Water Mage of the Ancient Sea

[NaZgUly]

                          

 

You can discard 2WATER monsters to Special Summon this card from your hand. Once per turn, you can banish 3 WATER monsters from your Graveyard to Special Summon 1 WATER monster from your Deck.

 

This card is made for summoning high leveled monsters.

[magemeek22]

This is actually pretty interesting. I mean, sure, its immensely powerful, but there is a sense of balance that appears to be fairly well thought out. Actually, its really good design, but there are some flaws. Well, you'll here more about that in my actual review that follows:

 

[spoiler="Artwork and OCG"]

I'm digging the artwork on the card here. It's a little realistic from a YGO standpoint, but it fits perfectly and overall I LIKE IT (lol). The card grammar, however, is almost atrocious; I get what you're saying, but it needs rewording:

 

You can discard 2 WATER monsters to Special Summon this card (from your hand). Once per turn, you can banish 3 WATER monsters from your Graveyard to Special Summon 1 Aqua-type monster from your Deck.

 

Other than that, pretty good.

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler="Effect Usefulness"]

I got to hand it to you, the effect you packed onto this level 2 monster is quite fantastic. The innate Special Summon works wonders with the latter part of its effect, which allows for you to banish monsters to Special Summon from your Deck. Basically, you discard two other monsters, Special Summon mage, and then banish the two monsters you discarded plus another to get a monster worth fighting on the field. It's really powerful and goes together very well with the atlantean archetype, so it really does fit the WATER theme well. After all, WATER is all about discarding and swarming - and with this card, you thoroughly incorporate both.

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler="Balance"]

The balance on this card is so near flawless I'm astounded. Seriously, either you thought this out really well or you simply had a stroke of profound luck. I'll discuss each part of your card in detail here.

 

The ATK/DEF, Level, and Stats

Really low ATK and DEF on this card, which is perfect. It can Special Summon itself, and its whole purpose is to get a beatstick out, so there's no point in making the card itself powerful. Plus, this way, it avoids Bottomless Trap Hole.

 

The First Part of MY REVISED Effect:

You can discard 2 WATER monsters to Special Summon this card (from your hand).

Steep cost, steep results. Discarding TWO MONSTERS is no easy chore, especially if that could potentially damage your Deck. However, the results could be astounding. For this steep of a cost, the Special Summon is fine. Further, there is no limitation that says the monster cannot be Normal Summoned. Normally, this wouldn't fit well, especially since there is a powerful effect that follows; however, even this is balanced by the fact that the second effect itself is brilliantly made.

 

The Second Part of MY REVISED Effect:

Once per turn, you can banish 3 WATER monsters from your Graveyard to Special Summon 1 Aqua-type monster from your Deck.

Nice. Banishing monsters isn't easy, but that's perfect, since you'll be able to get out a monster worth reckoning if you're successful. Whether you Normal Summon or Special Summon this card, it doesn't matter since using its second effect (the Special Summoning one) requires banishing potentially useful monsters. I added a once per turn limitation, as you can see, to restrict overpowering your opponent. Also, my recommendation is to allow you to summon ANY WATER monster from your Deck. This may be powerful, but the card is still fairly balanced.

[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler="Overall Playability"]

This card fits well into most Water archetypes, so brilliant thinking. I'd actually love to see it in an Atlantean Deck!

[/spoiler]

 

My Rankings:

1. Artwork and OCG: 8/10 and 4/10, respectively
2. Effect Usefulness: 9/10
3. Balance: 10/10
4. Overall Playability: 9.5/10

 

My complete revised effect (only a recommendation):

You can discard 2 WATER monsters to Special Summon this card (from your hand). Once per turn, you can banish 3 WATER monsters from your Graveyard to Special Summon 1 WATER monster from your Deck.

[Sora1499]

I'm gonna have to disagree with the above poster and say that I like this card very little, and this is coming from a guy who's been playing Mermails for the past year now.

 

First off, the summoning conditions or w/e are ridiculous.  Even if it does trigger Atlanteans and Gunde, discarding 2 of your resources for a puny level 2 kinda sucks when you can just normal summon it for almost the same result (apart from the inherent -2, of course).  That being said, it almost feels like you included those summoning conditions just to abuse Atlanteans further, because without them, it would absolutely NEVER be used instead of almost never.  Flawless design choice I must say.

 

While we're on the subject of design, grabbing monsters straight from the deck without a tangible cost and/or player-player interaction is generally frowned upon.  This card epitomizes such a taboo effect, allowing you to instantly drop monster after monster after monster without any restrictions as long as you have monsters in the grave to banish.  Loop enabler, anyone?  OTK central?  Yeah, this effect needs major revisions.

 

For starters, I'd change the summoning conditions to discarding just 1 WATER: a realistic effect that doesn't deform Atlanteans any further.  Next, you need to add the following clause to this card:  "You can only use this effect of 'Water Mage of the Ancient Sea' once per turn."  I'd also highly recommend a level cap for this effect, such as level 4, as well as preventing the summoned monster from being used as Material for that turn.

 

After these revisions, it's passable as a card, but it's still pretty shitty design.

[NaZgUly]

For the 1st post thx allot i will fix it ;D and for the 2nd i know about that but it will be better to send more and more monster to your graveyard to special summon higher star ones.. . Cuz i think it would be better like u to discard 2 3/6 level monsters and another in your graveywrd to Ss one from like 7-10 stars but u r right thx for comments and btw i got the idea in my head and made the card about a minute :D
And yeah sora this card isnt a fighter its a summoner and the summoners ussualy have like 500 atk and def and star leveling: 1-5 so if he had like 2000 it would be op and if youd only discard one card it would be UP cuz u wont get enough monsters in your grave in early/late game and this is a way that u can send more m/s to your grave from hand and Ss powerful monsters on your field. Andnbtw i dont think the design sucks and the effect.. . Its not perfect cuz in the Life there is nothing perfect ;)