When the Cards Cry - Umineko set[3/?]

[mitchermitcher]

Because Aix made the Orica template a while ago and when it's sitting on my desktop I kind of do get urges to make something with it. Trying to adapt lore into gameplay mechanics is pretty fun. The cards here are based on the meta witches from the visual novel series Umineko and I've done my best(read: 5 minutes of thinking) to try and adapt their abilities into a card format.

 

[spoiler=Beato]

Golden Witch Beatrice
R10
LIGHT Spellcaster Xyz
2 Level 10 Monsters
Once per turn, you can detach 1 Xyz material: Declare one full sentence. Neither player can activate cards whose effects contain that exact sentence for the rest of the duel.
ATK 1000
DEF 1000

I wonder if I have to define what a 'full sentence' means in the context of YGO in the card or if I can just leave it as is. Either way, the Golden Witch is very much the star of her story and the single most important character(but not the protagonist!) so I made her the boss monster. She's not actually stronger than the below witches but I felt it was appropriate. It's not like there's really anyone here who's read Umineko who'll argue my choice on that anyway...

 
[spoiler=Bern]

Witch of Miracles Bernkastel
R2
DARK Spellcaster Xyz
2 Level 2 Monsters
This card is treated as a Level 10 monster when used for an Xyz Summon. Neither players can activate card effects with the text “Add 1”. During your standby phase, you can detach 1 Xyz material: Place 1 card from your deck on top of your deck.
ATK 900
DEF 1000

She's meant to stop searching, since as far as I can recall most searching effects start with a "Add 1.... from the deck". I could just say "Neither players can add cards to their hand except by drawing them" but I wanted the effect to emphasize the text rather than the actual effect of the card. As for her other effect, she can effectively control her topdecks and thus, control when miracles happen. Although I guess that's not really a miracle anymore.

 
[spoiler=Lambda]

Witch of Certainty Lambdadelta
R2
LIGHT Spellcaster Xyz
2 Level 2 Monsters
This card is treated as a Level 10 monster when used for an Xyz Summon. Neither players can activate cards effects with the text “Negate”. During your end phase, you can detach 1 Xyz material to target 1 card in either player’s graveyard: It cannot be moved from the graveyard as long as this card is on the field.
ATK 1000
DEF 1000

It's much harder to find decent art of Lambda compared to the other two for some strange reason. Anyway, for spoiler-ish reasons her ATK is slightly higher than Bern. Both of her effects emphasize on 'certainty', with the first not allowing negation effects and the latter making sure things stay dead, if only for a while. Both Lambda and Bern have that 'level 10' clause just so it's possible to run all 3 in the same deck although at this point it's still not really an archetype and more of a collection of Xyz monsters...

There's definitely a good amount of characters I haven't made yet so expect more cards I guess, idk. Rate, CnC, feel free.
 

[ENMaker]

Not a clue what Umineko is and honestly not interested to find out so just looking at them as cards in their own right.

 

For the moment only going to be about Beatrice. That effect is absurd. If you know what deck you're facing, which in matches you always will, it's a ridiculous thing to be able bring out. If your opponent is playing Igknights and you make this you completely win, they can't YuGiOh in any way because their entire deck is locked. It prevents Shaddolls from using either of their fusion spells. Raidraptors get absolutely fucked by no Strix. Kozmos can at least be impeded by making Farmgirl and subsequently their E-Teles redundant. Use it against Nekroz and they are gone with how it shuts down either both Mirror and Cycle or just Kaleidoscope. Heros losing Mask Changes. Fluffals without Polymerization is game over. Can block off Deneb and Altair so Satellarknights fold.

 

I mean Trains have no bother at all making this and if it manages to stay out and get that effect off twice it's either going to be game over or at the very least a huge impediment for those decks and likely others I'm not thinking off. Like it can even shut down staples or random engines, and the fact that unless you negate it at activation there is absolutely no recovery seems a bit much.

 

I could be totally wrong in what I'm saying and my casualness shining through so take that into account but still.

[mitchermitcher]

I mean Trains have no bother at all making this

Well sheet. I was kinda hoping R10 is hard enough to summon. Should I just straight up make it an R12? I don't really want to resort to making her only summonable by using specific Xyz materials. I get how absurd her effect is and I kinda do want to keep it that way but I do perfectly understand the concern about not being able to negate her except at activation. Perhaps the negation lasting the entire duel is a bit much. Maybe for as long as she's face up on the field? I did give her only 1000 ATK for a reason, although I'm not sure if it's hard to circumvent that one downside.

 

I'm more casual than you are so idk

[I Hate Snatch Steal]

If this is an Umineko set, where are all the oceans & cats, or maybe ocean cats? .... *checks google* Ok fine its "seagull" not "ocean cat". Still, I don't see seagull's anywhere either.

 

[spoiler=in case you didn't get that]

 

In Japanese,

 

Umi = Ocean

Neko = Cat

Umineko = a particular breed of seagull

 

 

First card:

This cards seem like it should belong in experimental for the reason that they match text on a card, possibly even flavor text?. Either way it can lock certain decks out completely. eg "Must be Fusion Summoned and cannot be special summoned by other ways" applies to many HERO fusions. That's been noted already though. The fact that its for the whole duel instead of just while the card is out seems like a major issue.

 

Second Card:

2 level 2 monsters is definitely a requirement not every deck can make, Any card on top of your deck is good The game had that at one point from lavalval chain, but chain was banned because of its other effect I think. In addition to setting up your next draw, cards like this come to mind:

http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/True_Name

 

Since this effect activates during the Standby Phase, you'll need to put some work into activating it

 

That's before I even consider how much searching this card blocks. However its stats are low so that effect is fine since an opponent will just normal summon something and run over it before activating a search effect.

 

but wait, this card says "add 1" so it prevents itself from activating?

 

Third Card:

Not much to say here. Once again, low stats make its lock effect less useful. I assume the trend is that you use the rank 2s to make the rank 10? Once again, it seems that you can't activate its effect because it includes the text it prohibits.

 

In general I don't like the idea of doing things based on card text as text, and I have some ideas on how to change the effects of cards 2 and 3 to not require that, but that's just me. Certainly its a creative set.

[mitchermitcher]

woot, got a comment even though its this late already

 

Very well, I'll post the updated set in Experimental, if I ever get to updating this.

 

Yup, even flavor text. Either way, guess there's no helping it, I'll adjust the permanency of Beato's effect.

 

As for the 2nd and 3rd card, I had assumed that with the way I worded it, only the actual activated effect that contains the relevant words won't work. Let's say, in the second card's effect, her text does contain 'Add 1' but the actual effect she can activate is one that places a card on top of the deck. Either way, that can easily be fixed by adding a 'except for this card' clause.

[I Hate Snatch Steal]

If you couldn't tell from my joke at the start of my reply, I'm curious, why are these called Umineko?

[mitchermitcher]

It's from a series of visual novels called exactly that. Since I couldn't find the pop culture section I thought it was probably fine to just post it in casuals.

[I Hate Snatch Steal]

There is no more dedicated pop culture section anymore. Pop culture cards are now posted the appropriate section based on the same criteria as other cards. Personally I think the staff should have made it that way years ago.