Malice Ascendants Revision [Written]

[drowsyCoffee]

Introduction:

 

Finally, its time to fix this god forsaken archetype. So, Malice Ascendants are an archetype i made long, long time ago, if i remember right, on the first account i made on this site "proltvkun" or something like that, that has been long lost to me having a really bad memory and forgetting my gmail passwords. The general idea was to build a deck around Malice Ascendant, a monster with the effect of milling opponent's cards during their Standby Phase based on how many copies of itself you had on GY

 

I made a whole archetype based on the seven deadly sins, each with an effect during opponent's Standby based on the amount of Malice Ascendants on GY and a bunch of spells/traps that either facilitated filling your GY or did stuff based on Malice Ascendants on GY. The problem was, my card design abilites at the time just, sucked. A whole lot. So, the deck really didnt work, ever, and even though i playtested the deck a bunch, at best i won like, 2 times

 

So, lets go one by one with some of the problems i've identified as well as the revised, more polished (i hope) version of the deck

 

First, all the monsters sucked. None of them did anything relevant, except two, one of which was absolutely broken and the other who was kind of the only wincon you had. The broken one was "Hate Uprising", aka, Wrath. Essentially, it was the deck's only searcher, and it could on a HOPT search any card within the archetype when sent from the Deck to the GY. Needless to say, everything the deck ever did was revolving this one specific card, and its existence was extremely toxic for the deck. You see, since it was so powerful, anything i could do to improve it would probably just break the entire archetype, but at the same time leaving it as is was problematic, as the deck had 3 or 4 extremely powerful cards it NEEDED to get, and thus, since this was your only searcher, you never really managed to get them all consistently and the deck turned into this very sacky mess

 

The other one, was the unga bunga boy himself, Gran Maju before Gran Maju was viable, Pride. Pride had a simple effect on Standby, where it pumped the ATK of all Malice Ascendants based on your number of Malice Ascendants on GY. So, the deck very quickly degenerated into a Pride turbo unga bunga deck where you tried to make a bunch of your monsters big, hope they sticked until your next turn, and then hit it for lethal. I remember how much i hated Borreload due to the deck's dependancy on Pride

 

Oh, also, since i was really bad at making yugioh, all the  monster cards were treated as the same name on deck. So, yeah, you kinda could only have 3 of ALL the monsters on deck. My bad

 

The next problem in the deck where the 3 only good spells it had, Cycle of Hate, the SS from GY one, and Depression Eater. All of them, in some way or form, were powerful enough that the deck NEEDED to see them to win, and a lack of searchers for them made the deck sacky as hell. First, Cycle of Hate

 

Cycle of Hate was a continuous spell that allowed you to up to thrice per turn (per copy, as it was a SOPT(SPPT?)) draw a card when a Malice Ascendant touched the GY. Yeah. Card was nuts. It was powerful enough that most cards in the deck were heavily draw negative to make up for its power, so not having access to it really hurted the deck whenever it happened. It also heavily limited the power of the deck in general, and made some really weird Lightsworn variants where you just drawed for days. Not very healthy

 

The SS from GY one was. A mistake. If i had to point a card i've ever designed and say, "this was the dumbest thing i've ever made", it would be this one. This card allowed you to, AS A COST, send any 2 Malice Ascendants from your Deck to your GY, then a la Reincardination, SS a Malice Ascendant on GY. Anything this deck ever made revolved around this card being in your hand. It also wasnt a HOPT?? Yeah, this was a mess

 

Finally, Depression Eater was like, the only sensible card in the group. It just, popped a bunch of cards based on Malice Ascendants on GY. That's it. That's all it did. It had some general balance nonsense, like additions of HOPTs, Targetting, etc. but in general it was the  only card that you could just, add back without that much of a problem

 

So with that in mind, the deck looked something like this. You sent Hate and Pride to GY, add Cycle, Summon Pride, and hoped that won you the game. Otherwise, you just, spammed Depression Eater until you inevitably died. F U N (For the record, it was  funny, just, not very well designed nor balanced. The fact that i only remember 6 cards of the archertype (Havent mentioned Plague yet since it was kinda fine) even though the final count was big enough for you to have around 50 cards on deck using only archetype specific cards should give you an idea of how well balanced the deck was)

 

So, with all the introductions out of the way, lets jump into the actual cards. First of all, i've divided Hate into different searchers, and gave each monster and eff when sent from Deck to GY to make them playable. Second, Cycle has been nerfed a bunch for it to be a tad more balanced. Finally, i gave the deck some actual interactions

 

(Oh god, i've just noticed the OG Post doesnt exist anymore. Having to come up with new names for these cards is gonna be a pain)

 

Monsters:

 

First, the Monster cards. Let's start with the searchers

 

Festering Sloth

Monster/Zombie/Dark

Level 4

ATK 200/1500 DEF

(This card is always treated as "Malice Ascendant: Sloth") 

While this card is on the field, during your opponent's Standby Phase, if there are 5 or more "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) in your GY; Your opponent cannot conduct their Battle Phase this turn

If this card is sent from your deck or hand to your GY: add 1 Spell card that includes "Malice Ascendant" in its effect from your deck to your hand. 

You can only activate each effect of "Malice Ascendant: Sloth" once per turn

 

Sloth, previously one of the less playable cards in the archetype, became sort of the bread and butter of the deck. Since this deck has problems spamming out boards, the Standby Effect helps protect you from being OTKd (Unless you opponent drew an Imperm in which case you're kinda screwed)  in the boards were you couldnt quite manage to stop your opponent, and the main, more relevant effect, allows you to search some of the really powerful Spells this archetype has, like Depression Eater going second or Plague if going first. It's important to note that since all the Stanby Effs trigger on the same window, you can chain block them, and thus effects like this one could be used to protect you Envy's from getting Ashed. In general, just a good card, probably even a 3 of

 

Selfish Envy

Monster/Zombie/Dark

Level 4

ATK 800/900 DEF

(This card is always treated as "Malice Ascendant: Envy")

While this card is on the field, during your opponent's Standby Phase: your opponent draws 1 card(s) for every 3 "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) in your GY, then, you can look at their hand and shuffle back into their deck an equal amount of card(s)

If this card is sent from your deck or hand to your GY: add 1 Trap card that includes "Malice Ascendant" in its effect from your deck to your hand. 

You can only activate each effect of "Malice Ascendant: Envy" once per turn

 

Envy is the main control tool of the deck. Much like a similar card i've made, "Poisoned Goods", this card allows to interact with your opponents hand and gain info without taking advantage away from them. The most common use, given that this is a backrow heavy deck (Or at least, has been designed with that in mind) would probably be for getting rid of those pesky Lightning Storms crawling on your opponent's hand. Since this is the Trap searcher, its even more fitting that it would be a control tool. You might use it to get some Cycles every so often, but for the most part, your turn 1 board is vulnerable enough that you would preffer to add you interactions first to not die 

 

Possesive Affection

Monster/Zombie/Dark

Level 4

ATK 1500/200 DEF

(This card is always treated as "Malice Ascendant: Lust")

While this card is on the field, during your opponent's Standby Phase: if there are 3 or more "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) in your GY, Special Summon 1 "Malice Ascendant" monster card from your GY, or, if you control 12 or more "Malice Ascendant"monster(s) in your GY,  a monster in either player's GY to your side the field 

If this card is sent from your deck or hand to your GY: send 1 "Malice Ascendant" Monster from your deck to your GY

You can only activate each effect of "Malice Ascendant: Lust" once per turn

 

Affection is yet another of your main engine cards. It can send Wrath for a pop in turns 2 and foward to help deal with established boards, but in reality its main use is just to send one of the searchers and increase your Ascendants in grave, kinda like a Tribrigade Kitt in some way. Pride is another good target for Turn 1 set ups, specially in the send Pride SS Lust line to get an extra body on field during your opponent's turn, like an Envy you milled to get some info. The Standby eff is particularly useful, as its one of the three effects you have to summon bodies on board, with the other ones being Pride and Cycle

 

