Mai's "Jean Claude Proposed!" face. XDAlso, first page of Love and Rock and Roll, for someone stumbling in here unawares and wondering why this is appropriate.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
In light of Love and Rock and Roll starting...
Mai's "Jean Claude Proposed!" face. XDAlso, first page of Love and Rock and Roll, for someone stumbling in here unawares and wondering why this is appropriate.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Invid's Bizarre Card Ramblings #2: Chaos End Ruler -Ruler of the Beginning and the End-
Here we are with another of these talks about cards on a blog about a comic where there hasn't actually been any dueling.
This week's entry is not, and hopefully will never be, a real card.
If you have any familiarity with the real life version of the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game, you are likely aware that there are a couple of Monsters who are often regarded as the strongest ever printed who happen to have "Chaos" in their original Japanese names: "Black Luster Soldier (originally "Chaos Soldier") -Envoy of the Beginning-" and "Chaos Emperor Dragon -Envoy of the End-". There is also a lesser but still powerful Monster called "Chaos Sorcerer" who is a similar if weaker card. (There's also Dark Magician of Chaos, a similarly insanely powerful card, but it doesn't factor into this discussion as it isn't actually related to these cards despite its name.)
These Chaos Monsters were an early experiment in creating strong cards with steep requirements. Konami quickly discovered, however, that these particular cards did not have nearly steep enough of a cost.
In case you don't feel like clicking on the links and investigating the cards yourself (and don't know much about the cards), the Envoys and Chaos Sorcerer require you to banish a Light Monster and a Dark Monster from your Graveyard in order to Summon them. Yes, just one each. Why the Envoys, who have 3000 ATK apiece, have the same requirements as the comparatively wretchedly small Chaos Sorceror (2300 ATK) is a mystery for the ages.
Supposedly, Light and Dark Monsters aren't supposed to work well together. However, there have always been plenty of solid Dark Monsters in the game, and a few good Light ones had come out only a little while before. The game also had Painful Choice, a card that ultimately wasn't painful at all, as it let you take five cards from your Deck and get one in your hand and four in the Graveyard. (The "painful" part was that your opponent chose which cards go where. Not really much of a drawback when you want those cards in the Graveyard, as Konami would soon realize. Painful Choice was restricted to one for most of its history, until Konami introduced banning cards, after which it has been permanently banned.)
The ease of summoning these cards meant that people were willing to try, and it turned out that 3000 ATK Monsters with incredibly strong effects were worth the investment. Chaos Emperor Dragon blows up both player's fields and hands (and incidentally inflicts damage), letting you set up an instant unbreakable lock (earning it one of the top spots on the first list of banned cards, and also an eternal spot), Black Luster Soldier can potentially attack twice or, instead of attacking, banish an opponent's Monster (has been restricted for a long time, although it took longer than Chaos Emperor Dragon, and was banned for a long time, although again it took longer, and has seen an apparently experimental unbanning recently), and Chaos Sorcerer can banish a face up Monster (it's been on and off the banlist at multiple levels of restriction). As all of these cards are also Special Summons, they don't even restrict your Normal Summon for the turn (a key to setting up the Yata-Lock that Chaos Emperor Dragon enabled in the old days).
So why am I talking about some of the most powerful cards in the game, cards which likely shouldn't have been printed or which have been in decks that are unfairly powerful?
Because they've got nothing on this one: Chaos End Ruler -Ruler of the Beginning and the End- (link)!
Chaos End Ruler -Ruler of the Beginning and the End-
Light Attribute/Warrior Type
Level 10
ATK 3500/DEF 2000
Cannot be Normal Summoned or Set. You can Special Summon this card (from your hand) by banishing 1 LIGHT Warrior-Type and 1 DARK Fiend-Type monster from your Graveyard. Cards and effects cannot be activated in response to this card's Special Summon. You can pay 1000 Life Points; banish all cards your opponent controls and all cards in your opponent's hand and Graveyard, then inflict 500 damage to your opponent for each card banished by this effect.
Now, what makes this card so much more vicious and nasty than any of the other cards I've been talking about?
Well, the first part is its requirement: It needs its Light Monster to be a Warrior and its Dark Monster to be a Fiend, but that's not necessarily an additional requirement.
See, the first Chaos decklist I heard of used Light Warriors and Dark Fiends as its staple Monsters already. So this card could be put in that deck with essentially no changes. Not only that, but in a pinch, if one was playing multiples, this card would fit the requirement itself.
So it looks restrictive, but it really isn't.
The next part is that cards can't be used in response to it being Special Summoned. Cards with effects like this exist, but haven't been used much that I can tell because they're usually expensive. As I've established, though, that wouldn't hurt this guy at all, because he'd be playable even if he wasn't essentially uncounterable. Players have always been able to use cards like Solemn Judgment to stop guys like this, but here it wouldn't work. Since the days of the original Chaos Monsters, card rulings have changed, and the original Chaos Monsters are a little weaker than they used to be due to these changes, but those same rulings don't affect this card because of this line of text.
