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Hey, thanks for the well-thought-out response! I appreciate the notes on some of the wording mistakes, and I went back and corrected a few of them. Yeah, this archetype can be considered a mini "engine" for other DARK Fiend decks, as I only made 8 cards, which is about what you could expect from second-wave support. This was the direction I had in mind, though I may make them a dedicated normal summon when I revisit them in the future. Spot on! These cards do have very different power levels, as many archetypes do, with some cards never being played after newer waves of support make them irrelevant. I like the Kashtira comparison you made. I can see it. The effect of Aspect Witch to attach a card with a Gaze counter as a material may seem straightforward in the early game, but Im sure there is plenty of creative use for it on sequential turns to counter continuous spells/traps or cards which already have Gaze counters but have since gained protections. Maybe I should do more play tests, but in theory it works lol. Hollow Idol is a normal extender to help you get two bodies and place more Gaze counters for Omniscience while expanding your coverage of cards that can be targeted by the Xyz monsters or Crimson Seraph. Speaking of Seraph, it does have a fun gameplay loop that you picked up on. You can send cards with Gaze counters to the graveyard at the cost of banishing itself if you don't Xyz Summon with it (or if used on your opponent's turn), and when you discard it as material, Seraph goes back to hand, allowing you to do it all over again next turn. The setting of Retribution is a bonus at that point, but it gives your turn one field some decent staying power. Retribution acts as a slow MST, so you can get it in the graveyard easily at the start of the turn if needed, and its GY effect can activate later that same turn. Funny thing is, when Retribution activates and attaches a banished DARK fiend to your revived Xyz, you can choose Crimson Seraph, then discard him to the graveyard once more to re-add him to hand. Unbound Verdict's effect will activate when you discard to banish/attach a card with a Gaze counter to place a new one, giving Seraph a newly selected target to send to the GY. I know this may not be the most meta, but the Xyz monsters were designed with a sort of call-and-response relationship with the other cards of the archetype. You summon Hollow Idol, for example, and place a Gaze counter, which announces to your opponent which cards they should be worried about while giving you, the Noctiris player, multiple options to deal with those pre-targeted cards. Both players see the typically 2-4 cards with Gaze counters, which is the cost, while being able to deal with those threats effectively acts as the benefit. Unbound Verdict acts as the core of this idea as it replaces Gaze counters in real time while still making those valuable cards obvious to both parties. Blanketed negates may make this concept a little overkill and should likely be allocated to other engines or set flood gates you play in this deck if that's your play style. Again, thanks for your comment, and I hope you enjoy these cards and any future ones I make. Best of luck, Duelist!

Hey there, I'm excited to see another Counter themed archetype and I like the style you chose for the card images. Regarding the PSCT: I appreciate the OCG-like way to list the effects as it makes the card much clearer, but I think that you didn't use it correctly at some points. On "Eye of the Abyss" and "Omniscence", you used the conditional effects "if condition xy.., you can also ..". These are usually part of an effect that is described beforehand, so if you want them to resolve simultaneously, you shouldn't give them a different effect number for separation, as that only confuses the reader. I was honestly not sure if the second effect on "Omniscence" was part of the first one, or just an ignition effect with very weird PSCT. I assume you want it to be part of the first effect in both cases, since the rest of your PSCT is on point, except for the "add this card to your hand, but banish it when it leaves the field" on "Crimson Seraph". I assume you tried to balance the Quick Removal by having it only be able to recycle once, but cards don't usually remember any lingering effects when they move into a non-public location as the hand. This is a game mechanic that prevents stuff like a player adding a "Crimson Seraph" to his hand and later discarding it to the GY, which the opponent has no way to call out, because the Noctris player might have a second one in their hand. Gameplay-wise I'd probably consider this more of a small engine that can be combined with another DARK Fiend archetype or run alot of non-engine cards. With that in mind I'd expect the cards to have a solid resource loop and create some form of pressure, but not deal with every possible threat in existance and have clear weaknesses. I'll come back to this later. The individual cards differ in power significantly. In my opinion "Aspect Witch" is probably the strongest of all the cards, giving you a free Summon and therefore level 6 xyz material, a +1 that could become a +2 in card advantage in form of the spell search and an additional removal. It's a very solid