for the idea behind it. The cards are obviously based off the ancient greek's "cardinal virtues", and ethics in general. As such, they're all LIGHT attributes to represent the Good and their effects revolves around banishing or disrupting DARK attributes cards (representing Evil). The cards in themselves are pretty strong imo, but are obviously balanced by the fact that they're limited against non-dark decks. Most philosophers have their takes on which of the cardinal virtue is the most important, but I value Justice the most. This is why I made it into the boss extra-deck monster of the archetype. I could say a lot more about the symbolics and reasoning behind each cards, their artwork and effects, but I'll stop here for now, I might expand on it later when I add the 4 other cards. For now, I would like you to appreciate and judge the effects for what they are, and their relevance in the game. If you read everything, I thank you a lot. I hope you appreciate these, and I would love some comments on them (even negative ones). See you soon for the rest of the cards and more comments on them ! New topic: So basically it's the same as the old topic. I started designing that archetype half a year ago, and struggled a lot to do so (mostly because of artwork). As I said I'm not an artist. I used AI tools to generate the pictures (canva and pixlr. photofiltre for editing), and it might be the last time I do so, considering both the unethical aspect of AI, and the poor result I'm getting from it (especially for non-human things, I just don't like both dragons artworks). Talking about ethics, the archetype is based on the cardinal virtues from ancient greek philosophy, which are represented by the 4 main cards of the archetype. Since I value Justice more than the others I made it the boss monster. But I consider some other virtues even greater than these 4, like Empathy, which is both the cornerstone of the archetype, and the cornerstone of any good moral system according to me. The 3 remaining cards represent redemption, and the act of becoming a greater moral being, which I found fitting thematically, and also pretty cool for some kind of a story line (the cardinal virtue knights helping the redemption knight to become virtuous). Anyway I love talking about philosophy and ethics but I put a lot of work in designing the actual effects of every cards, and that's what I would want to discuss the most today ! As you can see, I listened to your critics and corrected the effects of the 3 primordial knights to make it more easy to interact with them and disrupt them. For Prudence specifically, I took inspiration on the wording of the card "Allure of Darkness". The idea is to use them to banish DARK monsters from either the field, the GY or your opp's hand ; in order to special summon them. Once you got at least 2 lvl 6 LIGHT monsters on the field, you can XYZ summon Empathy, and that guy does a LOT for the deck, and you can chose up to two effects depending of your hand and the state of the game. If you have a hard time activating the 3 cardinal knights effects, you can use his last effect to put a DARK monster of your opponent from his deck, to the zone you want to, in order to summon the knight you want. If the game and your hand is really good for you, you can take the protecting effect that prevent your opps from targeting your LIGHT monsters. But the typical situation is using the first 2 effects to add Redemption to your hand, and one of the Cardinal spell or trap (usually the spell). That's where it's becoming hard to follow, Redemption does a lot too. You can set it as a pendulum (putting a DARK monster on the field bypassing the summon limit of only LIGHT monster) and use its effect to put another copy of himself on the field. This is important because you want to banish the first copy with Courage or Become Better, and keep the other one on the field to stack Redemption Counter for drawing/breaking board. When you banish it, you can summon a lvl 6 LIGHT Dragon or Warrior that is already banished or in your GY. Also, when Redemption is in banishment, you can send it back to your deck to protect one of your monster from being destroyed. So, once Redemption is on the field, you can banish it with Become Better to search for another Cardinal card. Note that its even better when you go 2nd and your opp already have a dark monster on field. With that effect you can either search one of the first 3 knights, or the trap card Ethical Meditation. It allows you to activate the effect of a Cardinal Knight directly from your deck, and during your opp's turn (since it's a trap obviously). Also, the turn after it got sent to the GY, you can banish it to destroy spell and traps equal to your opp's banished DARK monster which offer a bit more of board breaking. Finally you can use Become Better last effect to banish itself from the GY (note that you can use this effect the same turn as you used the first effect, or on your opp's turn since it's a quick effect) to send back 3 Cardinal monster back to your deck in order to fusion the boss monster: Justice. I reworked his effect quite a bit (thank you to Ultimagamer, that gave me some really