Archetype Submission - Rocksaber (Read 7406 times)

Slient Knight · May 23, 2018, 10:41:31 pm

Rocksaber

Description:
A Tellarknight-esk Pendulum Archetype who's monsters gain effects whem summoned and, more interestingly, when sent from the Extra Deck to the GY. The Link Monsters send the Pendulum Monsters from the Extra Deck to the GY in order to activate their effects, somewhat like Xyz Monsters detaching Materials. The Pendulum Monsters can SS themselves from the Pendulum Scales to Zones the Link Monsters point to in order to extend their plays, while fueling their effects when used as Material as they fill the Extra Deck. The main win condition is similar to that of decks like World-Chalice and Palladions, though the archetype cannot make an Extra Link solely by itself on account of it's lack of upwards pointing link monsters. This means that your win condition has to be somewhat based around more generic cards like Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon, Firewall Dragon or even Naturia Beast. They have no real type to their main deck monsters, but their link monsters are all warriors, which means it is possible to make cards such as Isolde, Two Tales of the Noble Knights and other generic support.If you take into account the "Skydian" archetype, they are able also to use that archetype's theme to great effect, searching cards from other archetypes such as Tellarknights, Phantom Knights and X-Sabers to enable a larger extra deck toolbox. Heavy Metalfoes Electrumite can be used to some effect as it allows the stacking of "Rocksaber" Monsters in the Extra Deck which can be used to fuel link plays, the downside to it is the lack of effects which proc off destruction in the archetype and the difficulty the archetype has in getting 2 Pendulum Monsters on the field before using it's Pendulum Summon. This means that it can often be a waste of materials compared to the Archetypes own Link Monsters or powerful generic Synchros such as Searing Twilight Red Dragon Archfiend. Electrumite could in theory make it possible for this deck to contain a splashable engine, like the Spiritualist Engine and the Advocate of Justice Engine, however compared to other engines in the card pool currently, it is not significant enough to warrent running over those engines (In my opinion).

Cards

Spoiler: Monster Cards • show

All of the Pendulum Monsters share the following effect while they are in a Pendulum Scale: If you control a "Rocksaber" Link monster, you can send 1 "Rocksaber" Pendulum Monster from your Extra Deck to the GY: Special Summon this card from your Pendulum Zone to a zone a "Rocksaber" Link Monster you control points to.

Rocksaber Darius
[Warrior/Pendulum/Effect] | Earth | Level 4 | 1500 ATK | 1200 DEF
If this card is Summoned: You can send 1 "Rocksaber" Monster from your hand to the GY: Add 1 "Rocksaber" Monster from your Deck to your hand. You can only use this effect of "Rocksaber Darius" once per turn. If this card is sent from the Extra Deck to the GY: You can add 1 other "Rocksaber" card from your GY to your hand.

Rocksaber Adavartae
[Beast-Warrior/Pendulum/Tuner/Effect] | Earth | Level 2 | 500 ATK | 200 DEF
If this card is Summoned: You can Special Summon 1 "Rocksaber" Monster from your hand. You can only use this effect of "Rocksaber Adavantae" once per turn. If this card is sent from the Extra Deck to the GY: You can add 1 "Rocksaber" Monster from your Deck to your hand.

Rocksaber Ganvanka
[Machine/Pendulum/Effect] | Earth | Level 4 | 1500 ATK | 1200 DEF
If this card is Summoned: You can add 1 "Rocksaber" Spell/Trap Card from your Deck to your hand. You can only use this effect of "Rocksaber Ganvanka" once per turn. If this card is sent from the Extra Deck to the GY: You can destroy 1 card on the field.

Rocksaber Treula
[Warrior/Pendulum/Effect] | Earth | Level 3 | 1500 ATK | 1200 DEF
If this card is Summoned: You can Destroy 1 card you control: Special Summon 1 "Rocksaber" Monster from your Deck except "Rocksaber Treula". If this card is sent from the Extra Deck to the GY: You can Special Summon 1 "Rocksaber" Monster from your GY except "Rocksaber Treula". You can only use each effect of "Rocksaber Treulai" once per turn.

Rocksaber Venari
[Spellcaster/Pendulum/Effect] | Earth | Level 3 | 1500 ATK | 1200 DEF
If this card is Summoned: You can Special Summon 1 "Rocksaber" Monster from your GY in Defence Position, but negate its effects and send it to the GY during the End Phase. You can only use this effect of "Rocksaber Venari" once per turn. If this card is sent from the Extra Deck to the GY: You can send 1 "Rocksaber" card from your Deck to the GY.

Spoiler: Extra Deck Monster Cards • show

Spoiler: Spell Cards • show

Spoiler: Trap Cards • show

Additional Remarks

Advantages:

{Sumary}
The archetype is consistant and is able to search its extenders while managing to maintain a consistant hand size. The archetype has no risk of running out of monsters in either their main or extra deck due to 1/4 of the archetype having effects that in some what recur used resources. The ability to use Pendulum Monsters in their Extra Deck provides a way to use resources that other Pendulum Decks might not be able to and ensures that no monster is left wasted and unable to use. The standard issue with MR4 is that Pendulum Decks find their Extra Deck full of Pendulum Monsters used for Link Summoning but no way to Pendulum Summon them out due to a lack of Extra Monster Zones. This archetype's main "Gimmick" means that those monsters can be sent to the GY and then probably shuffled away into the Deck to be re-used assuming that they can be searched. They have access to a large amount of generic support from both the custom and the IRL card pool which enables them to toolbox for a large variety of situations and the link monsters being able to send your Pendulum Monsters to the GY as cost means that you can play through floodgates like Skill Drain and even remove them if you have the right cards availible to you. This means that overall the archetype is able to play around most situations and be highly flexable towards most of its match-ups whether that be Sky-Striker from the real game of Advocate of Justice from our own card pool.