card, I'd compare to something like Kashtira Fenrir. Sadly it somewhat makes the Gaze Counters unnecessary, as it both places it and removes it by killing the card in a very streamlined way. "Hollow Idol" looks like a classic extender. Just Summon him along the way, as you will try to always give your opponent's cards some counters, and get an additional benefit when using it as material. Anyhow this looks like the weakest of the bunch, as pretty much all of the cards except for "Omniscience" only ever care for 1 card with a counter on it, the added effect of doubling down on counters seems off and not that helpful. "Crimson Seraph" is another beast. Especially the fact that the Summon from hand is a Quick Effect makes it a menace. I appreciate your attempt to balance it by trying to implement a lingering finality effect, even tho it kinda breaks the game rules. Here is a recommendation on how I would balance it: As you will use it as Xyz Material 90% of the time during your own turn, this will not affect the extender abilities, but forces you to make a decision if you want to throw away recursive card advantage if you want to use it as disruption during your opponent's turn. "Eye of the Abyss" is a very generic search spell, which I usually don't love to see, but it becomes pretty obligatory when making a small archetype with only 3 monsters like this. I'd probably change the condition of the Special Summoning part of the effect, as you wont need it as much when you already have your Xyz monster on the board but rather when on the backfoot. Maybe consider changing the condition to having less cards on board than your opponent or an Xyz monster in your GY or something like that. "Omniscience" is a perfectly fine protection card with a solid activation effect that matches the theme. I feel like it could also probably do a little more in terms of Counters as a Continuous piece. I obviously didn't playtest these, but I can imagine that it would be totally fine to put an effect on this card that makes a Counter once per turn, either triggered by something or as ignition effect. I also really like that it only protects from destruction and does none of the "make a card unaffected by everything" crap, many customs show these days. "Retribution" almost seems to generic, but keeping in mind how you fetch it, it's a solid disruption option and the added floating effect in GY makes the CXyz much more valuable. "Unbound Verdict" is a solid boss monster with the classic Quick removal/negate theme, but it doesn't really seem to match the Counter theme well. It also probably gives a little to many options for what to do and could be split up into two separate cards. What actually annoys me a little bit is that it doesn't have a Quick Effect to place counters, so the synergy with detaching "Crimson Seraph" is a little bit lack luster. It might actually be more fun, if the Quick Effect just placed a Counter on any card, non once per turn, with a continuous or triggered effect that interacts with Counters, like "Your "Noctris" cards are unaffected by cards with Gaze Counters on them" or "You can negate the effect of any card on the field, by removing 1 Gaze Counter from it (OPT)". This card definetely has the most hidden potential. "Deus: Reultima" is a little difficult in my opinion. It does have the option to place Counters as Quick Effect, which is great, especially combined with "Crimson Seraph", but the negate it very slow. Most modern cards will be Summoned or activated, and immediately start a chain with some kind of entering effect. This boss monster could react to that by placing a counter on each monster the opponent controls, but since this is not MTG, after resolving the effect to put Counters, the other card will just resolve aswell. The fix to this problem is using a Continuous Effect, as stated above. There are cards like "Fabled Unicore", "World Legacy's Secret" or "Cerulean Skyfire" that negate an effect when resolving, which would be much more efficient on this card. I understand that "Negate the effects of all cards with Gaze Counters on them" is to strong, but you could adapt the effect of one of these cards and make the effect say "Once per turn, you can negate any monster effect activated by your opponent, by removing 1 Gaze Counter from that monster." In summary I want to say that this archetype has much potential and could become an absolute favourite, especially with the dark demonic style, to set a mark against dumb design choices like Dragonmaids or Yummi. Coming back to my premise, the archetype does have a very solid resource loop in recycling "Crimson Seraph" and fetching copies of "Eye of the Abyss" with "Aspect Witch" and as it stands there are clear weaknesses as agressive monster spam and high ATK Towers, aswell as targeted Xyz hate. It does kind of have a little bit of everything on the end board (especially since "Unbound Verdict" has so many forms of removal to chose from), but a relatively low ceiling, which makes it not only fun to play, but also to play against. Balance and style wise, it's a very cool archetype and if you overhaul the Xyz monsters and "Crimson Seraph", the gameplay is about to be a blaze aswell. I'm looking forward to play you with these one day. As it stands I'd rate these cards 8/10. Greets, Messoras