Sacred Shenlongs!

[Draconus297]

So, I recently reread the early Yu-Gi-Oh manga, and I honestly think that Dragon Cards was awesome as hell. As such, I'm going to try to make them into a respectable, powerful archetype . . . with only 8 cards. No spoilers required.

 

Sacred Shenlong of Fire

FIRE - Level 9 - Dragon/Effect - 3800/2800

Cannot be Normal Summoned/Set. Must first be Special Summoned from your hand by revealing 2 other "Sacred Shenlong of Fire" in your hand. This monster's Summon and effects cannot be negated. You can discard this card from your hand: Draw 1 card (you can only activate this effect of "Sacred Shenlong of Fire" once per turn). At the start of the Damage Step, if this monster battles a DARK monster, this monster gains ATK equal to that monster's ATK. EARTH monsters are unaffected by card effects, except their own.

 

Sacred Shenlong of Earth

EARTH - Level 9 - Dragon/Effect - 3800/2800

Cannot be Normal Summoned/Set. Must first be Special Summoned from your hand by revealing 2 other "Sacred Shenlong of Earth" in your hand. This monster's Summon and effects cannot be negated. You can discard this card from your hand: Draw 1 card (you can only activate this effect of "Sacred Shenlong of Earth" once per turn). At the start of the Damage Step, if this monster battles a WATER monster, this monster gains ATK equal to that monster's ATK. DARK monsters are unaffected by card effects, except their own.

 

Sacred Shenlong of Metal

DARK - Level 9 - Dragon/Effect - 3800/2800

Cannot be Normal Summoned/Set. Must first be Special Summoned from your hand by revealing 2 other "Sacred Shenlong of Metal" in your hand. This monster's Summon and effects cannot be negated. You can discard this card from your hand: Draw 1 card (you can only activate this effect of "Sacred Shenlong of Metal" once per turn). At the start of the Damage Step, if this monster battles a WIND monster, this monster gains ATK equal to that monster's ATK. WATER monsters are unaffected by card effects, except their own.

 

Sacred Shenlong of Wood

WIND - Level 9 - Dragon/Effect - 3800/2800

Cannot be Normal Summoned/Set. Must first be Special Summoned from your hand by revealing 2 other "Sacred Shenlong of Wood" in your hand. This monster's Summon and effects cannot be negated. You can discard this card from your hand: Draw 1 card (you can only activate this effect of "Sacred Shenlong of Wood" once per turn). At the start of the Damage Step, if this monster battles an EARTH monster, this monster gains ATK equal to that monster's ATK. FIRE monsters are unaffected by card effects, except their own.

 

Sacred Shenlong of Water

WATER - Level 9 - Dragon/Effect - 3800/2800

Cannot be Normal Summoned/Set. Must first be Special Summoned from your hand by revealing 2 other "Sacred Shenlong of Water" in your hand. This monster's Summon and effects cannot be negated. You can discard this card from your hand: Draw 1 card (you can only activate this effect of "Sacred Shenlong of Water" once per turn). At the start of the Damage Step, if this monster battles a FIRE monster, this monster gains ATK equal to that monster's ATK. WIND monsters are unaffected by card effects, except their own.

 

Sacred Card Jar

Field Spell

Up to twice per turn, this card cannot be targeted or destroyed by card effects. You are treated as always having 1 additional "Sacred Shenlong of Fire", "Sacred Shenlong of Earth", "Sacred Shenlong of Metal", "Sacred Shenlong of Wood", and "Sacred Shenlong of Water" in your hand to reveal. Once per turn, you can reveal 1 "Sacred Shenlong" monster in your hand: Your opponent can pay 2000 Life Points to add that card to their hand, otherwise discard that card and draw 2 cards.

 

False Sacred Shenlong

Quick-Play Spell

If you would reveal a card in your hand, you can treat this card as an additional copy of that card. You can reveal 1 "Sacred Shenlong" monster in your hand and banish this card from your Graveyard: Add 1 additional copy of the revealed card from your Deck or Graveyard to your hand.

 

Soul Reclamation

Counter Trap

If your Life Points would become 0 while you control a face-up "Sacred Shenlong" monster, you can banish all cards on both sides of the field and in both Graveyards, face-down (including monsters "Unaffected by card effects"), and return both players' Life Points to 8000. The Duel then resumes as normal. You can only activate "Soul Reclamation" once per Duel.