Then, onto the rest of the gang

 

Unchecked Hubris

Monster/Zombie/Dark

Level 4

ATK 1700/0 DEF

(This card is always treated as "Malice Ascendant: Pride")

While this card is on the field, during your opponent's Standby Phase: increase the ATK of all "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) on field by 150 for each "Malice Ascendant" monsters(s) on your GY until the end of your next turn

If this card is sent from your deck or hand to your GY: you can Special Summon 1 "Malice Ascendant" monster in your GY to you side of the field

You can only activate each effect of "Malice Ascendant: Pride" once per turn

 

Beeg, unga bunga boy here. If it wasnt for pops being a thing, this could probably fully replace Sloth as your defensive card. Very slow Standby eff, probably not worth it outside simplified gamestates where a big ATK number is more than enough to be a threat. Other than that, one of your main 3 field swarming tools, often played alongside Lust if you're particularly greedy. Milling this off randomly is as high as your excitement will get on this deck 

 

Noxious Greed

Monster/Zombie/Dark

Level 4

ATK 300/1400 DEF

(This card is always treated as "Malice Ascendant: Greed")

While this card is on the field, during your opponent's Standby Phase: you can draw 1 card for every 3 "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) on your GY and discard the same amount of card(s) you drew

If this card is sent from your deck or hand to your GY: mill 2 cards

You can only activate each effect of "Malice Ascendant: Greed" once per turn

 

This is surprisingly one of your power cards. First of all, its a discard outlet for all your Ascendant in hand. While you have other ways to do so, you can send these ones during your opponent's turn to get extra triggers out of them, being specially relevant for discarding things like Pride and getting an SS during Standby for extra triggers. The GY effect is, somewhat mediocre and mainly something you'd want to get while paying the cost of a card, for things such as setting up a Wrath to turn Plague from a pop into a Dogmatika Punishment. Overall, its mainly a way to trigger effs during your opponents turn with less difficulty (This card has seen changes to better fit the playstyle of the deck)

 

Pent-Up Hatred

Monster/Zombie/Dark

Level 4

ATK 1400/300 DEF

(This card is always treated as "Malice Ascendant: Wrath")

While this card is on the field, during your opponent's Standby Phase: inflict 100 damage for every "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) in your GY

If this card is sent from your deck or hand to your GY: you can target 1 card on field; destroy it

You can only activate each effect of "Malice Ascendant: Wrath" once per turn

 

This is a weird one. Ignoring the fact that other than winning on time the Standby eff doenst really archieve anything, the GY eff makes ratios weird. The correct option is probably to have this as a 1 of to set up through Greed to turn your Plague into a Dogmatika Punishment, but at the same time, the temptation of playing multiples so you can trigger it off a random mill or a Released discard is pretty strong

 

Bottomless Gluttony

Monster/Zombie/Dark

Level 4

ATK 100/1600 DEF

(This card is always treated as "Malice Ascendant: Gluttony")

While this card is on the field, during your opponent's Standby Phase: you can gain 200 LP for every "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) in your GY

If this card is sent from your deck or hand to your GY: you can shuffle up to 3 banished Spell/Trap cards that include "Malice Ascendant" in their effect into your deck

You can only activate each effect of "Malice Ascendant: Gluttony" once per turn

 

This is probably one of the more boring ones in this list, and probably the only one i would outright not play. Gluttony was always like that. I guess it can win you on time or be used to Chain Block, but Wrath is just plain better at that. Eh, not all have to be winners

 

 

 

Spells:

 

 

Now, onto the spell lineup. Much like the Trap one, its on the lighter side with only 4 bodies

 

Intrusive Thoughts

Normal Spell

Discard 1 card; mill 4 cards and if any of them are a "Malice Ascendant" monster(s), draw 1 card

You can only use 1 "Intrusive Thoughts" once per turn

 

This is a boring one. Mainly a mill outlet, most of its use is for triggering Greeds or Prides during your turn, after you used your Released on milling your whole Envy + Lust>Sloth line up to get a Plague and a Destructive. Hitting any of the members of the search line up with this is probably as high value as it gets

 

I've choosen to delete this card due to how it tended to be somewhat unfun both to play and play against

 

Released Emotions

Normal Spell

Discard 1 card; send up to 2 "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) from your deck to your GY

You can only use 1 "Released Emotions" once per turn

 

This is the one card you want to always see in your hand, and maybe even search. In theory, given your options, this card pretty much a +0 in terms of card advantage, but given how good it is at searching your cards, its quite a bit better than your traditional draw 2 discard 1 spells. Its also quite flexible for boards that already milled a Sloth/Envy/Lust. Its also part of your most basic line, the 3 searchers into Plague Destructive combo. Note that both this and Thoughts are "Use" HOPTs, so if they are negated, you wont be able to activate more this turn. Big as hell chokepoint and the Ash magnet of the deck

 

Existential Plague

Quick-play Spell

Discard 1 card and Target 1 card on the field; destroy it, then, if you control a "Malice Ascendant" monster(s), mill 3 cards 

You can only activate 1 "Existential Plague" once per turn

 

This is you main interaction card for turn one set ups, being practically a Dogmatika Punishment if played alongside a set up Wrath. A bit less reliable than Intrusive for the purpose of gambling with mills, since you want to hold off on activating this card, but still solid enough

 

And finally, the reason you are playing the deck

 

Depression Eater

Normal Spell

Target 1 card on the field for every 2 "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) on your GY; send them to the GY

 

This card is just, a searcheable within archetype boardwipe (kind of) that gives this deck the potency it might need to clean up boards and be able to threaten lethal with the glacially slow Pride line up. All in all, this probably one of your stronger cards for follow ups. Still probably a 1 of, since you can add it via Sloth and isnt relevant on turn 1. 2 off to not mill it? Idk man

 

 

Traps:

 

 

And finally, your 2 trap line up

 

Cycle of Hatred

Continuous Trap

If a "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) is sent to the GY: Draw 1 Card

You can banish 1 Spell/Trap card that includes "Malice Ascendant" in its effect in your GY; Special Summon 1 "Malice Ascendant" monster in your GY to your side of the field

You can only activate each effect of "Cycle of Hatred" once per turn

 

All in all, this is the advantage engine that keeps the deck being an annoying recurring mess, compensating for the limitations you might have on non-Released set ups or in general by virtue of every single card here requiring you to discard 1 card. Triggering both effects 1 per each player's turn is the best way you have to grind out someone, by trying to swarm the board and slowly use your Standby effs to establish a lead

 

Destructive Tendencies

Counter Trap

When your opponent would activate a Spell/Trap card or the effect of a Monster: send to the GY 1 "Malice Ascendant" monster in your hand or field; negate the activation and destroy the card

If this card is in your GY and you have 5 or more "Malice Ascendant" monsters on your GY: you can shuffle this card into your deck

You can only activate each effect of "Destructive Tendencies" once per turn

 

Just, your good ol Omni Negate. Dont really have that much to say about it. The second eff exists almost exclusively to allow you to play it as a single in your deck and still be able to recur it over multiple turns as you mill more Sloths

 

Conclusion

 

So, with all of this out of the way, how does the deck look like? Well, probably some sort of either Gambling nonsense with a Lightsworn Engine, or something like Released Sloth Envy Tendencies Plague package shoved into your Chaos Ruler Eldlich lists, or maybe played alongside Dogmatika. All in all, you aim to set a duo pop and a negate turn one, with ideally a board wipe on the next turn. You use Sloth and a bit of gambling to survive past your opponents first turn (Or a bunch of Floodgates) and kind of depend on hitting a Greed out of one of your effs (Thoughts? Random Needlebug Nest?) to ensure the second pop. Ideally you draw Cycle, so you can set it up and draw/summon on endphase/standby during your opponents turn and further solidify your board. More often than not, your board will be around 2 Ascendants during Standby, through a Pride hit, and ideally with those being the Sloth and Envy you Foolished off Released to get your interaction line up, to both not die and look at your opponents hand to know when to interact with it. Also important to note that Ascendants do trigger on being discarded for your costs, so even if your mills are mediocre, you might get extra advantage that way. A Wrath stucked in your hand for example could be triggered by the cost of either Tendencies or Plague

