Amorphage - Failed Cards, Archetypes, and Sometimes Mechanics in Yu-Gi-Oh 

I get what they were going for with the maintenance cost. Tributing pendulum monsters during your standby phase meant you were getting rid of their floodgates to start your main phase, and you could just pendulum summon all of them right back when you were ready for them... it's just a pity the monster levels were all over the place, and the scales were way too stingy for a deck that doesn't let you special summon non-archetype things anyway.

"The Dallas cowboys of the Yu-Gi-Oh world" Damn you didn't have to drop a bar like that

Cowboys fans catching strays lmao didn't expect that from this channel tbh

Can't wait for the new Field Spell "Amorphage Sinister Playground", that says "Once per turn if a monster(s) on your side of the field would be tributed or if a card(s) in your Pendulum Zone would be destroyed, you can banish the top card of your deck instead."

Funny how Konami was naming the monsters based on the 7 deadly sins, but when they reached Lust they just went and said "Lechery", a cute synonym for Lust, since no one knows wtf Lechery means 💀💀💀

There are admittedly some decks that, if they were given even a bit of decent support would be very unfun to play against. Amorphage falls into that category. Really glad Konami didn't make this archetype good, playing against floodgate turbo is really frustrating

I think we can all agree that it's a good thing this archetype never took off. And it seems Konami decided to so themselves, because it could've easily been a thing. In fact a lot of the restrictions this Deck has seem purposeful, not only in-lore but also for balance. The Tribute cost means your floodgates get weaker each turn and that your opponent can actually imagine breaking your lock turn 3 or 5. (A quality not many floodgates have, most of them get better each turn.) And the fact you can't Pendulum Summon the most oppressive Amorphages, means you have limited recovery (especially in MR3) and that you have to commit more ressources for better results. Of course the Spell & Traps alleviate that, but you better draw them. In lore it also makes sense, the Amorphages are really strong but they are unnatural, and created from a horrible magic, With their innocent animal bodies writhing in pain, and their dragon shell melting and dying in front of your eyes. They're the sins of someone who created dragons for his own glory. And in the end, Goliath, the sin of Vanity, the only one that perfected a dragon form, merges with its creator, that soons becomes the embodiment of pain. Vector being the other half of memories of Luster, but anyway. I will say kudos to the designers for all of this, they knew how to put interesting limitations to not easily make this archetype the most insufferable mesh in existence. (Though Sloth/Goliath are sometimes played outside of Amorphage unfortunately.) And in my opinion, they could easily modernize the archetype with a few support cards; consistency cards, something to Tribute, a Spell & Trap searcher, and even, why not, Ritual elements scattered in. As long as they keep the spirit of them being a 'fast burning' floodgate Deck, with each floodgate becoming weaker and weaker each turn so that the opponent has a chance to break it all after a few turns, this would promote back and forth, but also important ressources management from the Amorphage player (Which Amorphage floodgate to use for this turn? What card to Tribute? Can I kill this turn? etc). Though they should be careful to make it so none of them could be cheated out in other Pendulum Decks and completely miss the whole point of the archetype.

Konami often love to make random archetype only for "LORE" especialy during ArcV era

the bots are in a tier 0 format

As a Dallas cowboys fan I can Agree with your statement

I was listening to this while doing something else. And I haven’t played Yugioh in years, but have kept up with the game thanks to channels like this. And I still caught the Achilles Heel before you said it. I mean a Pendulum deck that can’t Pendulum Summon is half dead right out the gate.

I remember Goliath, Lechery, and Sloth being occasional tech cards in OTHER decks. Goliath in Dragon decks when combined with Arkbrave Dragon for example. Ending on a board WITH Goliath to lock out the Extra Deck Some Pendulum Magician decks used Sloth as an end board piece to lock out the opponent's Extra Deck. And I vaguely remember Lechery being used somewhere alongside something like Sloth or Goliath. Since you'd have either face up, Lechery was just a literal NOPE to any Spell or Spell effects. And that's about it from my memory (if we don't count the Ritual Amorphactor)

The amorphages worst downfall came with the link era. Now they can't even summon a link monster, which means they can only pendulum summon 1 monster from the extra deck. So they will never be able to fully pay their maintenance cost without outside support.

Damn dallas even catching strays in a yugioh vids it seems to be the only thing they can catch

Even with the bad maintenance costs, if the pendulum scales weren't so bad maybe they would have been decent. You can play copies of Pendulum Switch to help bypass the maintenance cost though.