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

I'm not keen on the Trap Card to be honest, considering the fact it is a literal soft reset of the game (sans whatever got banished in a manner similar to Sophia) whenever you would lose. Fiber Jar got banned for shuffling everything back; this one banishes everything. Yeah, not great design. 

 

The rest of the Archetype relies on you having dual copies of multiple copies; otherwise you are going to brick hard. Then again, you have the Field Spell to alleviate that issue, but even then, it results in a harder to stop version of Blue-Eyes Alternative Dragon for all of them (summon-wise; higher stats, effects can't be negated [although Skill Drain would override that if out first] and effect immunity packed on it). As it stands though, all of them have copy/pasted effects except for certain Attribute protections and stat gains. Without the field, the SS conditions for them are fine, but there are still issues with them being unchainable on summoning. 

 

Flavor-wise, it works like how the dragon cards did in the manga, but design-wise in terms of balance and all, there are power issues (on the end of pushing it). Either you can get triples in hand, or hope you can get the support cards to lower the requirements otherwise. 

[Draconus297]

Essentially, what I wanted to do with the Trap was pay homage to the manga chapter in question, given that Yami swaps out for Yugi right when the latter loses and restarts the game doing so. I tried to recreate that in a card that avoided the inherent frustration Fiber Jar provided by being OPD and not giving either player their resources back.

 

Yeah. I wanted to balance out the power I gave each dragon with their "you need triples" Summoning condition, but then I gave the Deck consistency through a Field Spell and a Quick-Play and every member being HOPT discardable to draw 1, so now they're just kinda bricky, and sometimes you can screw yourself if you discard one member only to draw into another copy. The immunity to Summon negation is, put bluntly, that I think the concept of negating Summons was stupid. I get that you may want to add the possibility of cards never hitting the field, but that's why early YGO had tons of effects to snipe things out of your opponent's hand, and several other cards banish now. It makes quite a lot of monsters essentially useless when they had potential as ham.

 

My personal opinions on game design aside, it also means that you're not hitting their difficult Summon condition only to get hit with a Solemn. For what it's worth, given their high stats your opponent can always catch them with a Bottomless or Time-Space Trap Hole. Remember, they provide protection effects to monsters of other Attributes, not themselves.

 

Still, perhaps they do need balance tweaking. Suggestions?

[Dokutah]

[spoiler=rant]

damn you Draconus...i almost finish my draft version on Dragon Cards. with roughly near-same summoning condition and tamer effect LOL

 

well what done its done... there nothing new under the sun after all and i hope i can learn 1 or 2 things from your version ;)

 

all of the dragons: as per sakura said i agreed. this kinda prone to bricking design-wise...well the spells mitigate that. but in other hand i kinda don't like that level of power just splashed upon me. 3800 is hard to topple-down and despite their attribute restriction they being omnipotent version of UTL is just a mean icing on top of it. probs to decrease the ATK? or slightly simpler immunity?

 

Sacred Card Jar: that first effect is cute. but at the same time rather a bit confusing (even for me)...i know that it meant to substituted  at aleast 1 of the dragons you need to prevent that brick situation...but making the card that you don't really have to be treated exist is...idk. the 2nd effect quite matters though being a nice draw effect..but i also see the possibility that opponent willing to sacrifice some of their LP to turn your hardly-acquired  dragons into hand fuel for True Kings, Twin Twister, or any of discard based effect while leaving you with highly bricked hands

 

False Sacred Shenlong: much more sensible substitute effect than the field spell. albeit, obviously more limited in plays. liking the 2nd effect of searcher

 

Soul Reclamation: im actually don't against duel reset effect that much but i do understand that such cards is not that healthy to the game...so yeah, its a no for this card. i think i can tweak this card effect a bit:

 

If your Life Points would become 0 while you control a face-up "Sacred Shenlong" monster, you can make all players to banish all cards on both sides of the field and in both Graveyards, face-down , and return both players' Life Points to 8000. The Duel then resumes as normal. You can only activate "Soul Reclamation" once per Duel.

 

so instead trying to affecting the unaffected monster.... its affecting their owner to do it..bypassing that immunity. the wording is derived and modified from Apoqliphort Killer removal effect