good advice about it). When you Fusion Summon it, once per turn you can either target and banish any card on the field OR banish every DARK monsters on the field. Also, it acts as a floodgate negating all DARK monster's effect while it's on the field (excluding Virtues monster, meaning that it doesn't negate Redemption). So the typical combo would be: getting 2 lvl 6 light monster on the field -> Empathy -> use his first 2 effects to search for Redemption and Become Better -> set Redemption and use his first effect -> activate Become Better -> Banish Become Better to summon Justice. From there you can do whatever with the remaining cards. There might be some more advanced combos, and it depends a lot of your opening hand, but I'll let you figure that out if you're interested enough lol. So here it is. It's been a wild ride to design all this. I really hope it's neither too broken, neither too situational, it's really hard to balance a full archetype. I also hope everything is easily readable and understandable. Thank you a lot for reading all this again, I know it's a lot. Please let me know if you have any other comments or critiques, I can still edit them if needed and I would love some feedback on them ! Edited January 27 by not naze Completion and correction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ultimagamer Posted January 20 Report Share Posted January 20 Feels a bit odd having 3 level 6 monsters as the main deck... followed by a fusion monster. If the fusion had its effects toned down a bit it could be made into a rank 6 monster with a summoning requirement like "2 Level 6 LIGHT monsters". That'd work a lot better with the main deck since they're focused on swarming the field. They also don't search out fusion spells or enable fusion summons, making the fusion boss feel out of place. As for the monsters themselves... Prudence: The colons on this effect make it virtually impossible to respond to, since the semi-colon is placed *after* the special summon. That means the cost to activate the ability of banishing itself if you fail to find a dark monster is 1) looking at your opponent's hand, 2) banishing a dark monster from it, and 3) special summoning itself. You'd want to word the effect more like the following (Quick Effect): You can reveal this card in your hand; You can look at your opponent's hand and choose 1 monster. If the chosen monster is a DARK monster, banish that monster and Special Summon this card. Otherwise, banish this card. It's a good thing the summoning restriction is there. I could lowkey see people playing that just to see their opponent's hand and potentially rip a hand trap out. Courage: Since the archetype doesn't have any dark monsters, it makes the effect entirely reliant on outside engines or the opponent having dark monsters. Something like Bystials does this idea in a way that works with itself. They're all dark monsters that can banish a light/dark monster from either GY to summon themselves, while getting better if the opponent controls a monster. They work by themselves while also being able to hate on light/dark decks. It might be the way you want to work the deck around. Having a good baseline effect with a bonus for going against dark monsters instead of only working against dark monsters. Funnily enough, this effect (and the archetype) gets completely shut down by Ally of Justice Quarantine (since you can't activate Courage in hand to banish the Quarantine since you can't special summon light monsters). Temperance: Same thing from Courage applies here, but even moreso. Since the effect is limited to the opponent's GY you can't even put a dark monster in the GY to turn this effect on. If your opponent has no dark monsters, this is just a vanilla. Justice: Having all effects be once per turn if a bit odd since it has a continuous floodgate effect. If you keep that effect in you'll want to put it first while putting the other effects below it, and using a restriction like You can only use each of the following effects of "Cardinal Dragon - Justice" once per turn. This card is one where I think having it be more flexible could really help it shine. Imagine if instead of having a single anti-dark effect it had a choice between the following effects when summoned: Target 1 monster your opponent controls; banish it Banish all DARK monsters your opponent controls You could even turn the protection effect into one that detached a material instead of banishing a dark monster (Also, why does it banish a dark monster from your hand or GY when the archetype has no dark monsters and locks you out of dark monsters?) If you choose to keep it a fusion monster, you need to give the deck some ways to fuse. Either searching out polymerization or giving the monsters themselves ways to fuse with effects or both. Right now you'd have to run outside engines to grab a poly which won't work well with the light restrictions of the maindeck monsters. I think you'd have a much more synergistic boss as an xyz monster instead of a fusion one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
