critiques are welcome Requesting some feedback regarding my Retrain ideas for the 3 “Gate Guardian” component monsters (Sanga, Kazejin and Suijin, whom were all somehow skipped over whilst the Paradox Brother’s other cards were all otherwise retrained en mass)

[But First He Lit It On Fire]

So, in the relatively recent past of 2023-03-09 (as of writing of course), the booster pack “Maze of Memories” released with a suite of support for the crew of the Paradox Brothers (Labyrinth Wall and Gate Guardian stuff), including new fusions that relied on "Sanga of the Thunder", "Kazejin", and/or "Suijin"…

…EXCEPT Konami neglected to give the above 3 monsters retrains like so many of the Bros. other cards. SO, My idea tonight is to rectify that by presenting 3 proper retrains for these cards, and I would like anyone who sees this to leave their thoughts about them below…

 

_Sanga of the Crashing Thunder!_ (LIGHT)

Level 7

Thunder/Effect

_This card's name becomes "Sanga of the Thunder" while it isn’t Banished Facedown. If this card is Summoned, or inflicts battle damage to your opponent, you can add 1 Level 7 WATER or WIND monster to your hand from your Deck or GY. You can Normal Summon/Set WATER and WIND monsters with 1 less tribute, or 2 less Tributes while you control a face-up “Labyrinth Wall” card. During damage calculation only, If an opponent’s monster battles: Decrease that monster’s ATK/DEF by 2600. Once per turn, After the Battle Phase (Quick Effect): If a monster(s) was Destroyed by battle this turn; You can Special Summon 1 Level 7 WATER or WIND monster from your hand or GY._

ATK/2600 DEF/2200

_Kazejin of the Tempest Winds!_ (WIND)

Level 7

Spellcaster/Effect

_This card's name becomes "Kazejin" while it isn’t Banished Facedown. If this card is Summoned, or inflicts battle damage to your opponent, you can add 1 Level 7 LIGHT or WATER monster to your hand from your Deck or GY. You can Normal Summon/Set LIGHT and WATER monsters with 1 less tribute, or 2 less Tributes while you control a face-up “Labyrinth Wall” card. During damage calculation only, If an opponent’s monster battles: Decrease that monster’s ATK/DEF by 2400. Once per turn, After the Battle Phase (Quick Effect): If a monster(s) was Destroyed by battle this turn; You can Special Summon 1 Level 7 LIGHT or WATER monster from your hand or GY._

ATK/2400 DEF/2200

_Suijin of the Surging Waters!_ (WATER)

Level 7

Aqua/Effect

_This card's name becomes "Suijin" while it isn’t Banished Facedown. If this card is Summoned, or inflicts battle damage to your opponent, you can add 1 Level 7 LIGHT or WIND monster to your hand from your Deck or GY. You can Normal Summon/Set LIGHT and WIND monsters with 1 less tribute, or 2 less Tributes while you control a face-up “Labyrinth Wall” card. During damage calculation only, If an opponent’s monster battles: Decrease that monster’s ATK/DEF by 2500. Once per turn, After the Battle Phase (Quick Effect): If a monster(s) was Destroyed by battle this turn; You can Special Summon 1 Level 7 LIGHT or WIND monster from your hand or GY._

ATK/2500 DEF/2400

 

So basically, each of the original versions of the above cards (which said above cards treat themselves as so long as they aren’t Banished Facedown, for maximum support with their home deck) all had the shared effect of *“Once while face-up on the field, during damage calculation in your opponent's turn, if this card is being attacked (Quick Effect): You can target the attacking monster; make that target's ATK 0 during damage calculation only.”* This effect has been reworked to be mostly stronger and more flexible. Instead of just reducing the ATK of an opponents attacking monster to 0 only the one time, each monster now reduces the ATK AND DEF of any of your opponent’s battling monsters by equal to the original ATK of each respective monster, regardless of whom initiated the scuffle. And with said monsters deductions of 2400-2600 ATK/DEF (that also stack on other instances of themselves and/or each other if you can get out the multiple, which is augmented via the other new effects), not that many monsters are going to be able to fight the retrained GG components in a straight fight.

Besides the above homage to the OG effect, each card also has multiple ways of helping to get out the other GG component monsters. Summoning them or inflicting battle damage with them allows you to add 1 Level 7 monster of the other component monsters attributes from your deck or GY to your hand (so Sanga 2.0 as an example can search out Suijin or Kazejin). And said search effect is generic to just Level 7 monsters of said attributes, which would help one splash these cards into other kinds of decks that can use Level 7 LIGHT/WATER/WIND monsters. 

Beyond THAT, Normal and Special Summons of your Level 7 LIGHT/WATER/WIND monsters are made easier. Each card discounts the Normal Summon of the other component monsters respective attributes by 1 by themselves, or 2 if you control a Face-up “Labyrinth Wall” card. Meanwhile, after a Battle Phase of either players turn that has seen at least one monster destroyed by battle (which is likely to happen given each monster’s ATK/DEF draining effects), you can special summon 1 Level 7 LIGHT/WATER/WIND monster from your hand or GY, and there SHOULD be the one such monster to special summon given the cards on-summon and battle damage searching effects (or possibly your GY if a relevant monster ends up there by either yours or your opponents efforts).

So to summarize, I took the OG battle effect of the cards and reworked it into a core component of a self-synergying loop of potential searching and summoning that each GG component monster retrain can do, keeping the original spirit of the cards while optimizing them for use with other Labyrinth Wall and Gate Guardian related cards (while also being generic enough to possibly some use outside of those, and/or allowing the Paradox Bros. cards as a whole to fit in with more decks). All whilst each card is treated as their OG versions, in such a way that doesn’t run afoul of the “Rule of 3” convention, so you can have 3 of both the OG Sanga and his Crashing Thunder version together. All together, this should make each of them competent boss monsters in their own rights that can be used for bringing out your other boss monsters.

[LazerSwordKirbo]

I like the ideas of the cards, but I think that the effect to reduce the opponent's card's attack points should be a opt effect, because otherwise they functionally lock your opponent out of attacking.

[But First He Lit It On Fire]

I could see a soft OPT be resonable, or maybe I could keep the multiple activations by putting a cost to it, like discarding or banishing or Tributing a card.

Besides, there are some battle focused decks that can ignore those effects by either having them negated, having monsters that are immune to those effects passably or be made immune to them by the effects of another card, or just by having monsters that are so big and ATK/DEF bloated that even the stacking diminishments of multiple of these cards at once might not be enough to save them, like an “Chaos Ancient Gear Giant” that’s hopped up on both “Power Bond” and “Limiter Removal”, or a “King of the Skull Servants” that’s been rounded out from a bajillion “Skull Servants” being in the GY all at once.