A peek at an archetype I'll never finish [Essence Cannoner]

[AGATHODAIMON BANGTAIL COW]

Fun fact: Did you know that I keep spelling that goddamn word with an 's' where the 'c' is supposed to be?

 

Once per turn, during either player's turn: You can pay 1500 Life Points, then target 1 card on the field; destroy that target.

 

Life Point costs tend to be very negligible (fun fact again, I can't spell "negligible." I love Spellcheck so much) and not actually considered a cost. That is, until you start getting around to 1500-2000 points being paid for the effect, which is when it's way too much. This archetype that you'll never see again because I'll never actually complete it is based on gaining Life Points and spending them in huge chunks for specific effects. Also, they don't like facedown cards, but you couldn't really figure that out by looking at the card I revealed here. As for Cannoner, it is supposed to be a Bear-like monster that allows you to massacre your poor innocent Life Points to blow up cards, but this gets to activate this effect once during either player's turn. This means that in addition to paying two one and a half grand to take out that pesky boss monster, you can pay another 21.5k to blow up some other boss or combo that you're opponent is cooking up before they can even get around to dealing with this. But be careful though, as two-thousand Life Points is a whopping 1/4th 18.75% of your Life Points. You can only use this effect thrice  five times per duel without somehow gaining Life Points, and each use makes it much more easy to get pwn't from out of nowhere. Makes me wonder if I should improve its method of removal.

 

Edit: Decreased cost from 2000 to 1500.

 

 

 

If I do actually make this archetype and post it on YCM, be warned that it'll be written, as I'm really picky on my card art.

[Vip123]

It seems quite well balanced, but I think it could be more of a 1500 pay, rather than a 2000 pay. It could also be something like Once per turn/Once during either players turn

[Goldendragonslayer922]

The card is okay but the effect is really not that useful because 2000 life points to destroy 1 card is .... meh. Maybe change it to what Vip123 said like 1500 or 1000.

 

The lore is also a bit off: Once per turn, during either player's turn: You can pay 1000 Life Points; Target 1 card on the field; Destroy that target.

 

Other than that I'd say its pretty balanced.

[AGATHODAIMON BANGTAIL COW]

Eh, if you people insist, I'll drop the cost down from 2000 to 1500. 1000 is probably way too low, given how you can use this on either player's turn.

The lore is also a bit off: Once per turn, during either player's turn: You can pay 1000 Life Points; Target 1 card on the field; Destroy that target.

Neither target nor destroy are capitalized unless it's the start of a sentence or after the colon. Semi-colons have no effect on what gets capitalized. Furthermore, PSCT has effects arranged in a "condition: cost; effect" manner, whereas you're insisting that I use two semi-colons. I'm about 95% sure that what I have is right, and if there is something wrong, it's probably saying "destroy that target" instead of "destroy it." It might also be that I should've said "You can pay 2000 Life Points to target" rather than "You can pay 2000 Life Points, then target." In both instances, I've seen it both ways, so perhaps both ways are correct.

 

Is there an example of a PSCT card being formatted the way you described it?

[Goldendragonslayer922]

Sorry about that my bad I made a mistake there.

[Toshiba26]

Beautifully simple and nice card :)

[newhat]

I'm iffy about it. This is incredibly powerful, removing obstacles on your turn and preventing your opponent from making Synchro, Xyz or monster-effect-based plays on their turn. The only disadvantage is the lack of quick searchers, preventing you from starting the game with it consistently. I do not think a Life Point cost could be balanced for it.

[AGATHODAIMON BANGTAIL COW]

I'm iffy about it. This is incredibly powerful, removing obstacles on your turn and preventing your opponent from making Synchro, Xyz or monster-effect-based plays on their turn. The only disadvantage is the lack of quick searchers, preventing you from starting the game with it consistently. I do not think a Life Point cost could be balanced for it.

Well, it would go against the planned flavor for the archetype (the one I'm not even working on, and the same one I didn't feel like working on like a year ago) if I changed the cost to something other than paying Life Points, so I suppose I could just try to change the effect and leave the "1/turn during either turn: Pay something; blow something up" idea for something with different cost.

 

How about I limit it to only your opponent's turn? Or just your turn?

[TIBONE LUIS]

It seems unfulfilling and would only be helpful if used sparingly, in which case it may already be destroyed.

[AGATHODAIMON BANGTAIL COW]

It seems unfulfilling and would only be helpful if used sparingly, in which case it may already be destroyed.

How so? Being able to blow stuff up on your turn is probably "ok at best," but this also gets to blow things up on your opponent's turn. For example, if your opponent Normal Summons something like, let's say Tour Guide, then uses her effect to get another one. You can pay 1500 Life Points, blow one up, and prevent your opponent from going into Leviair, #17, or Rank 3s that would be able to shrug off this card's effect if you couldn't use it before they hit the field - like Zenmaines, Angineer, or Fortune Tune.

 

If you really think that it is underwhelming, then how would I improve the card, exactly?

[TIBONE LUIS]

If your opponent already had a card it could easily be defeated that's all I'm saying, although the effect is okay the monster itself is lacking.

[AGATHODAIMON BANGTAIL COW]

If your opponent already had a card it could easily be defeated that's all I'm saying, although the effect is okay the monster itself is lacking.

So... what I'm getting from this is "Give it more ATK," right? If so, how much ATK should it have? I gave it 1600 ATK so it could be similar to Fire Fist Bear, who has an effect to blow up monsters. And, given it has such an effect to allow it to blow up something that would defeat it, does it really need to have more ATK? If we made every Level 4 monster in the game have 1900 ATK or so, then it takes away a lot of the diversity in ATK scores, and it makes 1900 about as worthwhile as 1600, because there won't be any 1700 or 1800 monsters that could beat the 1600 but can't beat the 1900.

 

Furthermore, allowing about every other no-Tribute beatstich in the game to run this over is supposed to help balance this out. This is only one card, and it has a powerful effect to remove obstacles, threats, and setup by giving away your Life Points. Taking out one or two cards by itself is devastating enough. It shouldn't be able to hold your opponent off for an entire turn or two by itself, because your opponent probably won't have a turn after that to make a comeback. And this isn't even a boss monster.

[Matches]

I think the card is actually fine the way it is. 1500 LP is already a fair cost to destroy 1 card (even if it is on both player's turn, it's still limited to once per turn). It can easily be destroyed since it has no inbuilt protection. Maybe, if you really want some people to feel better about it, you can change the "target 1 card" to "target 1 monster", or you can add You can only control 1 "Essence Cannoner", thus limiting the use of the card and then giving way to justifiably adding some sort of inbuilt protection to the card.