Cool/Gimmicky cards without a home

[drowsyCoffee]

Ya ever read a card and thing "Man, this is the most unbelievably powerful effect ever" only to find it hasnt seen use simply because there are absolutely zero cards that fit their conditions? Or have you ever seen a card with an effect so dumb you wanted to see if you could make it playable somehow? Well, i have. Really f*cking often, because yugioh is crammed full with this kind of useless cards, due to pack filler

So, here i wanted to make a list of some of the cards that i feel either have great potential, or could be fun to make a custom archetype around/based on them, to see if any of them catches your eye and we end up seeing some potentially powerful/very dumb new custom archetypes out of it. Hope ya like going through this

 

First, whenever you're talking about cards with powerful effects that lack a home, there i just one mention that is pretty much mandatory at this point. That card is Snake rain

The effect of it is simple, it says

Discard 1 card; send 4 Reptile monsters from your Deck to the GY.

 

 

That's it. That's all it does. Still, considering how powerful cards like Painful Choice and Foolish Burial are, its easy to see that if any deck could make good use of it (Dont even talk to me about Abyss) it could inmediatly jump to some degree of meta relevance depending on how reliant they were on this card. The deck doesnt even need to have that good of GY effects for this card to be a potential powerhouse, and thus, it might be the easiest/hardest card to build around given how easily it could be gamebreakingly powerful

 

 

Next, there is this niche, pack filler revival spell that probably no one of us would know if it wasnt for Yugitubing, Feast of the Wild LV 5s. The card in general its a pretty sweet piece of extension, specially in situations like Synchro or Fusion deck where you could make use of the revived monsters for materials for rather powerful monsters. Alternatively, a deck that had one (Or more) LV 5 warriors with Non-HOPT GY effects could use this as a way to loop them. Or it could just be a link laddering tool. In general, if only this card had some good targets, it could potentially be somewhat strong. Effect says:

 

Special Summon up to 2 Level 5 Warrior-Type monsters from your hand and/or Graveyard, but their effects are negated, also, for the rest of this turn, they cannot attack.

 

For the next one, i have a card that has seen plenty of use (On decks like SPYRAL to give an example) but currently doesnt have any particularly good targets to get through its effect (Maybe the Ciber Dragon stuff counts as one? Nah). Im talking about Machine Duplication. Any machine archetype with a low attack monster inmediatly becomes a latent danger due to this card's existence, and if that said card had other ways to benefit from Dupe, like, as for example, Tuner status or a Non-HOPT effect, it could probably be enough to give the deck some rather mean boards when they draw this card. Ya can ever do as CyDra and mess with card names to make so the card can summon different monsters than the ones you've summoned. Def a fun one to play with

Effect says:

Target 1 Machine monster you control with 500 or less ATK; Special Summon up to 2 monsters from your Deck with the same name as that face-up monster.

 

Now, for our next card, we have legitimately just Soul Charge. Yup. There is a legal, at 3 Soul Charge that never sees any use. Any good FIRE combo deck, or maybe even control deck, could inmediatly make use of this card for some quite nasty recursion and ability to extend for some big as hell boards. Plus, unlike Soul Charge, it doesnt limit the Battle Phase, so it could even be an OTK tool. Def a powerful one to make an archetype around, having a themed Soul Charge is an easy way to push a deck into playability

Name is Rekindling, Effect is:

 

Special Summon from your Graveyard as many FIRE monsters as possible with 200 DEF, but banish them during the End Phase.

 

Now, as you might be able to tell after seeing all these cards, a lot of yugioh's latent powers are Spell cards, as well as a lot of Yugioh's more powerful cards. After all, of the three card types, they tend to be the easier one to be able to activate due to the mechanic not having any extra built in requirements to use them other than to have them in the hand. So, next are two very powerful cards that dont see that much use now (MSE is kinda used on Empty Pot but that's it) and could be built around to make some rather absurd decks, as the cards themselves, by design, are kind of meant to not be able to easily fit into an archetype. Those cards are, respectively, Left Arm Offering for Spell Searches and Magical Stone Excavation for Spell recurring. Could you imagine how digusting could be  a deck that could legitimately play Left Arm Offering as part of their engine? Like, a deck centered around effects triggered when banished or something. They would also have triple Gold Sarc too, to add insult to injury. Def a great card to make an archetype around

 

Effects are:

 

If you have 2 or more other cards in your hand: Banish your entire hand; add 1 Spell from your Deck to your hand. You cannot Set Spells/Traps during the turn you activate this card

For LAO

 

and for MSE:

 

Discard 2 cards, then target 1 Spell in your GY; add it to your hand.

