Venom Counters - Failed Cards and Mechanics in YuGiOh 

Venom counters feels less "failed mechanics" and more like "unfinished and left forgotten"

Just like with union monsters, this feels like a concept that they can fix pretty easily

Venom Burn, also called "Just use wave motion cannon." As the only player to actually bring Vennominaga to a TCG event and get featured (Shonen Jump Chicago in 2007), let me tell you that the venom monsters got dropped out of the deck pretty much instantly. It was indeed more effective to turbo out Vennominion and Vennominaga using the fact that Vennominion is one of the easiest mid-boss monsters to summon in the games history, working with basically every trap card known to man like Damage Condenser and obviously Damage = Reptile. If you can find my feature match vs Anthony Alverado, you can actually see him trigger a 3500 Vennominion off a damage condensor, and instantly call his battle phase off, and waiting a turn to draw his Heavy Storm to clear an already set Rise of the Snake Diety, before using his Lightning Vortex to clear Vennominion and get the conceed from me.

If they made you unable to use monsters with venom counters for any tributes or extra deck plays unless they were Venom, these counters would suddenly be way more serious of a gimmick than they are.

It'd be nice if they get new modernized field spell and some supports. Maybe make monsters unable to be tributed or used as material when they have venom counter, so you can interrupt their plays and freeze their board, then slowly kill them (like real venom).

I didn't even notice that Starving Venom and Greedy Venom are technically a part of the Venom archetype until this video, and the Venom cards are one of my favorite bad decks.

i could see an interesting way to work them into something scary. have the field spell also make the counters move to anything the monster is used to summon. since tribute, syncro, xyz, and link all require you to actually pick the monster being used its not impossible. "if a monster with a venom counter is used for a tribute, syncro, xyz, or link summon: place all of the venom counters on that monster on the monster summoned." now they just need to protect the field spell and start slinging venom counters. theres still ways around it that are common, but it would really help it out.

I shifted to using Venominaga and generic reptile support extremely quickly when I tried to make this archetype work. The GX villain who used Venoms was kinda badass though.

In the anime, Rise of the Snake Deity can trigger if a Vennominon gets destroyed by battle (which it did). Konami probably thought that was too broken. This is all your fault, Jaden.

Venom counters should have transfered to monsters that use the envenomed monsters as material. That would have been an interesting concept and mechanic.

Here’s something: They could retune the venom counters to be able to also exist on the venom cards themselves, like venom being stored in a snakes fangs for future use. These could provide buffs (extra attacks, ignoring certain cards effects during battle, burn damage after battle, basically anything that makes sense with the concept of how snake venom works) to the venom monsters with tokens on them that can be transferred onto opponents cards and turn into debuffs. The debuffs could in turn be a variety of things, based off the context of the situation. They could negate effects of chosen monsters, lock them out of attacking, make it so they take piercing battle damage when in defense position, or even affect the enemy player themselves, like bleeding their LP’s, forcing them to discard cards, stoping them from drawing new cards…

You mentioned how the "Venom" dragons are part of the archetype despite having nothing to do with it, but what you didn't mention that I find hilarious is the Manga/ Pendulum counterparts for "Starving Venom Fusion Dragon", "Starving Venemy Dragon" & "Starving Venemy Lethal Dose Dragon" both not only specifically avoid the "Venom" name, but they're also the ones who actually have a counter placing effect that causes monsters to lose ATK per counter present, and their counters are called "Venemy counters". So the 2 dragons that come closest to actually having shared effects with the reptiles are also the ones that are specifically made to not be "Venom" monsters, and they doubled down by distinguishing the 2 types of counters because Pendulum Dragon - Venom Burn is such a scary deck prospect I guess.

I feel like with a proper combination of updated “venom” support, and a Ogdoadic engine, this could actually be a fun deck to play

Vennominaga is one of my favorite cards. I hope one day we can see some new support/retrains for these cards. Maybe have some way to let venom counters last for longer, like having the counters transfer through materials or locking a monster on the field, unable to be used as tribute material.