not naze Posted January 22 Author Report Share Posted January 22 Thank you a lot for your comments ! A lot of your critiques are actually fixed by the 4 missing cards that i've not finished yet, so I will talk about them a bit here ! Quote Prudence: The colons on this effect make it virtually impossible to respond to, since the semi-colon is placed *after* the special summon. I have a hard time with the colon and semi-colon things tbh (like a lot of ygh player I suppose), thank you for rewriting the effect, I'll make sure to correct that. Also I want to mention that I'm not a native english speaker, so if my wording is weird or bad it's probably because of that ! But I hope the intent behind each effects are still understandable ! Quote Courage: Since the archetype doesn't have any dark monsters, it makes the effect entirely reliant on outside engines or the opponent having dark monsters. That's one of the issue addressed by one of the missing card. I planned on including one (or two ?) DARK monster, that would be pendulum monsters (so you can put them on the field even with the restriction of only summoning LIGHT monsters) and could discard themselves, so you can actually banish it/them both from the hand, field or GY ! But to be fair, I also had in mind that the archetype would be played in some kind of weird LIGHT-versed "chaos" decks, and not only on its own. But I do agree with you about the fact that the archetype would be better if it worked in every case but was boosted against DARK decks, instead of only working against them. I may be a little bit shy when creating cards, I'm too scared to do something too overpowered. Quote Justice: Having all effects be once per turn if a bit odd since it has a continuous floodgate effect. If you keep that effect in you'll want to put it first while putting the other effects below it, and using a restriction 100% true. I will correct that. Quote This card is one where I think having it be more flexible could really help it shine. Imagine if instead of having a single anti-dark effect it had a choice between the following effects when summoned... Once again very true. That's another case of me being scared to make the card too OP. But I like your Idea it seems balanced. Quote You could even turn the protection effect into one that detached a material instead of banishing a dark monster [...] If you choose to keep it a fusion monster, you need to give the deck some ways to fuse. This is resolved by the other missing cards. One of them is a fusing card, and the other is an actual XYZ rank 6 monster. Although it works more as an extender that a boss monster, since one of his effects is to search the fusing card. Quote You could even turn the protection effect into one that detached a material instead of banishing a dark monster (Also, why does it banish a dark monster from your hand or GY when the archetype has no dark monsters and locks you out of dark monsters?) The protecting effect of Justice is assured both by the DARK pendulum monster I mentioned earlier, and by the chaos-like deckbuilding I intended for the deck. Maybe should I create another engine of DARK monsters that actually profits off being banished to go along with it ? But it might be abused in a lot of other decks I think. I hope I answered all your concerns about the cards, thank you again for your critique and ideas ! I'll try to finish the last cards as soon as possible so the archetype finally feels complete and coherent ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LazerSwordKirbo Posted January 22 Report Share Posted January 22 An anti DARK deck is an interesting idea, especially with how much of the card pool is DARK monsters, but the summoning restriction for courage does not work. The restriction is an effect independent of the summoning effect, and because of that the once per turn restriction only applies to the lights only effect. To fix it you could replace the period after hand with ", then". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
not naze Posted January 26 Author Report Share Posted January 26 I added the 4 missing cards, and corrected the 4 first one according to your remarks. Thank you two a lot, I hope you'll like them ! I would love some more review now that the archetype is finally completed ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ultimagamer Posted January 29 Report Share Posted January 29 (edited) An update! I'm glad this archetype did get a rank 6. I still think the fusion should be a rank 6 too, but this is close enough. Now, for an update on my thoughts on the cards... Courage: Still works fine for what the deck wants, though there's an issue with the pendulum I'll need to talk about what I get to it. Prudence: I do wish you kept my wording on it. The way I worded it aligns with what Konami has done with PSCT in the past (A good example of this is in cards like Neo-Spacian Aqua Dolphin). You first have to choose a card, then apply whether or not it gets banished and a summon happens. The same rulings for Neo-Spacian Aqua Dolphin would apply for this card. You would also not need a semi-colon for the special summoning part of the effect, the only cost is revealing Prudence in your hand. https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Card_Rulings:Neo-Spacian_Aqua_Dolphin