I try to practice what I preach when it comes to Rituals

[AGATHODAIMON BANGTAIL COW]

[spoiler='Will you wait for me?']You can Ritual Summon this card with "Millennium of Stasis". Your opponent cannot activate cards or effects in response to this card's Ritual Summon. When this card is Ritual Summoned: You can target 1 card on the field; banish that target face-up. When this card attacks, your opponent cannot activate card effects until the end of the Damage Step.[/spoiler]

 

[spoiler='I've got a whole lot of nope for you today.']This card is used to Ritual Summon "Livaton, the Temporal Ruler of Abeyance". You must also Tribute monsters from your hand or field whose total Levels are 8 or more. Spells, Traps, and card effects cannot be activated in response to this card's activation. If a Ritual Monster on your side of the field would be affected by an opponent's card effect, you can banish this card from your Graveyard instead.[/spoiler]

When you are playing a Ritual Deck, there are plenty of opportunities for your opponent to disrupt your big Ritual play, whether it be something like Bottomless Trap Hole, Torrential Tribute, Solemn Warning, and so on. And this is just when you're bringing it out, it doesn't take into account the Mirror Forces, D-Prisons, and other effect destruction that lurks every corner of your opponent's Deck and Extra Deck. This makes it very easy to lose a lot of card advantage for nothing in return, which is often the bane of Decks that run the blue cards. The duo of cards posted above are trying to combat such a tragedy.

 

Livaton, the Ritual Monster, has the ability to prevent your opponent from chaining those devastating Traps that would normally wreck other Ritual Monsters such as Demise and the Evigishkis. No neverending pits or watery graves for you! If you don't think that's not enough to justify the 1-3 cards you lose to Summon this, then this has another gift for you. When you Ritual Summon it, you can banish any card on the field. Bam, it's gone. There's no need to worry about your opponent activating anything in response to this because, like when this was Ritual Summoned, your opponent was unable to activate anything to counter your monster. This is the same here. The ability to prevent your opponent from taking this out with a cheap effect removal card is also extended to when this card attacks, so you will never have to worry about a Dimensional Prison when you're swinging with this card (same as Mirror Force, but it can still take this out if you attack with something else). Unlike the Ancient Gear series, it prevents more than Spells and Traps from activating - your opponent can't activate monster effects either, which means your opponent can't catch you off guard with an Honest, Kalut, or Crane.

 

Another issue with Ritual Summoning exists in the Ritual Card being negated. While this doesn't wreck your advantage as much since you keep the monsters you would've ditched for the Summon and you also keep the Ritual Monster, it can still prove problematic. Your Ritual Spells are very valuable, they are the gateway to making your blue cards hit the field. This is where Millennium of Stasis comes in. With Super Polymerization's clause, your opponent will be unable to stop your strategy with Solemn Warning, Magic Drain, or Dark Bribe. Combine this with Livaton's effects, and this allows you to become untouchable as you Summon Livaton and until after you banish a card on your opponent's side of the field. For its final trick, your Spell can banish itself from the Graveyard to prevent Livaton from being affected by a single card your opponent throws at it. Diawolf comes and tries to ruin your fun? Nope. Dark Hole gets played? You don't care. Volca attempts to blow up your monster in a painful burst of 3k 2800 damage? Not gonna happen. You also don't have to have Livaton out to use this protective secondary effect, you can banish this to protect some other Ritual Monster you have out.

 

 

Sooo, YCM, how did I do?

[StealthyTyranitar]

The one thing is that, while you are trying to create something that combats stated problem, you also create something practically indestructible. You can only kill it with higher ATK or a card effect, of which you can negate once.

[AGATHODAIMON BANGTAIL COW]

The one thing is that, while you are trying to create something that combats stated problem, you also create something practically indestructible. You can only kill it with higher ATK or a card effect, of which you can negate once.

With Rituals being as slow and costly as they are, the extreme hardiness doesn't seem like it is too good. Plus, there are plenty of card effects that can deal with this, and while a lot of them won't be able to go off when Livaton starts doing its stuff, there are still a plethora of them out there.