Now, here's the doozy: Pay 1000 Life Points to banish all cards in your opponent's hand, and on your opponent's Field, and in your opponent's Graveyard, and inflict 500 damage to your opponent for each card banished this way.
I'm not even sure how to express the unfairness and brutality of this effect. Basically, the only way to stop it is with the counter trap Divine Wrath (there are very few other cards that could), thanks to Solemn Judgment having no effect on it. (Solemn Judgment is supposed to stop everything. It doesn't, but most of the exceptions are defensive cards.) If it just banished your Graveyard, or your hand, or your Field, there would be a faint semblance of fairness, and there would be ways to counter this card.
But banishing the Field means there are very few cards that can do anything to protect you (Reborn Tengu, Waboku, Threatening Roar, Hallowed Life Barrier, Rainbow Life, and that's about it), banishing your hand means that most of the things players rely on for escaping nasty pinches like this don't work (Effect Veiler could probably shut it down), and the Graveyard is also gone (Necro Gardna and probably Damage Eater would provide a small amount of protection). The only cards listed that could actually keep you from taking huge amounts of damage are Hallowed Life Barrier and Rainbow Life, and they're Trap cards, which means that you need to have them set and they'll be vulnerable there-everything else on the list can only stop Chaos End Ruler's attack or its effect damage. (Reborn Tengu can't even actually do either of these things-it'd only be a help if Chaos End Ruler's controller didn't have enough Life Points to activate its effect more than once.)
The reason this is so bad is because, other than the Life Point cost, there's no drawback to this whatsoever. Most defensive cards care more about being sent to the Graveyard or destroyed, and this dodges both of those. And as long as there isn't one of the few Trap cards that can stop it involved, if this card gets summoned, the player who didn't play it is going to take huge amounts of damage, guaranteed, whether the 3500 ATK of Chaos End Ruler, the multiple of 500 from its effect (which will nearly always be absurdly huge), or both. This card could easily deal 8000+ damage in the turn it comes down, with no assistance or combo setups, virtually for free.
And the best part? It leaves the other player with nothing, and the single card that the other player draws the following turn probably won't be able to do squat to Chaos End Ruler, especially if it's a Trap card or a Monster.
They ought to call it "Chaos End Ruler -Ruler of Unfairness and Epic Ragequits-".
(If you're wondering where the card comes from, it's mentioned as a rare banned card in an episode of ZeXaL. Whoever made it up in-universe was a sick puppy; whoever made it up for the show should be watched carefully, and kept away from the real card game.)
-Signing off.
This week's entry is not, and hopefully will never be, a real card.
If you have any familiarity with the real life version of the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game, you are likely aware that there are a couple of Monsters who are often regarded as the strongest ever printed who happen to have "Chaos" in their original Japanese names: "Black Luster Soldier (originally "Chaos Soldier") -Envoy of the Beginning-" and "Chaos Emperor Dragon -Envoy of the End-". There is also a lesser but still powerful Monster called "Chaos Sorcerer" who is a similar if weaker card. (There's also Dark Magician of Chaos, a similarly insanely powerful card, but it doesn't factor into this discussion as it isn't actually related to these cards despite its name.)
These Chaos Monsters were an early experiment in creating strong cards with steep requirements. Konami quickly discovered, however, that these particular cards did not have nearly steep enough of a cost.
In case you don't feel like clicking on the links and investigating the cards yourself (and don't know much about the cards), the Envoys and Chaos Sorcerer require you to banish a Light Monster and a Dark Monster from your Graveyard in order to Summon them. Yes, just one each. Why the Envoys, who have 3000 ATK apiece, have the same requirements as the comparatively wretchedly small Chaos Sorceror (2300 ATK) is a mystery for the ages.
Supposedly, Light and Dark Monsters aren't supposed to work well together. However, there have always been plenty of solid Dark Monsters in the game, and a few good Light ones had come out only a little while before. The game also had Painful Choice, a card that ultimately wasn't painful at all, as it let you take five cards from your Deck and get one in your hand and four in the Graveyard. (The "painful" part was that your opponent chose which cards go where. Not really much of a drawback when you want those cards in the Graveyard, as Konami would soon realize. Painful Choice was restricted to one for most of its history, until Konami introduced banning cards, after which it has been permanently banned.)