Temperance: If this card has to stay just anti-dark it should really give you the option to banish from your own GY too. That would make it a lot easier to work with, especially if there are more smaller dark monsters planned as support to go alongside Redemption. (New) Virtue Dragon - Empathy: This card should have 1 effect trimmed off it. Having 4 effects makes it a bit bloated when it could be spread out across multiple monsters. (Personally, I'd suggest making its targeting protection a passive on Justice instead of it's floodgate effect. It'd give a stronger sense of the monsters fighting together while not feeling as miserable to fight against for dark decks). It irks me that this card isn't a Cardinal monster since it means you can't use it as fusion material. If it could be, the deck would have a 3 card combo to set up the fusion, but it unfortunately does not. I am a fan of this being a more balanced version of Ryzeal Duo Drive. Having to make a choice of monster and a backrow instead of getting up to 2 of either is a good choice to make players make. It's a reasonable limitation while still being a good search effect. The banish effect is tricky. This would be a really nice effect for the deck, but getting to see your opponent's entire deck is a bit too much free knowledge, especially since you can use what it's the deck to potentially decipher what's in their hand. If the Cardinals could banish a dark monster from your zones in addition to the opponent's zones, Empathy could let you put a Redemption into the zone you needed to continue your plays. That'd be the best workout for this imo, since you could plan around it consistently and it wouldn't make turns take a long time with someone potentially looking over an entire deck before resolving the effect. (New) Redemption: I see what you're going for with this, but there is an important rule that makes this have anti-synergy. Pendulum monsters in the pendulum zone are not treated as monsters. You would not be allowed to banish this from the pendulum zone for Courage's effect. For it's pendulum effect... It's a bit excessive. It'd be cool if there was another scale for the deck, and it could place that instead of just a copy of itself. Right now it can only put another Redemption in the scale which neither lets you pendulum summon or summon any Cardinals. The counter mechanic is unnecessary and just too slow. I'd much rather have scales 5/7 with a light restriction than a slow draw and occasional banish. For it's monster effect... The first one needs to be more flexible tbh. Cardinals have a high risk of being dead in the hand, and this summoning them from the hand when banished (say, by the effect of Courage) would be a boon for making rank 6s. Right now it only works for intentionally missing on Prudence so it gets banished to set this up. The protection effect needs a bit of wording help, since it would make more sense as an effect that isn't activated. If a "Cardinal" and/or "Virtue" monster(s) you control would be destroyed by battle or card effect, you can shuffle this banished card into the Deck instead. (New) Become Better: I wish this was a quickplay spell that fused instead of being a clunky searcher. That search effect is really hard to pull off in this deck and has a high risk of just being straight up dead when you need it most. This is especially true with Redemption not being a monster in the scale. The GY effect also doesn't work as a quick effect in the way you intend. Spell cards in the GY can't just activate like a quick effect in the way a trap can. They have to have something trigger them first (such as the Witchcrafter spells which trigger at the beginning of your end phase). This spell would work a lot better as a quickplay that could fuse by shuffling while banishing itself from the GY to search. That way it would work with how spells work while still being a searcher on later turns. The search effect would be a lot better if it could at least also banish from the GY. (New) Ethical Meditations: You can't target monsters in the deck like that. This trap would work just about the same if it was a simple searcher though, since all the Cardinals are quick effects. Also, the GY effect should state "up to" rather than its current wording. As it's worded right now, it would have to target an equal number of backrow which could be very dead depending on how much banishing you're doing. Justice: I'm glad you took my recommendation for the flexible effect! That makes it both usable against non-dark decks and even more flexible against those dark decks. More fun all around. Honestly, this should have its materials lowered to 2 Cardinals instead of 3. The effect of it is narrow enough that it wouldn't be too strong for only needing 2 materials to summon. The floodgate effect is what would tip it over the edge though. Being a free lockdown against its intended deck would be really unfun to fight against. It's important to think about how your opponents will feel having to play against your cards too. Banishing all their monsters is a lot of damage already, which is why I think giving it the protection effect from Empathy would be better. Overall, the deck is much improved with the new support cards, though they're still too inflexible to really make for a fun casual deck. It definitely needs another dark virtue monster or 2, and needs more spell support which will make setting up your plays easier. I could see staying with the purely anti-dark theme as long as it can banish your own dark monsters too. Courage banishing Redemption is a great example of what the deck could do if all the Cardinals worked around it. Prudence could choose either player instead of just being your opponent, and Temperance could banish from your GY. It'd really strengthen the deck's plays while also keeping the theme. Edited January 29 by Ultimagamer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
