What if Rituals could be summoned from the deck? | What-if Wednesday: 

Something i actually enjoy about rituals is that their inherent flaws give them a much higher power budget to work with. Cyber angels' non OPT effects and heralds chief among them. But that also leads to problems when a deck is printed that abuses these things such as drytron

Putting Rituals on ED would invalidate a lot of modern rituals since they also have hand effects, pretty important hand effects.

Based on not just the original manga but some of the early video games, the original alt summoning mechanics were designed in a way that would be tough to translate into real life cards. Fusion was presented to be "you can fuse any two monsters to get a new monster" and I believe there are even some shots in the anime that shows the fusion monster as a "transformed" card as being one of the materials on field rather than a Fusion monster. Obviously this would not work for any game with a sufficiently large card pool so early DM games made it "you can TRY to fuse any two monsters but only specific ones will get you a Fusion monster" (like the Forbidden Memories system). And Rituals were kind of opposite of how they ended up being in paper play - you need more specific materials but the Ritual Spell tells you what the materials are and you're guaranteed to get a known monster. In both cases, they were essentially cards that didn't even exist in either the main or extra deck because neither were necessary to consider for the purposes of the manga or the video games based on it. So that's probably why the Extra Deck mechanic was conceived - to let Fusion monsters to be separate cards. I wouldn't doubt that in some early concepts there was a plan to let Ritual monsters be in the Extra Deck but they figured that they wouldn't be very mechanically distinct from Fusion monsters in that case - instead of a Polymerization and specific materials it's a specific Ritual spell and generic materials - in either case it seems like one would completely overshadow the other (though in practice it ended up being neither was particularly useful).

I always considered rituals be a counterpart to fusion summoning. The old design for fusions require two specificly named monsters and the more generic polymerization, while rituals require the specific ritual monster and its specific spell, plus any monster(s) with the correct level. In both cases you need 3 cards, two being specific and one being more generic, so its actually a perfectly fine comparison. Of course, all of this goes out the window the minute fusion materials become generic, and suddenly rituals look terrible. There's really no salvaging the core mechanic at that point, so modern ritual cards just need to generate lots of free advantage or cheat the mechanic entirely. Drytron uses attack points to ritual summon, Megaliths can ritual summon without a spell, and Gishki adds about a dozen cards to hand from the deck and graveyard for even its most basic plays. Even so, fusion decks have basically been ignoring the old concept behind their summoning mechanic for a good while as well. Tearlaments fuse using cards in grave and no spell, Predaplants fuse with their pendulum scales, and Branded can basically do anything they want and call it a fusion summon. So ritual is still left playing a distant second fiddle.

I like how Impcantations and Drytrons tackled the hand advantage problem. THe issue then became how every new ritual deck risk being balanced around those 2

Theres a few cards that let you ritual summon from your deck. 1. Turning of the World 2. High Ritual Art 3. Megalith Unformed 4. Megalith Phul - also seeing those "heavily played" cards hurts my soul

There's a lot of things that can be used to make rituals better, my favorite being a ritual pendulum archetype, they made one card out of the coolest combination of mechanics and I would love to see an entire archetype around it.

I was thinking about early Yugioh design the other day and I ended up thinking "wait, why were Rituals bad? Shouldn't they have been really good?", it took me an embarrassingly long time to remember that Ritual mons needed to be run in the main deck and summoned from the hand, instead of summoned from the extra deck. In theory though not needing to ever draw the ritual mon would have made it much better for card economy, being a 2 for 1 similar to synchos/xyz rather than a 3 for 1 like fusions. But yeah we're long past that at this point, now that it's clear to the designers how much fundamentally worse rituals are at a base level the new cards are designed with the ability to catch up on the bad card economy in mind.

High Ritual Art entered the chat

Remember when Black Luster Soldier was first summoned? It came out of nowhere when tributing the required stars. I think it 100% makes sense to be able to ritual from the deck. They should also have effects in the hand to discard for a search of some kind for the sake of meta plays

Even before pendulums, I wondered about the possibility of ritual spell/monster hybrids, where their spell effect is the ritual, but said ritual cannot summon itself as a monster. If you compare that to pendulums, it still isnt nearly as powerful, but still provides a similar level of consistency. That way, these hypothetical hybrid cards could be given much stronger effects and stat lines than pendulums.

I personally add an additional main deck with a limit of 20 cards since it is part of the main deck in which you can put the ritual monsters in addition to the main main deck

Fun video! I’d recommend getting rid of the “what if-wednesdays” in the title as it will make it more appealing😊

I think an interesting middle ground although very convoluted and not new player friendly is this: Rituals can be added to both the Main/Extra deck, it doesn't break existing cards but once that ritual monster leaves your ED unless a card Specifically returns it to your ED it would work like a ritual in your main deck. Rituals like Herald would need to be banned but honestly it would give rituals a lot of breathing room even if you only put like 1-2 rituals in your ED so you're guaranteed to soft open your best ritual.

non-Effect Ritual monsters I feel deserve a card that make them really really easy to summon. Flat out special summon them from anywhere by sending the corresponding Ritual Spell from hand or deck to the GY and maybe give some bonus effects.