Also, the general Zombie Goodstuff Gang is all viable within this archetype. Gozuki and Uni can foolish your searchers and give you extra way to start combos, Mezuki and Gozuki are pretty good mills to swarm a board, and Solitaire can get you Uni, or at worst, Pride. It just adds a bunch of starters and improves mill quality. Edit: I'he spent a bit thinking about this, and due to Gozuki, Uni Zombie, Solitaire, Foolish Burial, Armageddon Knight and Dark Grepher, this deck could play 17 (3 of which are emotions) which is kind of not what i was prepared for when making the archetype. The chances of you at least reaching the Sloth/Envy + Tendencies (The omni negate) set up in your starting hand are really high. Bear in mind, this is a bare minimum that considers you having to add Released through Sloth and missing every single mill/not having any effects that could trigger on discard, which is hella unlikely. There is also the fact that you average Released lines dont really use your Normal Summon NS ALEISTER, meaning you dont really mind having to go through the whole, idk, NS Solitaire, get Uni, Uni mill Sloth, Sloth add Released and then you're off to the races. At least the deck has a pretty obvious choke to ass in Released. Still, the gambling deck is surprisingly consistent, and i find that kinda f*cking hilarious. Also, did you know, Glow Up Bloom and Necroworld Banshe could be triggered by being milled? Yeah this deck totally gets to play Baledroch. In fact, if you highroll and get it turn one, suddenly the deck board is scary as all hell. A banish, 2 negates (1 Omni and 1 Monster specific) and potentially a Dogmatika Punishment while under Envy giving info of hand sounds M E N A C I N G. Kind of solves most of the turn one board problems

 

All in all, its still an obnoxious gambling deck that takes like 5 turns to assemble lethal and feels allergic to the extra deck, and i love because of it. That's if you arent playing it alongside Zombie Goodstuff, of course. If you are, then it suddenly is just a metathreat control strat for some god forsaken reason

 

Also, regarding spoilers.  I've tried to put them, i almost erased the entire introduction, i dont really want to deal with that again

[Ezrael]

I've been considering making an archetype based on the Seven Deadly Sins for aaaaaages, it's insanely sick to see them getting some love. Really well thought out stuff, I'd definitely play this archetype given the chance. Gives me some inspiration for the archetype that I've been blueprinting out recently, actually!

[Loleo]

This is beautiful, but not very viable as even remotely meta. In fact, I would boost a lot of these give them a field spell and extra deck (yes I saw they are extra-deckphobic and you love that). This works great with danger and lightsworn (but lightsworn dilutes the deck in a bad way). Also veeeery suceptible to almost every handtrap ever.

7 hours ago, Shadow Black-Wood said:

Introduction:

 

 The general idea was to build a deck around Malice Ascendant, a monster with the effect of milling opponent's cards during their Standby Phase based on how many copies of itself you had on GY

Very GY reliant makes it incredibly easy to stop with macro cosmos or an OTK. (not to mention evenly matched)

I made a whole archetype based on the seven deadly sins, each with an effect during opponent's Standby based on the amount of Malice Ascendants on GY and a bunch of spells/traps that either facilitated filling your GY or did stuff based on Malice Ascendants on GY. The problem was, my card design abilites at the time just, sucked. A whole lot. So, the deck really didnt work, ever, and even though i playtested the deck a bunch, at best i won like, 2 times

 

So, lets go one by one with some of the problems i've identified as well as the revised, more polished (i hope) version of the deck

It's great!

First, all the monsters sucked. None of them did anything relevant, except two, one of which was absolutely broken and the other who was kind of the only wincon you had.

It's actually fine to have broken archetype specific cards in a bad archetype.

The broken one was "Hate Uprising", aka, Wrath. Essentially, it was the deck's only searcher, and it could on a HOPT search any card within the archetype when sent from the Deck to the GY.

This is fine.

Needless to say, everything the deck ever did was revolving this one specific card, and its existence was extremely toxic for the deck. You see, since it was so powerful, anything i could do to improve it would probably just break the entire archetype, but at the same time leaving it as is was problematic, as the deck had 3 or 4 extremely powerful cards it NEEDED to get, and thus, since this was your only searcher, you never really managed to get them all consistently and the deck turned into this very sacky mess

fair

The other one, was the unga bunga boy himself, Gran Maju before Gran Maju was viable, Pride. Pride had a simple effect on Standby, where it pumped the ATK of all Malice Ascendants based on your number of Malice Ascendants on GY. So, the deck very quickly degenerated into a Pride turbo unga bunga deck where you tried to make a bunch of your monsters big, hope they sticked until your next turn, and then hit it for lethal. I remember how much i hated Borreload due to the deck's dependancy on Pride

That sounds like prime yugioh 10/10 no joke. 

Oh, also, since i was really bad at making yugioh, all the  monster cards were treated as the same name on deck. So, yeah, you kinda could only have 3 of ALL the monsters on deck. My bad

common mistake

The next problem in the deck where the 3 only good spells it had, Cycle of Hate, the SS from GY one, and Depression Eater. All of them, in some way or form, were powerful enough that the deck NEEDED to see them to win, and a lack of searchers for them made the deck sacky as hell. First, Cycle of Hate

I'll just get to the fixed versions

Cycle of Hate was a continuous spell that allowed you to up to thrice per turn (per copy, as it was a SOPT(SPPT?)) draw a card when a Malice Ascendant touched the GY. Yeah. Card was nuts. It was powerful enough that most cards in the deck were heavily draw negative to make up for its power, so not having access to it really hurted the deck whenever it happened. It also heavily limited the power of the deck in general, and made some really weird Lightsworn variants where you just drawed for days. Not very healthy

 

The SS from GY one was. A mistake. If i had to point a card i've ever designed and say, "this was the dumbest thing i've ever made", it would be this one. This card allowed you to, AS A COST, send any 2 Malice Ascendants from your Deck to your GY, then a la Reincardination, SS a Malice Ascendant on GY. Anything this deck ever made revolved around this card being in your hand. It also wasnt a HOPT?? Yeah, this was a mess

 

Finally, Depression Eater was like, the only sensible card in the group. It just, popped a bunch of cards based on Malice Ascendants on GY. That's it. That's all it did. It had some general balance nonsense, like additions of HOPTs, Targetting, etc. but in general it was the  only card that you could just, add back without that much of a problem

 

So with that in mind, the deck looked something like this. You sent Hate and Pride to GY, add Cycle, Summon Pride, and hoped that won you the game. Otherwise, you just, spammed Depression Eater until you inevitably died. F U N (For the record, it was  funny, just, not very well designed nor balanced. The fact that i only remember 6 cards of the archertype (Havent mentioned Plague yet since it was kinda fine) even though the final count was big enough for you to have around 50 cards on deck using only archetype specific cards should give you an idea of how well balanced the deck was)

 

So, with all the introductions out of the way, lets jump into the actual cards. First of all, i've divided Hate into different searchers, and gave each monster and eff when sent from Deck to GY to make them playable. Second, Cycle has been nerfed a bunch for it to be a tad more balanced. Finally, i gave the deck some actual interactions

 

(Oh god, i've just noticed the OG Post doesnt exist anymore. Having to come up with new names for these cards is gonna be a pain)

 

Monsters:

 

First, the Monster cards. Let's start with the searchers

 

Festering Sloth

Monster/Zombie/Dark

Level 4

ATK 200/1500 DEF

(This card is always treated as "Malice Ascendant: Sloth") 

While this card is on the field, during your opponent's Standby Phase, if there are 5 or more "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) in your GY: Your opponent cannot conduct their Battle Phase this turn

If this card is sent from your deck or hand to your GY: add 1 Spell card that includes "Malice Ascendant" in its effect from your deck to your hand. 