[StealthyTyranitar]

That's the thing, is though thier costly, you can special summon monsters without ever having to have anything on the field. Art hat to the bone statements, and...

[AGATHODAIMON BANGTAIL COW]

That's the thing, is though thier costly, you can special summon monsters without ever having to have anything on the field. Art hat to the bone statements, and...

Without having things on the field? This isn't a new thing, Rituals could be Summoned onto an empty field since they were first made. Though, you're probably likely to have a Manju (or some weaker variation of) on the field already to search Millennium/Contract/ARA or Livaton. And if you have another Manju (or Manju-like monster), then you'll Summon it next turn so that you can try to bring out another Ritual Monster. Their field isn't always empty. If that wasn't what you were talking about, then please clarify, because that message is really difficult to understand.

[John Kelly]

Way too powerful; a card needs some weakness. In most circumstances it will be an instant 3000 damage for the opponent upon summoning.

[AGATHODAIMON BANGTAIL COW]

Way too powerful; a card needs some weakness. In most circumstances it will be an instant 3000 damage for the opponent upon summoning.

Like what sort of weakness? Do I have it implode on each of my End Phases? Do I bump its Level to some abomination number that messes up its guarantee of being ran in something? Do I drop its ATK stat down to something that lets it get ran over by something that probably took less resources?

[John Kelly]

Use your imagination. As it stands, this card is a 3000 ATK beatstick that can't be countered when it attacks, automatically kills a potential threat, and has an easy way to protect itself (multiple times if you run multiple Millennium of Stasis). Also if you run a lot of level 8+ monsters, including multiple copies of the same card, not many resources are actually required.

Additionally, this does nothing to really improve the game. Ritual monsters still suck even if this non-sucky Ritual monster were printed.

[tayfga15]

Yeah ritual monsters need real support, like some kind of motivation to use the non-effect ones. That would be cool, a really good ritual spell card that can summon any non-effect ritual monster and gives them some sort of protection.

 

Back on topic though, 3000ATK and 3000DEF are probably too much. Something like 2400ATK should be sufficient so it doesn't hit the all important 2500 mark. If you're really religious about it's strength something like 2900 ATK (Lower than some key threats like Red Dragon Archfiend) and should have much lower defence points to allow for your opponent to do some playmaking.

[AGATHODAIMON BANGTAIL COW]

Well, after all of that, I decided to finally remember to nerf this. Now your opponent can chain to the effect, and if Yu-Gi-Oh logic works the way I think it does, your opponent can now BTH/TT this if you decide to use its banishing effect, which promotes a "Do I want to do this?" question for you. I don't really know if it works like this at all. It also has a slightly lower ATK, just so it can die to BEWD and some other thing. Its DEF is also down to 1900, just for you people.

[AGATHODAIMON BANGTAIL COW]

I take it by the silence that I did good this time? Bump.

[vla1ne]

Close, but not exactly. Your ritual spell covers too many things for it to be considered balanced. Not that covering for rituals is a bad thing, but rituals have a habit of being extremely OP for relatively low cost. the only real issue with ritual monsters is consistency, but that's been mostly remedied by the new cards  such as grisaille prison and the Djinns. If you made the effect of your ritual a bit more specific, these cards would be more balanced, like if it worked along similar lines to Northwemko's ritual spell.

 

Also Immunity to negation/activation negation doesn't really make rituals more balanced. I like the concept, but cards that cannot be negated under any circumstance are rarely a good idea. especially when they have effects that do things like banish other cards. What might be better than that could be to have him give you back some of the resources you spent to Summon him upon his death.

 

I like the concept, but it feels like it could become very broken due to the constant threat of power creep giving you easier access to him.

[goddamnit names are a pain]

Meh, it seems fine to me. This includes the nerf, though. 2800 Seems perfect, and I see no issues with the cards. So what, it stops effects and stuff on summoning and during attacks? If it doesn't blow stuff up like crazy, take monsters away from the opponent, or unhinge game physics, it usually seems fine to me. I think the concept of a beater that protects itself is so underused, yet so good. Take Star Eater, for example.