If there was a card that could put 2 Venom counters on any monster that was summoned, while you control Venom Swamp, it would probably make the archetype viable. As getting just 1 would make your opponent unable to keep some monsters around long enough to use them beyond being summoned.

Man i remember when i played this competitively in...2008 on the DS lol. Burden of the mighty and the venom stall cards made it so easy to go into their boss monster. Shame they are so easily countered now

If Venoms were played by a character actually important like Yubel and not some forgettable villain that only appeared in a couple episodes they’d have support up to this year. 😢

Actually there’s one thing wrong about what you said. Even if Venom Swamp is removed/flipped face down, the counters do not go away. The effect is stopped, but if you manage to bring out a second Venom Swamp after your first is destroyed, the counters are retained.

The most tragic part was when rise of the snake deity was originally printed, it *did* trigger when venominon was destroyed by battle, too, but I guess that was too powerful so the errata’d it almost immediately

This is peak GT era card design: they put a lot of thought into what could be a flashy duel in a controlled environment (ie, a scripted episode) and put little thought into how it would actually play. It has everything: a "spooky" field spell, a "tense" inescapable mechanic, a mid-boss monster that is a bait and switch for the REAL boss monster. It has it all. Of course, none of this works in real duels, just like Neos, Yubel, the Sacred Beasts, etc, etc, etc.

I think we all would love to see really broken support to some of these failed mechanics (not archetypes with these mechanics, but something more general). I think it would be historic for the game to see for the first time a meta where "Venom counter burn", "Union monster swarm", "/Assault mode control" and "Gemini OTK" are the rule

A wild concept for venom counters would be to make all venom cards (that stay on the field) give effects to venom counters.

Venom is such a cool archetype concept, though, and I would really love to see a return to this. Maybe just give individual monsters different effects that used venom counters, and maybe make it so that venom counters are transferred if your opponent uses it as Fusion/Synchro/Xyz/Link Material.

They could probably revitalize the archetype by releasing a new field spell that makes venom counters lower attack by 1000 and destroys any monsters on the field with 0 attack. Probably give it a once per turn can't be destroyed effect. Then release better deck monsters with venom interactions and the ability to place tokens when removed from the field. Could easily have a boss monster that gains 1000 attack per counter and can't be tributed or destroyed by monster effect.

As Rata himself pointed out in Legacy of the Worthless, Venom as an archetype is something that has the potential to go somewhere, since "It's Free Real Estate". Reptiles still have practically no real support after nearly 25 years, which makes them having such massive boss monsters like Reptilliane Vaskii, Evil Dragon Ananta, Ogdoabyss, and Cornelius himself, Divine Serpent Geh, all the puzzling, and the counter mechanic remains a half-baked idea that people don't run due to them usually being slow in a game all about speed (it's funny that Reptiles have two archetypes around counters with Venom as well as Aliens). The card "Snake Rain" is clearly intended to flood the GY with Reptiles with the intent of bulking up the two Venom bosses ATK and DEF, which is the idea behind using the card. But, there's still a few missing ingredients. However, given that Venoms were only used in *one* duel in GX by Thelonius Viper and Viper himself was immediately killed off the instant he lost, that effectively slammed the door on Venoms getting future support since... well, you can't exactly mill ideas off a dead guy who only dueled once and spent the first 12-13 episodes of a season lurking around the background and got owned by an alien arm, now? Even so, the fact that Venoms suffered from being trapped with an extremely unpopular type (Reptiles) and a gimmick mechanic (counters... I mean, if the magicians of Endymon can't make counters cool, who will?) likely means Konami won't revisit them.