You can only activate each effect of "Malice Ascendant: Sloth" once per turn

 

Sloth, previously one of the less playable cards in the archetype, became sort of the bread and butter of the deck. Since this deck has problems spamming out boards, the Standby Effect helps protect you from being OTKd (Unless you opponent drew an Imperm in which case you're kinda screwed)  in the boards were you couldnt quite manage to stop your opponent, and the main, more relevant effect, allows you to search some of the really powerful Spells this archetype has, like Depression Eater going second or Plague if going first. It's important to note that since all the Stanby Effs trigger on the same window, you can chain block them, and thus effects like this one could be used to protect you Envy's from getting Ashed. In general, just a good card, probably even a 3 of

Ok hear me out; the same effects (with some boosted) but also included the spell traps? Love the design though.

Selfish Envy

Monster/Zombie/Dark

Level 4

ATK 800/900 DEF

(This card is always treated as "Malice Ascendant: Envy")

While this card is on the field, during your opponent's Standby Phase: your opponent draws 1 card(s) for every 3 "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) in your GY, then, you can look at their hand and shuffle back into their deck an equal amount of card(s)

If this card is sent from your deck or hand to your GY: add 1 Trap card that includes "Malice Ascendant" in its effect from your deck to your hand. 

You can only activate each effect of "Malice Ascendant: Envy" once per turn

 

Envy is the main control tool of the deck. Much like a similar card I've made, "Poisoned Goods", this card allows to interact with your opponents hand and gain info without taking advantage away from them. The most common use, given that this is a backrow heavy deck (Or at least, has been designed with that in mind) would probably be for getting rid of those pesky Lightning Storms crawling on your opponent's hand. Since this is the Trap searcher, its even more fitting that it would be a control tool. You might use it to get some Cycles every so often, but for the most part, your turn 1 board is vulnerable enough that you would prefer to add you interactions first to not die 

Funny enough I think banishing would be more in line with the original malice ascendant to contribute to a mill win. Very unique style that is wonderful. 

Possesive Affection

Monster/Zombie/Dark

Level 4

ATK 1500/200 DEF

(This card is always treated as "Malice Ascendant: Lust")

While this card is on the field, during your opponent's Standby Phase: if there are 3 or more "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) in your GY, Special Summon 1 "Malice Ascendant" monster card from your GY to your side the field 

If this card is sent from your deck or hand to your GY: send 1 "Malice Ascendant" Monster from your deck to your GY

You can only activate each effect of "Malice Ascendant: Lust" once per turn

 

Affection is yet another of your main engine cards. It can send Wrath for a pop in turns 2 and foward to help deal with established boards, but in reality its main use is just to send one of the searchers and increase your Ascendants in grave, kinda like a Tribrigade Kitt in some way. Pride is another good target for Turn 1 set ups, specially in the send Pride SS Lust line to get an extra body on field during your opponent's turn, like an Envy you milled to get some info. The Standby eff is particularly useful, as its one of the three effects you have to summon bodies on board, with the other ones being Pride and Cycle

MORE POWER special summon any monster from either GY!

Then, onto the rest of the gang

 

Unchecked Hubris

Monster/Zombie/Dark

Level 4

ATK 1700/0 DEF

(This card is always treated as "Malice Ascendant: Pride")

While this card is on the field, during your opponent's Standby Phase: increase the ATK of all "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) on field by 200 for each "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) in your GY until the end of your next turn

If this card is sent from your deck or hand to your GY: you can Special Summon 1 "Malice Ascendant" monster in your GY to you side of the field

You can only activate each effect of "Malice Ascendant: Pride" once per turn

 

Beeg, unga bunga boy here. If it wasnt for pops being a thing, this could probably fully replace Sloth as your defensive card. Very slow Standby eff, probably not worth it outside simplified gamestates where a big ATK number is more than enough to be a threat. Other than that, one of your main 3 field swarming tools, often played alongside Lust if you're particularly greedy. Milling this off randomly is as high as your excitement will get on this deck 

 

Noxious Greed

Monster/Zombie/Dark

Level 4

ATK 300/1400 DEF

(This card is always treated as "Malice Ascendant: Greed")

While this card is on the field, during your opponent's Standby Phase: you can draw 1 card for every 3 "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) on your GY and discard the same amount of card(s) you drew

If this card is sent from your deck or hand to your GY: you can choose 1 "Malice Ascendant" Monster in your deck and place it in the top of your deck

You can only activate each effect of "Malice Ascendant: Greed" once per turn

How about it sets a Malice spell/trap that is banished or in GY when sent from deck to GY. More greedy and needed. You are right that the first effect has impact.

This is surprisingly one of your power cards. First of all, its a discard outlet for all your Ascendant in hand. While you have other ways to do so, you can send these ones during your opponent's turn to get extra triggers out of them, being specially relevant for discarding things like Pride and getting an SS during Standby for extra triggers. The GY effect is, somewhat mediocre and mainly something you'd want to get while paying the cost of a card, for things such as setting up a Wrath to turn Plague from a pop into a Dogmatika Punishment. Overall, its mainly a way to trigger effs during your opponents turn with less difficulty

 

Pent-Up Hatred

Monster/Zombie/Dark

Level 4

ATK 1400/300 DEF

(This card is always treated as "Malice Ascendant: Wrath")

While this card is on the field, during your opponent's Standby Phase: inflict 200 damage for every "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) in your GY

If this card is sent from your deck or hand to your GY: you can target 1 card on field; destroy it

You can only activate each effect of "Malice Ascendant: Wrath" once per turn

 

This is a weird one. Ignoring the fact that other than winning on time the Standby eff doenst really archieve anything, the GY eff makes ratios weird. The correct option is probably to have this as a 1 of to set up through Greed to turn your Plague into a Dogmatika Punishment, but at the same time, the temptation of playing multiples so you can trigger it off a random mill or a Released discard is pretty strong

 

Bottomless Gluttony

Monster/Zombie/Dark

Level 4

ATK 100/1600 DEF

(This card is always treated as "Malice Ascendant: Gluttony")

While this card is on the field, during your opponent's Standby Phase: you can gain 500 LP for every "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) in your GY

If this card is sent from your deck or hand to your GY: you can shuffle up to 3 Spell/Trap cards that include "Malice Ascendant" in their effect into your deck

You can only activate each effect of "Malice Ascendant: Gluttony" once per turn

How about no max and also works on the monsters for the second effect? At least then it would be played at 1 or 2 in stall?

This is probably one of the more boring ones in this list, and probably the only one i would outright not play. Gluttony was always like that. I guess it can win you on time or be used to Chain Block, but Wrath is just plain better at that. Eh, not all have to be winners

 

 

 

Spells:

 

 

Now, onto the spell lineup. Much like the Trap one, its on the lighter side with only 4 bodies

 

Intrusive Thoughts

Normal Spell

Discard 1 card; mill 3 cards and if any of them are a "Malice Ascendant" monster(s), draw 1 card

simple and works.

This is a boring one. Mainly a mill outlet, most of its use is for triggering Greeds or Prides during your turn, after you used your Released on milling your whole Envy + Lust>Sloth line up to get a Plague and a Destructive. Hitting any of the members of the search line up with this is probably as high value as it gets

 

Released Emotions

Normal Spell

Discard 1 card; send up to 2 "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) from your deck to your GY

You can only use 1 "Released Emotions" once per turn

I would make this quick play.

This is the one card you want to always see in your hand, and maybe even search. In theory, given your options, this card pretty much a +0 in terms of card advantage, but given how good it is at searching your cards, its quite a bit better than your traditional draw 2 discard 1 spells. Its also quite flexible for boards that already milled a Sloth/Envy/Lust. Its also part of your most basic line, the 3 searchers into Plague Destructive combo. Note that both this and Thoughts are "Use" HOPTs, so if they are negated, you wont be able to activate more this turn. Big as hell chokepoint and the Ash magnet of the deck

 

Existential Plague

Quick-play Spell

Discard 1 card and Target 1 card on the field; destroy it, then, if you control a "Malice Ascendant" monster(s), mill 3 cards 

You can only activate 1 "Existential Plague" once per turn

Targeted destruction hmmm. How about you can set one from GY if you have 5+ in GY but banish when leave the field or banish it from GY as discard cost for Malice in effect card.

