The Amazement Archetype has officially set up shop! They've come to showcase new tricks and take us on a wild ride. Today we're going to take a look at the new gimmick this archetype's going to bring, along with its shortcomings and future potential!
Amazing Amazement Staff
Mainstays
Amazement Administrator Arlekino is the big boss of this circus. He functions like Multifaker in the sense that he can bring himself out when a Trap Card is activated. Do note that it doesn't need to be YOU as the player that activates a trap. If your opponent activates a Trap, you can summon Arlekino upon the resolution! This already makes him a tiny bit more versatile than Faker.
He has two more effects. The next one is whenever your opponent Normal or Special summons a monster, you can equip an Attraction trap to that monster! More on this later. If that wasn't good enough for you, Amazement Arlekino also has a third effect that is Accesscode-esque. You can banish any number of Attraction traps in your grave to destroy as many cards on your opponent's field! Arlekino definitely packs a punch.
Amazement Attendant Comica is the second most important monster in the deck. It functions similarly to Marionetter in that it can set an Attraction trap directly from deck. In addition to that, she has a second effect wherein you can change which monster your traps are equipped to! This will also make more sense in just a few minutes.
Back-ups... for now
Amazement Ambassador Bufo and Amazement Assistant Delia make up the rest of the crew. While their effects aren't necessarily horrible, they could be better.
Bufo has the same trap-transfer ability that Comica has, but his other effect is subpar. It needs for your opponent to have a monster AND for you to have an Attraction trap in grave. While that does give you recursion, it requires a lot of setup and will only probably be good mid to late-game. That makes it a pretty bad card to draw early on. Delia, on the other hand, acts like an extender by revealing an Attraction trap in hand. Its second ability is to set an Attraction trap directly from deck by sending another one from field or hand to the GY. This, again, makes it so that you'd need setup for it to be decent. The other two Amazement monsters are just leagues better, at least with the cards we have right now!
Amazement Spells
When I first saw that the Amazements had a field spell, I was a little stoked. That quickly died down, however, upon reading Amazement Precious Park. It has a nifty little effect that lets you activate 1 Attraction trap the turn it was set. Its other effect will only come up in the grind since it needs to swap one trap on the field with one in the grave or is banished. It follows the same line where it would be good for the grind. However, that means it's a pretty bad card to open. I had hoped that it could at least search a monster when activated! Precious Park could potentially be good in the future - but that's all it is for now.
Amazement Special Show is just bad. It will only come up in niche scenarios wherein you could, say, special summon Arlekino from hand for free. But if you're playing not to lose, you're probably losing anyways.
Would you look at that - a good spell for the archetype. Amazing Time Ticket is so good, it's not even funny. It adds any Amazement card from deck to hand. That means any monster, and Amazement spell/trap. Admittedly, we only have a few at the moment, but one of them is bonkers - Amazement Family Faces. More on that later. Ticket being a quick-play spell can also come in clutch. You can dodge Droll & Lock Bird by activating this in standby phase! In addition to that, it has a second effect, too - at least when activated on your opponent's turn. It lets you set an Attraction trap from deck - and it can be activated that turn!
Amazement Rides (Traps)
One of the good thing about most of these traps are that they are stand-alone. Meaning, they are powerful when paired with Arlekino/Comica, but they CAN do things on their own! So we've seen all the cards that set, equip and search the traps. Now let's finally get to the traps themselves!
The Ride-ables
Amaze Attraction Horror House is one of the best traps in the deck. Each of these traps have two effects: one when equipped to an opponent's monster, and one when equipped to your own monster. Horror House probably IS the best one, actually. Its first effect is essentially a Book of Moon when equipped to an opponent's monster. The other one is Impermanence-esque. But the great thing about that is that it can recur! When equipped to your monster, you have a once-per-turn Impermanence negate!
Amaze Attraction Cyclo-Coaster is key to this deck's consistency. It's kind of like a worse Spoofing in a way. It helps you get to Arlekino OR can help you clear your opponent's backrow (take that, Mystic Mine players!).
Amaze Attraction Rapid Racing is another neat tool to have in your arsenal. When equipped to your opponent's monster, you can increase its level by 1 to mess with Synchro/XYZ plays and change its battle position. When equipped to YOUR monster, it acts like a D.D. Crow (albeit shuffling back instead of banishing). This is going to be useful against those Drytron players!
Abandoned Rides
These three are the worse ones of the traps currently available. Hey, can't have all the good things, right?
Amaze Attraction Vanquish Viking has its niche uses, especially against Ignition-effect monsters. You can bounce the monster back to hand when it activates its effect! The other effect just negates an attack and takes control of the monster during that Battle Phase. Yeah, I don't think I need to speak more about that. There's a reason why most people don't play battle traps anymore!
Amaze Attraction Wonder Wheel kinda just does nothing. It either refreshes 1 of your hand cards or swaps an opponent's monster's ATK and DEF stats. Please don't play this.
