Soul Sisters (Link Pendulum & Gemini/Normal support)

[not naze]

Okay, I've been stuck on these cards a looooooong time. It was a mess to balance, but I think I managed to make something relatively fun.

The cards are kinda based on soul music personified. I would have loved to make an illustration that matches the theme better, but I suck at all kinds of artistry sadly. I made the pictures with Paint 3D. Without further ado, let's review the cards.

You gotta start this combo with "Soul Sisters". A normal pendulum monster that has the effect that if it is in the pendulum zone when you have no card in your other pendulum zone, you can special summon it to the field and cheat out another Soul Sister link pendulum monster from the extra deck, and put it in your pendulum zone. Nothing too complicated here. But here's where it gets spicy, with the 2 Link Pendulum cards of that archetype.

Their effects are kinda hard to read so i'll just paste them here:

Quote

Soul Sister Gospel:

1 Normal "Soul Sister" monster
If this card is in the Extra Monster Zone, negate all monster effects on the field with 2500 ATK or more (except Gemini and "Soul Sister" monsters), you cannot summon monsters (except Gemini, Normal and "Soul Sister" monsters), and you do not take battle damage from this card.
If this card is in the Extra Monster Zone, and you have a "Soul Sister" Link monster in your Pendulum Zone: You can discard 1 card; Special Summon it to the other Extra Monster Zone. 
If this card in the Extra Monster Zone would leave the field: You can place this card in your Pendulum Zone.
You can only use each effect of "Soul Sister Gospel" once per turn.

Soul Sister Rab:

3 monsters, including a "Soul Sister" monster
If this card is in the Extra Monster Zone, monsters in the Extra Monster Zone cannot be targeted by card effect or destroyed by battle, and you can't Special Summon monster (except Gemini, Normal and "Soul Sister" monster).
You cannot declare attack with this card.
If this card in the Extra Monster Zone would leave the field: You can place this card in your Pendulum Zone.

What you want to do is, with the effect of Souls Sister, you wanna put Rab in your pendulum zone, and link summon Gospel using Souls.

Now that Gospel is in the Extra monster zone, it acts as a double floodgate. It negates all effects of monsters on the field with 2500atk or more, and prevents you (not your opponent) from summoning monsters other than Normal and Gemini monsters. You also do not take battle damage from Gospel.

Now, you can trigger Gospel's effect to special summon Rab directly from the Pendulum Zone, to the other Extra monster zone by discarding a card. Which will, in turn, protect both Rab and Gospel thanks to Rab's effect, which makes it so cards in the extra monster zone cannot be targeted or destroyed by battle.

If any of those cards would leave the field, you can put them in the pendulum zone instead. Which can help to restart that combo thanks to Gospel's pendulum effect, that can re-summon souls from the GY and send itself to the GY. So you can link Gospel again with Souls and do everything over again.

Here's the last card of this archetype. It has 2 uses. Either you play it as a Gemini card, which has the effect of destroying a card on the field and double its attack (making it 2600atk, 100 more than Gospel's floodgate benchmark). Or use it as a pendulum that will allow you to access another normal summon, to better support other normal and gemini cards in your deck.

 

That's it for this archetype. I hope you liked it, it might still be a bit broken but I think they're pretty fun.

[Messoras]

Hey there,
This one is actually a very cool idea. Like most people, I don't really like Pendulum cards at all, but I admit that their inbound ability to be a spell card, opens alot of room for interesting ideas.

Let's go over the indivudual cards.

Soul Sisters is a pretty cool starter. Just like the Sunvine stuff, it's actually material without needing generic starters. Since it potentially enables filled scales and with that a Pendulum Summon without Normal Summoning first, I'd consider changing it's targets to only be "Soul Sister" monsters, keeping in mind that Link Pendulum monsters aren't that unrealistic to be made by Konami soon.

Soul Sister Gospel is what I have the most problems with. First of all it's a Link 1, which always upsets me to see. It's pretty much the laziest way to make a deck consistent. And in this case it doesn't even have to be. You could easily make it a Link 2 and the combo would still work flawlessly. Further you cannot Summon cards into the Extra Monster Zones except from the Extra Deck, and also not at all if you already occupy one, except if they are co-linked. This is a game rule that makes the second monster effect of Gospel not work. Coming to its powerlevel: If you ignore that the Special Summon effect breaks the rules, locking the Extra Monster Zones gives your opponent 3 Linked Zones and yourself 0, which means, that you can't Pendulum Summon from your Extra Deck until you Link Summon something else, like a Saryuja Skull Dread using both of these monsters, turning them into generic combo fillers, which - I suppose - you didn't intend.

Soul Sister Rab doesn't look like it does even half as much as Gospel, despite requiring 3 materials somehow. Even tho I didn't initially assume, that you want the Link monsters to stick, I have a feeling that this one is only Rank 3 to fuel a Rank 4 Link Summon.

Soul Sisters - Two Faced looks like a fine extender for a Gemini-Pendulum type deck. I love that is has a strong going second effect instead of enabling wild turn 1 shenanigans. Just like the OG Soul Sisters, this perfectly fits the archetype.

