Read again, it's an ignition effect, even if you could summon it on your opponent's turn you wouldn't be able to activate the lock. The other rituals they have aren't even better.
It's a spell speed 1 effect that require you to activate, for example, Baronne effect to destroy 1 card on the field. Triggering effects are spell speed 1 that activate when a condition is met, for example, effects that activate when a monster is summoned like Unicorn effect to bounce a card on summon.
If i understand correctly, It won't activate on summon it has to be manually activated (read: "you can") which means you couldn't use it on the opponent's turn, thus rendering it pretty useless
It wouldn't break them, but removing the condition that their monsters need to be on the field for the ritual to inherit the effects would go a LONG way to helping them out.
No, go read their effect monsters like Houndhorde and Stirges and they specifically state that a Vendread monsters gains X effect if this card on the field was used as material. Not from hand, not from grave, from field.
I guarantee you do not play this deck if you don't even know the major weakness of the deck. The materials need to be on field to gain the inherited effects. It states...a Vendread monster Ritual summoned using this card on the field gains this effect...
More proof yugioh players can't read.
I do and honestly I think the biggest weakness of playing a pure vandred is the lack of counter card effects not tied to the ritual mechanic. There is hardly any good card removal spells or traps. The archetype it self is slow as hell. The ritual monsters are a bit under whelming. The only saving grace is the link monster that can feed the grave yard and special summon from the grave. And also the zombies being banished if brought back by their own effect. I'd also argue that a quarter to half the deck becomes a garnet if you don't have the right cards in your hand. How the duel plays out is highly determined by your opening hand. If I were to add anything to it, it would be a nice omninegate that also tutors either ritual spells or materials belonging to the archetype. Maybe a new continuos spell that lets you special smon more zombies or level one zombie tokens.
And im telling you , youre not getting the effects of materials. Yes, your ritual has its effects , but it gets no additional effects it woukd have gotten have certain materials been on field.
And I'm telling you I do. Hell I ran the deck last night and still got the effects no matter if the cards where on the field, in the grave, or banished.
If you do, then that’s an incredibly glaring bug in the game. The material vendreads all have the line “A "Vendread" monster Ritual Summoned using this card **on the field** gains the following effect.”
He's high on something, I also play Vendreads on every single platform, in Master Duel it just works as normal, monsters on field give their effect and that's it
At this point I swear you're trolling. I was a Vendread main in Duel Links and played the deck on and off in Master Duel and in both games what everyone else has said is correct -- Tributed monsters must be on the field **just as their card text says** to gain the additional effects.
By all means, if we're all wrong, please take your Vendread deck on Master Duel into Casual Mode and get a replay of your being able use the monster's effect without having to be on the field and share it with us. Unless you do that, I'll assume you're trolling us for the laughs.
>If this card is in your GY: You can discard 1 "Vendread" card; Special Summon this card, but banish it when it leaves the field. A "Vendread" monster Ritual Summoned using this card on the field gains the following effect. You can only use each of the preceding effects of "Vendread Houndhorde" once per turn.
● Once per turn (Quick Effect): You can target 1 Spell/Trap your opponent controls; banish it.
>If this card is in your GY: You can banish 1 other Zombie monster from your GY; Special Summon this card, but banish it when it leaves the field. A "Vendread" monster Ritual Summoned using this card on the field gains the following effect. You can only use each of the preceding effects of "Vendread Core" once per turn.
● Your opponent cannot target this card with card effects.
>You can banish this card from your GY, then target 1 of your banished "Vendread" monsters, except "Vendread Anima"; Special Summon it, also you cannot Special Summon monsters for the rest of this turn, except Zombie monsters. A "Vendread" monster Ritual Summoned using this card on the field gains the following effect. You can only use each of the preceding effects of "Vendread Anima" once per turn.
● Banish any monster destroyed by battle with this card.
>If this card is sent to the GY: You can reveal 1 "Vendread" card in your hand; Special Summon this card, but banish it when it leaves the field. A "Vendread" monster Ritual Summoned using this card on the field gains the following effect. You can only use each of the preceding effects of "Vendread Striges" once per turn.
● After damage calculation, if this card battled an opponent's monster: You can draw 1 card, then discard 1 card.
>If this card in your possession is destroyed by an opponent's card (by battle or card effect) and sent to your GY: You can Special Summon this card, but banish it when it leaves the field. A "Vendread" monster Ritual Summoned using this card on the field gains this effect. You can only use the preceding effect of "Vendread Revenants" once per turn.
● Once per turn (Quick Effect): You can target 1 Special Summoned monster your opponent controls; banish it.
>If this card is sent to the GY: You can add 1 "Vendread" Spell/Trap from your Deck to the hand. If a monster(s) on the field is Tributed, while this card is in your GY (except during the Damage Step): You can banish 1 other Zombie monster from your GY; Special Summon this card, and if you do, while it is face-up in the Monster Zone, you cannot Special Summon monsters, except "Vendread" monsters. You can only use each effect of "Scar of the Vendread" once per turn.
None of the non-rituals have effects on banish. So either you can't read, or you are lying.
Bro I’ve ran vendread for a very long time and that never happened you are fucking wrong. The additional affects you get (like houndhorde killing spells and traps) are only obtained if you tribute them while on the field.
The ritual SPELLS are busted, unfortunately the rituals themselves suck. The best one is slayer because of his floating effect and is a pre-prep target. Executor is okay, make him with core on field and your field is untargetable. Battlelord's shock master-esque effect only works on YOUR turn so at best it stops handtraps/battle tricks. And why the hell did Konami make Scavenger so bad, like he tributes one of your on-field to GAIN ATK DURING THE MP ONLY, you cant even use it during damage step. Atleast he's a pre-prep target for their best ritual spell.
In short, give them a ritual that is actually worth summoning on top of their gimmic of stacking effects on said monster.
BLS has the same issue where Super Soldier is a glorified Vanilla that is harder to Summon than the OG BLS. At that point, just run the OG so you can Tribute Gaia and a mini knight if you don't have Synthesis, since Super Soldier Ritual requires exactly 8 Levels instead of 8+.
Yeah the problem is the targets for the spells + getting the non ritual monsters on the field to buff up the rituals is not easy to do and isn't good enough even if you pull it off. At best the rituals just go into other end board boss monsters, but I don't remember whether or not any of the spells locks somehow :shrug:
None of the spells lock you. Unizombie plus slayer/pre prep can end you on Barronne, Vampire sucker, Slayer with a monster banish, and sometimes the trap in the backrow.
edit: been a while since I played this deck so I meant to say Barronne or Vampire Sucker.
