Lavalval Chain

[~British Soul~]

 

2 Level 4 monsters
Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card to activate 1 of these effects;
● Send 1 card from your Deck to the Graveyard.
● Choose 1 monster from your Deck and place it on top of your Deck.

 

Remember when this was rumoured to be in BP03?

So let's talk about this badly designed card that didn't get a reprint in BP03, but still needs a reprint.

[evilfusion]

God, this thing needs a reprint, if only to lower that price tag.

 

Then again, I think the impending release of Shaddolls is why its price essentially doubled.

[Lonk]

It's the ultimate set-up card.  I wouldn't go and say that it is [i]badly[/i] designed, but a majority of Decks that use this card such as Infernities are the reason why this card would be considered broken.  It's a really good card that's abused by badly-designed Decks.

[Blake]

It's the ultimate set-up card.  I wouldn't go and say that it is badly designed, but a majority of Decks that use this card such as Infernities are the reason why this card would be considered broken.  It's a really good card that's abused by badly-designed Decks.

If a card does too much and enables bad design in basically every use it has, it's bad design .-.

[Lonk]

If a card does too much and enables bad design in basically every use it has, it's bad design .-.

 

Good point.  Maybe I underestimated its power or only see Decks that are terribly designed bring this out to further their combos, which I interpret as a victimized card.  For the sake of future growth and learning, would you mind sharing with me the difference between a terribly-designed card and a well-designed card that happens to be victimized by the existence of a terribly-designed card?

[Expelsword]

Extremely useful.

Its low ATK and bad typing keep it from being insane.

[Blake]

Good point.  Maybe I underestimated its power or only see Decks that are terribly designed bring this out to further their combos, which I interpret as a victimized card.  For the sake of future growth and learning, would you mind sharing with me the difference between a terribly-designed card and a well-designed card that happens to be victimized by the existence of a terribly-designed card?

Well, Evolzars are fine-ish cards for the most part (moreso Pre-Singularity), but Rabbit abused them.

Meanwhile, Ophion is a terribly designed card that Rabbit just happened to buff.'

Ophion does too much to the gamestate. It protects itself, it shuts the opponent down in certain matchups, and is big and hard to remove to boot.

Dolkka is fairly small and Laggia's a one-shot. Yeah, they're powerful for what they do, but that's only because Rabbit made them scott free. In their own decks they're not overly powerful bosses at all, because they take effort to summon.

[Lonk]

Well, Evolzars are fine-ish cards for the most part (moreso Pre-Singularity), but Rabbit abused them.

Meanwhile, Ophion is a terribly designed card that Rabbit just happened to buff.'

Ophion does too much to the gamestate. It protects itself, it shuts the opponent down in certain matchups, and is big and hard to remove to boot.

Dolkka is fairly small and Laggia's a one-shot. Yeah, they're powerful for what they do, but that's only because Rabbit made them scott free. In their own decks they're not overly powerful bosses at all, because they take effort to summon.

 

I appreciate the example very much so.

[Greiga]

So the next thing in line for this thing is the tins (unless those are gonna have imports only).

[Daigusto Sphreez]

Its probably at its most annoying in zombie decks and infernities, but there's honestly so many other xyzs that make me grimace more than this. 

 

Basically a 2 mat armageddon knight for everybody. 

[Sleepy]

This card is essentially a better Foolish Burial.

You can send any card rather than just monsters.

You don't lose this card itself, and it gets double use if you can protect it.

 

A Foolish Burial with an OPT clause was that was really needed, or this card exploiting both materials for its effect. Especially being a generic Rank 4, which many decks can make as a +0 as is.

 

 

 

Sooo last time I checked this card was 20 USDs, did it really double o.O" "goes check"

[evilfusion]

This card is essentially a better Foolish Burial.

You can send any card rather than just monsters.

You don't lose this card itself, and it gets double use if you can protect it.

 

A Foolish Burial with an OPT clause was that was really needed, or this card exploiting both materials for its effect. Especially being a generic Rank 4, which many decks can make as a +0 as is.

