Ghostrick Alraunee-chan

[Rayfield Lumina]

I made another little card for the upcoming Halloween. You might want to give it a look, @Ember McLain (n.n)

 

 Ghostrick Alraunee-chan  

Rank  ✪✪✪                 DARK

Plant / Xyz / Effect

2 Level 3 monsters

If this card is Xyz Summoned while you control another face-up "Ghostrick" card: You can change all other face-up monsters on the field to face-down Defense Position, and if you do, inflict 300 damage to your opponent for each monster that changed Battle Position this way. Cannot be targeted by your opponent's card effects (even if face-down) while you control another face-up "Ghostrick" card. You can target 1 face-down monster on the field; attach that target to this card as  material. You can detach 1 material from this card, then target 1 "Ghostrick" card in your GY; Set it, and if you do, send 1 "Ghostrick" card from your Deck to the GY. You can only use each effect of "Ghostrick Alraunee-chan" once per turn.

ATK 1400 / DEF 3000
 

 

So, I decided to use a monster girl as another member of the archetype (what a surprise xD). This Xyz Monster is best suited for an offensive build of the Ghostricks. I did this on purpose, since I get desperate by absolutely defensive, mill strategies, which I know Ghostricks are about in general, so I'd rather take this approach. Many of the offensive monsters in the archetype are Level 3, so that's why I chose this rank, and it was left generic to include even something like Stealth Bird in the party. I suppose making it generic is pretty nasty, but this time I decided to make a pretty strong card, due to the oblivion in which this archetype has gone. The ATK / DEF might sound too high, but considering Grampulse, which has 1800 / 2800 and is also generic, I guess it's fine  

[Ember McLain]

Wow this looks really fun! Ghostricks as a whole have always had a soft spot in my heart for obvious reasons, but sadly their entire playstyle lost its footing come MR4 and the release of Link Monsters. The "(even if face-down)" part of the protection is strange, and honestly not sure if there is another card that does that. The main "treat" of this Ghos"trick" would be the revival + foolish ability in that last effect. Certainly powerful, but not too much so due to the archetype lock. Overall a super solid card, nice work!

 

By the by, any chance you could throw me a bone and send that Ghostrick bg my way?

[Rayfield Lumina]

11 hours ago, Ember McLain said:

Wow this looks really fun! Ghostricks as a whole have always had a soft spot in my heart for obvious reasons, but sadly their entire playstyle lost its footing come MR4 and the release of Link Monsters. The "(even if face-down)" part of the protection is strange, and honestly not sure if there is another card that does that. The main "treat" of this Ghos"trick" would be the revival + foolish ability in that last effect. Certainly powerful, but not too much so due to the archetype lock. Overall a super solid card, nice work!

 

By the by, any chance you could throw me a bone and send that Ghostrick bg my way?

Thanks a lot for the feedback n.n

Well, I would have said the (even if face-down) effect was a No just some days ago, but it seems it's possible (not 100% sure, tho). A friend brought my attention to this card, Big Shield Gardna, which is pretty famous but I didn't had in consideration. That thing has an effect active, even if face-down. Otherwise, it wouldn't be able to activate its self flipping effect. Stuff here is different, since we're talking about a Quick Effect vs a Continuous one, but the point is that a monster can have an effect even if face-down. but again, I can't be sure if this is correct xD.

About the BG, I'll PM you

[Dokutah]

this card is pretty much anything ghostrick need

and for the most part its flawless but i do have question for the 1st effect that said: "You can change as many face-up monsters on the field as possible". "as possible" wording if im not mistaken is make the player to to the action related to that wording to be apply to all cards it could apply and that including this card. so player pretty much have to set this card face-down as its own effect resolved. while its kinda make sense with its unique protection effect its kinda counter productive with the rest of the effect. so unless its intentional i kinda consider it an oversight

[Rayfield Lumina]

11 hours ago, Dr. Jolly Glot the III said:

this card is pretty much anything ghostrick need

and for the most part its flawless but i do have question for the 1st effect that said: "You can change as many face-up monsters on the field as possible". "as possible" wording if im not mistaken is make the player to to the action related to that wording to be apply to all cards it could apply and that including this card. so player pretty much have to set this card face-down as its own effect resolved. while its kinda make sense with its unique protection effect its kinda counter productive with the rest of the effect. so unless its intentional i kinda consider it an oversight

It is an oversight, TBH xD. I noticed some time after posting, perhaps while re-reading the effect to reply to Ember. Since that particular effect is generic, I decided to leave it as it is. I dunno, I considered SSing this thing, changing all monsters to face down, inflicting damage, and attaching a FD monster to it as material during the same turn was overkill, lol. Y'know, I have an idea. I'll let her stay face-up at Xyz Summoning, but only if you control other face-up Ghostrick cards when you do so, that way it's not so abusive in generic plays. Thanks, Doc!

[drowsyCoffee]

I kinda really like this card, it does help Ghostricks a lot with some of the things that they struggle with. It sadly doesnt fix the fact that most of your turn ones are gonna be a T set pass, but having some tools for removal outside Alucard through its attaching eff is very nice, specially considering that Rank 3s are the ones you run out the sooner, thanks to the deck having some of its best cards (Like Mummy or Jiangshi) being of that level.