not naze Posted February 7 Author Report Share Posted February 7 (edited) Thank you so much for your interest in this archetype, it truly makes me happy that you're writing such a complete critique for it ! I'll explain some of my choices here and acknowledge the changes I should make for it. Quote Prudence: [...] The way I worded it aligns with what Konami has done with PSCT in the past [...] The same rulings for Neo-Spacian Aqua Dolphin would apply for this card. You would also not need a semi-colon for the special summoning part of the effect, the only cost is revealing Prudence in your hand. Noted, I didn't know of that card, I'll modify the effect then. Also I wanted to put a semi-colon because I thought that each effect should correspond to one sentence (I write all my cards like that lol) and that a simple dot meant that what comes next is another effect. Quote Temperance: If this card has to stay just anti-dark it should really give you the option to banish from your own GY too. That would make it a lot easier to work with ... In the light of modern yugioh, I actually agree (and will in fact modify the effect so you can banish from your own GY too). A lot of my design choices stems from my disagreement with Konami's way of designing cards. I like modern ygh as much as the old one, but I really think they're not careful enough with the powercreep; and making increasingly fast, powerful and versatile cards is, in the long term, unhealthy for the game. That's why all the cards I create aims to slow down the game, and to be more specific instead of too versatile. Which, in the current state of ygh, can make my cards tend to feel either unfun for the opp, or hard to make it work. I think that this point of my game-design philosophy shades light on why my cards are the way they are. But I'll try to make them more playable despite that (allowing Courage, Temperance and Prudence to banish from your own field, GY or hand is a good start for that I think, you're right). Quote (New) Virtue Dragon - Empathy: This card should have 1 effect trimmed off it. Having 4 effects makes it a bit bloated when it could be spread out across multiple monsters. I actually intended this card to have a lot of effects. I thought about putting his protection effect on another monster as you suggested too, but I like the idea of being restricted in what you can do with the archetype. I also like the idea of a monster that encourages decision making ; which is both fitting thematically, a lot of ethic is about making (good) choices, and fun to play, since it value smart plays, and make it so the archetypes can't do everything all at once. Having "only" 3 effects to chose from would deter the choice-oriented design/gameplay of the card, which would be a bit less fun in my opinion. Quote It irks me that this card isn't a Cardinal monster since it means you can't use it as fusion material. If it could be, the deck would have a 3 card combo to set up the fusion, but it unfortunately does not. That's actually a mistake from my side. Become Better should allow you to Fuse with both Cardinal and Virtue monsters, I just forgot to write that. But it still wouldn't allow you to summon Justice with the Virtues monster (Empathy and Redemption) anyway, because of its summoning restriction (3 Cardinal Monsters with different names). I'll discuss that point later tho. Quote The banish effect is tricky. This would be a really nice effect for the deck, but getting to see your opponent's entire deck is a bit too much free knowledge, especially since you can use what it's the deck to potentially decipher what's in their hand I'm not sure about this, but I assume you're talking about Empathy's last effect ? If that's the case, you don't get to see your opp's deck. It's your opp that looks through his own deck to chose a DARK monster that he reveals to you, so you can choose where to put it. You only get to see the card your opponent choses. Quote If the Cardinals could banish a dark monster from your zones in addition to the opponent's zones, Empathy could let you put a Redemption into the zone you needed to continue your plays As I said, I think I'll make it so the Cardinals Knights can banish DARK monsters from your own zone because I think you're right about that. As for the second sentence, Empathy can already put Redemption in your hand (and you can then put it on your field if you want it), but