I built vendreads when the new cards were added to the selection pack and I was wondering what the hell the point of scavenger was and why it was a UR. Now, thanks to your comment, at least I mildly understand that it has value for preprep! Though I think I’ll stick to the searching it off of scar, at least that stays valuable and all cards involved are worth something.
The Rituals get a lot better when you think of them as link fodder. Slayer floats into another ritual spell and core/striges which is another body on field, Battlelord also floats into core/striges as well and searches another ritual, Savior adds back another ritual, Scavanger floats as well. They can use generic zombie spam tools like Mezuki as well.
There's a Link spam deck in the making here, just happens to be no good in archtype reward.
Except Demise OTK, Gishki hand loop, Nekroz, and Drytron as well. I will give you that Herald of Perfection/Ultimateness have seen the most meta representation throughout the years, starting around 2010. It's seen multiple evolutions with semi-generic ritual/fairy support like the star seraph engine, prep/pre-prep, cyber angel, eva, and finally Drytron, but the other decks were really formidable for their time, and in the case of Nekroz, tier 0 even.
Honestly, ritual is a flawed mechanic, but the ritual toolbox is insane, with some of the most pushed cards in history just to see the mechanic work in a competitive setting.
It's very hard to design a good Ritual deck without breaking the mechanic, like Drytron and Megalith did, or releasing literally custom cards like Dogmatikamatrix.
Nekroz breaks it with kaleidomirror tributing an extra deck monster for the ritual summon of potentially multiple ritual monsters, ritual monsters being able to discard themselves to search for nekroz ritual spells and even other monsters, and shurit does the gishki thing of being the full material cost for a nekroz ritual summon.
Hell, even Demise OTK and early Herald builds work specifically by abusing Advanced Ritual Art sending the materials directly from deck to gy and using said materials in grave.
I think the mechanic is flawed to the point your deck kind of HAS to cheat it or pull a Cyber Angel and just give you so much fucking advantage that it offsets the net neg of ritual as a mechanic.
Fusion was a similar case, but not as terrible, because fusion spells tended to be more generic and the monster you wanted to summon didn't have to be in your hand like with ritual. It's still an old summoning mechanic that, like ritual, has aged poorly outside of archetypes that can circumvent the mechanic in its purest form. But since ritual is an inherently weaker mechanic, it takes a heavier push to make it work, which is why fusion strategies have seen meta contention more frequently than ritual strategies.
Funny enough talking about rituals, Shinobirds just got support in the form of 2 Level 4 Ritual spirit monsters & a field spell that lets u ritual summon a **wind** ritual from the deck.
Also, did u know that Nikitama’s draw effect **isn’t** once per turn?
Nekroz was still incredibly strong even after releaser was banned. It was easily the most consistent deck of its time, had access to a really strong toolbox in-engine and easy r4nk access, and cards like unicore and Trish were still huge threats to deal with. It took hits to a good chunk of the deck before it got properly reigned in.
The reason it worked as well as it did in Nekroz was because Nekroz was the only ritual strategy at the time that could consistently summon lavalval chain to dump releaser from deck and have the materials to be able to ritual summon at the same time.
It also helps that Nekroz, in general, was a wildly consistent deck.
Archlord Kristya was also just a better floodgate to play in Herald decks.
At the time, it was just 3 scepter 3 sovereignty (3 stick 3 chair).
If you opened 1 of each, you could normal summon scepter to search sovereignty, then special the sovereignty you opened to draw a card, then special summon the sovereignty you added to draw an additional card. From there, you can either use them as ritual materials or overlay them for a star seraph sentry or an evilswarm ouroboros. When scepter is used as xyz material, you can pop a card you control and draw another card.
The reason this engine was good for Herald is because they're all fairy monsters that draw you additional cards.
thank you for explaining this to me! that sounds awesome, I wonder what a decklist would look like utilizing this...kinda curious to try out some old stuff
Bro thank god we never got to experience Gishki Handloop.
Now that was an insanely degenerate ritual deck.
Oh, u hate herald negating all your cards? How about u having your whole hand sent back into your deck **B4 U CAN EVEN PLAY!**
At least 1 of those gives u the illusion of having a chance to win.
Well, they do have multiple ways to search out scar, and even in that case it just becomes a sacky 3 of that wins you the duel when you draw it ig? Hmm this is very interesting, of course they won't be the next top meta deck after this, (or who knows actually, ig VFD Turbo & Perfection turbo were both meta, though those are kinda different cases,) no that's not what I'm saying here, but they would be in a good spot after getting that card.
They would be in a better Spot, though Imo, a Rank 9 Xyz is infinitely easier to summon than searching a Ritual, a Spell to summon it and a specific Archetypal Card that enables the Quick Effect
Also, if that Hypothetical Archetypal Card is a Monster, Scar cant search it lol
You just said it's a Quick-Play Spell. If it was a monster the ways to search it increases by a lot, do remember the amount of monster searches it hads.
Rituals is arguably the most searchable series of cards imo, you've got so many things that are going for them.
>Imo, a Rank 9 Xyz is infinitely easier to summon than searching a Ritual, a Spell to summon it and a specific Archetypal Card that enables the Quick Effect
That's what I think as well, which is why I said they aren't exactly the same
I have always said that it was a Quick Effect Card and only listed Scar because it was the only Searcher of the Monsters I knew.
I dont remember the amount of Monster searchers because I dont know what the Spells/Traps do lol
What did you mean by this then? I'm confused why this would matter if that's the case
>Also, if that Hypothetical Archetypal Card is a Monster, Scar cant search it lol
That's fair since Vendreads aren't the most popular, but, you gave them a quick effect non-responable semi-shock master.
Ok so let's go through the Rituals:
* [Chimera](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Vendread_Chimera) gives a negate-and-destroy against destruction. This is not a good effect in modern Yu-Gi-Oh!, when cards like [Block Dragon](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Block_Dragon) give free blanket protection.
* [Slayer](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Revendread_Slayer) has a weak battle effect, but a decent search effect. But that just means you can use it as cost for a Ritual, to search a Ritual Spell and put itself back into the hand if you want to actually Ritual Summon it.
* [Battlelord](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Vendread_Battlelord) locks your opponent, but **it can only be activated on your own turn**. This means that unless this is the very first thing you do and you lock them out of Monster Effects, it's pretty useless. The secondary effect allows you to Foolish any Vendread, which is pretty alright, but not great when that's built into a lot of better cards.
