Generation Fish, Banisharks - Failed Cards and Mechanics 

Wingtortoise is exactly what Charizard and Blastoise would look like if they fused together

Is funny that this playstyle is actually really well implemented in Weather Painters of all things, they banish theirselves at quick effect speed to activate a bunch of useful effects, dodging interaction and coming back, one of my favorite archetypes.

For future reference: Ghoti is actually pronounced “fish.” It’s an English language meme based on how we pronounce the same letters or pairs of letters various ways. -GH from rough -O from women -TI from nation = FISH The fact Konami made an archetype based on a linguistics meme that most people are gonna mispronounce is hilarious 🤣

It's a crime that decks that focus on having a trap card called "Oh F!sh!" aren't viable.

When Generation Force was released it was such a joy to have a gimmick like this but when I saw Underworld Egg Clutch my initial thought was: "Why is this not a continuous trap?"

This set of cards is one of the most frustrating times Konami made a cool concept & then just left it to die. Airorca was a seriously great card, just nothing else connected to it was worth playing. Wing tortoise missing timing still annoys me

So you know how Umi is the single most supported field spell in the game, and Pyro monsters have been on this channel called the weakest monster type? I think it would be fun if there was a FIRE equivalent for Umi that works for Pyro and other FIRE related monsters (Maybe Pyro, Rock and thunder, like a raging volcanic eruption)…. Ideas on how to make that work?

It's kinda funny you're talking about this series of cards, when Ghoti is a pretty strong brand new archetype of Fish that self-banish and bring themselves back, and also focus on extra deck spam. (though Ghoti do Synchros instead of Generation Fish's XYZ)

It's weird to me how different Aero Shark's effect is from the anime version, which inflicted 400 points of damage for every card in the opponent's hand. I guess they felt it's anime effect was too strong? I still love OH F!SH!'s name. No clue if that's a direct translation, but someone on the localization team knew exactly what they were doing.

Forgotten temple of the deep is not the first use of the "diving = banish" thing, it was an anime thing with the Legendary Fisherman, he was basically gone from the game, inside Umi until he attacked, I can't remember if other fishes did the same during those episodes, but this was a thing

I feel like Ghoti could've been a contender if it wasn't released around the same time as 3 absolutely crazy archetypes.

it may be cope because I love these fish, but ghoti feels like it is mainly a onecard starter away from being rogue playable. the deck can set up quick effect raigeki through white aura whale and quick effect deep beyond to banish the whole field quite easily with their new support (especially zep is a standout here, as it allows plays through dark ruler no more), but needing at least some kind of 2 card combo makes the deck clunky, and locking you into only making fish synchros means that the deck is harsh accidental casualty of the halq and fishborg blaster bans respectively (both because they are accessible monsters that allow you to go into other, more generic quick synchro tuners like formula synchron easily without running into any of the water locks so common in many fish extenders). tl;dr: cards that ghoti specifically needs/wants: - a water typed quick synchro tuner with 2 stars that can go into non-fish (even if it can only synch into water monsters, that still opens up a lot of flex) - better fish synchros (preferably negates) - anything searchable off of beatunaful princess or a ghoti-searcher that is a one card arionpos (because that is essentially then the whole setup in one accessible card)

I never realized THAT'S why Aeroshark had a different effect from the anime iirc, aeroshark in the anime did 400 damage for every card in the opponent's hand (I might be wrong on the exact amount)

Could you cover the Sphinx cards? Andro Sphinx, Sphinx Teleia, Theinen the Great Sphinx, and Pyramid of Light are really cool but I think definitely fall under failed archetypes.

Maybe if the archetype used the self banish but also had the added benefit that cards your opponent controls or in their hand are banished with them temporarily based on what card type it is. Monsters can banish monsters, spells spells, traps traps which is then complimented by on banishment effects. Maybe even copy tears by creating an ed summoning effect out of it which can maybe even include monsters spells or traps that you banished from yourself or opponent. Overlay in banishment into an xys with 1 archetype monster banished and 1 trap your opponent has banished. Then, similar to redoer, they have unique effects based on card type material, and banish cards they detach which then triggers on banishment effects of the archetype

Hearing you talk about wingtortoise made me think about a "top 10 cards that would be broken if they didn't miss timing" video

Feels more like a *underdeveloped* series than a failed one. Seriously, look at the size of that card pool.

