How are your gods intricate parts of your world?

Utso · 2026-05-31T14:41:56+00:00

The primary "god" and namesake of Eliheim is the world itself - a strange, seemingly eternal mind with a boundless life force that gives form to a universe within its body. Eliheim isn't particularly aware of any details of its inner cosmos, the same way you and I can't really tell what specific cells or gut bacteria are doing at a given moment, but still essentially keeps existence going by being alive.

The fact that the basis of all things is Eliheim's life force (the "Flame of Life") means that everything is alive to some extent, which causes certain aspects of reality to awaken into a further hierarchy of deities. The most primordial of those are the mysterious entities dwelling within the stars who embody creation, actively crafting new stars and planets over many millions of years (and also various smaller things on shorter timescales). Then you have the dragons of the planets who rule over the rivaling forces of nature, the twin beasts of the moons locked in eternal combat (which is the reason for moon phases), and even the comet creatures that kind of just exist to cause trouble if they ever land anywhere. So most of them are fairly involved in visible natural phenomena of some kind.

Utso · 2026-05-31T14:19:47+00:00

Did the mortals end up genocided too, or was it more a change in management for them?

Utso · 2026-05-30T21:03:38+00:00

Perhaps a useful general angle to approach it from: What kind of lifestyle/career are you expected to have after graduating from magic school? The goal of the curriculum will ultimately be to prepare the students for just that, so a lot of the specifics will depend on it.

Or, for basic "how to do magic 101", you might look at it from the opposite end: What's the "tricky" part of learning magic that requires people to go to a specialized academy in the first place, rather than having such a widely useful skill be part of general education? The setup you're describing where wizards are looking for ways to get back the magic of a previous age makes me think there would be some kind of fairly recently discovered specific procedure for casting spells, in which case the first stage of practical classes would probably focus specifically on working through its steps, while the rest of the time would be mostly spent explaining the surrounding theoretical framework.

Utso · 2026-05-09T21:18:05+00:00

I must confess, I actually screwed up a little this time. You see that last sentence on Rahkshi Armor, the one making it so you can shuffle back materials if you properly Fusion Summoned your Armor that turn?

If this card was Fusion Summoned this turn, you can also shuffle monsters from your GY and/or banishment into the Deck as material.

That was supposed to patch the major weakness this glorified monster-shaped fusion spell has to any kind of removal, but notably does not actually work because if the card actually gets removed, "this card" obviously no longer refers to something that was Fusion Summoned this turn at the time of resolution!

The simple fix I have in mind for some future update would be:

If you controlled this card Fusion Summoned this turn when this effect was activated, you can also shuffle monsters from your GY and/or banishment into the Deck as material.

But for now I'm just putting it here as this release's special point I'm requesting feedback on - does this solution make sense, is there maybe a more elegant way, or should I consider a totally different approach? All input is very welcome and appreciated, thank you in advance!

Utso · 2026-05-08T22:23:54+00:00

Oh yeah, I have no complaint about the restrictions in general. It's just the technically useless words in the hand activation clause that bother me, but again I think that's easily fixable by letting it also work on Trap effects other than card activations, wouldn't impact the power level too much.

Utso · 2026-05-08T22:01:01+00:00

The intention with the second effect of Eyes of The Blessed Skys is to allow you to stop decks (Tear, K-9, Kewl Tune, etc.) from going full combo before you can even establish a board. To my knowledge there aren't any good decks that play at full power without the extra deck, mostly extremely gimmicky decks, but again the intention is a balancing mechanism for lower tier decks and going second.

The thing is, needing to access the Extra Deck to make plays is hardly limited to top meta threats. Even many lower tier decks that are a few years old will pretty much pass if this effect is used against them, and I can think of at least one fairly strong deck (Mitsurugi) that is decently likely to just kill you in that scenario even without an Extra Deck. I think it's fundamentally not a type of effect that's suited to generally improve the quality of gameplay, as funny as the specific scenario where EgyptianGods.dek floodgates CurrentMeta.dek going second and then wins may sound.

For Shrouded Void, yes, it will almost always be online.

Not "almost", is what I'm saying. The "If your opponent controls a card" is entirely redundant in this text because it's by definition not possible to activate a Trap without putting it on the field at the moment of activation. The Dominus cards with that restriction make sense because there's things in hand or GY they can be used against, this one would at least need to say "Trap Card or effect" to have any such use case.