it's true that he can't put Redemption in your GY, which would be sad if I decide to make Temperance being able to banish from your own GY. I could rewrite Empathy first effect so you can choose to "add 1 DARK "Virtue" monster to your hand, OR send it directly to your GY". What do you think about that ? Quote (New) Redemption: I see what you're going for with this, but there is an important rule that makes this have anti-synergy. Pendulum monsters in the pendulum zone are not treated as monsters. You would not be allowed to banish this from the pendulum zone for Courage's effect. Yeah I figured that out after posting it. Maybe this downside could be bypassed by adding a line in its pendulum effect stating "This card in the pendulum zone is still treated as a DARK monster", would that work out ? Quote For it's pendulum effect... It's a bit excessive. It'd be cool if there was another scale for the deck, and it could place that instead of just a copy of itself. Right now it can only put another Redemption in the scale which neither lets you pendulum summon or summon any Cardinals. The counter mechanic is unnecessary and just too slow. I'd much rather have scales 5/7 with a light restriction than a slow draw and occasional banish. The fact that there is only one Pendulum monster in the archetype, meaning you don't get to really pendulum summon is actually intentional. I like archetypes that have only 1 pendulum monster that are used in a quirky way (Dreaming Nemleria in mind, I love this deck a lot). I could still change its scales to 5/7 tho, for a greater deckbuilding liberty, so if one decides to put some more pendulum monsters that are not part of the archetype into the deck, they could still use Redemption for Pendulum Summon. The only reason I wanted a pendulum monster in this deck was so you could put a DARK monster on the field while bypassing the LIGHT-only restriction. Redemption has a lot of text, but its only purpose is actually to get banished from the field. That's why the counter mechanic is slow and unnecessary, it's just "a cherry on top", you're not supposed to trigger that effect a lot (if ever). Also counters are fun to play and underused imo. I don't have much idea for another DARK pendulum, but if I were to make one, it would have a similar design, where it would be played only to get banished. Quote For it's monster effect... The first one needs to be more flexible tbh. Cardinals have a high risk of being dead in the hand [...] Right now it only works for intentionally missing on Prudence so it gets banished to set this up. The protection effect needs a bit of wording help, since it would make more sense as an effect that isn't activated. If a "Cardinal" and/or "Virtue" monster(s) you control would be destroyed by battle or card effect, you can shuffle this banished card into the Deck instead. I really agree with you on this one. I imagined it to be an effect that is only useful in mid/late game, but that doesn't really feel good. I feel like the archetype lacks a bit of consistency, maybe I could replace that effect with one that searches 1 light lvl6 warrior or dragon monster from your deck to hand instead ? Or if you have any other idea for it I'd gladly take it. As for the protection effect, your wording seems good to me, I think I'll replace the current one with this, thx. Quote (New) Become Better: I wish this was a quickplay spell that fused instead of being a clunky searcher. That search effect is really hard to pull off in this deck and has a high risk of just being straight up dead when you need it most. This is especially true with Redemption not being a monster in the scale. This card is actually a bit messy and I agree it could be improved a lot. It's because I've rewritten it several times. I think the first effect I wrote for it was banishing 2 dark monsters from anywhere to search 2 cardinals trap or monsters. But at this time I did not created Empathy yet, and I also thought it would be a bit much. So I reworked it a few times, and ended up wanting it to not be a generic searcher, but just a piece of the Empathy combo, where you use Empathy first 2 effect to search for Redemption and Become Better, set Redemption on field and use Become Better on it (which would be possible if we add the "still a monster in pendulum zone" line in Redemption's effect I talked earlier). Like, it's not supposed to be a card that can be played on its own, it's supposed to be played at 1 copy in the deck just as a combo enabler. Empathy is supposed to play the role of the generic searcher. But since it's pretty hard to pull off, the deck lacks consistency and I agree it comes as awkward as it is. I feel Become Better is good in this state, but then the archetype would need another spell support to improve the deck's consistency, and do what Become Better don't actually do (if that makes sense?). I might want to expand on that idea. Quote The GY effect also doesn't work as a quick effect in the way you intend. Spell cards in the GY can't just activate like a quick effect in the way a trap can. They have to have something trigger them first Could this be solved by a line that says something like "Whenever