This is you main interaction card for turn one set ups, being practically a Dogmatika Punishment if played alongside a set up Wrath. A bit less reliable than Intrusive for the purpose of gambling with mills, since you want to hold off on activating this card, but still solid enough

 

And finally, the reason you are playing the deck

 

Depression Eater

Normal Spell

Discard 1 card, target 1 card on the field for every 3 "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) in your GY; send them to the GY

How about banish it from GY as the cost for a spell as an additional option? Also quick play.

This card is just, a searcheable within archetype boardwipe (kind of) that gives this deck the potency it might need to clean up boards and be able to threaten lethal with the glacially slow Pride line up. All in all, this probably one of your stronger cards for follow ups. Still probably a 1 of, since you can add it via Sloth and isnt relevant on turn 1. 2 off to not mill it? Idk man

 

 

Traps:

 

 

And finally, your 2 trap line up

 

Cycle of Hatred

Continuous Trap

If a "Malice Ascendant" monster(s) is sent to the GY: Draw 1 Card

You can banish 1 Spell/Trap card that includes "Malice Ascendant" in its effect in your GY; Special Summon 1 "Malice Ascendant" monster in your GY to your side of the field

You can only use each effect of "Cycle of Hatred" once per turn

10/10. Maybe continuous spell but that would be pushing it.

All in all, this is the advantage engine that keeps the deck being an annoying recurring mess, compensating for the limitations you might have on non-Released set ups or in general by virtue of every single card here requiring you to discard 1 card. Triggering both effects 1 per each player's turn is the best way you have to grind out someone, by trying to swarm the board and slowly use your Standby effs to establish a lead

 

Destructive Tendencies

Counter Trap

When your opponent would activate a Spell/Trap card or the effect of a Monster: send to the GY 1 "Malice Ascendant" monster in your hand or field; negate the activation and destroy the card

If this card is in your GY and you have 5 or more "Malice Ascendant" monsters on your GY: you can shuffle this card into your deck

You can only activate each effect of "Destructive Tendencies" once per turn

set and banish instead of shuffle!

Field spell Ascendant Horizon

When this card is activated: return all banished cards to the GY. Once per turn, during your standby phase if you control a "Malice Ascendant" monster: send cards from the top of each player's deck to the GY equal to the number of cards in their hand.

Also link 2 monster that gives protection (when 5 or less in GY) returns banished to GY, and can be banished from GY as discard cost. (Maybe call it Malice Ascendant Descendant?)

 

All in all it works with a little more power and protection! Instead of the link (or even with it) You can make an Ultimate Malice monster that can tribute summon itself from hand using 2 monsters in hand as tribute or GY using 2 on field as tribute. (if sent from hand/deck to GY send 3 to GY but negate their effects) on field banishes a random card from opponents hand or ED if 7+ in GY (2400/800)? some tribute for Monarch synergy. Or just lean into Zombie synergy. My biggest 2 issues are the lack of a boss monster and no protection of plays, but this is amazing, fun, just absolutely wonderful.

[drowsyCoffee]

While i agree with some of the points being made there, and some of the ideas you suggested were actually kinda lit (Like Lust having the option to SS from either GY, that just, fits the theme so well, 10/10) in general there are some small things i dont really agree with, specially near the end of the review. One of the reasons why i didnt particularly felt like giving them a Field Spell (Besides the clear failure of one i made in the past on Duel Portal) as well as a Boss monster, is that in general the deck felt as if it could have some great synergy with your typical Zombie Goodstuff, and that i've realised while making this response that Baledroch kind of already can do the job.

 

Solitaire, Uni Zombie and Gozuki are all p solid starters by virtue of being able to mill Sloth for a Released Emotions search, Gozuki and Mezuki are fairly good mills, etc. So, since you have space for a Field and Boss, and already mix well with Zombie Goodstuff, why not just cram as well a Baledroch and a Zombie World on top, given that the deck would gladly cram even more Foolish effs to get it live? The deck doesnt really conflict with either, and being able to consistently add an extra pop and negate through Baledroch setups, for a total of 4, easy to recur interactions (Negate from Bale, Negate from Tendencies, Pop from Plague, Banish from Bale) that you could repeat for quite a while it feels like there is a big enough reason to justify it. It just feels a bit too good of a natural fit, and since my previous attempts (The weird Fusion monster that required 7 specific names and the OG Lust) of making a boss monster for the archetype didnt really pan out, i felt like it wasnt really necessary. Maybe make a "far too restrictive to be playable" boss just for flavor, themed on having each of the seven names. Idk man. Plus, 2 of the other tools of Zombie Goodstuff, Necroworld Banshee (Your Zombieworld searcher) and Glow Up Bloom (Another tool to get into Bale) can trigger by being milled making both of them pretty strong cards to add in for the chance of highrolling with em. Bale himself will trigger out of being milled if you managed to access Zombieworld, which you can get from either drawing it or Banshee, milling Banshee, or, in a worst case scenario, using one of your 11-7 (Depending on wether you wanna play Grepher + Armageddon) ish cards that Foolish to send it from deck to grave. Its just, great synergy all around. The deck doesnt really need a boss monster with Bale around

On the other hand, regarding to protection, between the fact that the deck gets to play quite happily a Pot of Disparity to bait Ash activations, with Ash being the toughest handtrap to deal with, other than Droll, and that Crossout Designator exists now, bumping the number of anti handtrap staples from 1 to 4, i feel like giving the deck more defenses on top of its staples would be a tad too much. On the other hand, for normal defense, for the most part using Envy to rip off power cards like Lightning Storm still is your best tool. While you probably would still die if a deck managed to summon Accesscode through a pop and a negate on perfect info, that is just the ceiling of pure variants specifically and does not taking into account any of the rng things that could happen like drawing handtraps or going through Bale. The Bale variant boards probably are way more menacing in reality and would make the likelihood of even then getting OTKd far rarer and thus making the scenarios where you whiff and it happens a natural downside to balance out the deck. Macro beats the crap out of you, i agree on that, but at the same time, if  feel like Depression Eater and Plague are already good enough outs to it for a deck that should be weak to that card. Thus, in short, i dont think the deck needs help in either protection for turn 1 set ups or a boss monster, after finally realizing just how good of a fit Bale is

 

For the actual changes, though, here is a list:

 

First, i think that Lust summoning monsters from opponents GY is cool as f*ck, so i think i'll add that as an eff on 12 Ascendants on GY on more. You dont really care about it at the start of the duel while setting up a normal board, and later on, given that things such as properly summoned Crystalwings and any kind of other negate bosses would be roaming around in GY if you havent won/lost yet, a condition that high feels fitting, after all, even in the OG variant i rarely managed to stay in a duel past the 14 mark, so you probably could go a tad crazy with effs that required that many Ascendants on GY

 

While i liked the ideas of Plague being easier to recur and Tendencies setting itself, after taking into acount Baledroch lines, i feel like the deck already has enough easy to access interactions, and that having to go through the process of milling yet another Sloth to add extra copies of those is a fine amount of effort to have to put. And while i agree that Cycle feels like it could be a spell, im mainly being cautious with it because during playtesting on prior iterations the card was already disgusting, and the deck didnt even had good turn 1 plays at that point. So, since the deck's turn 1 power increased a whole f*cking lot, i feel like taking away Cycle from their first turn is a fair trade

 

Released Emotions as a QP is a big nono, it probably is easily the strongest card in the deck, and being able to abuse Spell Speed 2 to activate during your opponent's turn and bypass the HOPT would not be healthy in the slightest. Same goes for Depression Eater, it would be overstepping into Plague's niche, feels a tad unnecesary

 