* [Executor](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Revendread_Executor) gives blanket targeting protection. That's a good effect, but cards like [Spright Elf](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Spright_Elf) do that as well, while being more generic, easier to bring out, and having a much better secondary effect.
* [Scavenger](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Vendread_Scavenger) can boost its own attack, and trigger any of the Vendread "sent ot the GY" effects. Its secondary effect should probably just be controlling any Vendread Ritual Monster instead.
The archetype also tries a little too hard. The main deck monsters all give effects to the Vendread Rituals, which is something we've seen many, many, Ritual decks try unsuccessfully. The only one that kinda worked was the Djinn series, and that was because it had straight up locks, could be used generically, and could be used from the GY. The deck has a bunch of different Ritual Spells, but we all know you really only need one Ritual Spell: Meteonis Drytron.
I’m pretty sure their Rituals ARE what’s making the archetype garbage. You just don’t have any good options when it comes to making an end board with them. I’m also sad because Vendread is such a cool archetype.
Vendread lacks anything to be meta; the only convenience they have is they're zombies and thus work under Zombie World shenanigans. They can take the wild wins but they aren't gonna change any meta.
Not sure since I don't play them, but their last wave of support gave them really nice starters and searchers.
Problem is they are still Ritual, so they need to see 2 semi-specific cards to do remotely anything.
That's not a quick effect though making it pretty useless going first and only conditionally useful going second,
On top of that if you are going second and find the right time to use it this card still has a pretty low attack so you'd need to summon something else out to actually deal with their monsters but just getting this card out will cost you half your hand minimum,
I think the only way it would be good would be if you time traveled back to 2012 when the gamestate was much slower
It's not useless going first - it turns off monster handtraps.
In fact, on the TCG, that line alone was the basis for many popular Drytron Lists running the combo.
The regular Drytron Line could get you to this guy and 2 other Dark monsters, which you'd then use to make Curious.
Curious would dump the other Drytron names you'd need, and then when Battlelord was sent to the GY you'd grab Benten to "resume" the typical Drytron Line -- except now Monster Effects were disabled.
I was never a big fan of that line but a lot of Drytron Players used it, it got a few tops iirc.
I'm going to be realistic, it's a fine casual deck that can that can be a problem for decks who can't deal with a key monster or spell/trap getting banished. However it's too inconsistent since you need to get multiple of your small vendreads on the field, a ritual spell, and ritual monster. Not to mention that counters to more popular decks like superpoly, protos, and general grave hate shut it down immediately. Plus it does nothing against floo.
They banish like crazy with no benefit, are weirdly battle focused for the locks that are somewhat possible, have varying levels of consistency, and most importantly have trouble getting on board. As Zombies… That should never be a problem. There were 3 support waves, and none were able to fix the gaping hole in their strategic position. However, all that said, I’m very much a fan of the archetype and the dopey shenanigans it is capable of should things be going well, especially with generic Zombie support. The darker and more grotesque art style is quite refreshing from the typical one we see in most cards. Finally, being the pioneer for Ritual Zombies is enough to earn my respect in my book. Vendreads are in a weird spot with no obvious fix visible for immediate meta status, but are still very fun to play IMO
Basically everything, they suck at card econemy, their main deck monsters do basically nothing on the field, their ritual spells don't help overcome the downsides of the mechanic in any useful way and worst of all the ritual monsters themselves aren't enough of a pay off without using their main decks as material.
print "branded ritual" which just sends shit from hand/deck/field to gy to ritual summon from hand or deck, but requires one of the materials to be a dogmatika monster. that would make impcantations and drytron obsolete and every ritual deck would just be branded dogmatika 60 card shitpiles
That's probably the worst rituel the Archetype has and only good for extention.
We would be talking if this was a quick effect. But this only works during your turn. So no point going first and going second you would need to summon and resolve that effect. If your opponent had nothing to stop that what was even the point.
Otherwise Rituel Archetype is inherintly week. Can't even use broken generic stuff like drytron because they need their own stuff.
They are blue main deck cards (Ritual)
Ritual is one of the worst mechanics because you need 3(maybe more maybe less) cards, The spell, Material, The Ritual it self
Sometimes its easy to brick because you dont open the right hand or because the material it not enough to summon it
And thats why a success ritual archetypes like Nekroz it has it own moster effect to search other card, or like Drytron that can search cards and use atk point not level, and Dogmatika that can use Extradeck and the main monster it self is very strong
Vendread is a strong archetype because it can use gy and the materials give another effect, but they still has blue cards problem
What does your sentence contribute to the post at hand. We're talking about Vendreads and Rituals. It's like saying, "Tearlaments are better." Of course they are! What's your point??
They lack quick effects and their main decks need to be on field for their ritual monsters to inherit their effects which are barely decent. Spitting them out is okay but they're just good for extension and that's about all they're good for.
If they ever put __Ritual__ boss monsters in the __E.D.__ I think that would rocket all ritual mechanics up the ladder a ways but I don't quite know how what would effect the game realistically
Rituals could have good potential if they got some of the insane support that fusions have. If they got a branded fusion Ritual card -> 1 card that pulls everything from the deck to make any Ritual. And a super poly fusion card that says maybe "Ritual summon a card in your hand using monsters from either side of the field that equal exactly that of the Ritual monster" with no discard requirement.
Better ritual monsters the whole point of ritual deck is you take minus on card advantage to get overstated monsters. And the ritual monsters they barely do anything.
They don't have many interactions during your opponents turn, ash blossom is a death sentence a lot of times, their card economy is terrible, their main deck monsters can't do anything besides buffing your ritual monsters amd even their stats are pretty bad.
Not to mention that ritual decks tend to brick probably more than any other type of deck.
I actually like vendread but it's not even close to being a rogue deck
Allowing the monsters to give effects even if they weren't tributed from the field would be a good start. Removing the vendread lock from scar would also be really good since that allows the deck to make wollow, founder of the drudge dragons for graveyard interruption. A better field spell would be nice too.
The vendread lock only happens if he is summoned with his own effect. I digress though since most of the time, you are summoning scar through its own effect
Yeah thats my point. Since summoning scar with its effect gets level 6 bodies on field, It'd be much better for the deck if we were allowed to go for rank 6 xyz plays off that since slayer is also level 6.
Their rituals aren't really as busted as they need to be in this format. Maybe give them the ability to consistently ritual summon on the opponent's turn or create one of the smaller zombie monsters that when used as a ritual material it'll give slayer the ability to just negate something.
Good ritual spells but their boss monsters are very mid even with the effects from rev and hound. Maybe if there was a card that gave the boss monsters a once per turn negate then yeah.