Duel logs: You forgot Fish Depth Charge and Deepsea Bottomless Trench, which have similar "banish as cost/activation" effects, and trench was way more recent than the last piece of support. Maybe they're not explicitly "Gen Fish" cards, but they are listed on the wiki and they are also comparably named, similar effect cards.

This series is so frustrating because none of the support seems to understand what the deck's monsters actually do (banish themselves and return). All the support does stuff like retrieve or shuffle back your banished monsters, actively disrupting your own turn-to-turn field presence. Fish and Kicks in particular feels like it just wasn't designed with any understanding of how the deck was meant to function; you can seldom even meet its activation condition!

Neat analysis video! Thanks for uploading!

I always felt, that most failed arch-types and vast series of like-cards, are better used in slowly teaching new players - mechanics and strategies, without getting too complex or complicated.

Never heard of these guys before but with a name like banisharks who could resist clicking

Can you do a top 10 for cards that steal your opponent's monster

Ghoti- "it's free real estate." It failed in the past but ghoti gives them a chance now

As a kid I loved forgotten temple of the deep. Being able to have a monster dodge literally anything was great. And being a continuous trap I could do it every turn. Fish Rain probably should’ve been a continuous trap to go with it. But it’s got other problems to handle

I love this series. In addition to the wonderful breakdown of what the cards/mechanics do and why they didn't work, they give me inspiration for custom cards to make for game design practice. As for what I'd do, I think I'd give the Generation Fish an ability that activates when they banish themselves and one that activates when they return to the field. Since I like to keep the initial flavor of cards, I might do something like change Flyfang so that it reduces the ATK of a monster when it's banished by its effect (as if it's taking one last bite before diving), and then giving it 500 ATK the turn it returns to the field. It would still be slow, and it would still not be good, but it would have a fringe use case with better support.

I played a lot of yugioh in this era and I've seriously never even seen any of these cards except sea Lancer in Lancer frogs. You dig up some obscure cards my man. Love the vids.

One really weird thing about wingtortoise is that not being able to activate its effect twice off the same banish is actually not caused by the "when", but is really a specificity of the card. In comparison, egg clutch and fish rain, which have the exact same activation condition, *can* be activated multiple times off the same banish.

I did know about Generation Fish (well, not that specific name, but I did know there was a bunch of Fish/Aqua/Sea Serpent banish stuff meant to work together), and even then I never realized Leviair was meant to be a part of that theme

I had no idea this archtype existed except the 3 water types. Could you also make a video about the nordic archtype? I think that archtype also qualifies as a failed cards and mechanics, especially with the nordic gods Odin and Thor.

Submersible Carrier Aero Shark wasn't even a support for them initially. In the anime it burned for every card in hand instead of banished cards. As to why they decided to change it, no one knows.

This is weirdly one of the most iconic decks of early Xyz era for me. Yeah, I always think of the big decks like Wind-Ups first, but Banisharks are right alongside them as a deck I always found neat. Maybe it's the "weird" name of Generation Fish/Banisharks that makes them stand out.

I feel like the Metaphys cards also come up as a "banish for cost/activation" archetype.

This video was awesome. I never heard of these cards before lol. It’s a cool idea I wish they would’ve made decent cards for the arc type

Aeroshark was actually an anime card used by the titular Reginald "Shark" Kastle and so is Big Jaws. I think what happened is you confused some of those cards with being a part of Generation Fish due to the overlap with banish being in the card text.

Tbh Ghoti is more of a somewhat generic Water pile support than a standalone archtype. I can't really say if they are good enough (since I'm a MD only pleb), but it seems like a good consistency boost and additional endboard choices.

This is one of the decks that I to this day will STILL try to make work, I love my sylvans, ignights and ghostricks, but banish sharks just always made me feel cool!