I think an interesting failed card mechanics to talk about would be Spirit Monsters, since a majority of them are not good and the speed of the game making the normal summon more and more valuable inadvertedly makes them weaker, since there are only a handful of good spirit monsters among the years of not good ones. I think looking at flip monsters in this series would be interesting, but I wouldnt say they're as failed a mechanic as spirit monsters. Also, I think an interesting Top 10 to do would be top 10 archetype specific fusion cards, so looking at stuff like thunder dragon fusion, odd-eyes fusion, miracle fusion, and even other non spell card ones like darklord uprising or dinorphia domain/frenzy.

I used a reptilianne/venom deck way back in the day. I hope they bring more support for those archetypes would be a real change of pace.

Counter decks, in general, suck because they're not capable of being created properly due to lack of beneficial support. Predaplant Dragostapelia is actually a really good example of how they should create cards that use counters. If counters are immediately useful, you can take advantage of them quicker, and that mitigates you losing out on your opportunity to use your counters because your opponent got rid of your card.

My favorite deck! I wish we could ever get a viable alt win condition, it's really where we just lose to MTG, They're allowed to get so wacky compared to us

i dont think the dark dragon fusions where ment to be "venom" archtype. but honestly their so seperate that it doesnt matter unlike "frog the jam" theres no way to mesh them together w/out downsides

Honestly, if Venoms got an actual wave of support that recontextualized how Venom Counters effected things as well as letting the field spell add Venom counters when maybe, I don't know, sending Reptiles from the deck to the graveyard?

I really love the venom archtype, wish they would get a LOT more support, as the venom counter thing is such a fun gimmich

Oh yeah, I keep forgetting Venominaga is part of an archetype. Honestly, they should retrain the archetype to be centered around bringing her more easily instead of the attack reduction gimmick.

To be fair venom counters came out in a time where people would still tribute for things like summoned skull or dark magician and when special summons werent out of control i remember when venom counters came out and they were way more powerful when the game was slower

do you plan to have any fan duel (either your fan dueling and you do live commentary or you duel a fan) for your youtube streams ?

I think another reason Konami put the "This card cannot attack the turn it activated it effect" clause on their venom snake is because of lore/real world references, somewhere I heard that venomous snakes like viper, cobra, boa, mamba and ... Don't snap at their prey when they are poisoning them. Because of how cold blooded they are they first ambush the target and weaken them enough before finally attacking and presumably swallowing them a whole. Now I don't have any definitive proof of this being the reason why Konami made some of the Venom monsters not attack after poisoning a monster. But it weirdly has some sort of connection. Ohh and also GX era was a time when Konami was mostly doing things because "LORE" like "Worm" monsters or "Ally of Justice" archetype.

If they gave more venom monsters effects that applied to venom counters, like aliens have, alongside more spells to place them, give effects, and use them up for effects like venom burn does while also giving monsters with beefier stats to at least survive while they're on the field then it could lead to a very strong gimmick. They'll never do it but it's nice to hope for

From the mechanics, I think their idea was for this archetype to just be a counter for stall decks, but they greatly overestimated how powerful it would be so they reeled it back hard. Errata venom swamp to work on both atk and Def, and make it so the monsters get trapped and it would be a serious threat

The Venom archtype is the one i wish could get alot of support due to how cool the artwork is and how interesting the venom counter strat would be if it was workable

rise of the snake deity can miss timing. which is important in making it even worse

I'd honestly love to hear about some unique mechanics that became successful, also keep up the great work love your vids

This is my greatest qualms with yugioh. The Venom archetype was a favorite of mine. I was devastated that they got virtually no support.

I feel like all Venom would need is a retrain of Venom Swamp that had the following 2 effects added to it: 1. If this card is sent to the Graveyard, you can send one card from your hand to the Graveyard in order to place this card in your Field Spell Zone. 2. Monsters with Venom Counters on them cannot be tributed or be used as materials for a Link Summon. These two effects actually make Venoms a pretty seriously powerful Stall/Stun deck. With the ability to always keep Venom Swamp on the field, you never have to worry about your Venom Counters suddenly becoming useless, and this would also make basically any monster that isn't immediately linked away dead in the water for your opponent. If they then made another Venom boss monster that had a Quick Effect to remove a Venom Counter from anywhere on the field in order to negate a monster effect, I think Venoms could be seriously competitive.