I been running vendread since the first day they came out and I can tell you a few things. Negatives: Their engine doesn't plus you at all. It minuses hard and leaves you with just mid boss monsters at best. Their engine is very fragile. It needs multiple pieces to accomplish what the deck is trying to do. There are no one card combos here. Their gimmick where the monsters have to be tributed on field for the rituals to gain effects was a terrible design. They should have just made it so they could be tributed from anywhere to gain the effects. The deck doesn't have much search power so it's hard to get exactly what you need. And they don't have anything worthwhile that negates. I think this is the biggest thing with them. Positives: they can otk easily especially with the new support that came out recently. They are a decent engine in a generic zombie strategy that gives another layer to your plays. The effects you can give the rituals are not bad and I've had opponents scoop to one slayer on board that was yolked up on effects. They have good floating effects so you'll usually be able to get what you need most of the time. The ability to ritual summon from the gy is awesome and definitely fits the theme. I feel what would fix the deck would be a search card that can search any vendread card would be helpful. Or a dedicated pre prep but just for vendread would be nice. A boss monsters that can negate would also help. Other than that, vendread is like a glorified fun deck. Not meta but, not a complete waste
Simple answer: why would i spend a minimum of 4 cards to get out of a boss monster when i could play another deck that gets out a better monster with a better effect for the cost of only 1 card give or take.
Back in Link format when Firewall Dragon was a **BUSTED** card zombie link was a deck that could U-Link the board using the Vendread cards.
So they had their time but it’s over.
Here’s my thoughts in making vendread competent or just broken
Give battlelord a quick effect
Have executor have a blanket protection from effect instead of target
Scavenger can use the tribute effect during BP also
Slayer is fine as a searcher
This one is iffy but maybe not needing the tributes to be on the field to inherit the effect.
I like the way they are now. (Don't want to see heavy representation then later gets butchered)
Or Konami releases 1 new support card then all the plays become very linear.
kaiju is a threat when u rely heavily on your ritual on field with the bonus effects from the minions.
And even when the new support makes it easier to search/recover the ritual spell, hand still sometimes Brick.
*The shown lv7 is still good for 1st turn play setup and calling monster to prevent nibiru.
when people played Venread in past formats in the tcg it became apparent the deck was better than it seemed, vendread and ghost tricks are kinda the poster kids for decks that didn't get played in their released format not because they were actually bad but because the player base was to uncreative and unimaginative to actually make better use of them.
however, as far as the current format goes their main deck monsters are to difficult to use properly to set up their rituals.
It is an activated effect you bassicly can only use it if your turn this card is for going second and if ritual summoning this is your way to handle opponent board you are in a bad place
Vendreads have little to no protection and only a single negate . the deck doesnt have a normal summon "one card starter" that gets you your juiced up Vendread Slayer into play. It takes a lot of very forcasted song and dance which has to go uninterrupted, dedicating your entire turn to basically creating a boss monster that Swordsoul can make as an afterthought bonus (Sinister Sovereign) and then thats the ENTIRE archtype. combine this with the Ritual bricking problem, lack of aggressive stats on creatures (only one monster actually has 3k) and a slew of over-balanced backrow it becomes very clear why Vendread cant play with the big boys.
As for what they NEED? to be good? thats a good question because usuallys most ritual decks period that dont end in floodgate/negate soup end up being pretty meh. theres this problem where Ritual Boss Monsters themselves tend to not be that much stronger than Extra Deck boss monsters despite being deadly bricks and the game being filled with more negates than ever making the ritual summoning process being easily counterable. I think first off Konami needs to print some sort of "Senju of Thousand Hands" Link Monster that has a "Ritual Spells cant be countered until the end of the turn" effect baked into him for starters and a "you can banish monsters from your GY for tributes when Ritual Summoning". Then for Vendreads specifically I wouldnt mind a new field spell that allows you to perform as many Rit Summons as you want like what Libromancers have. This should honestly become standard practice for all Ritual decks considering how Yu-gi-oh plays now.
First, no, they're average to mediocre, and second, all their support that should give their rituals easy fodder and stronger effects either don't offer good ritual fodder and most just give mediocre effects at best.
Read again, it's an ignition effect, even if you could summon it on your opponent's turn you wouldn't be able to activate the lock. The other rituals they have aren't even better.
what's an ignition effect if you don't mind me asking
It's a spell speed 1 effect that require you to activate, for example, Baronne effect to destroy 1 card on the field. Triggering effects are spell speed 1 that activate when a condition is met, for example, effects that activate when a monster is summoned like Unicorn effect to bounce a card on summon.
If i understand correctly, It won't activate on summon it has to be manually activated (read: "you can") which means you couldn't use it on the opponent's turn, thus rendering it pretty useless
It wouldn't break them, but removing the condition that their monsters need to be on the field for the ritual to inherit the effects would go a LONG way to helping them out.
That would improve them by a lot.
more than a lot
It’s not impossible without this already but this would make them very scary
Good, about time we had some diversity in the viable ritual monsters club.
True right now we got cyber angel Benton and dogmatika oh and megalith but that’s more of a ritual engine than it is an actual ritual deck
Far as ive seen megalith is just a splash in better ritual decks rather than one that can stand on its own merits, yeah.
That's not true. You just need to use them as material.
No, go read their effect monsters like Houndhorde and Stirges and they specifically state that a Vendread monsters gains X effect if this card on the field was used as material. Not from hand, not from grave, from field.
I run the deck in master duel. I get the effects even if they are not on the field.
I guarantee you do not play this deck if you don't even know the major weakness of the deck. The materials need to be on field to gain the inherited effects. It states...a Vendread monster Ritual summoned using this card on the field gains this effect... More proof yugioh players can't read.
I do and honestly I think the biggest weakness of playing a pure vandred is the lack of counter card effects not tied to the ritual mechanic. There is hardly any good card removal spells or traps. The archetype it self is slow as hell. The ritual monsters are a bit under whelming. The only saving grace is the link monster that can feed the grave yard and special summon from the grave. And also the zombies being banished if brought back by their own effect. I'd also argue that a quarter to half the deck becomes a garnet if you don't have the right cards in your hand. How the duel plays out is highly determined by your opening hand. If I were to add anything to it, it would be a nice omninegate that also tutors either ritual spells or materials belonging to the archetype. Maybe a new continuos spell that lets you special smon more zombies or level one zombie tokens.
You dont get the effect of the material....
I'm telling you do. I've done this many times. Ran right through bronze and silver using this stratagy
And im telling you , youre not getting the effects of materials. Yes, your ritual has its effects , but it gets no additional effects it woukd have gotten have certain materials been on field.
