Pendulum Summons

**  This page is out-dated as the details surrounding Pendulum Summoning have now been released.  For more up to date info check out my update post right here.  **

As usual, I’m a few days behind on my Yu-gi-oh news.  Today I came across several places talking about “Pendulum Summoning” that is going to be introduced in the new anime, and ultimately, the card game.  The yugioh community is buzzing with predictions (here and here for example) as to what this will mean, so I thought I would throw in my ideas as well.

First, let me say I am not happy that a new form of summoning is being introduced.  Maybe Konami feels like the game has gotten stale or something, but I just see it as them trying one more thing to get their hands on our money.  XYZ and Synchro monsters are already expensive cards that often result in Extra Deck costs being two or three times as much as Main Decks.  I mean, Dracossack is still $60.  Now we’ll have even more cards to squeeze into our 15 Extra Deck spaces that will only add to the cost I’m sure.

Anyway, on to my thoughts.

When I hear the word “pendulum” I think of the gif to the right.  Something that swings back and forth and back and forth.  Looking at other peoples’ suggestions, it seems a lot of people are trying to link “pendulum” to time , meaning effects could be based on how much time passes.  When I tried to apply this to yu-gi-oh however, I immediately had a thought: Monsters that swap out during each players’ turn.  This could make the game a lot more challenging and open up a lot of new strategies.  Here’s an example of what I was thinking:

Player A: Summons a Pendulum monster > Ends his turn
Player B: Draws a card > Enters Main Phase
Player A: Effect of Player A’s monster activates, swapping itself out for a different Pendulum monster.
Player B: Ends his turn
Player A: Draws a card > Enters Main Phase > Pendulum monster’s effect activates, swapping itself with the 1st Pendulum monster.

One really cool thing that could be done here is have cards that have varying effects to go back and forth.  Here are two monsters that I had in mind:

Pendulum A: This monster is not effected by any other card effect.  During the Main Phase 1 following this card’s summon, Pendulum summon “Pendulum B” from your Extra Deck, then return this card to the Extra Deck.

Pendulum B: This monster cannot be destroyed by battle.  During the Main Phase 1 following this card’s summon, Pendulum summon “Pendulum A” from your Extra Deck, then return this card to the Extra Deck.

With the two monsters described above, you could really make your opponent work.  You could summon Pendulum A (however Pendulum summons are started) and attack, knowing you wont be effected by spells or traps, then during your opponent’s turn, your monster is protected during battle.  It would be very annoying to get rid of something like this, plus it would allow the summoner a lot more flexibility.

Is that how it will be?  I highly doubt it.  It will most likely be something either overly difficult or stupidly simple.  But if it’s really simple and really powerful, look for other Extra Deck types to fall out of play, much like Ritual and Fusion monsters have over the years.  Either way, look for it to raise the cost of competitive deck building.

If they make the Pendulum monster cards green, I’m in.  Otherwise . . . we’ll see.