 

As a honorable mention for cards that are missing a home, Traptrix Sera has always been one of the most stupidly powerful never played cards out there. Ghostrick Angel of Mischief, as a non-HOPT searcher for the archetype that could be made with any pair of level 4s, 3s, 2s or 1s is also another potentially broken card given the right support to it. There are many other archetype specific cards that need a bit of love, like Lavalval Convection Field for example. There is also  Resonant Insect as a card that while already seeing use  could be even stronger with good support. Or Verdant Sanctuary. The list goes on forever

 

And now, the dumb, gimmicky, stupid cards that would be absolutely hilarious to make a deck around them, or, given how bad they are, instead of trying to make them playable just grabbing the idea of their effects and theming an archetype around it

 

First, lets start with two particularly dumb but potentially funny gimmicks. 

 

The first card gimmick im gonna talk about is Gold Moon Coin's one. This card is, absolutely stupid and i love it. The effect says:

 

Add 2 cards from your hand to your opponent's hand, then draw 2 cards. You can only activate 1 "Gold Moon Coin" per turn.

 

Yeah there is no way we are making a card like that playable. Even things like Dark World dont really like to play the -1 discard cards, so it would be hard to make an even finickier version of them playable. On the other hand, though, a deck centered around cards adding themselves to your opponent's hand could be absolutely hilarious to see. As for example, you could have the Archetype's stratos, a card you'd always wanna NS, have an effect where its mandatory  to normal summon it if its in your hand. The player using the archetype doesnt mind, since they were gonna do it anyways for searching, but once you put it in your opponent's hand, the card just wastes their NS for no upside. Could be a hella fun and annoying strategy for a deck to have

And, as another card that could be used for this purpose, there is Gift Exchange:

 

Both players banish 1 card from their Decks, face-down, and if they do, during the End Phase of this turn, both players add to their hands the card their opponent banished by this effect.

 

Or just regular Exchange

 

Both players reveal their hands and add 1 card from each other's hand to their hand.

 

Another could theme would be cards like Paracite Paracyde, that shove themselves into the opponent's deck. Maybe you could have a card with Ash like effects, where you get a negative if you try to access the deck while it is in it, like banishing cards that would be Foolish Burial-ed, or adding itself to your hand instead of whatever search target you had. It could be a cool card

 

Also, there is a good number of cards, like Law of the Normal, Goddess of Rebirth Sophia or Sky Scourge Norleras that get to do a complete boarwipe, including hands, and yet are kind of completely unplayable and would be absolutely hilarious to see ever being relevant. On the topic of potentially disgusting gimmicky cards, did you know there is a card called Chain Material, that allows you to Fusion Summon using materials from your deck? That's absolute insanity, yet, by virtue of being a Trap, has barely seen play in like, Sophia turbo decks. Still, it would be absolutely hilarious if somehow someone came up with an archetype for it, like maybe a set of traps that fusion summon during your opponent's turn to go absolutely crazy comboing off in their turn, making use of Frightfur Tiger-esque cards that nuke the field on summon or something like that

As a honorary mention, i would also like to talk about Pyro Clock of Destiny, a card that exclusively advances turns as its whole effect that the absolute madlad Kanashimi managed to make an Archetype themed around it, the Chronus card. Comedy at its finest. It gets to be kind of Final Countdown too, which is extra hilarious tbh

Finally, there are a metric ton of cards, like Waking the Dragon, that trigger for absolutely disgusting effs when destroyed by your opponent's effect. In the past, people have designed jank decks that gave Yajiro Invader, a card with a mandatory destruction effect, to their opponent; and then they performed very weird combos to force it to pop cards like Artifact Scythe or Wakin the Dragon and combo out of it. So, why not try to make an archetype that supported such nonsense?

 

Those are about all the stupid and/or potentially broken cards i've managed to think of, and i hope any of them has catched your eye for an archetype idea. Long live the jank

[Loleo]

1.Some of the cards you mentioned were meta at one point or another.