Amaze Attraction Majestic Merry-Go-Round I could kinda see some uses for. One of the problems of the deck (at least pure-wise) is putting pressure on board. Arlekino is the only big monster, and Comica only has 1400 ATK. Merry Go Round can at least boost your Comica/Arlekino for more damage, or weaken your opponent's monsters! Very niche, but it could work!
Honorable Mention
Amazement Family Faces definitely deserves its own spotlight. Some people are sleeping on this card, but it's definitely pretty good! It does require a little bit of a set-up (an opponent's monster with an equipped Attraction trap), but it's well worth it! It helps you put pressure on board and steals a monster permanently! Has Snatch Steal ever been this good? Okay, I'm kidding. It's obviously worse than a banned card. BUT! It's extremely good. Stealing and being able to treat the monster as an Amazement card PLUS it gains a 500-ATK boost? It's absolutely worth playing!
The downside is that this can NOT be set off of Comica and the like. You can only search this card off of Ticket OR wait for it... Trap Trick! Oh, and let me just put this little interaction down. Cyclo-coaster equip to a monster, new chain activate Faces and chain Coaster to search Arlekino. Upon resolution of that chain, you can summon the searched Arlekino since you activated Faces! This is something you normally wouldn't be able to do with JUST the Coaster. So keep that in mind!
Flaws - Is Amazement really amazing?
We've gone over the archetype and it's fair to say it has some pretty good upside and an even better potential with future support. But what about its issues?
The deck heavily feels akin to Altergeists, and both of them lose hard against backrow removal. Unfortunately, Amazement loses harder. If you don't play most of the grind cards (which are usually bad to begin with), you just lose the grind game to heavy backrow removal. Altergeists can at least save some resources by shuffling with Spoofing, bouncing with Silq, etc. THEN they could trigger faker since you flipped a trap. In some cases, you wouldn't even be able to trigger a trap since you'd need to equip to a monster first! Comica wouldn't always be in your hand and you'd need to rely on Cyclo-Coaster, and if you get Harpie'd with that setup, you pretty much lose.
Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon. Ah yes, the bane of all rogue decks - an un-targettable tower monster with an omni-negate and a 3000-ATK body. It is NOT impossible to get over, however. Remember Horror House? Horror House's Book of Moon effect does NOT target, and neither does Comica. You can move the trap to equip it to Dragoon, and just flip it right down! You're gonna have to go through hoops to do it, but at least it's possible!
Another issue of the deck is putting pressure. As said earlier, you only really wanna play Comica and Arlekino. That's 4000 damage on board IF you get both of them out. Comica is also really small with just 1400 ATK so she can get beat over pretty easily, even by normal-summoned monsters. Rapid Racing and Merry-Go-Round could help with this, but the issue does still exist and we need to acknowledge it.
Amazement Variants - Options to Explore
Dogmatika-Amazement
Dogmatika is bad in this deck. Okay, hear me out. I know it's been reflex for people to see a control deck and just slap Dogmatika as a crutch to it. However, there is a big glaring issue here. Most of the decks that CAN use Dogmatika are able to put an Extra Deck monster on board turn 1. Amazement does NOT have that luxury. We can't make Comica into a Link-1 as Invoked can. This will conflict with the deck's strategy as we NEED to normal summon Comica when we can, and we won't have the ability to bring out Ecclesia for free. Yes, you can still send Titaniklad and summon Ecclesia to get Fleurdelis in the End Phase but if you're incorporating something, you'd want to be able to utilize its power fully!
Traptrix-Amazement
The first hybrid variant to float around - Traptrix-Amazement. Traptrix Sera is one hell of a card. Being able to summon off things like Myrmeleo and being able to set different "Hole" trap cards from the deck is pretty good. Playing Traptrix with Amazement also kind of alleviates a little bit of the pressure problem. You'd be able to put some bodies on board to threaten with!
Eldlich-Amazement
My favorite variant by far. Eldlich-Amazement feels pretty good! It obviously solves the pressure problem by being able to put up your Golden Land traps as monsters AND the Golden Lord himself. Having a 3500-ATK body at your disposal is never a bad thing and can help you out several things, including potentially forcing out a Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon negate! The Eldlich engine consists of 11 cards if you don't play the Cursed Eldland's. That means you can still have 8-10 spots for going 2nd cards to make your deck somewhat viable in the competitive scene! Oh and did I talk about the grind game of Eldlich? What's that? I didn't need to? Yeah, gotcha.
Conclusion
The deck has its problems, as most control decks do. That being said, it still has a lot of upside and a ridiculous amount of potential! Imagine if we get another cool Attraction Trap or a new Amazement trap to go along with Family Faces? Or another monster that could do something cool like set an Amazement trap instead?
Amazement is already extremely fun whatever version you're playing. Pure, Traptrix, Eldlich, Dogmatika (please don't) - they all have their merits. The horizon is just the beginning for this deck, and you can bet I'm going to be here when it soars!