{Indepth Analysis}
{Mechanics}
The use of the Pendulum Mechanic is strong because it allows for rapid access of unused resouces in your hand. Although the Pendulum Scales have a relatively high activation cost of 2 cards from your hand, this archetype's first gimmick of the Pendulum Monsters being able to Special Summon themselves from the Pendulum Scale means that the resources used to make the Pendulum Scales can then be re-used, first as Material for a Summon, and secondly as payment for the Link Monsters effects. The gimmick also allows for the instant use of resources, provided that you have a free Link Zone to Special Summon them into. This might need a HOPT for each name in the Pendulum Monsters in order to prevent excess spam, although given the archetypes's inability to Extra Link and a lack of a boss monster means that it might not matter since there would be no reason to extend further into combos as you have already achieved your maximum board. If you include generic boss monsters however, it should probably be HOPTed to prevent fields of Crystal Wing, Naturia Beast and a Rank 4 which would most likely be Tornado Dragon, on top of the archetypes boss monster being a HOPT Quick Effect Bounce.(That field is only an example and I am unaware of any way to make that field currently as it would require 3 Extra Monster Zones free (not that im saying it's impossible, i just haven't playtested yet))
The second mechanic is the Pendulum Monsters gaining effects on summon. This has been seen in many archetypes before, both custom and TCG/OCG. Some examples include Tellarknights, Majespecters, Heros and infernity if you want to include single cards, Advocate of Justice, Spiritualists and so on. As such I shall keep this brief in its merits, and simpiliy keep it archetype relavent. When combined with the first archetypeal gimmick, this allows for every summon of any monster to be relavent. I have already HOPTed all of the on summon effects through common sense because I don't think that being able to infinitely proc effects when you have no limits to the number of Special Summons you can do from your hand is particularly smart, although other people might argue that point (See Advocate of Justice). By HOPTing all of the effects, which trigger on Summon, there is a limit on how much can be done since multiple cards with the same name cannot all trigger and make you go plus 3-4 (again, see Advocate of Justice). This limit means that it is unlikely that you could utilise all the different effects in one turn and provides a soft limit on the level of extra deck spam that is possible. Of course, cards like Firewall Dragon enable consistant hand spam, however, the soft limit only means that there is an extent at which you stop gaining momentum and you would have to start generating resources by other means.
The 3rd mechanic is the effects that proc when the Pendulum Monsters are sent from the field to the GY. As stated above, the Pendulum Monsters having these effects allow the Deck to use resources that other Pendulum Decks would not be able to access and in some way profit from them. This is the most unique part of the archetype and so has the least that it can be compared to in terms of power levels and general brokenness, as such, without proper playtesting, i cannot comment on how strong it actually is. The principles , however, are simple. The Pendulum Monster is used as material for a link summon and sent to the Extra Deck. In other archetypes this would then stay there until Pendulum Summoned again, as there is very little in the way of recursion from the face-up Extra Deck. The only archetype i think of that can easily recur from the Extra Deck is Spiritualists, and in most cases, they do not want to do so as it means the monsters have to be re-ritual summoned, which is one of the decks biggest weaknesses. Rocksaber however, can then by 1 of 2 ways send their Monsters from the Extra Deck to the GY, which is a place far more easily accessable to recovery effects, allowing for the Pendulum Monsters to escape the fate caused by MR4, of being stuck in the Extra Deck and never used again. This allows greater utilisation of resources and could potentually be what breaks the deck. A way to fix any issues which could arise from a particular card would be to HOPT it or add a condition to its effect, which prevents it being used excessively, however i find it unlikely that that would occur since you'd need to get said card in the Extra Deck multiple times in one turn and the deck only has a little in the way of GY SS or bounce to hand which would be required to use it as material again. While cards like Electrumite could be looped, and firewall could potentually bounce from GY, i doubt that it would cause anything more than 0/0ing out of it, since there are only limited ways of getting the Pendulum Monsters from the Extra Deck to the GY anyway and those would probably exaust themselves before you got to looping any particular monster any more than twice at best.
To tie into this mechanic, you have the Link Monsters who all have the following cost: "You can send 1 Pendulum "Rocksaber" Monster from your Extra Deck to the GY:" before activating their effects, also all of their effects bar 1 are HOPT in order to prevent the enmass sending of monsters from the Extra Deck to the GY. In general, if you Link Summoned using a previous Link monster and a Pendulum "Rocksaber" Monster, you will only have 1 "Rocksaber" Pendulum Monster in your Extra Deck to trigger the effect anyway, leaving none to do other things with, such as SS your excess Pendulum Monsters from your hand via their own effets. This mechanic is strong however, because it enables the previously mentioned use of otherwise unreachable resources. It also justifies a slightly stronger effect than has previously been allowed on link monsters in my opinion, as the effect, while strong, is not free like other link monsters would be, instead being more like a Xyz Monster, albeit all the Monsters have a shared Material Pool.

Disadvantages:

Loses to handtraps, especially to evenly matched as there is no inarche negation. On that same vein, it loses to boardwipes. While the engine itself is very strong, pure it has no real win condition as the only kind of disrupt it has is a HOPT quick effect bounce. It struggles with getting over 2 monsters with over 2k ATK since there is no ATK boosting in the archetype and no monster is higher than 2k. This means it relys heavily on external help, and that actually marginally weakens the archetype, mainly in the link monster revival. I'l leave it there cos im already at 3 pages and 2000 words total, but it does have more disadvantages, just PM me and i'l go into them deeper.