I feel like both Gluttony and Greed's suggestions arent that relevant. For the case of Greed, the deck is good at reaching the Plague Tendencies hallmark, setting more spell/traps wouldnt do that much as you'd still be limited to one of each anyways. Setting up Wrath for either probably ends up giving you overall more interactions, while not risking creating scenarios where you repeteadly set Released Emotions to plus far too much. On the case of Gluttony, for stall purposes, shuffling back monsters isnt that great as you want names to pump Pride so you can actually end the game, and since Cycle gives you a way to SS it from GY, shuffling it also does nothing. Furthermore, on a simplified gamestate where you have like, 10 cards left on deck, sending 3 powerful spell/traps to increase the chances of drawing a powerful card is probably better than shuffling back a huge pile of cards and diluting the card pool

 

Finally, for Envy, i originally considered it Banishing instead of shuffling, but the posibility of potentially banishing 1 ofs like Gazelle against Salamangreat felt a tad too good for a card that was already contributing a lot to the deck. The card already has a lot on its plate, it doesnt need to be even stronger

 

So, in short, a lot of the ideas tempted me, but after i realised that, "wait this deck gets to play Baledroch", i felt like the deck no longer needed an extra pump to be good. Still, at least in its pure variant where you'd depend a bit more on drawing staple traps, handtraps and floodgates, i could have been convinced by some of your ideas, in particular, the Greed set eff almost convinced me before i realised that the chokepoint wasnt accessing your backrow but rather the HOPTs on it. Gluttony seemed interesting too, but couldnt really resist that much further thought. The Tendencies and Plague suggestions were def a good idea in a world were you didnt just loop Bale endlessly, as it certainly would take less steps that having to use Sloth as a middle man to reach them, but with it in mind the deck is already getting more than enough free advantage

[Loleo]

I typed out a reply and it got deleted

Most of the stuff you disagreed with were points to consider not anything necessary I do think this is still a little underpowered even after the few new revisions, but this is definitely a viable zombie engine. I'm glad you liked some of my ideas :)

[drowsyCoffee]

Mate, i feel your pain, it happened to me an embarassing amount of times tbh. 

 

Besides that, you might be right about the deck potentially being a tad underpowered, at this point to say for sure i probably would have to build a specefic list and start playtesting it to know for sure, specially given how RNG mills can be. Hard to quite gauge the power and potential lines of a deck with this high variance if you dont spend a few games on it

[Ezrael]

6 hours ago, Shadow Black-Wood said:

Hard to quite gauge the power and potential lines of a deck with this high variance if you dont spend a few games on it

This is definitely the biggest point right here haha. Maybe you could set aside some time to add the cards into a website that allows you to use custom cards and run a few hands to see what you're dealing with? After reading through the revisions and other points I'd definitely agree that I can see them being a bit underpowered, especially with no true "boss" or major monster to work towards that I can pick apart. As a zombie engine I can see it working, but standalone there's just no major power play to make. You could totally prove me wrong and talk about some blatantly obvious combo that I didn't read into though, haha. Really excited to see if you put some more time into this and end up with a really fun archetype

[drowsyCoffee]

9 hours ago, xbox1003 said:

This is definitely the biggest point right here haha. Maybe you could set aside some time to add the cards into a website that allows you to use custom cards and run a few hands to see what you're dealing with? After reading through the revisions and other points I'd definitely agree that I can see them being a bit underpowered, especially with no true "boss" or major monster to work towards that I can pick apart. As a zombie engine I can see it working, but standalone there's just no major power play to make. You could totally prove me wrong and talk about some blatantly obvious combo that I didn't read into though, haha. Really excited to see if you put some more time into this and end up with a really fun archetype

I mean, the deck can turn any foolish burial eff (Send from deck to GY) that can target Sloth (A dark zombie, so quite a number) into a negate and an Envy checking your opponent hand, by using the foolish burial eff to send Sloth, Sloth to add Released Emotions, Emotions to send Lust and Envy, Envy adds the Omni negate trap, Lust sends to GY Pride, Pride summons back the Envy and you have 3 names on GY to be able to look at your opponents hand. That probably is good enough for you bare minimum board, given that you have 17 cards in deck (Maximum) that can pull it off on a deck that can play Pot of Disparity. Is probably not enough to stop that many deck, but given that you have 4 of those cards (The one of Foolish Burial and the 3 of Released Emotions) not burn a NS, and that you might draw Intrusive Thoughts to fish for mills, a handtrap, some floodgate or trap, etc, its probably good enough. 

 

But i agree, most of the power plays dont really happen, or at least, not turn one. They are things like drawing/getting through Sloth a Depression Eater latter on the duel and popping 4 cards, or top decking a Released Emotions any turn past turn 1 and out of nowhere getting a Negate and a Pop for no real reason whatsoever. Still, yeah i need to brew a list and play this

(Plus, i barely know that much of how normal Zombie Goodstuff plays their extra deck and the plays they might have lying there, so you might have some extra interesting tools to build boards there)

[drowsyCoffee]

So, i've handtested the deck for going first plays a bunch of times, and here are my conclusions

 

1) I underestimated the size of the Zombie engine you had to play. In order to be able of playing it, a lot of cards had to get snipped. Of the base archetype, Depression always felt pretty useless. Given the amount of card's you're getting to grave, for the most part, it just felt as a worse plague on my theoretical turn 2s. So,  got shipped to the extra. The Wrath line was so awkard with Greed, as you had to really do a lot to accomodate it in a way where it didnt got shuffled post stacking it, and since i was hurting for deck space, i ended up cutting it out. Greed remained on the deck as in some of your worse lines where you had to go through Intrusive pitches you ended up in a situation where Greed was the only HOPT you had left. Even then, the effect sucked big time, so i've changed it for something that will actually help you. Mezuki and Solitaire were also cards that i ended up cutting, as i didnt really felt like they archieved much, specially Mezuki. In the case of Soli, it had to do with the fact that you didnt really want 9 of the NS burials, so i kept only 6 of the whole group. I picked Gozu over Soli as myainly because both of the unique effects came up more or less equally often (Needing a discard and using Uni for it and needing to summon a Zombie on hand through Gozu (Both happened on some hand that were clogged with monsters). You also couldnt really fit cards i've wanted to cram into the deck, like floodgates, crossout, handtraps, etc changing a lot how i viewed the deck. One card that made a redemption arc though, is Cycle of Hatred, as even though it wasnt as good as searching Tendencies, hard drawing it often allowed you to save some rather bad hands, specially Intrusive ones where summoning back things like Greed was quite powerful. Both it and Plague ended up as 3 ofs, as you wanted to get them, but more often than not you couldnt search them and thus had to depend on drawing them. Plus, both felt quite good when drawn

2)Even though i had fully expected this deck to have some really standardized plays and do more or less the same line every time, in reality, most hands required quite some thinking to be properly played and you couldnt just spam Foolish Sloth>Activate Released>Mill Lust and Envy>Envy get Tendencies Lust Foolish Pride>Pride SS Envy on GY every time. A lot of the time, though you did end up on Envy Tendency, the way you reached that point had a lot of variance, as you ended up in scenarios where you had to discard some of the pieces there to trigger its HOPT and in general though you always used those 5 monsters the way you used them changed a lot from hand to hand. The fact that every card Discarded for cost turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as this deck plays a lot cards that desperately want to touch the GY, like Bloom, Baledroch, Banshee and practically all the Ascendants, and thus, you sometimes even ended up using the level modulating eff of Uni Zombie just to be able to discard something for cost. One of the big challenges playing this deck sorta became how to manage you discards, specially on hands that opened Pride, as, like i would find latter, Pride was just one big f*cking garnet that made hands really really awkard. Also, the deck is surprisingly good at churning out one of its interruptions on top of Bale, or in particularly nutty hands, ones with things like Foolish Burial, both of them. Sometimes even both of them on top of a Cycle, though that only happened once. Yeah, the deck is surprisingly good

 

