Shinigami Dogma

[The Nyx Avatar]

 

Pendulum Effect:Reduce the Level of all face-up monsters your opponent controls. Negate all card effects in either player's Graveyard. During each of your End Phases: Pay 1000 Life Points or destroy this card.

 

Monster Effect:While you control another monster, this card cannot declare an attack. When this card is Normal Summoned: You can Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower monster from either player's Graveyard. If you do, that card is banished when it leaves the field. Monsters Summoned by this card's effect cannot be used as an Xyz Material for an Xyz Summon.

[The Nyx Avatar]

Bump.

[Darj]

I'm on the edge with this card, personally.

First, the Pendulum Effect looks too oppressive as a floodgate that can practically serve as extra copies of Soul Drain (there are more differences between them of course, but I'm mainly referring to their Graveyard-locking effects), which was Limited in order to, as far as I know, keep Graveyard-centric decks viable in the game. In other words, this card's effect would practically make Soul Drain's position in the banlist irrelevant. Granted, this is more LP-expensive than Soul Drain, but on normal circumstances you get to keep this on the field for up to 7 turns, which in my opinion should be more than enough to secure a game if you search/draw into it early game.

It also reduces the monster's Levels. It doesn't state the amount of Levels reduced, but even just 1 is enough to disrupt most Synchro and Xyz-centric decks.

Not to mention that as a Pendulum Monster it gets more support (e.g. searchable by "Wavering Eyes").

 

Then, the Monster effect is good. While you cannot perform Rank 4 Xyz Summons, it still works with Tuners for "1-card" Synchro Summons. Or at the very least you can play it as an slow Graveyard disruptor: revive an opponent's monster that you don't want in his/her grave so it gets banished once it is removed from the field.

 

Finally, Scale 5 is decent as it enables Level 4 Pendulum Summons. Although it doesn't pair well with the popular Luster Pendulum and Plushfire, there are other decent-to-good Pendulum Scales to pair it with.

 

So, putting it simply, this is a Pendulum Monster with a great Monster effect, but a Pendulum Effect that is too strong for my liking. Personally, I suggest to water down said Pendulum Effect so it doesn't lock both Graveyard and Synchro/Xyz-centric decks, preferably lock the latter to avoid conflict with Soul Drain's position in the banlist.