 

 

 

Sooo last time I checked this card was 20 USDs, did it really double o.O" "goes check"

 

It was about 20...now it's more like 45.

 

It's a good card that just got more ridiculous as time went on. Gem-Knights could get amazing set-up by sending Fusion. Zombies could send whatever they wanted. Infernity...let's not talk about them. Heraldics loved it.

 

The fact so much support was given to Rank 4 archetypes has just made Chain more and more blatant bad design.

[CLG Klavier]

Card becoming stronger and stronger as time progresses doesn't make it a bad design. If Lavalval Chain, an enabler card, lets you do something insane, the problem is with the card it enabled. Not the enabler itself.

[goddamnit names are a pain]

IT DIDN'T GET A REPRINT?

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

 

 

Ok I'm done now.

 

Seriously though this card is great at what it does. I need this for Zombies. Badly.

[Blake]

Card becoming stronger and stronger as time progresses doesn't make it a bad design. If Lavalval Chain, an enabler card, lets you do something insane, the problem is with the card it enabled. Not the enabler itself.

Wrong. When a card is this generic, this capable of enabling, it is the problem.
 
Time and again, effects like this have shown to  be badly designed. Sending cards from the deck to the grave on a pinpoint shot is always going to be powerful. When it costs nothing more than 2 Level 4s (incredibly generic), and rewards you for nothing more than playing it, there's a problem. And then it does even more than an amazing effect, making the design inelegant, albeit while bolstering the flavor.
 
Cards can be designed in a certain way, but when a card like this exists, it limits the design of those cards. And if it's not limiting, that's even worse because that means it enables all the more.
 
If a card either limits design OR just enables more and more s*** by existing, it's not a card that should exist. Tell me, which of those is healthy for a gamestate?
 
And before you go on a tirade about "YGO has no gamestate", that is not entirely untrue. Yugioh is about maintaining and making the most of your resources. It doesn't have an inherent method of regulating this, which means a lot of cards come out more powerful than they should have. And others come out weaker. A resource system built in would make it a better game, obviously, but there is still a gamestate.
 
HAT(E) is a very skillful deck that's relevant in the TCG. And it's pure resource management and +1ing. Each card has to be used to the best of its ability, or you're going to lose because your opponent outmaneuvered you. Moralltach/Sanctum are dumb, but the rest of the deck is fine and encourages intelligent play.
 
Cards that reward you for simply playing the game, correctly or otherwise, cards that reward you for just playing a deck, cards that let you do too much for too little, and so on are all bad design.
 
Judgment Dragon falls under all of these, for example.
 
And even cards like Summoner's Art or Fossil Dig are bad design. RotAs as a whole are. They let you run a "37" card deck like upstart, except those RotAs are going to fetch specific cards instead of paying the opp 1000 LP to draw again, which means they're much more likely to enable dumb plays. All of these types of cards will linger under the surface until something finally enables them.
 
Fire Formation - Tenki, Covenant with the Infernal Gate, and Qliphort Tool are all absurd examples of this.
 
However, there are perfectly balanced cards. Cards that reward you for more intelligent play and timing.
 
Exciton and 101 are examples. Are they well designed? No. The former isn't even totally fair. But they reward you for playing well and/or your opponent playing stupidly.
 
Exciton only works when you have less advantage than your opponent. Theoretically, you should be able to neg yourself a lot in most decks in order to Exciton them. However, Exciton is only worth it when you absolutely HAVE to or when they overextend like hell. It promotes not throwing your hand on the board... at least until some decks OTK, but those aren't decks that deserve life anyways.
 
101 is one I'd argue IS well designed, even though it doesn't seem it on the surface. It only grabs ATK Special Summoned monsters for 2 materials. This means it can trap key cards that can be the difference between winning and losing. Other than that, it's just a chump blocker. This means that BTH/TT/etc can stop it from nomming, but not kill it, meaning it encourages figuring out the value of resources. Do you want it to eat your monster and keep your backrow, or do you really want that monster? Or, if you have Raigeki Break/Infernity Break, you should wait until it activates then murder it in the face. It encourages using your cards at the right times and how much. And it's not too powerful, just encourages you to be smart when you're devoting to the board.
 