Another nice thing about the card is that through it you finally get some incentive to not turn every single Xyz you manage to make into a copy of Angel, as being able to remove a card from your opponent and set a card every turn is definitively strong enough to be worth keeping.

At first, i thought that the protection effect was kinda meaningless, as in a similar way to Socuteboss it conflicted with Doll's setting the entire field face down, something very annoying considering how strong Doll is in Ghostrick decks, but then i realised that you would always have either a Vanish to protect it or a Scare  which would fulfill the condition of the effect, since you can pretty much set a trap every single turn with it, Then, i realised that since it said "Card", not monster, like Socuteboss, it wouldnt even have that problem, as just having a field card, a Go-Round active, or even Night if you played that for some reason, would be enough to fulfill the conditions

 

Overall, i am impressed, this card really solves some of the key issues of the archetype, such as being able to protect the first resources you manage to put on the field, by simply being very relatively hard to get rid off. Originally i was kinda annoyed by the lack of the floating eff that the Xyz have, but considering that it is way stronger than other alternatives, and that you wouldnt wanna use as an Angel material anyways, which was one of the best way to trigger those effects, it makes sense that it lacks that ability

 

Very nice work, i definitively could see Ghostrick decks wnting to use this card

[Rayfield Lumina]

What the... how did I miss this comment? Well... obviously because I never expected this card would be getting another review after Halloween passed, but for what you mentioned at your introduction, I thought of coming to visit xD. You know, your facade of "I'm not knowledgeable" is crumbling, pal, this is a very well made, in-depth review, and I thank you for taking your time to write it. Yeah, what you say is pretty much my intention for the card, though as you very well mention, doesn't fix the "first turn" issue, which is still troublesome for the archetype. I have a friend who seemed disappointed it lacks  a solution for this, so I kinda regret not having included something of the sort, but perhaps I'll do it later with another card (or maybe you'll do it if you make that support you mentioned n.n). As I mention up there, I wanted to take a more offensive approach with this card than fattening Angel of Mischief for the auto-win or the ever annoying milling strategy.

Again, thanks for the nice review  

[drowsyCoffee]

Cant agree more, in my personal experience, the Mischief win eff strats and Mill deck strats almost always end up in someone waiting for 20 turn with a big f*** off board while they have lethal just because they wanna win in a cooler way, as weird as it may sound, for some godforsaken reason in my tons upon tons of experience with the deck some weird "Spam Mischief Search Beatdown" variant was what had the most success for me, though again my deckbuilding is suboptimal at best so i bet there are more viable ways to play Ghostricks that i am not aware of

 

On the other hand, i think that one of the things that make a card good support for an archetype, as i said, is making the deck better without letting it lose its unique essence and playstyle. Even if you gave the Ghostricks support to make them better in their first turn, sucking at it is kind of a big part of what they are, they're a slow, grindy archetype afterall, and if a piece of support turned them into a combo deck going nuts with isolde needlefiber nonsense, even if the archetypes winrate would be improved by it i would consider it a bad piece of support, after all, it didnt improve the archetypes premise nor did it make it better at what is trying to archieve, it changed their entire playstyle in a totally different direction and turned it into a totally different deck. I think the new Sacred Beast support is an excellent example of how support cards can be bad even though they improve the archetype, as they undid the whole "slow grind fallen paradise advantage" playstyle and turned the into a weird OTK blind second deck, losing their original essence and strategy

 

In that way, i think Alraune is an amazingly designed card. It doesnt make Ghostricks play a different strategy in any means, it just makes them better at performing their current playstyle and strategies, and i think that is what any support card should try to archieve

 

On an unrelated note, judging my game knowledge based on my most played archetype might lead to some misleading results, specially considering that is a Xyz archetype, the main reason why i say i am not very knowledgeable in yugioh is because i know jacks*** about anything link related outside their endboards, and i dont have that much experience playing, both things that are irrelevant in this specific scenario, were we are talking about a deck that barely uses links if any and that i actually had played with quite a lot

[Rayfield Lumina]

I have to say the post above has had me pondering for longer than most. I respect your point of view and definitely wouldn't disregard it as the correct one, but I'm still not entirely sure if a good support card is entirely limited to enhance the default capabilities of a particular archetype. After thinking for a while, I came to the conclusion that, in most cases, if not in all, support should avoid changing the essence of an archetype altogether in pro of making it more relevant for the meta, so, in this regard, we coincide. Then again, I still can get behind cards that address the specific weaknesses of the archetype to make it more solid. Said support doesn't require to take the whole strategy in another direction, it'd be mostly an effect that allows you to patch that one issue that's preventing a Deck from becoming it's best self. An archetype is slow? A card that allows it's own set of gimmick to be a little faster. An archetype which suffers from backrow removal? Add a card that destroys Spell/Cards when applying the archetype's gimmick... etc. The line is thin, but I suppose a good support card can have enough of both points of view to be considered valid n.n

p.d. Man, you gotta read a self-esteem book xD. Jk.