Card Design

Konami has released many Special Summoning techniques. These are Ritual, Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, Pendulum and Links. Over the years, the mechanics have evolved, giving new interaction and gameplay. Sometimes, the anime provides these evolutions semi-official terms. Other times, they are treated as a gimmick. This article will be one of the six-part series looking at the evolution for each summoning mechanic. Some of these evolutions haven’t appeared in the real game yet. I will also be using the terms from the anime to describe the evolutions.

Konami has released many Special Summoning techniques from Ritual, Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, Pendulum and Links. Over the years, the mechanics have evolved, giving new interaction and play styles. Sometimes, the anime provides these evolutions semi-official terms. Other times, they are treated as a gimmick. This article will be one of the six-part series looking at the evolution for each summoning mechanic. Some of these evolutions haven’t appeared in the real game yet. I will be using terms from the anime to describe the evolutions. This article will assume you know how each summoning mechanic works.

Pendulum Summoning is a Special Summoning mechanic introduced in the Arc-V era. Like Ritual Monsters, they reside in the main

Ritual is an interesting Special Summoning mechanic. Just like Pendulums, Rituals are Special Summoned from the hand rather than the Extra Deck. However, for the same reason, Rituals suffer many consistency and minus issues. Over the years, Konami has released Ritual Archetypes that addresses these problems. Then one day, Konami decided to fix all these issues by creating the Impcantation archetype. Suddenly, Ritual decks became more consistent and less costly. However, Impcantation did more harm than good.

Konami has made many archetypes and series over the years. Some of them originated from the anime, while some are game-originals. However, many archetypes have cards that imply future support they’ve never received.

Konami has made many archetypes and series over the years. Some of them originated from the anime, while some are game-originals. However, many archetypes have cards that imply future support they’ve never received.

An archetype is a group of cards with a similar name or theme that supports one another. Despite being common