2. I know you said don't ask, but why isn't snake rain good enough for Ogdodadics.

3. For the exchange cards I was working on a joke archetype I like to call "Ours" aka the communist archetype. Sadly it is incomplete and doesn't yet use the aforementioned gimmicks but it planned to!

[drowsyCoffee]

Its not so much as Snake Rain not being good enough of a card for Abyss, and more of Abyss being kind of a lackluster archetype that doesnt quite manage to exploit the card's full potential, in my opinion. Kind of like Chain Material. Sure, it has seen use in like, Sophia Turbo decks. The problem is, those decks kinda f*cking suck ngl, and havent really had any impact whatsoever. I feel like Snake Rain could have left a much bigger impact tbh. And as for the cards that were once meta, the point i was trying to make is that right now they dont really have that much of a house, and thus, were kind of up for grabs for any archetype that felt like picking them up

 

Anyways, leaving that aside, fair f*cking enough, i can see that kind of theme working for an Exchange archetype. My only worry is that it might get the mods mad at ya, but so long as ya have that in mind, sure, go for it. For the exchanging gimmick, i heavily recomend cards that have some sort of mandatory effect in hand, such as forcing you to NS them or effects like that as a way to hurt your opponent by giving them said cards. I think the "C" series of insect cards had a few that could work as inspiration

[Loleo]

7 hours ago, drowsyCoffee said:

Its not so much as Snake Rain not being good enough of a card for Abyss, and more of Abyss being kind of a lackluster archetype that doesnt quite manage to exploit the card's full potential, in my opinion. Kind of like Chain Material. Sure, it has seen use in like, Sophia Turbo decks. The problem is, those decks kinda f*cking suck ngl, and havent really had any impact whatsoever.

Ah I get it that's definetly fair.

I feel like Snake Rain could have left a much bigger impact tbh. And as for the cards that were once meta, the point i was trying to make is that right now they dont really have that much of a house, and thus, were kind of up for grabs for any archetype that felt like picking them up

yeah old cards seeing new love is so enjoyble!

Anyways, leaving that aside, fair f*cking enough, i can see that kind of theme working for an Exchange archetype.

:)

My only worry is that it might get the mods mad at ya, but so long as ya have that in mind, sure, go for it.

I didn't think of that, if it becomes an issue I might just call the archetype "our".

For the exchanging gimmick, i heavily recomend cards that have some sort of mandatory effect in hand, such as forcing you to NS them or effects like that as a way to hurt your opponent by giving them said cards. I think the "C" series of insect cards had a few that could work as inspiration

Noted, and yeah great place to start. Might ask for some help later.

 

[TheWanderingMist]

On 10/13/2021 at 9:55 AM, drowsyCoffee said:

Ya ever read a card and thing "Man, this is the most unbelievably powerful effect ever" only to find it hasnt seen use simply because there are absolutely zero cards that fit their conditions? Or have you ever seen a card with an effect so dumb you wanted to see if you could make it playable somehow? Well, i have. Really f*cking often, because yugioh is crammed full with this kind of useless cards, due to pack filler

So, here i wanted to make a list of some of the cards that i feel either have great potential, or could be fun to make a custom archetype around/based on them, to see if any of them catches your eye and we end up seeing some potentially powerful/very dumb new custom archetypes out of it. Hope ya like going through this

 

First, whenever you're talking about cards with powerful effects that lack a home, there i just one mention that is pretty much mandatory at this point. That card is Snake rain

The effect of it is simple, it says

Discard 1 card; send 4 Reptile monsters from your Deck to the GY.

 

 

That's it. That's all it does. Still, considering how powerful cards like Painful Choice and Foolish Burial are, its easy to see that if any deck could make good use of it (Dont even talk to me about Abyss) it could inmediatly jump to some degree of meta relevance depending on how reliant they were on this card. The deck doesnt even need to have that good of GY effects for this card to be a potential powerhouse, and thus, it might be the easiest/hardest card to build around given how easily it could be gamebreakingly powerful

 

 

Next, there is this niche, pack filler revival spell that probably no one of us would know if it wasnt for Yugitubing, Feast of the Wild LV 5s. The card in general its a pretty sweet piece of extension, specially in situations like Synchro or Fusion deck where you could make use of the revived monsters for materials for rather powerful monsters. Alternatively, a deck that had one (Or more) LV 5 warriors with Non-HOPT GY effects could use this as a way to loop them. Or it could just be a link laddering tool. In general, if only this card had some good targets, it could potentially be somewhat strong. Effect says:

 

Special Summon up to 2 Level 5 Warrior-Type monsters from your hand and/or Graveyard, but their effects are negated, also, for the rest of this turn, they cannot attack.