Meanwhile, Castel is just a generic spin for any face-up card. With a secondary effect to boot. This doesn't promote skill in the game, it punishes you for playing at all. The only safe card is a set card.
 
And things like this. Not to mention, the decks in a format encourage you to think about the matchups just as much as any other game. If you're playing Gears v Lightsworn, what do you do? Do you turtle like normal? Hell no, you rush in and beat their face off, because you're on a 4-5 turn clock. You ADAPT to them. You become the beatdown. For this, an article using concepts adapted from MTG is better.

http://duelistgroundz.com/index.php?showtopic=161296

Lavalval Chain is degenerate. It is the problem. It may enable other retarded cards, but this doesn't change that it will always rear its head as one of the troublemakers. It is no more innocent than Infernity Archfiend or Mezuki or Gem-Knight Fusion.

[CLG Klavier]

Reading the article currently. Anyways, according to your logic, the entire concept of an Archetype is bad, since an Archetype in YGO is a bunch of cards that reward you for playing with other cards of this type. And you said that "cards that reward you for just playing a deck" are badly designed. This invalidates like 3/4 of the cardbase in YGO, since any card that gives you benefits for playing something is a bad design. Is, for example, Noble Knights of the Round Table a bad design? It literally does what you said - it rewards you for playing with Noble Knights since they will naturally end up on the board/in graveyard. Is Lumina a bad design since she rewards you for playing Lightsworns? etc. etc.

I agree that the decks you mentioned, like HAT, ARE indeed good and perfectly balanced, it's what we call midrange in MTG - a deck that focuses mostly on exchanging resources with opponent in a way where you come out on the top of the exchange. But as I said - it's a semi-generic deck since it just runs good cards with slight interactions between each other, like Sanctum/Moralltach or Myrmeleo/Dionaea.

[Blake]

No, an archetype isn't bad, and I never said such.

For example... What ratios are good in Shaddoll? How many do you run of each? Some say 1 Falcon, some say 3. Some say 0-1 dragon, some say 2. 1 Electromagnetic Turtle, or none? Deck construction matters, so what LIGHT, EARTH, FIRE, etc. do you run? If you don't build it correctly, the deck becomes clunky and sacky, and punsihes you with bad hands that will cost you games. And then it rewards you the more intelligently you play it, ESPECIALLY in the mirror.

Meanwhile, there's Qliphorts. Every card of theirs can be run if not maxed. Is it optimal to max them? Is it optimal to build without an extra because "durr hurr don't need it"? No, but the deck still rewards you for using the cards at all.

Tool rewards you for playing it. All the cards do generic things that reward you far too much (Disk sets you up completely, Shell's an almost OTK on its own, Killer is just straight up terrible design, Archive/Genome reward you for playing cards by clearing the opponent). Saqliphort rewards you for activating it. Apoqliphort rewards you for being outplayed. Fortran's a generic Lance/Chalice for every Qliph you have, and Qliphortress is a once per turn double summon that prevents your NSs from being Solemned/Adviced/Whatever. Which means your bosses that do too much are harder to resist.

And it doesn't even take much intelligence to play the deck. More or less the same amount required of Satellars... hell, probably even less. It can build itself, albeit suboptimally, and reward you for that alone.

Round Table rewards you for playing a bunch of Knights, but it doesn't reward you in the same way. If you're building to abuse it in full, you're building it badly, and the rest of the deck punishes you for not playing it correctly. The design is iffy because of this, but at least it is a trap more than anything.

Lumina is terrible design, that's not even a question. She's a pseudo-wolfbark. She may cost more, but she's in a deck that doesn't mind that cost much because it wants to throw its deck into the grave to gain advantage.

Who cares if it's only semi-generic? It's akin to +1. It encourages you to value each summon, each spell, each trap like your life depends on it. Because it does. +1.deks do this even more, because they generally are very, very NS reliant, even more than HATE. Each of those small engines make up a good whole deck.