3)And finally, the changes. Depression got the requiremed per pop reduced to 2, as you really didnt manage to get enough Ascendants on grave to make it worth playing over Plague even past your first turn. Even then, surprisingly it became a really bad card, so im also taking away the cost to see if that helps make it better. Greed never did anything when sent to grave and it was hard to get on field due to you often not being able to reach a high enough count of Ascendants in GY after summoning it. So, as a direct solution, im giving it an effect on GY to make it mill, in hopes that it might manage to be playable more often. If not, it might even end up being cut. And finally, Intrusive Thoughts just, felt like sh*t at 3 mills. You HAD to play it in a bunch of hands to trigger all your HOPTS, but it felt miserable to do so. With 3 mills, leave alone triggering the Draw, milling anything relevant was quite hard. So, i bumped it to 5, and after testing it a bit, the deck felt considerably more consistent. That is everything for now

[drowsyCoffee]

Small detail, after some more minor testing, apparently Discarding Greed of Intrusive is really broken. Might bump Greed to 2 and Intrusive to 4 if after some more testing they remain to be this consistently good

Yeah, no those are getting toned down rn, every hand im trying with them almost inmediatly manages to reach all the conditions for full combo. Small mistake on my side

[Dokutah]

Sloth: it depends on the deck dumping power but thats pretty nasty lock down effect and seems easy to trigger. The search effect also ok-ish and even can be triggered from deck

Envy: ooooofffff that kinda brutal hand rip ngl lol. opponent still have same advantage as before but remember that you have upper hand in information game. And the early draw can dig for ungodly 8 cards which along with opponent hand size get you to check 1/4 of their deck content

Search effect is the same case as sloth so equally as good

Lust: thats pretty good summon effect, the bonus for commiting to dumping stuff is nice too. It also help to dump stuff when pitched ala Foolish. Good stuff

Pride: okay based on 7 deathly member and the OG malice ascendant we have 24 cards within full set each. Which gives this card a whooping 3450 boost ceiling. Well this scenario its unlikely but given that so far all of the member already has good base stat already its not bad option when milling strats of original malice not work as intended. Oh also nice summon effect

Greed: damn right this is the deck power card. It draw stuff in massive quantites and further mill in other effect. Triggering a bunch of other member effect en masse. The only thing balance about this other than xenophobia is the fact it draw on opponent turns. Its super rejuve at worst and maxx C draw power level at its best

Wrath: removal and burn roll into one. The burn can be nasty but it will played more for the destruction effect

Gluttony: same notion as you mention. i guess you cant really revamp this to pot of avarice-esque given the deck already have insane draw power already

Thoughts: ok i need confirmation. It draw per pitched members or just 1? I assume latter since former value simply pretty bonker

Emotion: work as your explaination so its good

Plague: good removal and mill. Good stuff

Eater: i guess its balanced a bit by doing nothing else and you also at risk of sending your own stuff to fullfill its mandatory number but still though. Non-target non-destroy. Thank goodness its not spin 

Hatred: balanced yet still pure advantage card. Good stuff

Tendencies: good counter trap. Normally another copy of infernity barrier variant like this is kinda worse for having that discard cost but i guess in this deck that cost elevate it more like nine pillars of YZ or Orcust Cresendo, And it also recover itself so nice stuff

 

 

 

[drowsyCoffee]

1 hour ago, Dokutah Jolly said:

Sloth: it depends on the deck dumping power but thats pretty nasty lock down effect and seems easy to trigger. The search effect also ok-ish and even can be triggered from deck

 

Funnily enough, i've never been able to trigger the lock effect. Both Envy and Greed feel like more valuable targets to summon, normally, out of a Pride GY eff, and your standard line of Sloth dump > Released Emotions > Envy and Lust Dump > Envy pick up Counter trap Lust send Pride > Pride summon a guy (Usually Envy, maybe Lust if you have Cycle in hand and an extra Ascendant in GY or are in the weird One for One for Bloom hands that need to summon a guy and go into Vampire Sucker just to trigger the Bloom) ends in exactly 3 Ascendants in GY, making it hard to set up on turn one. Since the deck has been, surprisingly powerful (Though most of the decks i've played against felt like casual Rogue tier choices, except one that beat my ass while i was trying to see how the deck worked going second), i've never reached a top deck war situation, but i expect that something like a Sloth locking your opponent and and Envy pseudo Yata Garasuing them on turn 4 or 5 to be quite disgusting as you said. The search eff, on the other hand, turned out to be one of the best things in the entire deck, as through the Released Emotions line i've mentioned, its essentially full combo all the way to a live Envy and a Counter trap. Drawing it isnt even that bad, on hands with Emotions already you can pitch it for the discard cost for a Plague, or you can use it for resillience by fishing for an Ash with something like a Gozuki just to then pitch it later as a cost (if your opponent doesnt buy the Gozu, you can just send Banshee instead for a Zombie World, or even better, if you have Zombie World access already, dump a Bloom to summon from deck a Baledroch, which forces the Ash since Ash is a Zombie and thus can be negated by Bale even if Zombie World doesnt affect the hand). In general, just one of your best cards and a 3 of

 

1 hour ago, Dokutah Jolly said:

Envy: ooooofffff that kinda brutal hand rip ngl lol. opponent still have same advantage as before but remember that you have upper hand in information game. And the early draw can dig for ungodly 8 cards which along with opponent hand size get you to check 1/4 of their deck content

1 hour ago, Dokutah Jolly said:

Search effect is the same case as sloth so equally as good

 

I totally agree, after playing against Lavalval and using Envy to keep them off Archer and Convection Field, their 2 good cards, i started to appreciate just how powerful this card can be. I also played against a few menacing decks, like a Puppet one centered on stealing you monsters, and having this card giving me a heads up to what cards i should save my Omninegate for felt really strong. The deck main strat is kinda just Tendencies Envy Baledroch turbo, as it is a surprisingly menacing board. Every so often you get hands that hard drew Cycle, Plague or can get to Plague while not conflicting with your Emotions line, and those feel kinda disgusting. Never managed to get into a game state where i could play an Envy for a 2 card check though. The Zombie engine takes a lot of space (And since it gives you a big recurring beater, an extra negate, a banish, and Zombie World being a pseudo floodgate against decks that specify types, making it kinda non negotiable to play them) so i ended up playing a surprisingly low cound of Ascendants at 9, with 3 Sloth, 3 Envy, 1 Lust, 1 Pride as your main garnet, as unlike Lust, it can be a miserable draw in a lot of hands, and 1 Greed for some Intrusive thoughts set ups as well as set ups that pitched Envy for cost. Due to that, my amount of Ascendants on GY always has been around 5 by the end of my second turn at best. To be fair though, a lot of the time i didnt played all my cards in hand past turn one, because i was already on a winning board state, given that most custom decks i've found werent that competitive and had problems dealing with 2 negates. Would have felt kind of bad sportmanship to keep going, like styling on em. 

 

 

1 hour ago, Dokutah Jolly said:

Lust: thats pretty good summon effect, the bonus for commiting to dumping stuff is nice too. It also help to dump stuff when pitched ala Foolish. Good stuff

 

I totally agree. Lust always feels pretty nice to play, as either glue for your plays, a really sick discard for your spells or just a generally good option to summon of Cycles on hands that went through Intrusive Thoughs and stacked up a GY

 

1 hour ago, Dokutah Jolly said:

Pride: okay based on 7 deathly member and the OG malice ascendant we have 24 cards within full set each. Which gives this card a whooping 3450 boost ceiling. Well this scenario its unlikely but given that so far all of the member already has good base stat already its not bad option when milling strats of original malice not work as intended. Oh also nice summon effect

 

Ironically, by playing Baledroch this deck kind of managed to solve its need for a Big Bungus to hit things over with, and as such i've never found myself needing to play the glacially slow Pride Beatdown variant. The card is still amazing though, since the GY summon eff is mandatory to have in order to perform the deck's full combo. Havent quite managed to brew a list that could play it at more than one though

 

1 hour ago, Dokutah Jolly said:

Greed: damn right this is the deck power card. It draw stuff in massive quantites and further mill in other effect. Triggering a bunch of other member effect en masse. The only thing balance about this other than xenophobia is the fact it draw on opponent turns. Its super rejuve at worst and maxx C draw power level at its best

 