 

For the next one, i have a card that has seen plenty of use (On decks like SPYRAL to give an example) but currently doesnt have any particularly good targets to get through its effect (Maybe the Ciber Dragon stuff counts as one? Nah). Im talking about Machine Duplication. Any machine archetype with a low attack monster inmediatly becomes a latent danger due to this card's existence, and if that said card had other ways to benefit from Dupe, like, as for example, Tuner status or a Non-HOPT effect, it could probably be enough to give the deck some rather mean boards when they draw this card. Ya can ever do as CyDra and mess with card names to make so the card can summon different monsters than the ones you've summoned. Def a fun one to play with

Effect says:

Target 1 Machine monster you control with 500 or less ATK; Special Summon up to 2 monsters from your Deck with the same name as that face-up monster.

 

Now, for our next card, we have legitimately just Soul Charge. Yup. There is a legal, at 3 Soul Charge that never sees any use. Any good FIRE combo deck, or maybe even control deck, could inmediatly make use of this card for some quite nasty recursion and ability to extend for some big as hell boards. Plus, unlike Soul Charge, it doesnt limit the Battle Phase, so it could even be an OTK tool. Def a powerful one to make an archetype around, having a themed Soul Charge is an easy way to push a deck into playability

Name is Rekindling, Effect is:

 

Special Summon from your Graveyard as many FIRE monsters as possible with 200 DEF, but banish them during the End Phase.

 

Now, as you might be able to tell after seeing all these cards, a lot of yugioh's latent powers are Spell cards, as well as a lot of Yugioh's more powerful cards. After all, of the three card types, they tend to be the easier one to be able to activate due to the mechanic not having any extra built in requirements to use them other than to have them in the hand. So, next are two very powerful cards that dont see that much use now (MSE is kinda used on Empty Pot but that's it) and could be built around to make some rather absurd decks, as the cards themselves, by design, are kind of meant to not be able to easily fit into an archetype. Those cards are, respectively, Left Arm Offering for Spell Searches and Magical Stone Excavation for Spell recurring. Could you imagine how digusting could be  a deck that could legitimately play Left Arm Offering as part of their engine? Like, a deck centered around effects triggered when banished or something. They would also have triple Gold Sarc too, to add insult to injury. Def a great card to make an archetype around

 

Effects are:

 

If you have 2 or more other cards in your hand: Banish your entire hand; add 1 Spell from your Deck to your hand. You cannot Set Spells/Traps during the turn you activate this card

For LAO

 

and for MSE:

 

Discard 2 cards, then target 1 Spell in your GY; add it to your hand.

 

As a honorable mention for cards that are missing a home, Traptrix Sera has always been one of the most stupidly powerful never played cards out there. Ghostrick Angel of Mischief, as a non-HOPT searcher for the archetype that could be made with any pair of level 4s, 3s, 2s or 1s is also another potentially broken card given the right support to it. There are many other archetype specific cards that need a bit of love, like Lavalval Convection Field for example. There is also  Resonant Insect as a card that while already seeing use  could be even stronger with good support. Or Verdant Sanctuary. The list goes on forever

 

And now, the dumb, gimmicky, stupid cards that would be absolutely hilarious to make a deck around them, or, given how bad they are, instead of trying to make them playable just grabbing the idea of their effects and theming an archetype around it

 

First, lets start with two particularly dumb but potentially funny gimmicks. 

 

The first card gimmick im gonna talk about is Gold Moon Coin's one. This card is, absolutely stupid and i love it. The effect says:

 

Add 2 cards from your hand to your opponent's hand, then draw 2 cards. You can only activate 1 "Gold Moon Coin" per turn.

