[Post Contest Tune-up] Prepare the torture rack! (Iron Chain Torture)

[Trebuchet MS]

[spoiler Lore]All "Iron Chain" monsters you control gain 300 ATK and DEF. When an "Iron Chain" monster you control inflicts damage to your opponent: Send the top 2 cards of your opponent's Deck to the Graveyard. When an "Iron Chain" monster you control is destroyed by battle: Send cards from the top of your opponent's Deck to the Graveyard equal to half the destroyed monster's Level (rounded up).[/spoiler]

 

I like the concept of mill - destroying the opponent's source of cards and rendering them nearly helpless in fighting back. Well, with exception to those cards that intentionally mill themselves. When the Iron Chain archetype appeared in CSOC I tried to build a Deck around them.

 

A pity the entire archetype is rather unfocused, being unsure of whether to beat, burn, or mill. So when a contest appeared with the aim of making a card to support an old archetype, I got to making a card that blends all 3 aspects of the Iron Chain's attempts at once.

 

The 300 ATK/DEF boost doesn't seem like much, but it allows Repairman to kill more things in a straight-up battle, and allows Coil to withstand weaker attacks. Dragon also turns into a respectable 2800 ATK - if 2500 on a generic LV6 Synchro wasn't enough.

 

The second effect triggers off either battle damage or effect damage, allowing you to mill regardless of how you damaged the opponent. This means that Repairman killing a monster with lower ATK gets the effect off twice. A former version of this card milled 1 and sent 1 card from your opponent's hand to the Graveyard in an attempt to blend both Robbin' Goblin and Zombie, but I was penalized for that. Hence it is changed to the buffed Robbin' Zombie you see now.

 

The final effect lets you have the last laugh when your Iron Chain monsters get destroyed in battle. The base monsters, on average, mill for 2, while Iron Chain Dragon mills 3 if it ever goes down. I would've made the mill count equal to the destroyed monster's Level, but apparently almost all easy mill effects cap off at 3 cards.

[Trebuchet MS]

Hard to get attention when members churning out custom cards bury you in a landslide.

 

Bump.

[Not-so-Radiant Arin]

The thing is, though, that mill has become increasingly less and less of a cost as newer cards come out that abuse the Graveyard. Nowadays, milling your opponent's Deck will actually help them more rather than hurt them, and that's why Iron Chain fell out of favor as the Level 6 Syncro (and was replaced with Brio a couple sets later). The destroy by battle is useless, seeming as how everything and their mother has a destruction effect (or means to dodge destruction) which basically makes this card nothing more than vulnerable MST bait.