This is definitely the most interesting archetype so far. My biggest problem with a series like this taking such a negative view on these decks is that every other deck that's been covered at least functions. They may not be good, but calling them failures seems overly harsh when the gameplan can come together rather nicely just not in meta play. Amorphage's have so much potential, but it is insane how many arbitrary limitations the deck gets saddled with just from some overcautious card design. Would honestly love to see at least a few more cards maybe even something like the training wheels we got for Malefics as long as its locked into the archetype I don't see the harm in throwing this decrepit, non-functioning pendulum deck something resembling decent synergy since there ain't no way it'll even be rogue with all those restrictions ontop of the newer restrictions on Pendulums with the modern rules

Never noticed how kickass their artwork is. Each dragon has a virus clamped to its back.

Dallas cowboys reference in a YGO video was unexpectedly hilarious.

I'm surprised you didn't mention the relation to their names and the 7 deadly sins.

to be fair, spheres tribute for goliath was one of the most annoying things to deal with when you were playing against dragon link back then.

Oh my god. RU-vid's bot problem is only getting worse.

That cowboys stray..and I’m an Eagles fan like woah a football reference in a yugioh channel 😂😂😂

“Being hyped… that you’re good, then realizing you’re a failure.” Damn, DuelLogs getting personal out here. Hit me right in the feels.

This is the first time I caught one of your videos when you just posted. Just wanted to save I love your channel man, gives me nostalgia and also I’m just a nerd and I love all the logic behind these cards even though I don’t play I watch your mtg one too and sometimes your wow channel they’re all good man keep it up

Ways I would make the archetype better. 1. New monsters with effects that activate upon leaving the field by a card effect, and a better version of that effect if it was from an Amorphage card's effect. Also, give them pendulum scales of 1 and 9. 2. Swarming and more searching that ignore the Amorphage floodgates. Like, seriously, why does this deck have no swarming? 3. Some form of negation protection that's not obnoxiously overpowered, but still reliable. 4. A Link monster that's either an extender or helps with swarming. With how slow this deck is, maybe it could get away with a Link-1, but it should probably be restricted to only being summonable once per turn, depending on how good it is.

Nothing like special summon Goliath with the hieratic sphere link after bouncing your opponent normal summon. 🤙🏻

I was not expecting Cowboys slander in my yugioh video but i'm all for it.

When I heard the cowboys joke the only thing I could do was sigh and say to myself “yea…yea”

Pain can be pretty nice in a dedicated ritual deck

Honestly I feel like what this deck really could have benefited from (besides just better scales to work with) was either an archtype-specific means of influencing scales like Yosenju Shinchu R or the Star-Timegazer magicians where you get better scales for sticking to the Archetype... or a card that allowed you do something else besides tribute to keep monsters on the field. Something in the vein of the Kokai Meiru cards. Also possibly either a boss monster or something to that effect that added an extra wrinkle towards the floodgates. Either making them go from Vanity to Majesty monsters (read: only locking your opponent out of them) or making it so that the pendulum effects become their monster effects, increasing the range of flood-gates you can have out.

"They're like the Dallas Cowboys of the Yu-Gi-Oh world!" Mmmm nah, at least the Cowboys have SOME success in their history. This is more like the Cleveland Browns

I love playing dragon decks, especially Lvl 7/8 dragon spam. My favorite combo I was able to do pretty constantly was send Goliath to the GY with Trade-in, Shrine, Dragon Ravine, or as XYZ materials (if it was summoned with Nebula dragons effect) and bring it back with Arkbrave or Return of the dragon Lords. Dragon Decks aren't the best but being able to finish off a board with Number 38, Goliath, Ruins of the dragon lord, and a Return in the GY was a pretty good turn 1 stun that didnt take 5 minutes to combo.

Idea for a new “Amorphage Infector” monster that’s based off of the little virus looking things that turn other monsters into Amorphage ones: _Amorphage Infector_ (EARTH) Level 1 Pendulum Scales: 0⬅️➡️0 _Once per turn, you can declare the name of 1 “Amorphage” Pendulum monster from your hand or that you control: Until the draw phase of your next turn, this card gains that declared monster’s Pendulum Effects and Scales. If a monster(s) in your hand or you control is Tributed, or destroyed by battle or card effect: You can Special Summon this card from your Pendulum Zones._ Machine/Pendulum/Effect _If an “Amorphage” card you control is tributed or destroyed by battle or card effect: You can special summon this card from your hand or face-up from your extra deck. Can make additional attacks per battle phase, and gains 250 ATK/DEF, equal to the number of face-up “Amorphage” cards you control. If this card is destroyed by an opponent’s monster (by battle or card effect); You can equip this card to that monster, and if you do, you take control of it while this card is equipped to it._ ATK/250 DEF/250

“Dallas Cowboys of Yugioh” is a fantastic analogy 😆

Even i liked the grotesque aesthetics of it, i'm really glad this one failed and will never be fixed because we already have enough floodgates in modern YGO and it's for the better.....