 

Yeah there is no way we are making a card like that playable. Even things like Dark World dont really like to play the -1 discard cards, so it would be hard to make an even finickier version of them playable. On the other hand, though, a deck centered around cards adding themselves to your opponent's hand could be absolutely hilarious to see. As for example, you could have the Archetype's stratos, a card you'd always wanna NS, have an effect where its mandatory  to normal summon it if its in your hand. The player using the archetype doesnt mind, since they were gonna do it anyways for searching, but once you put it in your opponent's hand, the card just wastes their NS for no upside. Could be a hella fun and annoying strategy for a deck to have

And, as another card that could be used for this purpose, there is Gift Exchange:

 

Both players banish 1 card from their Decks, face-down, and if they do, during the End Phase of this turn, both players add to their hands the card their opponent banished by this effect.

 

Or just regular Exchange

 

Both players reveal their hands and add 1 card from each other's hand to their hand.

 

Another could theme would be cards like Paracite Paracyde, that shove themselves into the opponent's deck. Maybe you could have a card with Ash like effects, where you get a negative if you try to access the deck while it is in it, like banishing cards that would be Foolish Burial-ed, or adding itself to your hand instead of whatever search target you had. It could be a cool card

 

Also, there is a good number of cards, like Law of the Normal, Goddess of Rebirth Sophia or Sky Scourge Norleras that get to do a complete boarwipe, including hands, and yet are kind of completely unplayable and would be absolutely hilarious to see ever being relevant. On the topic of potentially disgusting gimmicky cards, did you know there is a card called Chain Material, that allows you to Fusion Summon using materials from your deck? That's absolute insanity, yet, by virtue of being a Trap, has barely seen play in like, Sophia turbo decks. Still, it would be absolutely hilarious if somehow someone came up with an archetype for it, like maybe a set of traps that fusion summon during your opponent's turn to go absolutely crazy comboing off in their turn, making use of Frightfur Tiger-esque cards that nuke the field on summon or something like that

As a honorary mention, i would also like to talk about Pyro Clock of Destiny, a card that exclusively advances turns as its whole effect that the absolute madlad Kanashimi managed to make an Archetype themed around it, the Chronus card. Comedy at its finest. It gets to be kind of Final Countdown too, which is extra hilarious tbh

Finally, there are a metric ton of cards, like Waking the Dragon, that trigger for absolutely disgusting effs when destroyed by your opponent's effect. In the past, people have designed jank decks that gave Yajiro Invader, a card with a mandatory destruction effect, to their opponent; and then they performed very weird combos to force it to pop cards like Artifact Scythe or Wakin the Dragon and combo out of it. So, why not try to make an archetype that supported such nonsense?

 

Those are about all the stupid and/or potentially broken cards i've managed to think of, and i hope any of them has catched your eye for an archetype idea. Long live the jank

Oh, I use Gift Exchange and Exchange in one of my Duel Links Decks. I just give my opponent Exchange using Gift Exchange, if possible. Computer players basically always use Exchange and human players are stuck with deciding whether or not revealing their hand is worth seeing mine.

[drowsyCoffee]

Weird way to use it, but okay i guess. I mean, i vaguely remember Exchange seeing a vaguely similar use on a handtrap heavy format, by using it to check your opponent's hand for handtraps. Guess that it has some sort of resemblance

[Kanashimi]

I'm not sure this is the correct section about the topic tittle (probably fitting on TCG/OCG section, since this doesn't add customs), but anyway already mentioned this before on my archetype years ago:

"Pay 800 Life Points. Pick up 4 cards from the top of your Deck and Special Summon to your side of the field all Level 3 or lower Normal Monsters among the picked-up cards. Return all the other picked-up cards to your Deck and the Deck is then shuffled."

A potential +3 or 1 card Link-4 if you somehow lucky/stack enough low level Normies, sadly we have not seen Konami make a spammable low level normal monsters as a Deck a whole/archetype relied on stacking cards (to prevent bricking draw) and make use of those stacking top deck with this.