Aero Shark was a lot better in the anime (surprise surprise). In the anime, it dealt more damage, also, it dealt damage for each card in your hand. Granted, its still not very good, but its way better and could possibly go in a gimmicky burn deck.

Amogus, Also, I would like a failed mechanics of Crystal Beasts

Every time another failed mechanic video comes out it gives me ideas for casual play haha

First time i dont know the cards youre talking about. İnteresting

if the spell and traps always let special summon fishes from the banished zone as adittional effect and the fishes had generic fish,sea serpent and aqua support effects if they are summoned it wouldnt just fit the ideia of the archtype but give it a great boost in power, although i think it would be fair to lock to those 3 type of monsters when using spells and traps because their spammability would be already too great and allowing for generic extra deck monsters to be used, maybe would be too powerfull. I also think that a boss monster that could banish itself as quick effect and return at the end phase would be more fitting for the archtype.

There was very little recursion for these banished cards, but Shiranui worked pretty well off the concept of banishing for good effects

It’s funny because Skystarray was actually viable in Duel Links for a while when paired with Marik’s Payback skill. It was a fun gimmick for a while

Fun fact: Ghoti is a linguistics joke which is actually pronounced "fish"

This is one of my all time favourite decks and I wish it had been designed better. I love using Skystarray to poke and then putting up some Wingtortoise and other level 3 monsters like Shark Stickers to XYZ summon or to use as fodder for Scrubbed Raid. I think there was real potential here in the monsters, Wingtortoise in particular.

banisharks were a cool concept, but sadly even revised with the Ghoti, wasn't so hot. but certainly is still fun to play around with in a more casual format.

A common theme of how an archetype/mechanic fail consists of - Clunkiness to use (requiring monster in banished zone when they banish themselves during battle phase) - Mediocre payoff (the special summon is nice but doesn't extend the play due to you losing out a monster from field anyway, the burn is laughable for most part) - Incohesive in-archetype synergy (monster banish themselves and come back later, but then you need to use those monster that would return as a cost) - Lack of powerful endboard/boss I think a "banish itself and come back later" effect can work, even as a rogue strategy. But it needs to be tagged with good payoff and coherent structure. It lends itself well to a grind game where you are dodging destruction effect (which means you kind of want it on a spell speed 2). A good example to reference is the weather painter. If we reference the above list - Not as clunky as the gameplan is simple to set up continue spell/trap that are searchable within the archetype - Individual payoff may not be huge but given you can do it multiple times a turn (provided you have the monster to banish themselves), and a lot of the effect help you to just search for consistency - Style of gameplay lend very well in terms of accumulating advantage overtime, while also conserving resources through the weather and monster effect - While not game-breaking, the spell/trap provide some decent interruption and the link 3 is quite good as well Even then it isn't a meta deck right now, but at least it has enough synergy to hold its own on casual play. The generation fish is just all-over the place for what it wants and the best card in it is better outside of its own archetype for some reason

Because of Ghoti, all of the Generation Fish can be used now.

Skystray actually saw some play in really early DL in weevil burn decks with Temple of the Minds Eye, super obnoxious back then

I didnt even know most of these existed. I think this is around the time I took an extended break from the TCG.

Well the sky ray can be used with the field spell temple of the mind eye for attacks and a bunch of staples can be usefull.

I use Oh F!sh! in a fish decks in Duel Links. With cards like Beautunaful, D. Fissure and discard traps like Karma Cut. It's not bad and does come up often enough.

No matter what people say about ghoti, it is easily the archetype with the best art

I think they could do with a banish trap, similar to hand traps, such as a monster that puts itself into the grave from banish to do stuff that normal hand traps do. To make them a bit balanced you wouldn't give them a way to banish themselves, meaning the deck would need to be able to run them in some way to prevent them from just becoming generic one ofs, which makes the game more fun in my opinion

Oh fish is actually an awesome tech card. I used it in duel links often with beautunafish in my shark deck.