Discussing the turn 1 play.

I assume the way to play looks like this:
-> Scale Soul Sisters.
-> Use effect to place Soul Sister Rab and Special Summon itself
-> Link Summon into Soul Sister Gospel
-> Discard to Summon Soul Sister Rab from Pend Scale
From here I'm not that sure anymore, since you have no linked zones available and no scales up and even though locking down 2500 or more ATK plus Extra Linking and protecting your EMZ is somewhat valuable, it creates a gamestate where neither player can really progress (no fun to be found here)
-> Use remaining extenders (eg. Two Faces) while you can fulfill the single scale condition
-> Link Summon into Saryuja or something with downwards arrows, using both Link monsters and placing them in your scales
-> Pendulum Summon Soul Sisters from Extra Deck and start using the rest of your hand

I'm not sure if I got something wrong, so correct me if I did, but I feel like the archetype doesn't really have a defined identity, except if you want it to be Mystic Mine 2 with the double EMZ stun.

Some Notes for you:

Remember that Pendulum monsters go to the Extra Deck if they would be sent from the field to the GY, so Monster Reborn effects like Gospel's Pend effect will most likely not be helpful, if you don't intent to include Xyz plays.
Your Link monsters will not be able to revive after they have been Summoned from the Pend Scales or Special Summoned in any way that isn't a Link Summon (like the Sky Striker armors summoned by Raye's effect). Keep that in mind when continuing your work on these.
Also I think there have been Konami cards that try to Summon cards from other places than the Extra Deck to the EMZ, but those return the cards to the Extra Deck beforehand, like "Return it to the Extra Deck, then Special Summon a monster with the same name from your Extra Deck..: (This is treated as Link Summon)"
When diving into Gemini decks, be mindful, that Superalloy Beast Raptinus exists, which can cause absurd infinite combos very quickly.

Conclusion:

There is alot of potential. As I stated before, I love the two Main Deck monsters, bringing a fun new gameplay element and providing a well balanced extender and good use of the Gamini mechanic. The Link monsters need to be reworked, as they only produce unfun stalemate situations in my opinion. There's lots of room for continuous and reactive interaction with this Pend Scale toolbox mechanic, so I'm looking forward to see more of this.

 

Greetings,
Messoras

Edited June 10 by Messoras

[not naze]

Hello, thanks a lot for the attention you gave to my cards, it really matters to me !!

Though, you did missed one or two lines that changes drastically what you can do with these cards, and how you are supposed to play them in a deck. The most important one being on Gospel:

Quote

If this card is in the Extra Monster Zone, negate all monster effects on the field with 2500 ATK or more (except Gemini and "Soul Sister" monsters), you cannot summon monsters (except Gemini, Normal and "Soul Sister" monsters)

While it's true that you don't have any link arrow pointing to your field, you wouldn't be able to use them anyway because of that line. Because of it, you can't summon neither link monsters, neither pendulum effect monsters. So you can't even link off rab and gospel for a link 4. The only way you can get rid of them yourself would be by tributing them. For that reason you could maybe play it in some Monarch decks I guess, even if it isn't the gameplay intended for them. For that same reason, Superalloy Beast Raptinus is not an issue, because you can't summon it under gospel's restriction.

The idea of this archetype is to pull-off an easy but restricting (for you) floodgate, to more easily enable normal monster based strategies (with cards like flawless perfection of the tenyi, painful decision, unexpected dai, heart of the underdog, piercing the darkness; along normal monster beatstick or the phantom spiral dragon engine), or gemini based strategies (using two-faced, and other strong generic gemini monsters) or a combination of both.

That is also the main reason for Gospel being a link 1. It could easily be a link 2, but normal and gemini decks tend to struggle to special summon monsters, and rely heavily on their normal summon !

Also, since your extra deck would be mostly unusable, you could play cards like Ultimate Slayer and Dogmatika Punishment, along with N'tss, Mereologic Aggregator, Malong, etc ... (all of them would still work since Gospel only negate effects on the field). Another set of cards that could be played in a deck with the Soul Sisters, would be the Morganite cards, the chimicritter archetype, or if you are really evil, Runicks.

As for the pendulum cards, I guess you could still pendulum summon normal pendulum monsters, there are a few. In that case, not having an arrow to summon them from the extra deck is indeed a problem. Although, Souls isn't made to stay in the pendulum zone. You can still pendulum summon with Souls before doing the full soul sister combo; but after that,  you would have to find 2 more pendulum normal monster to perform additional pendulum summon; or wait for Rab and Gospel to get outted of the field.

Which leads me to the second line you missed, that is on both Rab and Gospel: 

Quote

If this card in the Extra Monster Zone would leave the field: You can place this card in your Pendulum Zone.

That might seem weird but every extra deck pendulum (fusion pendulum or synchro pendulum) monsters have a line of that sort. That means, they do not go back to the ED (if you choose to) and have to be revived in other ways.

Now, something that I indeed missed, is that when pendulums are used as link materials they go to the ED and not the GY. I could maybe add a line on Souls that states explicitly that "when this card is used as a link material, send it to the GY instead of the extra deck". That way, Gospel's revive effect would work the way I intended to restart your combo.