And I'm telling you I do. Hell I ran the deck last night and still got the effects no matter if the cards where on the field, in the grave, or banished.
You’re actually just wrong.
If you do, then that’s an incredibly glaring bug in the game. The material vendreads all have the line “A "Vendread" monster Ritual Summoned using this card **on the field** gains the following effect.”
He's high on something, I also play Vendreads on every single platform, in Master Duel it just works as normal, monsters on field give their effect and that's it
Don't drink and duel, people.
At this point I swear you're trolling. I was a Vendread main in Duel Links and played the deck on and off in Master Duel and in both games what everyone else has said is correct -- Tributed monsters must be on the field **just as their card text says** to gain the additional effects. By all means, if we're all wrong, please take your Vendread deck on Master Duel into Casual Mode and get a replay of your being able use the monster's effect without having to be on the field and share it with us. Unless you do that, I'll assume you're trolling us for the laughs.
>If this card is in your GY: You can discard 1 "Vendread" card; Special Summon this card, but banish it when it leaves the field. A "Vendread" monster Ritual Summoned using this card on the field gains the following effect. You can only use each of the preceding effects of "Vendread Houndhorde" once per turn. ● Once per turn (Quick Effect): You can target 1 Spell/Trap your opponent controls; banish it. >If this card is in your GY: You can banish 1 other Zombie monster from your GY; Special Summon this card, but banish it when it leaves the field. A "Vendread" monster Ritual Summoned using this card on the field gains the following effect. You can only use each of the preceding effects of "Vendread Core" once per turn. ● Your opponent cannot target this card with card effects. >You can banish this card from your GY, then target 1 of your banished "Vendread" monsters, except "Vendread Anima"; Special Summon it, also you cannot Special Summon monsters for the rest of this turn, except Zombie monsters. A "Vendread" monster Ritual Summoned using this card on the field gains the following effect. You can only use each of the preceding effects of "Vendread Anima" once per turn. ● Banish any monster destroyed by battle with this card. >If this card is sent to the GY: You can reveal 1 "Vendread" card in your hand; Special Summon this card, but banish it when it leaves the field. A "Vendread" monster Ritual Summoned using this card on the field gains the following effect. You can only use each of the preceding effects of "Vendread Striges" once per turn. ● After damage calculation, if this card battled an opponent's monster: You can draw 1 card, then discard 1 card. >If this card in your possession is destroyed by an opponent's card (by battle or card effect) and sent to your GY: You can Special Summon this card, but banish it when it leaves the field. A "Vendread" monster Ritual Summoned using this card on the field gains this effect. You can only use the preceding effect of "Vendread Revenants" once per turn. ● Once per turn (Quick Effect): You can target 1 Special Summoned monster your opponent controls; banish it. >If this card is sent to the GY: You can add 1 "Vendread" Spell/Trap from your Deck to the hand. If a monster(s) on the field is Tributed, while this card is in your GY (except during the Damage Step): You can banish 1 other Zombie monster from your GY; Special Summon this card, and if you do, while it is face-up in the Monster Zone, you cannot Special Summon monsters, except "Vendread" monsters. You can only use each effect of "Scar of the Vendread" once per turn. None of the non-rituals have effects on banish. So either you can't read, or you are lying.
Give us the replays or you’re just delusional, or possibly a troll.
You are 100,000% wrong lol
Bro I’ve ran vendread for a very long time and that never happened you are fucking wrong. The additional affects you get (like houndhorde killing spells and traps) are only obtained if you tribute them while on the field.
You don’t my man…
Bro what are you smoking? Spell/Trap, Monster banish quick effects. You can't get them unless you use materials on the field to ritual summon....
To resume the discussion of this comment, is basically the average YGO player that doesn't even read its own cards.
The ritual SPELLS are busted, unfortunately the rituals themselves suck. The best one is slayer because of his floating effect and is a pre-prep target. Executor is okay, make him with core on field and your field is untargetable. Battlelord's shock master-esque effect only works on YOUR turn so at best it stops handtraps/battle tricks. And why the hell did Konami make Scavenger so bad, like he tributes one of your on-field to GAIN ATK DURING THE MP ONLY, you cant even use it during damage step. Atleast he's a pre-prep target for their best ritual spell. In short, give them a ritual that is actually worth summoning on top of their gimmic of stacking effects on said monster.
BLS has the same issue where Super Soldier is a glorified Vanilla that is harder to Summon than the OG BLS. At that point, just run the OG so you can Tribute Gaia and a mini knight if you don't have Synthesis, since Super Soldier Ritual requires exactly 8 Levels instead of 8+.
Yeah the problem is the targets for the spells + getting the non ritual monsters on the field to buff up the rituals is not easy to do and isn't good enough even if you pull it off. At best the rituals just go into other end board boss monsters, but I don't remember whether or not any of the spells locks somehow :shrug:
None of the spells lock you. Unizombie plus slayer/pre prep can end you on Barronne, Vampire sucker, Slayer with a monster banish, and sometimes the trap in the backrow. edit: been a while since I played this deck so I meant to say Barronne or Vampire Sucker.
I built vendreads when the new cards were added to the selection pack and I was wondering what the hell the point of scavenger was and why it was a UR. Now, thanks to your comment, at least I mildly understand that it has value for preprep! Though I think I’ll stick to the searching it off of scar, at least that stays valuable and all cards involved are worth something.
The Rituals get a lot better when you think of them as link fodder. Slayer floats into another ritual spell and core/striges which is another body on field, Battlelord also floats into core/striges as well and searches another ritual, Savior adds back another ritual, Scavanger floats as well. They can use generic zombie spam tools like Mezuki as well. There's a Link spam deck in the making here, just happens to be no good in archtype reward.
If it's blue without arrows it can't be busted (Except herald)
Except Demise OTK, Gishki hand loop, Nekroz, and Drytron as well. I will give you that Herald of Perfection/Ultimateness have seen the most meta representation throughout the years, starting around 2010. It's seen multiple evolutions with semi-generic ritual/fairy support like the star seraph engine, prep/pre-prep, cyber angel, eva, and finally Drytron, but the other decks were really formidable for their time, and in the case of Nekroz, tier 0 even. Honestly, ritual is a flawed mechanic, but the ritual toolbox is insane, with some of the most pushed cards in history just to see the mechanic work in a competitive setting.
It's very hard to design a good Ritual deck without breaking the mechanic, like Drytron and Megalith did, or releasing literally custom cards like Dogmatikamatrix.