In a sense, Venom Swamp should have also included an end turn 500 damage burn to both players unless they controlled a Venom Monster.

Loved venom counters as a concept and always hoped they'd give it some love lol. I am enjoying watching your vids helping me learn new cards in my continuing effort for a 0 turn kill deck lol

It's sad that venom's have one of the most stupidly overpowered boss monsters in the entirety of the game, so good that you can still bring it back after being kaiju'd pretty easily, but her archtype is holding her back.

3:15 Fatal Fog of Venom Swamp Continuous Spell When a monster is Summoned, place a Venom Counter on it; if you control other “Venom” cards, you can place an additional Venom Counter on a Monster for each card type (Monster, Spell, Trap) among them. If “Venom Swamp” is on a Field Zone, this card cannot be destroyed.

I just came up with a little cheat for the deity: use a card that ignores summoning conditions to summon it, and have another card out that prevents said cards negative effects from removing the deity from the field. So use A Wild Monster Appears to force it out, and either have a card that forces cards to not be able to be shuffled back into the deck or flip it face down. That should by bypass AWMA’s effect to return the card it summons back into the deck and keep venominaga out indefinitely.

I have been waiting for this video! I developed Venom Counter support before. Venom Counters in the hand.

Honestly venoms have excellent backrow support given its time period, so excellent that those cards are subpar at worst if we account modern standards, because there are way worse cards that got printed way later the introduction of these backrow support, it's a shame that the normal summonable Venom monsters were so OUTRAGEOUSLY BAD

i love this archetype and i alway try to make a semi-functional version of it whenever reptile support comes out. or if i see something that can synergies with it kinda. I'm eternally hopeful for some support to this archetype because it feels like a couple key cards away from being useable

I do have a topic to discuss that hasn't been talked about on this channel in over seven years: Spell Counters.

counters in general should need a clause like "if a monster with [x] counters leaves the field, you can place counters on face-up monsters on the field, up to the amount of counters it had." this would at least make it so venom or a or predaplant counters don't get countered by Lol just link summon

Kind of a geeky thing to bring up, but I have been messing with the idea of my OWN Yugioh Archetype, so totally a fan thing. Bringing it up because it relates to this, where you brought up how Counter decks only really work when you're placing counters on your OWN monsters, and that was my main thought too when making my idea.

I remember one of the video games had a challenge to win with Venomenaga's effect. I sank far too much time into that challenge because the requirements to summon the card and win with its hyper venom counters was so hard

Instead of these "cannot be used for ED play" ideas for venom support, I kinda want it to be a more gimmicky-meme where you have a venom monster(s) that can search a new field spell that also applies venom to all non-venom monsters on the field and lowers their attack. The field spell also searches for a continuous spell (a vial of sort) that accumulates venom counter based on the total number of venom counters added on monsters on the field. You can use half of the venom counters to inflict burn damage to opponent's LP based on the number of counters used. If the spell leaves the field, you inflict burn equal to the remaining counters left on the card and you get to search for a venom monster. A quickplay/trap card that special summon a venom monster with level equal or less than the number of venom counters on all monsters to your side of the field. More monsters that lower further the attack of envenomed monsters your opponent controls. An extra deck play where you don't use your opponent monsters with [venom] counters as material (that's overused, i think) but use their venom counters for fusion and syncho plays. (ex. number of venom counters + venom monster [or venom tuner monster for synchro] on your field or hand).

Something I thought would be interesting was if some counters placed themselves on the monster zone rather than the monster cards themselves, but only some as last thing we need is spell counters staying between monsters. For example, any monster zone that has a monster in it gets a venom counter each end phase via venom swamp, and the normal effect still applied, it'd be like if a monster was standing in the venom swamp and letting more venom sink in, making any monster that went into it effectively have the number of counters on it as the zone has. I know this premise has a potentially huge amount of flaws but I really want to love Venoms and their playstyle and so badly want them to be at least viable in average for fun duels without relying on nigh-total lockdown.

