Subject: Stop talking about the god cards!

I don't understand why people want the god cards to be 
tournament-legal.  All of the rulings concerning them are anime rulings, 
and this makes them unplayable:


1.  The anime/manga rulings make them too strong (for the people who can 
use them).

     Rulings for all the gods: card effects only affect them for one turn, 
"fatal" card effects don't affect them at ALL, and they can't switch 
control (i.e. change of heart doesen't work either).  This makes them 
basically invincible except to other god cards.

     Rulings for Obelisk:  4000/4000 for three tributes, and he can attack 
every monster on the field (AND the opponent) once for another two 
tributes.  This makes him the ultimate tribute monster.  You'll see decks 
popping up devoted to bringing tributes out on the field to summon Obelisk 
and then activate its effect (which is basically a game over).

     Rulings for Slifer:  1000/1000 times the number of cards in your hand 
for three tributes, and it decreases the ATK of summoned monsters by 2000, 
and it decreases the DEF of set monsters by 2000.  In the anime, this 
effect affected Obelisk - for one turn.  He was at 2000 
ATK.  Unfortunately, Slifer was at 1000 because Yugi didn't have enough 
cards in his hand.  This effect makes Slifer practically invincible.

     Rulings for Ra:  ATK/DEF equal to the SUM of the three monsters 
required to summon him (0/0 if revived); pay 1000 LP to destroy one monster 
on the field; pay all of your LP except 1 to increase Ra's ATK by however 
many LP you paid; tribute a monster on your side of the field to increase 
Ra's ATK by the ATK of the monster.  Ra is the strongest by far.  In Edo's 
Yu-Gi-Oh PC Game I once pumped him up to 23,999 ATK points in one turn 
using ONLY his effects.  And the field was clear.


2.  One Anime ruling is that only duelists who wield Millennium items can 
even CONTROL God cards.  (Kaiba is the exception: Priest Seto, the person 
he's a reincarnation of, used the Millennium Rod in ancient 
Egypt)  Supposedly, people who can't would be incinerated by the God as 
soon as it's summoned in a duel.

3.  ANOTHER Anime ruling states that to use ANY of Ra's effects, the user 
must be able to speak Hieratic.  There are less than 10 people in the world 
who can speak Hieratic.  It's a dead Egyptian language.  Furthermore, none 
of these people can pronounce it correctly (It's a dead language, after 
all) and they have no way of finding out the correct way, so basically 
nobody can use Ra.




Honestly, if we followed all of these rulings one (or more) of these 
horrible things would happen:

1.  EVERY deck would be reduced to being either a god deck or an anti-god 
deck.  (The only anti-god strategy there is is to discard it from your 
opponent's hand and remove it from the game... or to negate the summon of a 
god, either way)

2.  People would be alternately ranting about how strong god cards are or 
how much they've unbalanced the game or how they're not available to people 
who can't afford them...

3.  People would steal other people's god cards.

4.  Religious people would sue Upperdeck for depicting gods as "such ugly, 
horrifying beasts!  Eugh!"

5.  If we followed the control rulings, a black market in fake millennium 
items would spring up.  (Actually, that might be funny...)

6.  Everyone would be claiming they know how to pronounce Hieratic correctly.


Do NOT email me saying I have one of the effects of the God cards 
wrong.  The manga contradicts itself about the rulings (especially about 
traps; Yugi's Spellbinding Circle affected Slifer for one turn, but Obelisk 
wasn't affected by Mirror Force at all) so there are several "correct" 
interpretations.



Questions, Comments, Rants:

<mailto:qc@fengyuan.com>qc@fengyuan.com



-Pegasus