Rituals were my favorite type of card when they first came out because I was really excited to see what crazy stuff was going to be made from the mechanic. Sure at first it was basic and clunky, but it had so much potential! And that potential was completely wasted, until they could "fix" it years later. I firmly believe that Ritual monsters should have been put into the Extra Deck, though I get that at the time when they released it was still reserved for just Fusion cards. If they could have moved the idea of the Fusion Deck becoming the Extra Deck up several years, the Ritual mechanic could have been so much better. But since they did not do this, making such a change would be very bad for the game, since modern rituals are built around the current mechanics the change would make them too powerful. And yes, putting ritual cards into the Extra Deck would limit the number of Fusion cards you get to pick, but I feel that is a fair trade off. Its part of the strategy of building decks! As for the potential of ritual cards, the sky was the limit! Given that the requirements to summon a Ritual card could be written as a Spell card effect (rather than a single line or two like a on a Fusion card) you could have much more complicated requirements. You could introduce requirements like: Tributing specific cards (same as Fusion) Tributing specific types of cards (Ex: Tribute 1 Continuous Spell card + 1 Normal Monster) Discard X cards Send X cards from the top of the deck to the graveyard. And you could combine these! Maybe a card needs you to tribute 1 Continuous Trap card and Discard 1 card, then you get a super neat Ritual card from the Extra Deck. These alone would make ritual cards more interesting than they are, but you could go even further! You could have trigger requirements that need to be fulfilled, which could turn the Spell cards for Ritual summoning into almost Trap cards (or just make Trap card versions) For instance, in order to Ritual summon a specific card the requirement is that you are attacked by your opponent with a monster with 1900 or less ATK. or maybe a requirement where your opponent tributes a monster. Then you could combine these trigger effects and the standard requirements listed above and you could get some really specific and interesting Ritual cards to play with. Like a card that requires your opponent to attack you, then you discard 1 card and get to Ritual Summon a big beast! This could make Rituals a sort of guide to how you play the game. If you like combo heavy decks, you might want Ritual cards that trigger after you perform a lot of combos. Or if you like swinging with big monsters, get some ritual cards about that. Or if you like being sneaky, some Rituals that are based on your opponent doing things. And this could all be done in the comforting large text space of a spell card. It would be trivial to fit complex requirements, or multiple different requirements, on a spell card like this. The point being, Ritual cards have some amazing potential in their design space, but it was wasted early on. Rituals came out too clunky and not worth using, so their mechanic died before it could really get fleshed out. I was really sad to see Ritual cards stick to only getting rid of cards based on level when there was so much more they could play with. But alas, this is where we are now. Ritual cards are ok, they had to do a ton of (in my mind unnecessary) work to get them up to speed, but they have an interesting place now in the game. I still love the idea of them, and love having them in the game!

I feel like it could make a good archetype to make ritual monsters which are plenldulam in the same type (of course with some good effect to synergize the flow of summoning)

Funnily enough, I think there's exactly one archetype that can Ritual Summon from the Main Deck - that being Megaliths. Exploring the concept as a general thing is very interesting, though.

I thought of making a custom Ben 10 Archetype where the Aliens were all Ritual Pendulum Monsters, each with the Pendulum Effect to "if both cards in your Pendulum Zone are "X-Omni" Monsters you can shuffle both cards into the Deck to either A. Send a "X-Omni" card to the GY or B. Add a "X-Omni" spell/trap from your Deck to your hand.

How about Monsters that work like The Hex-Sealed Fusion monsters? "Quick Effect): Tribute this card you control and monsters from your Hand or field with the same Type or Attribute as a Ritual Monster in your Hand or GY, whose total Levels equal or exceed that monster's, to Ritual Summon that Ritual Monster. If you Summoned from the GY by this effect, return it to the Hand during your Opponent's End Phase, unless it is a non-Effect monster."

I feel as though more Ritual monsters should have hand effects, or just secondary effects in general to let them have playability. Saravis comes to mind; It's an omni negate on the field, but in the hand it becomes a hand trap that negates targeting. Illusion of Chaos is another; A consistency tool for the price of putting it back into the Deck. You could say the same thing of Ritual Spells too. Why not have them have a secondary effect? Magikey Maftea can both Fusion and Ritual summon, sadly, it isn't a Ritual card. Furthermore, both of the Magikey Rituals have no in hand effects, and yet, you need one to start your plays, and you need the other to protect your board. Summoning Rituals from Deck does feel like it could function well for the game.

2:13 they NEED to become an archetype!

Megaliths are an interesting solution to the problem, they don't need ritual spells and can ritual summon from the deck.

When I was a kid and played yugioh I thought rituals were extra deck monsters it kind of just made sense to me

That old childhood deck of yours is ROUGH

I am still of the Opinion that Ritals should get Fieldspells to summon them, just like Fusions got with Fusiongate. Maybe lock them inti Attributes or Archetypes, and then Players would only need specific Ritual Spellcards if those offered a unique, individual effect

1:58 there's a WIND one now!

Those cards look like they've been through hell

If you could summon them from the deck would be sick.

Nekroz would be such a bad deck if they were made into extra deck monsters. First of all, nekroz of unicore would just negate its own effect upon the initial summon (himself being summoned from the ED). Then, even if you do manage to put it into the gy and something like monster reborn it back so he does have his effects, it will make all your future (nekroz) ritual summons much worse. It's not just their hand effects that would be given a major nerf.

But what about Megalith Phul

I wish ritual monsters didn't need spell cards (but ritual cards still existed and just had benefits to use, like ritual summoning from the graveyard, or targeting opponent monsters). Instead the ritual monsters themselves would just list a cost like link/xyz monsters at the top. That would probably improve their value a lot

Personally I believe ritual spells should be in the extra deck, rather than the monsters. This way, the method of summoning every ritual monster is always available, and the monster in hand is never a straight up brick.

Ok, but megalith already ritual summon from the deck... and at quick effect speed. The deck is good but not broken...

They need to make Fusion Monsters that can use almost everything as material. Not OP, of course, but uswdul in some way!

Its wednesday my dudes Good stuff

Where’s the 6 hour long Junk Synchron documentary you promised?

The amount of "oh wait" Tells you the game is old and Konami always tries to mess with mechanics but keeps somthing to be desired

you forgot about drytrons

Lol hey I got guys I’m my hand tune for demise board wipe and Sophia win.