The ease of summoning these cards meant that people were willing to try, and it turned out that 3000 ATK Monsters with incredibly strong effects were worth the investment. Chaos Emperor Dragon blows up both player's fields and hands (and incidentally inflicts damage), letting you set up an instant unbreakable lock (earning it one of the top spots on the first list of banned cards, and also an eternal spot), Black Luster Soldier can potentially attack twice or, instead of attacking, banish an opponent's Monster (has been restricted for a long time, although it took longer than Chaos Emperor Dragon, and was banned for a long time, although again it took longer, and has seen an apparently experimental unbanning recently), and Chaos Sorcerer can banish a face up Monster (it's been on and off the banlist at multiple levels of restriction). As all of these cards are also Special Summons, they don't even restrict your Normal Summon for the turn (a key to setting up the Yata-Lock that Chaos Emperor Dragon enabled in the old days).
So why am I talking about some of the most powerful cards in the game, cards which likely shouldn't have been printed or which have been in decks that are unfairly powerful?
Because they've got nothing on this one: Chaos End Ruler -Ruler of the Beginning and the End- (link)!
Chaos End Ruler -Ruler of the Beginning and the End-
Light Attribute/Warrior Type
Level 10
ATK 3500/DEF 2000
Cannot be Normal Summoned or Set. You can Special Summon this card (from your hand) by banishing 1 LIGHT Warrior-Type and 1 DARK Fiend-Type monster from your Graveyard. Cards and effects cannot be activated in response to this card's Special Summon. You can pay 1000 Life Points; banish all cards your opponent controls and all cards in your opponent's hand and Graveyard, then inflict 500 damage to your opponent for each card banished by this effect.
Now, what makes this card so much more vicious and nasty than any of the other cards I've been talking about?
Well, the first part is its requirement: It needs its Light Monster to be a Warrior and its Dark Monster to be a Fiend, but that's not necessarily an additional requirement.
See, the first Chaos decklist I heard of used Light Warriors and Dark Fiends as its staple Monsters already. So this card could be put in that deck with essentially no changes. Not only that, but in a pinch, if one was playing multiples, this card would fit the requirement itself.
So it looks restrictive, but it really isn't.
The next part is that cards can't be used in response to it being Special Summoned. Cards with effects like this exist, but haven't been used much that I can tell because they're usually expensive. As I've established, though, that wouldn't hurt this guy at all, because he'd be playable even if he wasn't essentially uncounterable. Players have always been able to use cards like Solemn Judgment to stop guys like this, but here it wouldn't work. Since the days of the original Chaos Monsters, card rulings have changed, and the original Chaos Monsters are a little weaker than they used to be due to these changes, but those same rulings don't affect this card because of this line of text.
Now, here's the doozy: Pay 1000 Life Points to banish all cards in your opponent's hand, and on your opponent's Field, and in your opponent's Graveyard, and inflict 500 damage to your opponent for each card banished this way.
I'm not even sure how to express the unfairness and brutality of this effect. Basically, the only way to stop it is with the counter trap Divine Wrath (there are very few other cards that could), thanks to Solemn Judgment having no effect on it. (Solemn Judgment is supposed to stop everything. It doesn't, but most of the exceptions are defensive cards.) If it just banished your Graveyard, or your hand, or your Field, there would be a faint semblance of fairness, and there would be ways to counter this card.
But banishing the Field means there are very few cards that can do anything to protect you (Reborn Tengu, Waboku, Threatening Roar, Hallowed Life Barrier, Rainbow Life, and that's about it), banishing your hand means that most of the things players rely on for escaping nasty pinches like this don't work (Effect Veiler could probably shut it down), and the Graveyard is also gone (Necro Gardna and probably Damage Eater would provide a small amount of protection). The only cards listed that could actually keep you from taking huge amounts of damage are Hallowed Life Barrier and Rainbow Life, and they're Trap cards, which means that you need to have them set and they'll be vulnerable there-everything else on the list can only stop Chaos End Ruler's attack or its effect damage. (Reborn Tengu can't even actually do either of these things-it'd only be a help if Chaos End Ruler's controller didn't have enough Life Points to activate its effect more than once.)
The reason this is so bad is because, other than the Life Point cost, there's no drawback to this whatsoever. Most defensive cards care more about being sent to the Graveyard or destroyed, and this dodges both of those. And as long as there isn't one of the few Trap cards that can stop it involved, if this card gets summoned, the player who didn't play it is going to take huge amounts of damage, guaranteed, whether the 3500 ATK of Chaos End Ruler, the multiple of 500 from its effect (which will nearly always be absurdly huge), or both. This card could easily deal 8000+ damage in the turn it comes down, with no assistance or combo setups, virtually for free.
And the best part? It leaves the other player with nothing, and the single card that the other player draws the following turn probably won't be able to do squat to Chaos End Ruler, especially if it's a Trap card or a Monster.
They ought to call it "Chaos End Ruler -Ruler of Unfairness and Epic Ragequits-".
(If you're wondering where the card comes from, it's mentioned as a rare banned card in an episode of ZeXaL. Whoever made it up in-universe was a sick puppy; whoever made it up for the show should be watched carefully, and kept away from the real card game.)
-Signing off.
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