For tagging out there’s also the Fortune Lady field spell which was kinda fun for a bit

Ahhhh I remember skystarray. When I got back into ygo I built a deck based around banishment. Skystarray was a part of it and I used it with soul absorption. Had also the usual pomu for a banish deck, macro, d.prison, necroface, etc. Deck is bad but seeing skystarray brought back memories. Also, this video is the first I heard of the Ghoti archetype and I see what you did there Konami. You cleaver pomu

Back in the day, i have made a good use of Rescue rabbit and leviair Rr > banish to Sp 2 level 3s from deck > Xyz summin leviair > bring back Rr with leviair's effect > banish to sp more normal monsters to xyz again

I have thought of an archetype that uses aqua monsters that can banish your opponent monsters or your monsters and when banished,the main deck monsters give you tokens to summon the link monsters. Example Pearlholder sea urchin Water. Aqua. Level 3. 1600/1400 Eff: While this card is banished you can special summon it. If this card is banished, special summon 3 "pearlholder" tokens(water/aqua/level 2/800/800).

Oh, hey. I just learned about these in Hardleg's N/R Fish duels.

You need strong 'enter the battlefield' type effects, cards which trigger off of cards being unbanished, and it wouldn't hurt for a few effects which function off of how many cards you have banished. Maybe throw in a few extremely powerful board wipes as well that require a specific monster to be banished (since your own monsters could dodge via banish).

Being able to bring them out from banish at the time you choose might be good. But i can see that breaking the game if someone were to change an op cards type to fish/sea serpent

This archetype was one of the first to come out in duel links and was tempting to play with hammer shark decks. Beautunaful Princess banished itself to summon a fish from deck (usually hammer shark), and that effect was powerful enough to want to use other cards to get it back. Unfortunately, duel links only ever got one Beautunaful Princess (mako level up reward), making these cards not viable to use with that deck either :/

This archetype was a lot of fun to play (especially when using Sky Star Ray top just keep poking the opponent). What if ther monsters actually replaced themselves when banished with another one from the deck, and then came back on the next turn?

No comment on the Banisharks since I didn't come back into Yugioh until well over a year later, but this is the first time I've looked at any of the Ghoti archetype cards and they look sick. Might have to build them

I once used skystarray in a really obnoxious gimmick deck that would completely lock down the opponent and slowly poke them to death with direct attacks. I forget how it worked exactly but multiple people cussed me out online when I played it.

Who else uses this series of monsters together with "Ghoti" archetype?

So is that the point of all those spells and traps that required banished sea monsters? I always thought those were to synergy with some of the cards that Nasch/Shark used in the Zexal anime, even using the Different Dimension Deepsea Trench spell. Also: that is the "archetype" Leviar comes from. Joined the Catastor group of awesome cards coming from underwhelming archetypes.

The Generation Fish walked so that Ghoti can run

I don't know about this mechanic, but I believe a lot of cards that aren't played nowadays could get a revival if the semi-limited and limited lists in TCG, OCG and Master Duel were like in Duel Links. A lot of different decks would be created if the staples were super limited like in the mobile game.

would these cards work in a gren maju deck since you want to banish cards anyways or not really?

This is the second time in the past two weeks in which I discover a custom card archetype I made already existed.

how about you do the flip effect mosnters or the scorpio thiefs?

can you do a video explaining the bamboo cards please

Whoever translated / named these cards as "Ghoti" is an absolte meme lord and deserves 10 internet points.

Aero shark has good effect in anime though, but sadly didn't have any interaction with other strategies used in fish or water deck

I use Leviair in my Phantom Knights/Adventure deck just as an extra option, won me a couple games before

Wingtortoise being an If that can only have one proc per banish would help, and then having the rest be Quick Effect banishes would probably have made them viable. Though Air Orca with a Quick may have been a tad silly on release.

I remember trying to make this even slightly decent back in the day, and just going, "Okay, I've banished my cards! Now what." I think the best I settled on was a stall strategy utilizing Soul Absorption, with Earthbound Immortal Chacu Challhua as the boss monster. It was kind of sad.

I like to think that this archetype was the prototype for Ghoti

Aero Shark should have kept his original anime effect, dealing 400 damage for every card in your hand, at best a 1600 on burn damage, more useful.

Barians: "you fishes walked so I could run"

When you mentioned a card that was centered around banishing from the field and coming back later, I was sure you would mention The Weather.