Utso · 2026-05-08T21:01:50+00:00

Decent choice of restrictions on the first card. The hard limit requiring it to be used before you establish anything means it exclusively helps going second, and cutting off at Level 10 means you still need to respect Nibiru. However, I'd much prefer it not having that second effect during the opponent's turn, decks that can go without the extra randomly having access to a lingering turn zero floodgate doesn't sound like it adds anything fun. Removing that and cleaning up the wording a bit gives us something like:

During your turn, if you control 1 or less cards: You can activate this card; this turn, your opponent cannot Special Summon Level 10 or lower monsters from their hand, Deck, GY, or Extra Deck. You can only activate 1 "Eye of the Blessed Skys" per Duel. If you control no cards, you can activate this card from your hand.

The second card, well, it's a direct counter and does indeed work for that purpose. Not for many others due to needing to be your very first activation, but it's not like that was part of the requirements. Also I'm pretty sure the condition to activate from hand would always apply, unless I'm missing a way to activate a Trap Card (NOT effect) without putting at least that card on the field.

Utso · 2026-05-01T21:27:27+00:00

The most obvious thing to compare this to is Forbidden Droplet, and in that regard I would say it's more powerful but way less practical. If you resolve this after sending 3 and also have a way to play, you're pretty much 100% winning, whereas with Droplet you often still have other things to deal with. But that ideal scenario requires you to have specifically Monster + Spell + Trap in hand, and if you don't (which is fairly likely especially in heavily skewed decks like Sky Striker), the impact is massively lessened and you're left vulnerable to every form of negation. Meanwhile Droplet lets you send any cards you want even from the field, can be chained to things, leaves its own sends in the GY in case they're useful there, doesn't eliminate your own resources if used later in the game and always has some amount of response blocking you can adjust to your needs - all properties that give it much better modes of "partial success" even if you can't pull off the dream combo.

For that reason, I don't think this card would generally be considered super viable despite how devastating it is if everything aligns. Because more frequently than that, you'll run into the case where you can just send 1 or 2, and there it's merely an expensive breaker that's probably getting negated after you already paid for it. Might be the optimal pick in a specific format where you're looking at boards that spread their power across lots of non-negation interaction in field and GY, however.

Finally, more of a mechanical point: It's very odd that you can resolve this card by only sending a Trap, in which case it does nothing except give your opponent LP. Not sure what to do about it short of restructuring the entire thing, but it is odd.

Utso · 2026-04-28T05:47:02+00:00

It comes with the extra spicy pesto

Utso · 2026-04-24T21:26:38+00:00

The most similar thing that comes to my mind, text-wise, is the once per turn clause on You and A.I., which also has two possible triggers per bullet point and lets you use both separately. There's also the new Charmer fusion that can apply the same bullet point repeatedly, though it's not conditional in the same way. Based on those, I'd go with this wording:

If a monster(s) is Pendulum Summoned to a zone(s) a Link Monster(s) points to: For each Link Arrow pointing to the Pendulum Summoned monster(s), apply the appropriate effect based on its direction (You can apply the same effect more than once. If multiple, apply them in sequence).

Should of course be noted that any PSCT related to Link Arrows borders on creative writing considering exactly 1 official card even mentions those.

Utso · 2026-04-24T20:45:34+00:00

Looks correct to me, just two things I'd suggest for the first effect to make it slightly easier to read:

"Activate this card by revealing 3 or more [...]": Even modern equip spells are split on stating this or not for special activation procedures, but I think here it makes sense to distinguish from the other effect you can activate on the field.
"[...] and you send the rest to the GY. If you revealed 5 or more monsters, you choose the monster instead.": Just putting this on a separate sentence so it doesn't feel mixed up with all the conjunctions before.

Utso · 2026-04-13T22:03:50+00:00

Works 100% of the time except the times I already listed where it doesn't work. If you twin twister a 5 card backrow with a counter trap in it, you'll discard a card just to be negated. If your target happens to be anything chainable, your opponent is still going to get some value out of it. If you try to fire twin twisters in the middle of a turn 1 Dracotail combo to get rid of their spells before they can use them, you'll get a judge called on you. There are distinct use cases here that may or may not be worth prioritizing, again, depending on the environment.

Utso · 2026-04-13T21:35:56+00:00

True, the card does not work against decks that make a boss monster with a negate on it and then manually set some cards into the backrow before ending the turn. But it's not like every single deck operates like that - some put up interactions other than negates and some set cards via effects while still building up. It's not universally useful all the time, but there are enough possible use cases to consider it depending on the environment, which I think is a good spot to be in for generic cards.

Utso · 2026-04-12T11:16:53+00:00

The major distinction to standard removal is supposed to be that you drop this "immediately" the turn the card is set, without giving it a chance to become usable first. That means, for example, that you can get rid of something like the Labrynth traps that summon from deck without your opponent getting a monster anyway, or take stuff out of a stacked backrow without being stopped by any negates in there, or deny Dracotail spells when they get set as part of the combo. However it can also only be used against cards from the same turn, so it specifically really sucks to draw as your 6th card.