you want during the Main Phase, you can banish this card ....." instead of just saying "Quick Effect:" ? Although with everything you said, I'm actually considering making another GY effect for this card and displace the Fusing effect to another new card. Or maybe displace the searching effect (but then I should think of another reward for banishing Redemption off the field), I really don't know. But I really want to keep the idea for this card to only be a combo enabler with Empathy and Redemption, that also happens to have a GY effect. Maybe I really need to design another card to address all these issues. Quote (New) Ethical Meditations: You can't target monsters in the deck like that. This trap would work just about the same if it was a simple searcher though, since all the Cardinals are quick effects. Also, the GY effect should state "up to" rather than its current wording. As it's worded right now, it would have to target an equal number of backrow which could be very dead depending on how much banishing you're doing. Could this issue be solved by revealing a cardinal monster from your deck instead of targeting it ? I know I didn't want to make it add Cardinals to the hand because of some niche interaction, but I forgot what it was exactly. As for the GY effect, I understand and I will change that asap. Now, for Justice, there is a lot of little critique pointing to it in your message: Quote I still think the fusion should be a rank 6 too [...] I'd suggest making [empathy] targeting protection a passive on Justice instead of it's floodgate effect [...] It irks me that [Empathy] isn't a Cardinal monster since it means you can't use it as fusion material. If it could be, the deck would have a 3 card combo to set up the fusion, but it unfortunately does not. Which links to your direct critique of it Quote Honestly, this should have its materials lowered to 2 Cardinals instead of 3. The effect of it is narrow enough that it wouldn't be too strong for only needing 2 materials to summon. The floodgate effect is what would tip it over the edge though. Being a free lockdown against its intended deck would be really unfun to fight against. Overall, what you are saying is that the monster is both: too hard to summon (because it needs the 3 Cardinal monsters specifically, and not the Virtues), and too unfair (because of the floodgate effect). That is actually calculated. The reason why Justice has such a restrictive summoning condition is exactly because the floodgate effect is so strong. The original idea was to get the 3 Cardinal Knights specifically out of the deck to fuse them into Justice, which is hard to do, but gets you a huge reward. But on the other hand, I wanted to make another Fusion monster, that would have been easier to summon (with only 2 Cardinal OR Virtue monsters), and have a protection effect similar to Empathy's one. I ended up not creating it because I thought it would be too redundant. Now that it is said, and that you know my original intent, I would like to know if you still think the card should be reworked and how ? Same thing for Empathy. Anyway, I hope you understand better what I intended and aimed at for the deck and each cards specifically. I'd love your opinion on what I've just said. I took your critiques into account tho, and will repair the effects and wording of the cards accordingly. Writing this comment made me realize a lot of issue the archetype have, but I don't have a solution to all of them, so some more comments would be welcomed ! Once again thank you a lot for your attention and involvement, it means a lot to me ! Edited February 11 by not naze Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SamuelScott Posted February 11 Report Share Posted February 11 (edited) On 1/20/2025 at 10:57 AM, not naze said: Old topic: Reveal hidden contents So I designed this little archetype like half a year ago and never posted it because i struggled a lot and lacked time to make the artwork for it. As usual, I generate and edit the artworks with free AI tools (Canva and Pixlr this time) and end up by reworking them a bit with Photofiltre 7. I'm not an artist, and I'm not even good with AI tools so please don't judge them too severely. New topic: So basically it's the same as the old topic. I started designing that archetype half a year ago, and struggled a lot to do so (mostly because of artwork). As I said I'm not an artist. I used AI tools to generate the pictures (canva and pixlr. photofiltre for editing), and it might be the last time I do so, considering both the unethical aspect of AI, and the poor result I'm getting from it (especially for non-human things, I just don't like both dragons artworks). Talking about ethics, the archetype is based on the cardinal virtues from ancient greek philosophy, which are represented by the 4 main cards of the archetype. Since I value Justice more than the others I made it the boss monster. But I consider some other virtues even greater than these 4, like Empathy, which is both the cornerstone of the archetype, and the cornerstone of any good moral system according to me. The 3 remaining cards represent redemption, and the act of becoming a