Black makes a statement on Pendulum and Scale Design [First Strike Veiler]

[Blake]

Pendulum Effect: N/A

Monster Effect: This Pendulum Summoned monster is treated as a Tuner monster, but it is shuffled into the Main Deck when it leaves the field. During either player's turn, you can discard this card and target one face-up card your opponent controls; During this turn, it cannot activate its effects on the field.

 

First off, it's petty blatantly a Veiler upgrade.

 

The most notable par of the card is its lack of Pendulum Effect... Why does it need one? If you set it as a scale, you're attempting to reap the benefits of pendulum summoning, which is advantage in its own right. You get to +++ from the ED, albeit with setup, so a -2 isn't that bad in the long run. If it eats an MST, that's more advantage. So if a card offers a good scale (I'll cover this) and decency otherwise, why would it need more to make it worth it? And don't say this is unheard of, Flash Knight and company exist.

 

Next, its "Hand Trap" effect; Strong? Sure. Better than Yuki Usagi? You decide. It has points for and against it, and offers alternatives to decks that can run pendulums efficiently, in theory. Its effect also means that it can stop niche plays like, I dunno, sacking a card you control with an effect. However, it can't stop a non-continuous S/T/Pendulum Spells or a monster that triggers on summon, giving it a real area of weakness.

 

Then it has a Fuxi-like effect that makes itself a tuner, but spins it to the deck after. On one hand, this means that you can't spit out a Level 2 LIGHT tuner every turn. On the other, it makes it live over and over until you need to discard it. Still not strictly better than Yuki Usagi, by any means, but with a lot of similar merits.

 

Finally, let's go back to its scale of 1. Scale 1 is actually pretty ass. I mean, think about it; Is the Level 2 relevant? No. Not in general. The Level 1, however, is extremely relevant due to its plethora of Tuner monsters/the efficiency of a Level 1 Tuner. A scale 2 tuner is actually just okay, generally, unless it's Formula. So a Scale 1 is technically a niche superiority to Scale 2, but is rarely so. Due to the ability to Pendulum extra copies of itself, and actually pair fairly cutely with Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon, the scale is technically strong enough to warrant no spell effect, and offers the ability to spit Tuners out (especially copies that ended up in the ED for some reason), so it has a reason to be a vanilla 1 scale.

 

So, discuss. I wanted to make a point of Pendulum Design in general with its different facets, and Nai assisted a bit, so here you go.

[Toffee.]

Part of me thinks this card only keeps stuff from activating is cuz' decks like Volcanics/Mermails/etc are a thing, right?
Otherwise, things that have costs/etc you would typically want them get away with it first, only because it can bite them in the ass later.
Or something like that.

And your point is fair; Pendulum Effects don't always need to a be a thing, when the scale in question can fit the needs of a large summon you are trying to do. This is kinda' like those Space-Time Magicians; They don't realistically do anything(There effects are gimmicky; shoosh), but it's the fact they are Scales 1 and 8, to which, lets you Summon eveything that's 2-7- And that's a large pool by itself.