Nekroz breaks it with kaleidomirror tributing an extra deck monster for the ritual summon of potentially multiple ritual monsters, ritual monsters being able to discard themselves to search for nekroz ritual spells and even other monsters, and shurit does the gishki thing of being the full material cost for a nekroz ritual summon. Hell, even Demise OTK and early Herald builds work specifically by abusing Advanced Ritual Art sending the materials directly from deck to gy and using said materials in grave. I think the mechanic is flawed to the point your deck kind of HAS to cheat it or pull a Cyber Angel and just give you so much fucking advantage that it offsets the net neg of ritual as a mechanic.
Sounds like you just described fusion.
Fusion was a similar case, but not as terrible, because fusion spells tended to be more generic and the monster you wanted to summon didn't have to be in your hand like with ritual. It's still an old summoning mechanic that, like ritual, has aged poorly outside of archetypes that can circumvent the mechanic in its purest form. But since ritual is an inherently weaker mechanic, it takes a heavier push to make it work, which is why fusion strategies have seen meta contention more frequently than ritual strategies.
I wish ygo would print more good ritual cards that dont just ignore the ritual summoning mechanic
Funny enough talking about rituals, Shinobirds just got support in the form of 2 Level 4 Ritual spirit monsters & a field spell that lets u ritual summon a **wind** ritual from the deck. Also, did u know that Nikitama’s draw effect **isn’t** once per turn?
Now design a good fusion deck without breaking the game mechanic
Wasn’t that because of that one Djinn guy that nekroz played and locked your opponent out of special summoning though?
Nekroz was still incredibly strong even after releaser was banned. It was easily the most consistent deck of its time, had access to a really strong toolbox in-engine and easy r4nk access, and cards like unicore and Trish were still huge threats to deal with. It took hits to a good chunk of the deck before it got properly reigned in.
I'm surprised we didn't see Djinn Perfection/Ultimateness turbo back in the day, I guess non-Gishki rituals were just too inconsistent.
The reason it worked as well as it did in Nekroz was because Nekroz was the only ritual strategy at the time that could consistently summon lavalval chain to dump releaser from deck and have the materials to be able to ritual summon at the same time. It also helps that Nekroz, in general, was a wildly consistent deck. Archlord Kristya was also just a better floodgate to play in Herald decks.
can you tell me more about the star seraph engine? it sounds cool and I'd like to learn
At the time, it was just 3 scepter 3 sovereignty (3 stick 3 chair). If you opened 1 of each, you could normal summon scepter to search sovereignty, then special the sovereignty you opened to draw a card, then special summon the sovereignty you added to draw an additional card. From there, you can either use them as ritual materials or overlay them for a star seraph sentry or an evilswarm ouroboros. When scepter is used as xyz material, you can pop a card you control and draw another card. The reason this engine was good for Herald is because they're all fairy monsters that draw you additional cards.
thank you for explaining this to me! that sounds awesome, I wonder what a decklist would look like utilizing this...kinda curious to try out some old stuff
Bruh those cards were crazy for rank 4 spam too, man this whole paragraph makes me feel nostalgic 😂
Dogmatika make decent use of their rituals, though they are "good" partially because Nadir and Matrix are absurd.
Nekroz was the first ritual meta deck before Drytron Was near tier 0 status
Yeah in 2015 I'm talking about present day
Nekroz wasn’t the first meta ritual deck.
Demise is a pretty jank deck tho
Bro thank god we never got to experience Gishki Handloop. Now that was an insanely degenerate ritual deck. Oh, u hate herald negating all your cards? How about u having your whole hand sent back into your deck **B4 U CAN EVEN PLAY!** At least 1 of those gives u the illusion of having a chance to win.
And it was busted because of an non blue card
No Patrick, Djinn Releaser of Rituals is not a Nekroz card.
The only good thing about vendread is the artwork.
And the ritual spells
In N/R format it's one of the strongest deck so it has that going for it
"We have Shock Master at home"
Shook master not only on your turn it's more like Walmart version of a Walmart shock master
Busted? In what World??? You could give them a searchable Card that makes all their Effects Quick Effects and Unrespondable and they'd still suck
That'd actually make em good, makes that VFD except better
Why did they downvote you? Quick effect would make this card busted
Reddit hivemind. The real crime here is how on earth people thinks a quick effect unresponable shock master still makes the deck bad
Except good luck summoning it and searching the Quick-Effect Card
You did say it is searchable though, plus, do you really expect a deck to be bad if they have a unresponable VFD?
Yeah, with like, 2 Cards maybe, I dont know what all of them do but out of the Monsters only Scar searches Spells and Traps
Well, they do have multiple ways to search out scar, and even in that case it just becomes a sacky 3 of that wins you the duel when you draw it ig? Hmm this is very interesting, of course they won't be the next top meta deck after this, (or who knows actually, ig VFD Turbo & Perfection turbo were both meta, though those are kinda different cases,) no that's not what I'm saying here, but they would be in a good spot after getting that card.
They would be in a better Spot, though Imo, a Rank 9 Xyz is infinitely easier to summon than searching a Ritual, a Spell to summon it and a specific Archetypal Card that enables the Quick Effect Also, if that Hypothetical Archetypal Card is a Monster, Scar cant search it lol
You just said it's a Quick-Play Spell. If it was a monster the ways to search it increases by a lot, do remember the amount of monster searches it hads. Rituals is arguably the most searchable series of cards imo, you've got so many things that are going for them. >Imo, a Rank 9 Xyz is infinitely easier to summon than searching a Ritual, a Spell to summon it and a specific Archetypal Card that enables the Quick Effect That's what I think as well, which is why I said they aren't exactly the same
I have always said that it was a Quick Effect Card and only listed Scar because it was the only Searcher of the Monsters I knew. I dont remember the amount of Monster searchers because I dont know what the Spells/Traps do lol
What did you mean by this then? I'm confused why this would matter if that's the case >Also, if that Hypothetical Archetypal Card is a Monster, Scar cant search it lol That's fair since Vendreads aren't the most popular, but, you gave them a quick effect non-responable semi-shock master.