greater moral being, which I found fitting thematically, and also pretty cool for some kind of a story line (the cardinal virtue knights helping the redemption knight to become virtuous). Anyway I love talking about philosophy and ethics but I put a lot of work in designing the actual effects of every cards, and that's what I would want to discuss the most today ! As you can see, I listened to your critics and corrected the effects of the 3 primordial knights to make it more easy to interact with them and disrupt them. For Prudence specifically, I took inspiration on the wording of the card "Allure of Darkness". The idea is to use them to banish DARK monsters from either the field, the GY or your opp's hand ; in order to special summon them. Once you got at least 2 lvl 6 LIGHT monsters on the field, you can XYZ summon Empathy, and that guy does a LOT for the deck, and you can chose up to two effects depending of your hand and the state of the game. If you have a hard time activating the 3 cardinal knights effects, you can use his last effect to put a DARK monster of your opponent from his deck, to the zone you want to, in order to summon the knight you want. If the game and your hand is really good for you, you can take the protecting effect that prevent your opps from targeting your LIGHT monsters. But the typical situation is using the first 2 effects to add Redemption to your hand, and one of the Cardinal spell or trap (usually the spell). That's where it's becoming hard to follow, Redemption does a lot too. You can set it as a pendulum (putting a DARK monster on the field bypassing the summon limit of only LIGHT monster) and use its effect to put another copy of himself on the field. This is important because you want to banish the first copy with Courage or Become Better, and keep the other one on the field to stack Redemption Counter for drawing/breaking board. When you banish it, you can summon a lvl 6 LIGHT Dragon or Warrior that is already banished or in your GY. Also, when Redemption is in banishment, you can send it back to your deck to protect one of your monster from being destroyed. So, once Redemption is on the field, you can banish it with Become Better to search for another Cardinal card. Note that its even better when you go 2nd and your opp already have a dark monster on field. With that effect you can either search one of the first 3 knights, or the trap card Ethical Meditation. It allows you to activate the effect of a Cardinal Knight directly from your deck, and during your opp's turn (since it's a trap obviously). Also, the turn after it got sent to the GY, you can banish it to destroy spell and traps equal to your opp's banished DARK monster which offer a bit more of board breaking. Finally you can use Become Better last effect to banish itself from the GY (note that you can use this effect the same turn as you used the first effect, or on your opp's turn since it's a quick effect) to send back 3 Cardinal monster back to your deck in order to fusion the boss monster: Justice. I reworked his effect quite a bit (thank you to Ultimagamer, that gave me some really good advice about it). When you Fusion Summon it, once per turn you can either target and banish any card on the field OR banish every DARK monsters on the field. Also, it acts as a floodgate negating all DARK monster's effect while it's on the field (excluding Virtues monster, meaning that it doesn't negate Redemption). So the typical combo would be: getting 2 lvl 6 light monster on the field -> Empathy -> use his first 2 effects to search for Redemption and Become Better -> set Redemption and use his first effect -> activate Become Better -> Banish Become Better to summon Justice. From there you can do whatever with the remaining cards. There might be some more advanced combos, and it depends a lot of your opening hand, but I'll let you figure that out if you're interested enough lol. So here it is. It's been a wild ride to design all this. I really hope it's neither too broken, neither too situational, it's really hard to balance a full archetype. I also hope everything is easily readable and understandable. Thank you a lot for reading all this again, I know it's a lot. Please let me know if you have any other comments or critiques, I can still edit them if needed and I would love some feedback on them ! The "Cardinal Virtue" archetype is an innovative addition to the Yu-Gi-Oh! universe, inspired by ancient Greek philosophy's cardinal virtues. Comprising LIGHT attribute Dragons and Warriors, these cards focus on banishing or countering DARK attribute opponents, symbolizing the battle between good and evil. Your dedication shows! You can keep refining, your creativity will shine through. Edited March 10 by SamuelScott Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
not naze Posted February 14 Author Report Share Posted February 14 Thank you ! I love designing cards. I hope I'll be able to create my own TCG one day (or work for konami lol). Y'all comments really help me to refine my cards and I couldn't improve as much without you ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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