I really wanted this deck to be sooo good. I love the concept of the deadly sins. I hope it gets more support or some sort of change to the archetype to make it viable

Next archtype Nephthys, even if it has been my pet deck for yearS i still think 1 on nephthys would be cool

I have been cooking with this pure occasionally for years, MR 4/4.5 absolutely destorys this deck's longevity. Basically either play Dragon Gate or ignore them entirely.

Goddamn, the Cowboys are even getting roasted on a Yugioh channel.🤣 Starry Knights could probably qualify for one of these. They're a neat idea, but it'd be great if the archetype didn't revolve entirely around special summoning their boss monster from the hand and not anywhere else.

The design of the monsters are so unique but...the man.

I can't get away from Jerry's shenaningans even when I step entirely out of the realm of football. I really had to listen to that bit again😂

That random cowboys stray made my day.

I was not ready for that sponsored segment 🤣

Sloth also saw competitive play in Billy Brake's 1st place 2016 YCS Bochum Metalfoe side deck.

Maybe the best thing for the deck would just be a couple of consistency. Like a spell that said look at your opponent hand or top 5 cards of their deck. Then add of amorphage monster from deck to hand maybe a hard once per turn depending on power level. Then a link 1 or 2 that could revive itself. And summon tokens during the draw or standby phase.

Amorphactor pain goes hard in Drytron though

The thing with Amorphage is that it needs scales that are useful or be splashable on other decks Some pendulum decks used up to 3 Amorphages as floodgates back when Electrumite and Guardragons were legal. The ones used were Goliath, Sloth and Leechery. All 3 had the potential to be just another floodgate with Heriatic Seal summoning them from the deck, and Sloth and Leechery could help as scale floodgates

Stand proud Amorphage you are strong.

Ok, so Amorphage monsters are supposed to be corrupted versions of pre-existing creatures, right? One way the archetype can be fixed is by leaning into that, with a new Amorphage monster of each main monster type, symbolizing a monster of that type being infected and mutated after being defeated… We could have names like: Amorphage Pyre (Pyro) Amorphage Torrent (Aqua) Amorphage Heresy (Divine-Beast) And so on and so fourth…

I love the Amorphage. I've been messing with them over the past few month.

Just what I needed. Love Sloth

And True King of All Calamities happened... but I reckon that's a video for another day...

The Dallas cowboys stray literally made me physically react

Cant believe there was a sports reference in my YGO video--that isn't about UA's.

The scales in this deck really is it's biggest issue. I tried playing this deck a few times back in the day but not being able to pendulum summon more than half the deck makes it super hard to build any sort of board.

at least goliath was good in blue-eyes :p

pendulum soup: allow me to introduce myself

Duel log really called them the Dallas cowboys 😆😆😆

That’s so cool that minnieful is part of his videos now 🙏

It's a damn shame, I love this arctype and I still use it to this day I even mix them with generaiders, the only difference is the deck usually ends with one amorphage in the pendulum scale while I use the level one pendulum monster that goes back to the deck. While I wish we could get more support but obviously it's never gonna happen so im just finding cards that could help the arctype. All I want is a amorthus persona searcher, and no planet pathfinder is not one of it

The only support I can think of it could be a couple of Link Monster (Amorphage Link 1, Link 2 and maybe link 3 all pointing Down). A new Field Speel that searches on activation with a similar effect like Dragonic Diagram. Even with that, it still hard to play it soe yea, good luck hoping that

This is the first time I ever heard of amorphage

So Goliath has the exact same issue as Kirin, a great pendulum boss monster that was purposely neutered by having its own archetype be unable to reliably summon it, even down to it actually being better splashed in other decks. So, along with early Ice Barriers, I'm curious if there are any other archetypes that get shafted this way

i always wanted to play this deck but as you explained it didnt mesh while with its own damn cards. i would love a re-train of the entire archtype.

terrible scale's and the link monster's killed this deck.

the funny thing is the whole archetype is searchable sky iris or skullcrobat into revolution dragon into lv 8 or lower pendulum dragon

hey any advice on what decks to use on master duels

Time to pick this card up

Can you do pure Subterror next? It would actually be very interesting hearing how Subterror evolved from a terrible deck to meta by adjusting how it was played.

Yeah, we all thought a Flood Gate archetype would be amazing, but for all the reason you mentioned, it flopped super hard. If it wasn't for the maintenance cost, I think the deck would be decent. Maybe you can do Graydle. It's another archetype the community got excited about because it was the "Snatch Steal" archetype. But it ended up sucking too.