I think a small failed mechanic to talk about is NEX: that spell card Neo Spacians had that summoned "upgraded" versions of those monsters from the Extra Deck. The mechanic failed so hard it wasn't even finished: only 2 of the 6 Neo Spacians have NEX versions, and from those 2 only 1 have a Neos fusion monster that can be summoned via Contact Fusion with that NEX monster and Neos on the field

They should've made venom counter inflict lp damage.

Venom rattler 4star earth Reptile/effect 1400/300 While venom swamp is on the field your opponent cannot not set monsters face down(they may still set monsters face up) Snake hatchling 1 star dark Reptile/effect 500/500 When this face up card is destroyed, skip the next players battle phase. Except the turn this card is sent to the graveyard you can remove this card from the GY to add 1 spell/trap with venom in its name to your hand. Venom nest Continuous spell You may add 1 level 5 or lower venom monster or snake hatchling from your deck to your hand. You can only activate this effect once per turn. Except the turn this card is sent to the GY you can remove this card from the GY to add one level 5 or lower venom monster from your GY to your hand. Venom poison cloud 2 star dark 0/400 If this card is destroyed by battle while you control venom swamp destroy the monster that attacked it, and deal 500 points of damage to your opponents LP. Venom power up Continuous spell Venom monsters gain 200 atk for every venom counter on the field. As long as you control a venom monster this card cannot be destroyed by card effects.

Ways I could Fix Venom Monsters with new support(Without Retrains): -More Swarming : If Snake Rain can send 4 reptiles to the Graveyard, you can make some OP shit with Reptiles... IDK, something like ''Discard 1 Card , Special Summon 3 ''Venom'' monsters with different Levels from your deck but they (Insert Restriction here)'' You can Use all 3 Venoms and their effs, and you can summon Vennominom -More Searching: A continuous Spell that searches One Venom Card or Rise of the Snake Deity Or Both (they are reptiles... GO CRAZY) -A way of making the new monsters retain the old monsters' counters... Something like ''If your Opponent uses a Monster with a Venom counter as material for a summon, transfer those counters to that monster'' -A Link Monster? -An Easier Way to summon Vennominom or Vennominnaga and actually use their effects... You Need to inject 10 tons of Steroids if you want Venoms to be decent

Continuous Spell: Snake Pit. Effect: When a monster you or your opponent controls with venom counters is removed from the field. place those venom counters on Snake Pit. When a monster would be special summoned to either side of the field, place a venom counter (or counters?) on that monster. May or may not need to be once per turn.

i have been playing Venominaga since the old days and it pains me Konami never made the archetype actually good.

Love ur vids Man, started playing again since GX and thanks to your top 10 I'm not so lost LOL

Too bad I was so stoked when I pulled Vennominon out of a pack as he was one of my favorite monsters. I went high and low to obtain Vennominaga and loved using her. I wish they had made more to this deck.

Anytime I think of venom snakes, I remember playing against an ai in duel links who got to cheat out a venonominaga, and I managed to make a giant Chimeratech Overdragon and just attack it like 12 times till it finally died

Love this series. Please keep it going!

What if the venom counters could be placed on venom monsters and those monsters could select to put them on... selected field spots to lower the attack of anything on that spot or use venom counters to protect themselves from effects, using venom counters as protection currency?

I LOVE YOUR VIDEOS THANK YOU FOR MAKING THEM!

Imagine a Maxx C replacement that uses counters "You can send this card from your hand to the GY (Quick Effect), every time your opponent summons a monster, place an amount of derp counters on it equal to the number of monsters summoned so far during this turn. If your opponent inflicts damage to you, before damage calculation, gain LP equal to the amount of derp counters placed for the current turn so far ×1000 (even if the derp counters leave the field). Remove all derp counters from the field during the End Phase. Once per turn, while this card is in the GY (Quick Effect), you can banish this card, negate the next attack, then draw 1 card. You can only use this effect of "Maximum "D"" once per turn."