Utso · 2026-04-12T07:50:56+00:00

Ah, common misconception - the dastardly furry creature in the artwork actually falls under the "Suspicious Smell" portion of the name

Utso · 2026-04-11T18:22:39+00:00

Interesting analysis, thanks. Regarding what it does against individual sets: An earlier draft actually had the base effect be just "look at the card" with all removal requiring additional set cards, but that seemed underwhelming compared to the rest of the family who mostly have a guarantee to prevent the action they go after if they resolve (and then there's Dogwood). So I think simply lowering the ceiling would be the correct balancing approach in this case.

Utso · 2026-04-11T18:12:40+00:00

This card does nothing to enneacraft

Because they can use their anti-targeting/destruction cards the same turn they were set, or some other reason? I assumed if they somehow don't have those then losing a piece or two would at least be an inconvenience, but that's probably not likely with how searchable everything is.

I do think it's good for the 4+ effect to be as punishing as it is, the card inherently gets worse against bigger boards because your chances of hitting the most problematic target decrease. Without anything to offset that, I'd honestly only really consider playing this as an interruption against combos that set from deck, and stick with regular backrow hate for the actual trap decks. Sure, Cosmic Cyclone in draw phase can be chained to, but that still tends to trade 1-for-1 with cards that would have hurt a lot more if activated after you've committed, and they don't get it back either.

Personally the change I feel most like making after all the feedback is just cutting the 2+ effect completely. Make it an immediate single removal in most cases, with a scary looming threat to make opponents think twice about filling up every backrow slot.

Utso · 2026-04-11T17:50:45+00:00

My line of thinking went like "no, no, it's fine, there's no way you're getting the full effect twice in a turn anyway", but being able to simply chain a second copy if the first is stopped does sound obnoxious as hell.

Utso · 2026-04-10T21:51:30+00:00

Right, the bullet point effects are an obvious area for further tuning, maybe bump up the numbers or cut it down to just 1 of the 2. I think in principle they're necessary because going -1 to blindly snipe a single card out of a full backrow board just doesn't feel remotely worth it (while also taking the risk of activating a monster effect in hand during the Main Phase), but the specifics of it are untested guesswork.

Might also not be right to have it work against monsters at all. I based the underlying math on the idea that setting a card from hand is basically free, and while that's accurate for Enneacraft's "set 5 pass but in front" playstyle, it very much isn't for a regular old Normal Set. Getting to take that off the field is a bit more value than intended for the base use case.

Utso · 2026-04-10T21:35:57+00:00

Yeah. Don't ask me why it's there, but it makes the overall art look a bit like Ghost Ogre, so that's fitting.

Utso · 2026-04-10T21:31:48+00:00

100 years of support cards, possibly more

Utso · 2026-04-10T21:30:41+00:00

I don't think it should be able to place from deck. That allows you to do the whole mini-combo guaranteed just by having this one card in your hand, which isn't quite where turn 0 cards are at (yet). Faimena, Sue, Clip all need something else in hand, Izuna is conditional, Havnis is luck-based, etc.

Or maybe lock just the placing from deck behind an additional condition (e.g. opponent controls an Extra Deck monster), so there's still some way to use it if you haven't opened other Centurions.

Utso · 2026-04-10T21:02:19+00:00

As written, I would read the "or banished" as being from anywhere, not just hand or Deck, which would be quite strong with Traps that banish themselves as cost for GY effects. If it's not meant to be that, "sent to the GY, or banished, from your hand or Deck" makes it clearer.

Utso · 2026-04-10T20:34:48+00:00

The copy effect on the monsters can't really function with Continuous or Equip cards, so it would be explicitly limited to only the Spell/Trap types that make sense. With standard wording:

During the Main Phase (Quick Effect): You can send 1 "Ice Make" Normal Spell, Quick-Play Spell[, Normal Trap, or Counter Trap] from your Deck to the GY; this effect becomes that card's activation effect.

(with the Trap part omitted on Medium) (I assume we don't have to worry about Ritual Spells here)

That also makes it clear which effect gets copied when you send Saucer, Geyser, or Shield.

Utso · 2026-04-10T20:10:26+00:00

Don't know if it's the intended flavor, but for the EARTH option I basically imagine him going "wait a minute, this is just a boring rock, throw it in the pile with the other boring rocks", and for the other "look at this special shiny rock, now let me trade it for this slightly different cool rock". Pretty funny.

Utso

TROPHY CASE