An example of what I mean is: Gospel gets tributed, leaving the field. But its effect triggers, putting it into the pendulum zone. You can then trigger Gospel's pendulum effect (during your main phase) to revive Souls from the GY, sending Gospel to the ED. From there, you can link Gospel back using souls and remake your combo.

 

Finally, i'd like to address one more thing. You say:

Quote

 since you have no linked zones available and no scales up and even though locking down 2500 or more ATK plus Extra Linking and protecting your EMZ is somewhat valuable, it creates a gamestate where neither player can really progress (no fun to be found here) [...] they only produce unfun stalemate situations in my opinion.

In a way, you are right. I am very well aware that floodgate effects are very hard to balance in a way that feels good, interactive, and fun. But I still wanted to make that, because in my opinion, the gemini/normal monster based strategies are way too slow for modern yugioh, and one of the only way to make them playable in that state, is by designing cards that slow down the game. 

That's why I tried my best to design a floodgate that slows the progress-making while not stopping it completely; all while being as interactive and fun to play against as possible. That is the reason why Gospel doesnt negate low ATK monsters, and also why the deck gives your opponent 3 link arrows on their side. So they can still use their low atk starters to make some combos. Your opponent could also still try to tribute Rab and Gospel with kaijus, lava golem, sphere mode or kurikara. Or lastly, if they have only high ATK monster that get their effects negated by Gospel, they could still try to rack up damage by attacking Rab repeatingly (which only have 2000atk, can't be destroyed by battle, but still receive attack damage contrary to Gospel), and whatever normal/gemini monsters you have on the field.

That is at least 3 ways to interact with these cards, while still slowing down the game enough to make your gemini and normal monster shine.

 

Anyway, thanks a lot for your comments, I hope I addressed all your remarks and that you understand better the way I intended to deckbuild and play this archetype ! (I feel like some of my explanations are not very clear, but english isn't my first language, sorry).

I agree some lines could be rewritten to be clearer, but I'm not sure how I could rework the link monsters' effects to be more fun to face and play. If you, or anybody else, have any suggestion I would gladly take them !

[Messoras]

12 hours ago, not naze said:

I agree some lines could be rewritten to be clearer, but I'm not sure how I could rework the link monsters' effects to be more fun to face and play. If you, or anybody else, have any suggestion I would gladly take them !

I think since OG Soul Sisters can kind of function like a toolbox for Link monsters (like Sky Striker Ace Raye), you could easily make multiple relatively weak Link Monsters which can help you deal with specific situations. Also I feel like there should be a way to set them up again periodically. I was imagining stuff like this:

Quote

Some kind of Link 2 Pendulum Monster
Arrows Up-Center, Down-Center
Pendulum Scale 1
ATK 1500

-Pendulum Effect-
You can return this card to the Extra Deck, then target 1 face-up card your opponent controls; destroy it. 

-Monster Effect-
2 Gemini monsters
If you can Pendulum Summon Level 2, you can Pendulum Summon this face-up card from your Extra Deck. Once per turn (Quick Effect): You can place 1 face-up Pendulum Monster you control in your Pendulum Zone, and if you do, immediately after this effect resolves, Normal Summon 1 Gemini monster.

This one would help you to extend while also resetting OG Soul Sisters and provide some kind of generic interaction with the opponent as a toolbox option (it can also place itself into the Pend Zone with its monster effect)

 

Quote

Some other Link 2 Pendulum Monster
Arrows: Right-Middle, Left-Middle
Pendulum Scale 3
ATK 1500

-Pendulum Effect-
You can activate the effects of Gemini monsters you control as Quick Effects.

-Monster Effect-
2 Gemini Monsters
If you can Pendulum Summon Level 2, you can Pendulum Summon this face-up card from your Extra Deck. When this card is Special Summoned: You can discard 1 card; add 1 Level 4 or lower Gemini monster from your Deck to your hand. Your opponent cannot target Gemini monsters you control with card effects, the turn they are Normal Summoned.

This one is more of a passive setup approach, enabling many of the strong Gemini monsters to function as removal during your opponent's turn.

I feel like these make more use of the OG Soul Sister effect while also enabling healthy interaction with the opponent without being floodgates. I also added the Pendulum Summon line all the Xyz monster have. I thought the Level 2 thing is fitting pretty well here, as Link 2 is easily accessible and the Deck aims to enable Level 2 Pendulum Summons anyway.

Greetings,
Messoras

[not naze]

I really like these effects, they're genuily a great idea to enable gemini strategies. The only issues I see here is that they cannot be summoned using Soul Sisters, since it's a normal monster and not a Gemini. Or can you pendulum summon them using sisters as a pendule ? I thought that worked only when they're face-up in the extra-deck after being destroyed, and not face-down (like others extra deck monsters).

Also, 2 monsters isn't a big cost, but I really think it's waaay harder to bring up 2 geminies on the field, and if you do bring them, it's even harder to bring another gemini and normal summon it again for it to get its effects