Top 10 Worst classic cards 7: Ancient Sanctuary, or Top 10 Worst Warrior type monsters For the non top 10 list: The Unknown side of Yu-Gi-Oh: Beasts of the Colliseum featuring Gladiator Beasts

I’m surprised you’re not talking about Earthbound immortal yet.

Amorphactor Pain actually does see play in a gimmicky Drytron deck paired with Terminal World to skip your opponent's turn

Only way for the amorphage to work is combine it as a hybrid with another archetype or just combine it with a small package of dogmatika cards.

I remember when these were announced. Around my locals people acted like they were the strongest stuff ever and would conquer the meta. And then they were absolutely useless filth.

Sloth/Goliath is pretty strong in Ninjas with Super Transformation lol

IMO amorphages aren't that bad...in the context of MR3 when you can pendulum summon as much as you want from the ED. The problem is, and is frankly the case with 90% of the pendulum archetypes released pre MR4, that they rely on the sole mechanic of tribute/destroy your own cards and bring them back. For what they were at the time, they were balanced. Yes you have bonkers floodgates but in order rto maintain them you have steep costs. But when you take away the ability to pendulum summon as much as you want, the the deck kind of just dies. And it's not the only deck that was like this. Ignights, Magispectors, performapal pendulum, Metalfoes, Qli, zefra, and amorphages all kind of died immediately upon rule change, and if they became playable at all depended on future support working around the new limitations. Basically, without new stuff to make them payable, the only coherant pendulum deck was THE pendulum deck, the pendulum magician good stuff deck. Every other deck that actually cared about pendulum summoning (as opposed to just having pendulum monsters like lunalights and D/D/D) got killed by the fact you couldn't freely pendulum summon from the extra deck, because they were so poorly future proofed for the next immediate rule change that the only thing that most pendulum decks did at the time was now something they could not do easily. It took specifically made link monster training wheels to have individual pend decks again

It would've been way better if they were "soft" floodgates, only restricting you to 2 cards you can add from the deck to your hand or 2 monster that can be summoned from the extra deck each turn. This would've made them way more interactable, easier to work around, gives them the chance to receive support and build up a medium board without negates to have a good back and forth with way easier upkeep and a few new guidelines to play by

I think the only other playable card was sloth as a tech in for going first in other pendulum decks. To attempt to stop your opponent from ever going off. But it wasn't a popular choice, but I did see it.

Hieratic love to be tributed and they're Dragon too but the ED lock makes them hesitant to get along with Amorphage.

I am not a ygo player, I just love collecting the cards. I remember when I opened shining victories packs and saw these cards I felt so bad when they had a cool thing going for them with a bad execution

When I played Amorphage I would play Void Expansion to have a regular flow of tokens for tribute

Gosh, the bots are really everywhere.

I love the amorphage archetype. I actually use an amorphage deck in master duel lol

Igknights are giga chads favorite deck though 🗿

Mr. Logs I’d love to see a video on why “Dream Mirror” failed.

They really made a Pendulum deck that's bad at everything that made the Pendulum mechanic strong to begin with

With the changes to the pendulum mechanic, Amorphages were murdered.

Currently using Pain in Megalith. Cant search it for heck sometimes, even with impcantations. But still funny

Man, imagine making a card that just changes Amorphages' pendulum scales to 1 and 9 respectively. While also making you able to tribute a card your opponent controls for the cost. And making the pendulum cards indestructible.

So sad this archetype didn't end up being good. The theme is a really cool idea being a nice spiritual successor to Evilswarm and the artworks are really cool.

Bro had to make this video after getting floodgated by this archetype 💀

You gotta do elementsaber next. Only one monster in the deck does anything and the field spell has the most unnecessary restriction ever

See, fixing them wouldn't be too terribly difficult. 4 link monsters. Their effects can be, for the most part, whatever you want with 1 caveat; They all have the following effect: 'While you control this face up card, all monsters you control/in your extra deck are treated as 'Amorphage' monsters.' For flavor, name them after the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. We've already got the sins.

No way @duellogs made a top tier NFL reference 😂

The worst part about the deck is that, to make it at least playable, the only requirements would be to set the levels and scales to work properly and flip the effects so the archetypal extra deck lock is the pendulum effect and the effect with an upkeep cost are the monster effects.

These actually belong to a story involving Dracoslayers, Dracoverlords, Igknights, Majespecters and Dinomists fyi

My first card i ever got was an amorphage monster lol

I hated this archetype ever since I matched up to it with my D Hero Plasma deck. We ended up in a very long game and I ended up losing the duel, time and my sanity. I won the match but man, I was so mad abiut that 28 minute duel

I fell for it. A friend insisted I made deck got all the cards and then I was like why is this terrible 😢