If they retrain this and don't do move the counters to the tributed/extra deck monster you can move the counters to the new venom swamp. It can protect the field spell by removing a counter then redistribute them however you want+ the original effect one per turn on everything.

Mtg's version of venom counters (poison counters) have seen competitive play and is still a legit strat in eternal formats. Sad we didn't get new venom support.

I still have a Venom Deck for fun on Duel Link or Master Duel, as a side deck it feels great when you win. Would be awesome if Konami brought some support to older decks

The main reason why predator counters were good is because they do something themselves while also having cards that give them more like the effect negation. They basically shut down xyz and synchro which is somewhay impressive.

I feel like a retrain of the Field Spell should do the trick. Perhaps a combination of Venom Swamp & Magical Citadel of Endymion, since Citadel also recycles counters when cards with Spell Counters are destroyed & you can also protect it from destruction as long as there's a Spell Counter. There's a reason why Spell Counter decks are still relevant today, and Citadel is, I believe, one of them.

I'm not sure if it would be a good pick for a Failed Cards & Mechanics vid (since I don't know if they even were used competatively), but I'd love to see a video on the Ghostrick archetype. They're one of my fav archetypes in the game.

I wanted this mechanic to be good. I love the concept of the poisonous swamp slowly eating away at your enemy as they slowly succumb to the swamplands to be eaten by the vermin

Please do Top 10 cards with the wording "you can use the effect of this card once per turn" meaning you can use the effect of that card against that turn if you have another copy of it !

Two big improvements would be if venom counters either prevented your opponent from summoning from the extra deck using materials with venom counters or venom counters on materials carried over to the summoned monster. It could only not work on tribute summoned monsters, then the counters are gone.

I remember from YGO Tag Force that some guy had a Venominaga Turbo deck using some of the Meklords or something I don't recall how the AI did it but they pulled it off relatively easy even in a 2009 format

I did create a venom burn deck that relied on stalling, stumbling, vengeful bog spirit, and a mix of the cards mentioned at the end with spirit or flip monsters like stealth bird. Kind of boring to play since it is super slow and very control based. initially tried clear world instead, but that was much worse than venom swamp which says something.

This sounds like a weird topic, but I wonder if Kaijus might be a decent topic for one of these videos? Kaiju Counters, specifically. Kaijus have been popular ever since they released, but not in the way they were probably intended. Each one has effects (some of them really powerful) based around removing Kaiju Counters from their field spell, Kyoutou Waterfront. But almost nobody actually runs Kyoutou Waterfront unless they’ve got a specific gimmick build in mind with the Kaijus. Because if you don’t have any Kaiju Counters around, then the Kaijus basically don’t *have* any effects, and you can just use their summoning conditions to tribute an opponent’s unstoppable boss monster for a 2200 ATK turtle. I think we can call it a failed mechanic if it’s way more competitively viable to run the cards without the card that makes the mechanic work.

I like to imagine what a more modern and *proper* Venom support could look like... I'm sure there's ways to make it work. (Disclaimer: I'm a casual Yugioh enjoyer, bear with me.) Venom Swamp would definitely need to be replaced with something stronger, be it a different field spell or a continuous spell or whatever. It should probably apply counters a bit faster and have a way to retain or move those counters if the afflicted monster leaves the field (under conditions?). The three basic monsters wouldn't necessarily need to be replaced, kinda like how the OG Cyberdarks still managed to find a place with newer support, but there probably should still be more monsters and some special summoning and searching involved, I imagine, to accelerate these monsters onto the field. Some themed Extra Deck support could introduce an interesting angle, perhaps? And ideally, new cards should find new ways to utilize Venom Counters to either further accelerate themselves, provide protection, or disrupt the opponent beyond just losing Atk. Additionally, Vennominaga needs a consistency boost. It's still a solid boss monster when it actually hits the field by virtue of its immunities, so it's probably fair if it's at least still somewhat hard to bring out and just giving her an actually functioning archetype should go a long way already (and kindly let the new support account for the fact that Vennominon and Vennominaga aren't TECHNICALLY Venom monsters). Still, the archetype ought to have a way to set up Vennominaga's summoning condition a bit more reliably with less risk of bricking, in particular with regard to finding Rise of the Snake Deity. And finally, if they wanna get potentially spicy, make Vennominaga's Hyper Venom Counters easier to apply somehow. Could something as simple as piercing damage be enough? Either way, being able to put the opponent on the clock regardless of LP would be a pretty interesting perk, and 3 turns isn't exactly fast, so it hardly seems unreasonable.