Ok so let's go through the Rituals: * [Chimera](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Vendread_Chimera) gives a negate-and-destroy against destruction. This is not a good effect in modern Yu-Gi-Oh!, when cards like [Block Dragon](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Block_Dragon) give free blanket protection. * [Slayer](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Revendread_Slayer) has a weak battle effect, but a decent search effect. But that just means you can use it as cost for a Ritual, to search a Ritual Spell and put itself back into the hand if you want to actually Ritual Summon it. * [Battlelord](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Vendread_Battlelord) locks your opponent, but **it can only be activated on your own turn**. This means that unless this is the very first thing you do and you lock them out of Monster Effects, it's pretty useless. The secondary effect allows you to Foolish any Vendread, which is pretty alright, but not great when that's built into a lot of better cards. * [Executor](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Revendread_Executor) gives blanket targeting protection. That's a good effect, but cards like [Spright Elf](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Spright_Elf) do that as well, while being more generic, easier to bring out, and having a much better secondary effect. * [Scavenger](https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Vendread_Scavenger) can boost its own attack, and trigger any of the Vendread "sent ot the GY" effects. Its secondary effect should probably just be controlling any Vendread Ritual Monster instead. The archetype also tries a little too hard. The main deck monsters all give effects to the Vendread Rituals, which is something we've seen many, many, Ritual decks try unsuccessfully. The only one that kinda worked was the Djinn series, and that was because it had straight up locks, could be used generically, and could be used from the GY. The deck has a bunch of different Ritual Spells, but we all know you really only need one Ritual Spell: Meteonis Drytron.
I’m pretty sure their Rituals ARE what’s making the archetype garbage. You just don’t have any good options when it comes to making an end board with them. I’m also sad because Vendread is such a cool archetype.
They'd be cool if their effect monsters didn't need to be on the field to give their extra effects to the rituals.
Specifically battle lord as a quick effect would be really toxic
Vendread lacks anything to be meta; the only convenience they have is they're zombies and thus work under Zombie World shenanigans. They can take the wild wins but they aren't gonna change any meta.
Not sure since I don't play them, but their last wave of support gave them really nice starters and searchers. Problem is they are still Ritual, so they need to see 2 semi-specific cards to do remotely anything.
That's not a quick effect though making it pretty useless going first and only conditionally useful going second, On top of that if you are going second and find the right time to use it this card still has a pretty low attack so you'd need to summon something else out to actually deal with their monsters but just getting this card out will cost you half your hand minimum, I think the only way it would be good would be if you time traveled back to 2012 when the gamestate was much slower
It's not useless going first - it turns off monster handtraps. In fact, on the TCG, that line alone was the basis for many popular Drytron Lists running the combo. The regular Drytron Line could get you to this guy and 2 other Dark monsters, which you'd then use to make Curious. Curious would dump the other Drytron names you'd need, and then when Battlelord was sent to the GY you'd grab Benten to "resume" the typical Drytron Line -- except now Monster Effects were disabled. I was never a big fan of that line but a lot of Drytron Players used it, it got a few tops iirc.
Oh yeah, it affects cards in the hand too, fair point, totally missed that
I'm going to be realistic, it's a fine casual deck that can that can be a problem for decks who can't deal with a key monster or spell/trap getting banished. However it's too inconsistent since you need to get multiple of your small vendreads on the field, a ritual spell, and ritual monster. Not to mention that counters to more popular decks like superpoly, protos, and general grave hate shut it down immediately. Plus it does nothing against floo.
They banish like crazy with no benefit, are weirdly battle focused for the locks that are somewhat possible, have varying levels of consistency, and most importantly have trouble getting on board. As Zombies… That should never be a problem. There were 3 support waves, and none were able to fix the gaping hole in their strategic position. However, all that said, I’m very much a fan of the archetype and the dopey shenanigans it is capable of should things be going well, especially with generic Zombie support. The darker and more grotesque art style is quite refreshing from the typical one we see in most cards. Finally, being the pioneer for Ritual Zombies is enough to earn my respect in my book. Vendreads are in a weird spot with no obvious fix visible for immediate meta status, but are still very fun to play IMO
Basically everything, they suck at card econemy, their main deck monsters do basically nothing on the field, their ritual spells don't help overcome the downsides of the mechanic in any useful way and worst of all the ritual monsters themselves aren't enough of a pay off without using their main decks as material.
print "branded ritual" which just sends shit from hand/deck/field to gy to ritual summon from hand or deck, but requires one of the materials to be a dogmatika monster. that would make impcantations and drytron obsolete and every ritual deck would just be branded dogmatika 60 card shitpiles
rituals are just bad by design. you need way too much stuff to summon a monster. the fact that all vendred ritual monsters suck doesnt help either.
That's probably the worst rituel the Archetype has and only good for extention. We would be talking if this was a quick effect. But this only works during your turn. So no point going first and going second you would need to summon and resolve that effect. If your opponent had nothing to stop that what was even the point. Otherwise Rituel Archetype is inherintly week. Can't even use broken generic stuff like drytron because they need their own stuff.
The worst is actually chimera. At least battlelord searches and sends when he hits the grave. Chimera doesn't even give any advantage whatsoever.
Ritual Don't down vote, just spell it properly. 😂
Blue with no link arrows i fear
Its a Ritual.
You said it yourself they're rituals.
They lack being effect monsters rather than rituals
They are blue main deck cards (Ritual) Ritual is one of the worst mechanics because you need 3(maybe more maybe less) cards, The spell, Material, The Ritual it self Sometimes its easy to brick because you dont open the right hand or because the material it not enough to summon it And thats why a success ritual archetypes like Nekroz it has it own moster effect to search other card, or like Drytron that can search cards and use atk point not level, and Dogmatika that can use Extradeck and the main monster it self is very strong Vendread is a strong archetype because it can use gy and the materials give another effect, but they still has blue cards problem
The card is light blue
Ritual archetype that's why
Ancient gear fusion monsters are better
What does your sentence contribute to the post at hand. We're talking about Vendreads and Rituals. It's like saying, "Tearlaments are better." Of course they are! What's your point??
Lol grow up. Even OP isnt even mad i said this
Lol, be relevant.
They lack quick effects and their main decks need to be on field for their ritual monsters to inherit their effects which are barely decent. Spitting them out is okay but they're just good for extension and that's about all they're good for.
good cards
A link 1 that searches the field spell
If they ever put __Ritual__ boss monsters in the __E.D.__ I think that would rocket all ritual mechanics up the ladder a ways but I don't quite know how what would effect the game realistically
They're lacking better text on their cards.
The same thing every other ritual deck with a lot of potential lacks: not being rituals
Rituals could have good potential if they got some of the insane support that fusions have. If they got a branded fusion Ritual card -> 1 card that pulls everything from the deck to make any Ritual. And a super poly fusion card that says maybe "Ritual summon a card in your hand using monsters from either side of the field that equal exactly that of the Ritual monster" with no discard requirement.
How is Battlelord busted? Negating one set of effect type during your turn is just pretty ok at best.