As someone who tried making this deck work in duel links, and failed even with the lower power level, I can give some insight on how to make the deck better. -Focus more on the "banish" side of the strategy. The fact that the best way to banish fish/sea serpents/aquas is beautunaful princess' self-banish, running macro cosmos, or using gold sarc to banish a monster from deck is depressing.. The easiest way to accomplish this is to make support kinda like what they did with the deepsea diva support, or ghoti archetype. Maybe make a way to search beautunaful, add support based off it, and actually try and make it more combo oriented. Another way to accomplish this would be to make them like floowandereze monsters; make it so they can only be banished upon being removed from the field. Or, y'know, make a snake rain equivalent that banishes 4 fish/ss/aquas from deck. -Make a better payoff than airorca, fish & kicks, and oh f!sh. Even then, the deck wasn't able to really stand on its own simply due to the fact that the payoffs were kinda mediocre. Adding extra deck monsters that, for instance, had an effect to banish themselves for a turn in order to negate, destroy, or banish cards would have made the deck so much better. -Make better combo tools to prevent their turns from being "normal summon airorca, set 3 traps, pass" in order to give them options. Even if they were to limit you to summoning fish/ss/aqua monsters for the turn, it would at least let them play the game. Heck, they could even just consolidate the entire banish shark and shark archetype into one deck and it would be so much better! If they did any 2 of these 3 things, the deck would feel so much better. If they make it more self-banish focused and helped it swarm the field, it would probably work well with existing water support. If they make actual boss monsters and made them self-banish reliant, they would be able to use the existing shark/water support in order to help build a board, and they could easily run a control package (for example, paleozoics, kragen + gozen, etc). If they made them a better payoff and gave them combos, they could completely scrap the idea of banishing their own cards, effectively reworking the deck like they did with vampires. As it stands, the deck is a tragedy, but I feel like if they tried, they can easily make them playable.

These videos make me want to see a "Low Tier Tournament" using only card sets and archetypes that never got much play

HOW DID YOU NOT MENTION THAT SKYSTAR RAY SAW PLAY IN DUEL LINKS IN THE EARLY DAYS WITH TEMPLE OF THE MIND’S EYE + LAVA GOLEM IN STALL DECKS

I use leviar in my eyes restrict deck so I can recur some of the resources I used for reliquished fusion

This kinda feels like a spiritual successor of Legacy of the Worthless... I have to say, tough, Ghoti is pretty good. It's just that Tearalaments and Splights are WAY too broken for anything else to realistically compete.

Can you do a top 10 Unlimited cards from Goat? (Considering how they did in GOAT)

I'm a big fish guy, but never used these guys. I was always more into adding extra options to my current fishies, and these didn't play well with older cards. I did have fun with Sea Lancer in what I called my "Jawsman deck". It used water beasts and beast warriors with Horn of the Phantom Beast. Sea Lancer teamed up well with Fenrir.

I seriously never noticed that Oh Fish! is actually the original Trap Hole artwork with Flyfang photobombing it. That's hilarious.

I play a few of these cards in my ocean deck for yugioh master Duels

I played fish sea serpent aqua with macro cosmos and dimensional fissure because mermail was unattainable as a kid. Sucked that the banlist hit both and diva in one banlist destroying my decks biggest threats.

I know they aren't really mechanics... but it would be interesting to see this series expand into archtypes that failed or didn't survive in the various metas they were in (Perhaps starting with Gravekeepers since it was the first ever archtype printed and also the first to fail)

I might be high on copium, but if Konami gives more opportunities to Ghoti, for sure they can be great. Although they're not the best they for sure have such fun builds to tinker with.

I loved how goofy Oh F!sh! is

How about spell/trap removal that's worse than MST for this or the unknown side series? Anti Spell, Anti Trap, Dust Tornado, Twister etc. Lots of cards people haven't used since MST was unlimited.

I think it would be interesting to see you go over the state of the fusion mechanic in the first couple years of the game, pre GX, as I would say it was a pretty bad mechanic back then

Wow, I thought that was just a large coincidence