I think one way to make the Venom counters work is for it to deal unnegatable damage when the monster that have them leave the field by the opponent's actions and/or transfer the counters to whatever monster is summoned in its place.

Venom is one of my favorite archetype, with that glorious T H I C C reptile waifu. As a FromSoftware fans, gotta love that "Venom Swamp" Field Spell, can't get enough of those goddamn swamp. Hope Venom will get new support or modernized to fit modern Meta to same level as Pendulum Endymion.

Great vid DuelLogs!

What if the venom counters could be transferred to other monsters. Like if you use a monsters with a x amount of venom counters as an extra deck material, the venom counters would transfer over.

I used to play poisonous swamp with statue with anguish pattern. High defense, 0 atk so it can store counters without being destroyed by the sawmp and also it can't be targeted by card effects. Not the best strategy but it did allow me to finish players off with poisonous burn.

A simple fix would be to give the archetype a continuous or field spell that has the effect; (This card can be targeted be the effects of your Venom monsters) Once per turn, during the standby phase, place 1 venom counter on this card. Monsters your opponent controls lose 200 Atk for each Venom counter on this card. Monsters whose ATK has become zero by this effect cannot activate their effects. If this card would leave the field, you can remove 2 venom counters instead.

And Snake Rain continues its search to find an archtype that can use it, and when it does watch out.

I remember challenges from nintendo DS YGO back then, 'summon xxx' very hard to pull off monster cards. Vennominaga is one of them.

I got so excited as a kid when I found a card that mentioned “blizzard counters”. I assumed they’d idk freeze your opponent’s boss monsters in their tracks or something. Shame they never integrated the mechanic with the lackluster ice barriers. Ice barriers are supposed to stun your opponent and OTK with their dragons but they are so bad at both stunning and summoning their bosses. I always had the pipe dream that blizzard counters would make a comeback within ice barriers to make them at least rogue.

How I would begin to fix the Venom Archetype. Change Field Spell - "Venom Swamp" "During Each Player's End Phase: Place 1 Venom Counter on each Face-Up Monster. "Venom" Monsters gain 500 ATK for Each Venom Counter on them. Monsters lose 500 ATK for Each Venom Counter on them, except "Venom" Monsters." New Continuous Trap Card - "Venom Swamp Noxious Fumes". "Monsters with 1+ Venom Counter(s) cannot be used as Material for a Fusion, XYZ, Synchro or Link Summon, except "Venom" Monsters. Monsters with 2+ Venom Counters cannot activate their activated effects, except "Venom" Monsters. Monsters with 3 Venom Counters are Destroyed, except "Venom" Monsters". New Equip Spell Card - "Spitting Venom". "Equip only to a Face-Up "Venom" Monster you control. The Equipped Monster gains 3 Venom Counters. Once per Turn you may distribute 1 Venom Counter to each Face-Up Monster on the field, up to the number of Venom Counters on the Equipped Monster." New Effect Monster Card - "Venomous Zombie Dragon" Dark - Zombie/Effect - 7 Stars - 2100 ATK - 0 DEF - "Cannot be Special Summoned, except by the Effect of a "Venom" Card. This Monster enters the Field with 2 Venom Counters on it. Once per Turn you can remove up to 7 Venom Counters on the field to activate One of the following Effects. - Inflict Damage to your Opponent equal to the number of removed Counters x300. - Special Summon 1 "Venom" Monster from your Graveyard whose Total Level Stars equals the number of removed Counters. New Monster Card - "Venomous Albino Asper" Earth - Reptile/Effect/Tuner - 3 Stars - 1000 ATK / 1000 DEF - "You can send this card from the Hand to Graveyard: Add 1 "Venom" Spell or Trap from your Graveyard or Deck to your Hand. If Special Summoned from the Graveyard by the effect of a "Venom" Monster: Place 1 Venom Counter on that Monster. If used to Synchro Summon a "Venom" Monster, place 1 Venom Counter on that Monster." New Monster Card - "Infinitely Venomous Ouroboros" Earth - Reptile/Effect - 4 Stars - ? ATK / ? DEF - "This Monster's ATK is equal to the number of Venom Counters on your side of the Field and DEF is equal to the number on your Opponent's side of the Field x400. While this card is Face-Up on the Field "Venom" Spells you control cannot be targeted by your Opponent's Card Effects."

