[Let's Salvage] Nuclear Wave

[Trebuchet MS]

Nuclear Wave

Trap/Normal

If you have 20 or less cards in your Graveyard: Inflict 200 damage to your opponent for each card in your Graveyard.

 

What's Wrong?

For starters, this card is very easily set up with the number of options or Decks that fill the Graveyard. Now, exchanging card advantage for burn is something players tend to shun away from, but this card has the potential of doing an immense 4000 damage at best, which is prone to ending games or making your work drastically easier. And in Chain Burn, that's nuts.

 

Let's compare with several other generic Burn Traps:

• Just Desserts - 2500 max
• Secret Barrel - 3800 max (full field, including Pendulums and Field Spell, 6 cards in hand)
• Prepared Explosives - 4900 max (10 cards on field, both Pendulum Zones, Field Spell, also bonus 1000 damage from being destroyed)
• Ceasefire - 5000 max (requires both players to control 5 Effect Monsters each)

"Gad, that's actually quite close to what this card can do!" I might hear you say. But note that these cards do their maximum potential damage when the opponent is fully loaded with card advantage, and if they've got their board developed to that extent, you're either losing or playing Chain Burn and actively benefit off the opponent doing so (which is still incredibly risky). Meanwhile, Nuclear Wave's best setup is something you manipulate yourself, and regardless of whether you have the upper hand or not, as long as you have a nicely stocked Graveyard, bam. Massive damage.

 

Oh, right. I forgot how it can also lend a hand to the originally defunct Magical Explosion FTK, too. Should you fail to get enough Spells in the Graveyard you're still pretty close to 20 cards in the Grave, allowing 2 of this card to oneshot your opponent.

 

How to Fix?

One possibility is to make it a parallel to Blasting the Ruins. A few ways it can be done:

• Halve the damage output, to match Blasting's card-damage ratio. This means it caps at 2000, though it can trigger at earlier stages than Blasting.
• Reduce the maximum Graveyard requirement, let's say to 15. This caps it at 3000 damage, making it an earlier-stage Blasting the Ruins which becomes a dead card if the game goes long. But that might come with its fair share of other problems.

Not to mention a crafty player can exploit the fact that the maximum Grave requirement is only the activation condition, and can fill up the Graveyard a little more mid-Chain to squeeze out more damage and cheat the cap. Hence, exchange that condition for a "you must have X or fewer cards in your Graveyard to activate and resolve this effect." condition at the end to enforce this cap.

 

Conclusion

Creating balanced generic burn is difficult due to the fine line between "ineffectual" and "too intense".

 

The original creator of this card wanted this to support Chain Burn, but in my opinion, what's holding back Chain Burn from being meta-worthy is its relative lack of consistency (none of our cards can be searched properly, we only have generic draw power, and we're allergic to Upstart Goblin) and vulnerability to the Side Deck. Adding another burn option just makes things compete for space even more, never mind how this can overshadow other options entirely.

 

Commentary

After seeing some cards from this thread actually come close to being reasonable (only needing a few tweaks) I decided to try this out. I think it would be better to discuss the salvageable cards in separate threads to keep attention away from the completely irredeemable ones in the card pool.

 

Should I continue evaluating the workable ones?

[Slinky]

When I first saw the card, I thought it was okay. But now that you bring up Magical Explosion ftk.. I will gladly retract that.

 

Working on your opponent's grave obv doesn't work, since it would outclass Cemetary bomb, a card that may actually see play on the slim chance Infernoids become popular/good, and working on your own grave is too easily manipulable.

 

As for OP, lets go ahead and add Ceasefire (Max: 5000, but requires both fields to be full) Secret Barrels max is actually 600 higher (pendulums and field zone, but doesn't matter)

 

Ideally, I think the best option is to go the Cemetary Bomb route, and have no Max. and instead inflict 100 for every card in your grave, inflicting on average bout 1000-1500 without dedication.

[Cierfrost]

Indeed you should continue. And I'm almost certain no one will call you on many threads if you PM ahead of time to merge the older ones or something. 

Honestly I kind of liked Nuclear Wave. The imagery of the name doesn't help but the effect is nice. And yea, a lower gap I'd go so far as to say 10 cards for 2000 maybe would be fine.

[Forest Fire]

I agree with Icy. But really, in the end is up to you. If you want I'm sure other members (myself included) would be more than glad to help. 

 

 I think, to edit, if you did this: 

 

• Reduce the maximum Graveyard requirement, let's say to 15. This caps it at 3000 damage, making it an earlier-stage Blasting the Ruins which becomes a dead card if the game goes long. But that might come with its fair share of other problems.

it feels like it balances it out more, to me at least. 

[Trebuchet MS]

There are several cards in the pool that look very close to reasonable and can be worked on, but I'm unable to comment sufficiently due to lack of experience with the related archetype(s) in question. You, and other similarly-minded members, are free to try and salvage the other cards.