[drowsyCoffee]

True, Normal Monster actually has some sweet support. Ignoring the dumb cards that probably will be never relevant, like Law of the Normal, they have some really sweet support cards with things like Tri Wight. Plus, any strat that can make use of Flawless Perfection of the Tenyi is a win in my book, getting to constantly Pot of Greed is hella nice. Could you imagine how cool that card ya mentioned would be on an actually playable Gemini deck if Geminis were normals on deck? That would be hella sick. Still, i guess you technically could do Tri Wight stuff with Geminis if ya managed to create a decent archetype, wouldnt be half bad

[Loleo]

There was once upon a time there was a werewolf themed archetype (by me and @MickeyDee) full of monsters treated as normal monsters in deck during your turn and treated as effect monsters with effects during your opponent's turn.

 

[drowsyCoffee]

Holy f*ck that's a cool ass theme for a deck, i like it. Ya probably have access to quite a pool of support cards there, i kinda wanna see some of the combos ya could pull off using Normal Monster support

[Tinkerer]

My favorite of these is probably "Jewels of the Valiant".  A foolish every turn as long as you have a little GY manipulation.  Unfortunately, the decks that can use it usually have much more active options/plays, and the decks that probably would love something like this probably can't fulfill the condition regularly.

Similar issues with "Pinpoint Landing".

 

 

On 10/16/2021 at 11:31 PM, Kanashimi said:

I'm not sure this is the correct section about the topic tittle (probably fitting on TCG/OCG section, since this doesn't add customs), but anyway already mentioned this before on my archetype years ago:

"Pay 800 Life Points. Pick up 4 cards from the top of your Deck and Special Summon to your side of the field all Level 3 or lower Normal Monsters among the picked-up cards. Return all the other picked-up cards to your Deck and the Deck is then shuffled."

A potential +3 or 1 card Link-4 if you somehow lucky/stack enough low level Normies, sadly we have not seen Konami make a spammable low level normal monsters as a Deck a whole/archetype relied on stacking cards (to prevent bricking draw) and make use of those stacking top deck with this.

I've actually seen a silly combo with this card and a certain series of cards.  You stack the Normals using "Dark Doriado" then use Fitting Room to summon all of them (+ an EARTH).  It's pretty fun!

 

[drowsyCoffee]

Yo, Jewels of the Valiant is sick as hell mate, i could see an Orcust-like deck with all the different atributes having a whole lot of fun with this card, specially if ya could do stuff such as banishing as a Quick Effect and have one of your guys be an interruption when sent to GY, like, target a card and negate their effs/flip em face down/do a gnomaterial-esque sort of deal. Sounds like a really fun card to design an archetype around ngl

 

Landing, on the other hand, kind of feels like a worse Upstart Goblin to me. Sending a card from deck to GY to kickstart a combo feels kind of more valuable than drawing a random card from deck tbh. Then again, Vampire Sucker and Cycle of Hatred proved to be quite a good card in Ascendants, so it probably depends a lot on the archetype in question

 

Also, the Dark Doriado interaction for the Huge Revolution combo is just, the stupidest combo i've ever seen and i absolutely love it. Havent seen a combo this hilarious since the Yajiro Invader FTK incident. Tbh, its a pretty creative interaction. Feels vaguely reminiscent to the combo were you set up a Fusion Gate, activated Chain Material, and went on a chain of absolutely insane combos to summon Sophia, Godess of Rebirth (Though, to be fair, there are probably way more craizy things to do with Chain Material and Fusion Gate being both on the field at the same time. Wonder how a custom deck centered around that interaction would do, specially given that Makyura is legal and ya could build something to get to trigger him and activate Chain Material in  turn 1) 

sad Makyura needs to be on field and go to the GY to trigger, going full circle and making a deck thaat tried to dump them out of a Jewels of the Valiant to do the whole Chain Material nonsense would be absolutely hilarious

[~British Soul~]

On 10/13/2021 at 2:55 PM, drowsyCoffee said:

As a honourable mention for cards that are missing a home, Traptrix Sera has always been one of the most stupidly powerful never played cards out there.

Traptrix Sera has seen play in the time period since its release, not always at top tables, but I've seen it being utilised in decks like Traptrix or decks that utilises a Traptrix engine.

[Loleo]

On 10/16/2021 at 10:31 PM, Kanashimi said:

I'm not sure this is the correct section about the topic tittle (probably fitting on TCG/OCG section, since this doesn't add customs), 

 

oh yeah @Nyx Avatar can we move this to card discussions?

[drowsyCoffee]

Fair enough, in retrospective, feels like a better section, my bad