Being fair, Venom monsters just need a good wave of support to actually be good. They have amazing tools: Swamp weakens non-Venom monsters, their back row is stuff even meta archetypes wish they had, and their boss monsters are not terrible: Vennominon can be summoned easily and Vennominaga is Towers tier with an added win effect. They also have Snake Rain. All they need is Konami looking at them and giving them some love to be at the top.

I use Venominon and Venominaga in a Reptilianne deck. While not something I would ever bring to a tournament, it's really fun to play casually since Reptiliannes have decent card advantage.

One idea would be that whenever a monster with venom counters on it is used as tribute or whatever to special summon, the special summoned monster inherits the venom counters.

I'd love if we got a venom version of Malefic Territory. Search Venom Swamp from Deck, protect Venom Swamp from card effects, and then do some third thing that would sound incredibly broken until you realize "oh wait, these are venom counters, they need all the tune up they can get", in the same way Malefic Territory *literally rewrites how malefic monsters work to remove a third of their gimmicks, then negates them during battle phase to remove another gimmick*. Maybe it negates the effects of all monsters with a venom counter (turning it into one sided, but slow, skill drain which probably wouldn't be enough) or lets you spend venom counters to special summon monsters from your deck or something.

They should have an effect on new support that if a monster is special or tribute summoned using materials that had venom counters on them, the resulting monster gets the combined number of venom counters from the materials placed on it.

As in 2023. Nov 27. Konami has released a new card called "Trap Tracks". Which once per turn can destroy 1 monster you control to set 1 normal trap from your deck to your side of the field. Then if you meet the requirements you can activate that set Trap. Running 3 "Trap Tracks" in any reptile based archetypes and 1-2 "Rise of the snake deity" can absolutely summon you this truck in no more than 1 turn. I run "Vennominaga" engine as a part of my reptilian and ogdo deck. Both of them I was managed to summon this card 4/7 with 3000 ATK +. I feel like Konami just gave support to the Venom archetype not their main Monster lineup but their boss monster. "Trap Tracks" just works too well with Vennominion and Vennominaga. I'm surprised their art isn't on the card. But having it easier to summon Vennominaga now arise(pun intended) a new issue with the boss monster. If you summon it quickly, it is going to be pretty weak. Which most decks can run over unless you get lucky. And also decks which spam monsters can indefinitely outnumber this one card. After all it's just 1 monster unaffected. I really recommend running a plan B and not just dedicate your entire deck to summoning this 1 monster.

Here's an idea for placing counters on opponents monsters en mass: Make it so whenever a monster with counters leaves the field, those counters move onto another available monster. So the only way to completely get rid of all of them is to clear your field entirely or something along those lines. Or have a continuous or Field Spell that takes all the counters of monsters who left the field and let's you redistribute them later. And maybe on that point take a page out of the Endymion Field Spell's book where said counters can be used to shield itself from destruction.