[The Warden]

Actually, to be fair Black, in Lumina's case and all from her caste (Zombie Master/Wolfbark/Ten B-N): How good they are is almost always defined by what they can summon. I'm not going to argue that they're unfair cards, I mean Wolfbark, just jesus f**king christ. Hell, Superheavy Sam Ten B-N might have crap targets, but even he is degenerate as hell due to the fact that Gigants can loop him as he spams out Oni/Kabuto. 

 

But still, Lumina's utility ONLY came to true fruition once LS got Raiden. Before that all she was good for was to summon another Lumina to make a Rank 3. Then LS were handed a Tuner and a Synchro on a silver platter, and that is what elevated Lumina on the degeneracy scale. And I won't argue about how LS don't care about costs, because they don't. The ENTIRE purpose of the deck has now come to the point where it just literally throws itself away in order to get JD as fast as possible. Which is partially the reason I hate them, because 37 other cards are considered expendable as long as you get at least one JD and nuke.

[Blake]

Actually, to be fair Black, in Lumina's case and all from her caste (Zombie Master/Wolfbark/Ten B-N): How good they are is almost always defined by what they can summon. I'm not going to argue that they're unfair cards, I mean Wolfbark, just jesus f**king christ. Hell, Superheavy Sam Ten B-N might have crap targets, but even he is degenerate as hell due to the fact that Gigants can loop him as he spams out Oni/Kabuto. 
 
But still, Lumina's utility ONLY came to true fruition once LS got Raiden. Before that all she was good for was to summon another Lumina to make a Rank 3. Then LS were handed a Tuner and a Synchro on a silver platter, and that is what elevated Lumina on the degeneracy scale. And I won't argue about how LS don't care about costs, because they don't. The ENTIRE purpose of the deck has now come to the point where it just literally throws itself away in order to get JD as fast as possible. Which is partially the reason I hate them, because 37 other cards are considered expendable as long as you get at least one JD and nuke.

Not entirely true. She was limited in the past, iirc, for doing much the same purpose in the past as she does now. Just at a slower time.

[The Warden]

Yes, I know she was limited, but that's because cards of her class were A LOT faster due to the fact that the game was much slower back then; since remember, she existed 6 years ago, almost half a year before 5Ds. She allowed LS to swarm too much before the days of archtypes like Blackwings. Her power waned as swarm become that much more prevalent (hence why she went back to Unlimited), but she was catapulted back into a higher plane of power solely because of Raiden.

[Blake]

I mean, that doesn't change that she's terrible DESIGN, it just changes her actual power level.

[The Warden]

Personally, I don't feel that's true. Cards that SS/search other cards are almost always determined as good by what it is they Summon/Search, and how they combo. Summoner's Art, nobody except bad or inexperienced players gave a s**t for it. It only searches Normals that are Level 5+, so it's useless to the vast majority of decks as Normals are so passe. But then along came Tool, and suddenly it's degenerate. I would dare say that the fault is completely with Tool for that. I can't argue that case of course with some other cards, but while Lumina isn't good design, she became horrendous design only because of Raiden. He is what elevated her beyond a reasonable threshold.

 

I won't lie of course, Lavalval isn't particularly healthy, as much of the time, you only need the one mill. Any deck I've used knows this as on occasion I use it to speed up my process of gaining Argent Chaos Force.

[Blake]

The Summoner's Art point isn't correct.

The design was never good. It might not have been degenerate, but RotA cards as a whole are bad design in Yugioh. Why? They cost nothing and just serve as -1 deck in the form of searching any of its targets, so to speak. It was never in a place to be degenerate, nor did I say it was, but it was never well designed. It was always bad design.

Design doesn't change. Power level and health in the game do.

[The Warden]

So even if some of them do possess some kind of cost or requirement, a RotA will ALWAYS be bad design?

[Blake]

A requirement, no.

But, generic, costless ones aren't. Summoner's Art, Fossil Dig, RotA, E-Call, Seal of Convoc, Tenki, Infernal Gate, Tool, etc, where they get even worse down the line. MST is not a valid reason for the design of the continuous ones to be any better.

And Onomatopaira is also not for being too much setup for basically everything that it searches WHILE searching too much.