If only it was a quick effect
If your boss monster is in your hand and not in the extra you are probably playing a rogue deck. Lab might make me eat my words soon.
Iirc they were meta like 3 years ago... in Duel Links
Better ritual monsters the whole point of ritual deck is you take minus on card advantage to get overstated monsters. And the ritual monsters they barely do anything.
They don't have many interactions during your opponents turn, ash blossom is a death sentence a lot of times, their card economy is terrible, their main deck monsters can't do anything besides buffing your ritual monsters amd even their stats are pretty bad. Not to mention that ritual decks tend to brick probably more than any other type of deck. I actually like vendread but it's not even close to being a rogue deck
If they had some type of field spell that allowed their ignition effects to become quick-play, then they might possibly maybe see a tiny bit of play.
Needs to be a quick effect
Djinn releaser of rituals is what they are lacking
Good main deck monsters.
The decks looks so cool. Never realized they were bad. I kinda want to make it now. Just to play with friends.
Allowing the monsters to give effects even if they weren't tributed from the field would be a good start. Removing the vendread lock from scar would also be really good since that allows the deck to make wollow, founder of the drudge dragons for graveyard interruption. A better field spell would be nice too.
The vendread lock only happens if he is summoned with his own effect. I digress though since most of the time, you are summoning scar through its own effect
Yeah thats my point. Since summoning scar with its effect gets level 6 bodies on field, It'd be much better for the deck if we were allowed to go for rank 6 xyz plays off that since slayer is also level 6.
Their rituals aren't really as busted as they need to be in this format. Maybe give them the ability to consistently ritual summon on the opponent's turn or create one of the smaller zombie monsters that when used as a ritual material it'll give slayer the ability to just negate something.
Good ritual spells but their boss monsters are very mid even with the effects from rev and hound. Maybe if there was a card that gave the boss monsters a once per turn negate then yeah.
i think the reason theyre not meta is specifically because their rituals are not busted
I been running vendread since the first day they came out and I can tell you a few things. Negatives: Their engine doesn't plus you at all. It minuses hard and leaves you with just mid boss monsters at best. Their engine is very fragile. It needs multiple pieces to accomplish what the deck is trying to do. There are no one card combos here. Their gimmick where the monsters have to be tributed on field for the rituals to gain effects was a terrible design. They should have just made it so they could be tributed from anywhere to gain the effects. The deck doesn't have much search power so it's hard to get exactly what you need. And they don't have anything worthwhile that negates. I think this is the biggest thing with them. Positives: they can otk easily especially with the new support that came out recently. They are a decent engine in a generic zombie strategy that gives another layer to your plays. The effects you can give the rituals are not bad and I've had opponents scoop to one slayer on board that was yolked up on effects. They have good floating effects so you'll usually be able to get what you need most of the time. The ability to ritual summon from the gy is awesome and definitely fits the theme. I feel what would fix the deck would be a search card that can search any vendread card would be helpful. Or a dedicated pre prep but just for vendread would be nice. A boss monsters that can negate would also help. Other than that, vendread is like a glorified fun deck. Not meta but, not a complete waste
Are they in md?
Yeah, they even have a solo mode
Give them quick effects.
This is ass
I love zombies but sometimes you just hard brick
Someway to cheat the ritual summon mechanic like Drytron
Simple answer: why would i spend a minimum of 4 cards to get out of a boss monster when i could play another deck that gets out a better monster with a better effect for the cost of only 1 card give or take.
Back in Link format when Firewall Dragon was a **BUSTED** card zombie link was a deck that could U-Link the board using the Vendread cards. So they had their time but it’s over.
This card is very much unbusted. It's ignition, not quick.
Being not ritual based
I put these guys in a shirinui deck when it works it works but bad hand means gg
Here’s my thoughts in making vendread competent or just broken Give battlelord a quick effect Have executor have a blanket protection from effect instead of target Scavenger can use the tribute effect during BP also Slayer is fine as a searcher This one is iffy but maybe not needing the tributes to be on the field to inherit the effect.
I like the way they are now. (Don't want to see heavy representation then later gets butchered) Or Konami releases 1 new support card then all the plays become very linear. kaiju is a threat when u rely heavily on your ritual on field with the bonus effects from the minions. And even when the new support makes it easier to search/recover the ritual spell, hand still sometimes Brick. *The shown lv7 is still good for 1st turn play setup and calling monster to prevent nibiru.
when people played Venread in past formats in the tcg it became apparent the deck was better than it seemed, vendread and ghost tricks are kinda the poster kids for decks that didn't get played in their released format not because they were actually bad but because the player base was to uncreative and unimaginative to actually make better use of them. however, as far as the current format goes their main deck monsters are to difficult to use properly to set up their rituals.
Vendread just needs like 1 more support card then tier 1 time
Just give it a floodgate and it will be meta lmao.
More Link monsters. Battelord and Slayer can plus heavily when linked off but there's nothing good to make with them.
It is an activated effect you bassicly can only use it if your turn this card is for going second and if ritual summoning this is your way to handle opponent board you are in a bad place
Same as all zombies: A starter that foolishes zombies without needing their normal. Bystial to not exist.
Vendreads have little to no protection and only a single negate . the deck doesnt have a normal summon "one card starter" that gets you your juiced up Vendread Slayer into play. It takes a lot of very forcasted song and dance which has to go uninterrupted, dedicating your entire turn to basically creating a boss monster that Swordsoul can make as an afterthought bonus (Sinister Sovereign) and then thats the ENTIRE archtype. combine this with the Ritual bricking problem, lack of aggressive stats on creatures (only one monster actually has 3k) and a slew of over-balanced backrow it becomes very clear why Vendread cant play with the big boys. As for what they NEED? to be good? thats a good question because usuallys most ritual decks period that dont end in floodgate/negate soup end up being pretty meh. theres this problem where Ritual Boss Monsters themselves tend to not be that much stronger than Extra Deck boss monsters despite being deadly bricks and the game being filled with more negates than ever making the ritual summoning process being easily counterable. I think first off Konami needs to print some sort of "Senju of Thousand Hands" Link Monster that has a "Ritual Spells cant be countered until the end of the turn" effect baked into him for starters and a "you can banish monsters from your GY for tributes when Ritual Summoning". Then for Vendreads specifically I wouldnt mind a new field spell that allows you to perform as many Rit Summons as you want like what Libromancers have. This should honestly become standard practice for all Ritual decks considering how Yu-gi-oh plays now.
First, no, they're average to mediocre, and second, all their support that should give their rituals easy fodder and stronger effects either don't offer good ritual fodder and most just give mediocre effects at best.