What Makes a Good Custom Archetype?

Creating custom Yu-Gi-Oh cards is an art.

Having created, played, and played against countless custom archetypes, I realise I probably have a lot more experience and insight into the whole thing than most custom card creators.

Now, there’s a lot of questions that you could ask, and there’s a lot of ways that we could cover them.

Canonical archetypes are by no means perfect[^perfect] …or perfectly balanced,[^perfect-balance] but they’re really the only benchmark we have to go against.

[^perfect]: *coughlookin’ at you, Genex… [^perfect-balance]: *choke Tearlaments, my days…

Disclaimers

[!Tip] Yo! Customs is serious business, we gotta make sure we’re on the same page here ;)

• There may be some unconventional or obscure slang in here – if it’s too confusing try checking the § Glossary at the end where I might explain it.
• When playing customs, I’ve always played exclusively customs. In other words, I never mix canon and custom cards.[^customs] Likewise, I create custom cards and archetypes with the intention to never mix them with canon and custom cards. This DOES have a pretty serious effect on balancing. But come on. It’s customs.

[^customs]: For more in-depth discussion about this, see Why I Love Custom Cards.

Customs: Things You Get Used To

In my time I’ve encountered 3 types of custom card players:[^players][^3-types]

• Canon duelists. They religiously stick to the rules and conventions of Yu-Gi-Oh, often play with canon decks that feature a single custom support card, and will lecture you into the Shadow Realm on why your custom archetype is broken af.
• Anime fans. They love the duel, can appreciate cool card design, and might even be willing to drop some anime lines bordering on the edge of roleplay. There’s a good chance they’ve loved Yu-Gi-Oh since childhood.
• Delinquents. They love power trips. You’ll see them whip out the most ridiculous[^ridicous] custom cards you’ve ever seen, aptly fitted with some stretched 200x800 JPEG image that has an iStock watermark all over it. Usually you can drop some snide comments and quit the duel before turn 2.

[^players]: Players, creators, same difference in all honesty. Who’s playing only with other people’s custom cards? [^3-types]: This is a generalisation, I do not mean to offend anyone. [^ridiculous]: Ridiculous can be very awesome, but here I mean it in the absolute worst sense.

Before we start, remember we’re making custom cards.

Much of the fun in canonical Yu-Gi-Oh is in deck-building itself: finding the cards you want to include yourself, searching for obscure synergies, and evolving the deck as you play. With customs this isn’t really possible since what your cards do is decided by you alone. If something isn’t right, or the archetype is lacking in some way, you have every power to fix it by simply tweaking some text or adding a new card.

Conception: An Archetype is Born

The idea for an archetype is spontaneous, often unexpected, and at times, magical. The inspiration could be almost anything – a word, an image, an object, a particular game interaction, or anything in between. Sometimes the name comes first, and the function follows; in other cases the

If we’re making a custom archetype, though, there’s one thing it’s pretty much got to be: unique. I mean, if it doesn’t bring anything new to the table, or do anything interesting, then there’s not really much point in making it at all, no?

My favourite archetypes, regardless of how they play, have always shared one inescapable trait – character. It gives life to the deck, . It has always baffled me, somewhat, how some players (irl) manage to play with decks they feel no attachment towards, with cards they only care for because they’re high-rarity or . Where is the love? Do they not still have that childish glee from unleashing an unstoppable giant space mecha dragon with 4000 ATK on the opponent?

Life

There are many things that can give an archetype character. At a very superficial level, the theme itself plays a remarkably significant role. That’ll be the card names, card arts.

Construction: Developing the Archetype

Now, where in the world do you start?

Creating a single custom card ain’t too hard[^single], but constructing an entire cohesive – and balanced – archetype of anywhere between 20~40 cards is something else.

[^single]: Unless you’re making a generic staple. Then you better refresh your knowledge of the 13,000+ Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and pray to Osiris you haven’t created some meta-destroying broken interaction – oh, and get a banlist hammer at the ready!

There are no rules to this, ofc. You could start with any card, and take any path you want. That’s how we start out, and if you’re lucky it can turn out pretty well.

We’ll touch

The most important thing is, at all times, to keep the vision in sight.

The vision you have for the archetype – always keep it in mind.

After doing this many times, I’ve fallen into a particular combo line which works pretty well. I take it sort of in parallel, so we have:

• The core flagship cards. They’re the heart of the archetype, central to its function. If these were in Master Duel, they’d probably be URs.
• The niche anime cards. You won’t be using very them often, but they contain the soul of the archetype. If these were in Master Duel, they’d probably be URs too, ngl.

Ah! So the strat is to just make all the URs, go figure @.@

But the reason for this is that these cards are the essence of the archetype. The character and playstyle should shine through in these cards.

Correction: Balance and Tweaks

Now we reach the most difficult, and most painful part of the journey.

The Archetypes I Love Most

I create all my custom archetypes with love,[^love] and I care for each and every one of them. Unfortunately, not all turn out to be perfect, playable, or even close to what I imagined. Some are left in the archives and never played again.

[^love]: I mean, all of Assort is made with love.

But there are a few which I always come back to.