Messing with Pendulum immortality

[Sleepy]

    So I've been trying to mess with the Pendulum mechanic for a while, trying to make it more "fair" from an inherent point of view.

The attempts until now have not been very successful, and there even is a set of mixed feelings about them in general. Please keep in mind that I'm talking about the mechanic in general, so the reasoning of how they are supposed to work disregards effects that immediately replace your Scales or let you search more monsters to Pendulum Summon, or speed-ups in general through effects like Qliphs do.

 

    On one hand, they are a swarming mechanic of immortals and need not-so-natural (ie natural = going to the Graveyard like everyone else) ways of removal to be abundant in effects in order to be taken care of. Otherwise they just keep piling up until they overwhelm, even if they start off as a theoretical -2 on a hand with somewhat limited resources. Some members here at YCM which have tried to re-start the game from scratch that I've seen have outright dismissed the use of this mechanic altogether.

 

    On the other hand there is no denying that the mechanic's impact on the meta is not overwhelming. This means the mechanic might not be so outrageous in practice as it sounds (or that the meta is impressively powerful). This pretty much means suggesting changes for this mechanic are not related to the competitive impact of the game, but more so is catering to the casual side a bit, and I know, it doesn't sound like a very wise thing to do. It is also true that the mechanic is pretty interesting and original, and even adds some really fun and cool features to the game, which is why I personally wouldn't really avoid the mechanic if making a card pool anew.

 

    One of my previous statements that nowadays I take back is that "the mechanic is a glass jar where your opponent either takes care of your Scales or doesn't, and one side will overwhelm the other at the end". To be honest, I found that this is avoidable by not slapping your full hand into the field and always aiming to keep a spare Scale in hand in case that happens. In other words this is up to the player to ruin themselves or not. My first attempt tried to get rid of the multi-Summon aspect, but after testing it, it deletes the importance of building up your Extra Deck Pendulums, and that is not a good thing. It is the only way of making inherent Special multi-Summons in the game, and I'm sure some design choices and effects in the future can work-out something interesting with that.

 

 

 

My new idea is this:
When a monster that was Pendulum Summoned from the Extra Deck would be sent to the Extra Deck instead of the Graveyard, it goes to the Graveyard.

 

This means that rather than infinite immortality or needing to fill up the game with alternate ways to deal with them like effects that banish, shuffle back into the deck, or attach them; now they only get to float once. Still, that is one extra usage from them that other game mechanics don't have the privilege of doing. It pretty much keeps everything else in the mechanic intact, and although it honestly does weaken the mechanic, it also helps untighten the support that the mechanic could potentially get, and in my opinion that'd make up for it.

Also, the rule still lets you re-use Pendulums if you make them so they weren't last Pendulum Summoned from the Extra Deck at the moment of their deaths, like for example a Book of Eclipse or banishing them and returning them with Inter-dimensional Matter Transporter and the such.

 

 

Oh and obligatory petition for Scale 0 to exist, but that's another beast altogether.

 

 

What do you think? Would it work to make them still viable and now less degenerate?