Surprisingly, due to Envy being just so f*cking good, and the main line ending in exactly 3 Ascendant on GY post the Pride Summon, i havent quite managed to summon this guy. It still comes up on Intrusive Thoughts lines or as a pitch in lines where you drew and discarded the Envy early, but other than that, just a nice one of sitting there looking pretty. P good target to summon of Cycles tbh. Still, though, the main reason you play this card on field isnt so much because you draw things, but rather, because you can trigger the effects of Ascendants on your opponent's turn by having them as the pitch for Greed's cost, which, as Plague taught me, is really f*cking strong

 

1 hour ago, Dokutah Jolly said:

Wrath: removal and burn roll into one. The burn can be nasty but it will played more for the destruction effect

 

No more to say either. Didnt even found space to play it

 

1 hour ago, Dokutah Jolly said:

Gluttony: same notion as you mention. i guess you cant really revamp this to pot of avarice-esque given the deck already have insane draw power already

 

Same as Wrath here

 

1 hour ago, Dokutah Jolly said:

Thoughts: ok i need confirmation. It draw per pitched members or just 1? I assume latter since former value simply pretty bonker

 

Yeah, the effect is just 1 draw, never more than that. Even then, the Intrusive Thoughts lines, though less consistent, tend to be hella powerful. I tend to avoid it since its a RNG-y effect, but every so often it comes up

 

1 hour ago, Dokutah Jolly said:

Emotion: work as your explaination so its good

 

Yup. Probably best card on the deck. Drawing it on your second turn and dumping Envy + Sloth for a recycled Tendencies and a Plague is just, game ending

 

1 hour ago, Dokutah Jolly said:

Plague: good removal and mill. Good stuff

 

Yeah. Ironically, the mill eff turned out to be one of the cards main strenght. Even though its hard to have cards left to pitch at the moment of using this card, being able to mill and potentially trigger Ascendant's effs on your opponent's turn is quite disgusting. I managed to mill a Sloth out of it one game, adding me back a second Plague and drawing me a card out of Cycles in the process. Felt really strong to play. Sadly, other than hard drawn Plague/Emotions lines, its hard to get this card

 

1 hour ago, Dokutah Jolly said:

Eater: i guess its balanced a bit by doing nothing else and you also at risk of sending your own stuff to fullfill its mandatory number but still though. Non-target non-destroy. Thank goodness its not spin 

 

Never even played this one, zero clue how good it will be, Plague always felt better

 

1 hour ago, Dokutah Jolly said:

Hatred: balanced yet still pure advantage card. Good stuff

 

Fully agreed. Card's a bit clunky sometimes, but its worth it agaisnt stronger decks to be able of generating the resources you'll need to outgrind them

 

1 hour ago, Dokutah Jolly said:

Tendencies: good counter trap. Normally another copy of infernity barrier variant like this is kinda worse for having that discard cost but i guess in this deck that cost elevate it more like nine pillars of YZ or Orcust Cresendo, And it also recover itself so nice stuff

 

Pretty much yeah, it does feel like a Cresendo. Just a strong 1 of omni you search during your combo

[drowsyCoffee]

So, minor update in some of the thoughts i've had after playtesting the deck

 

1) Man, f*ck Intrusive. Playing sacky RNG cards can feel a bit cheesy sometimes, but if they are custom on top of it, it just feels like poor sportmanship. With that in mind, i think i'll be deleting the card. It aint like the card was that needed, given that i was able to perform decent enough while refusing to play the card due to those troubled feelings, and some of the replacements i've came up with, things like Reasoning, gave me good enough results just by virtue of being a pretty non-commital way of starting combos that didnt particularly screw any of your lines or plans and had a high potential upside. So, yeah, the card is getting bonked

 

2) I realised, much to my dismay, that the way this deck works, at least, on the builds i've had most success (Strong turn one boards aiming at around 3~4 ish interactions, abundance of one card starters as well as handtrap resilience, a list that packs a number of garnets and prioritizes one ofs to imptove the deck's first turns at the sake of repeatability later on, etc.) is pretty much just the description of a combo centric deck, even though i put a lot of effort in making it control adjacent. Oh well. Guess it is just discount Orcust now, given that a lot of the playstyles of it feel vaguely reminiscent. Plus, even though Pride as a garnet isnt as miserable as Golem in Orcust, it still fellt like it was glued to my hand. Some things never change

 

3)And finally, this deck doesnt really care about handtraps, huh? Thanks to the Malice Ascendant effs in GY triggering upon being discarded, the deck is surprisingly resilient to interactions, specially if played properly. Did the Uni Zombi you wanted to use to send Sloth to GY get Imperm'd? Just discard the copy in your hand for cost lol. Plus, given that you can use the cost of Plague and Tendencies as a way to trigger the HOPTs of Ascendants during your opponent's turn, you get actively rewarded by saving them in your hand. The amount of variance in your plays due to this makes the deck kinda hard to predict (and pilot too) sometimes. Besides the obvious DShifter, the only handtraps i've ever seen reduce the ceiling on the deck considerably are Imperm on a Uni Zombie and Ash on a Released Emotions, and both can get dodged by certain hands (Maybe Skull Meister is problematic too? Havent faced that one). The fact that the GY effs can chainblock eachother due to all of them being worded the same way just adds insult to injury, much like how the deck can play cards like Extrav or Disparity, perfect baits for Ash, the deck's biggest counter, withouth that much repercusions (I personally preffer Disparity given how many 1ofs you can afford to play. Ya get to use them since pretty much the only Extra deck cards youll play are Vampire Sucker and a few Super Poly targets for going second). So, in short, the deck can be quite resilient

 

So, yeah, much like most decent ish combo decks, this is just a consistent archetype for pumping out a few interactions through a number of interruptions so long as you dont pilot it like a monkey. If anything, it's main downside over oother ier 3~2 ish decks is an inability to OTK on the crackback and a lack of the proper space needed for handtraps and Designator, unlike what i've first expected the deck to be able to put in (Maybe on a pure variant? At the same time, i dont wanna end up playing Aleistar to make use of your free NS, the Zombie stuff feels more fun than it.). This... wasnt the direction i expected the deck to go, but ok

[drowsyCoffee]

Jack-o-Bolan is apparently just an amazing Malice Ascendant tech, huh, didnt expect that one. Your combo lines tend to be centered around using discards to trigger you Ascendant's GY effs (As that is your main way to play around handtraps, as well as to increase the overall ceilling of your boards), so the summoning cost of discarding one Zombie is more of an effect than anything for this deck (Kind of what happens with Uni Zombie's first eff, were you activate it almost every single time, as between your Zombies and your Ascendants you almost always have cards you want to get from hand to GY), and it also has the added benefit of being able to be used as material for Vampire Sucker alongside whatever monster you happened to NS (Or Bloom if you're on a One for One line) which makes your grind game somehow even more frustrating to deal with. You aint doing anything with the NS'ed dude anyways, so you might as well. Its just overall a very smooth card to play with tbh. Plus, if ya like Grepher, its another target for the self summon eff (Though lets be honest, Grepher's main use is to be a Foolish Burial that discards the Sloth in your hand). The more i play with this deck, the more i feel like the archetype's ability to play through interaction without a care in the world by just discarding Ascendants is kinda problematic, at least, in the Baledroch variants. Discarding any Ascendant during your opponents turn for the cost of a Tendencies or a Plague and plusing off like crazy also doesnt feel that good, specially given that once ya have enough names in GY ya can just start summoning dudes with Cycles in both players turns and start getting quite a strong grind game. I'll probably would have to play against meta decks to know for sure, after all, lacking deck space for handtraps/a Designator package is quite a downside to have to pay in exchange, but im starting to consider making so Ascendants no longer trigger from being send from hand to GY, or at least, give them a Darkworld kind of deal

 

All in all, playing with the card was quite fun i guess. Wonder how Dangers would mix with the deck. I have to try a Danger variant at some point. Maybe even a 60 card pile, like, Eldlich Danger Ascendant or something. Not sure if i have the skill to build a deck for that though