Advanced Format Singles

Overview

Just because you’ve got design ideas for a bunch of archetypes and series doesn’t mean new, smaller ideas won’t keep popping up, with inspirations ranging from random YouTube videos, to old or unreleased cards, and even current events in the Yu-Gi-Oh! fandom. The singles here were all designed with Goat Format in mind, perhaps supporting cards from this era of Yu-Gi-Oh!, but all designed to be of an appropriate power level and simple enough for this era.

World of Fantasy – Toon World

(This card’s name is always treated as “Toon World”.)

① Non-Effect Monsters you control are treated as Toon monsters. ② You do not pay LP to declare an attack with a Toon monster. ③ Toon monsters you control that can attack and change their battle position cannot be destroyed by battle with a non-Toon monster, also you take no battle damage from those battles.

A couple of months ago, I made a couple of cards designed to enforce Duelist Kingdom, Battle City, and GX anime rules. At the same time, I also made an anime-accurate Toon World. After seeing someone else’s custom Toon Monster on Reddit, I decided to clean it up a bit.

In Duelist Kingdom in the anime, Toon World transformed every monster Pegasus had on the board with it except Dragon Piper, which was the only Effect Monster he Summoned while it was on the field, so this card turns all Normal Monsters into Toons. It gives all Toons the anime benefits of being a Toon (safe in the book and can’t be hit anyway thanks to cartoon logic), unless they’re restrained somehow, mirroring Blue-Eyes Toon Dragon being vulnerable while restrained with Shadow Spell. When I originally posted this on Reddit, I also had it letting Toon Monsters destroy any non-Toon they battled. However, as this comment thread brought to light, that was a misunderstanding on my part from skimming the wiki too fast when double checking, so I removed it and reposted it.

World of Fantasy – Toon World is based on the anime version of Toon World and the Toon archetype. Its art is Toon Page-Flip with the background replaced with Yami’s Rush Duel art, mimicking Pegasus taking his rematch with Yugi to the Shadow Realm. The name references its name in the Brazilian dub, “Mundo da Fantasia”, or “World of Fantasy”.

Trap Restoration

① If your opponent controls a card, you can activate a Trap Card from your hand by discarding this card at activation. ② If your opponent controls a card, you can activate a Trap Card from your hand by banishing this card from your GY at activation.

With how Trap Cards have been largely made obsolete in favour of hand Traps outside of Trap-focused decks, I wanted to make something that might let players use regular non-hand Traps again outside of dedicated Trap-focused decks without having to Set the Trap being so much of a detriment. The templating of its effects is based on Ebon High Magician‘s continuous effect to activate Traps from the hand by detaching a material, and its effects being effects rather than conditions is cemented by how the Djinn of Rituals monsters use effects to let players banish them from the graveyard as Ritual materials.

Trap Restoration is inspired by hand Traps and designed to help regular Trap Cards compete against them. Its art is Fake Trap horizontally reflected, with the goblin holding Fiend’s Mirror, the reflective glass in Fiend’s Mirror replaced with Mirror Resonator’s reflective glass and reflecting the card image for Mirror Force (DB2-EN081 Unlimited Edition), and Mystical Cards of Light and Gateway to Chaos replacing the background.

Elemental HERO Vigilante Neos

“Elemental HERO Neos” + 1 “HERO” or “Neo-Spacian” monster

Must first be Special Summoned (from your Extra Deck) by banishing the above cards you control. ① This card’s Attribute becomes the Attribute of the “HERO” or “Neo-Spacian” monster banished for this card’s Special Summon. ② Other monsters with the same Attribute as this card cannot be Summoned, and their effects cannot be activated. ③ Negate the effects on the field of other monsters with the same Attribute as this card. ④ Once per turn, during the End Phase: Banish this card, and if you do, inflict 500 damage to your opponent for each monster on their field or in their GY with the same Attribute as this card on the field.

Recently, members of the community uncovered court documents detailing a lawsuit by Beyond Comics Inc against Konami in 2008 over the design of Elemental HERO Air Neos and its resemblance to the plaintiff’s comic book superhero character Ravedactyl. With how Air Neos has conspicuously lacked reprints compared to other Neos Fusion Monsters and now we have apparently uncovered the reason why, I thought it would be fun to make a Neos Fusion Monster encapsulating the situation: Elemental HERO Vigilante Neos.

I originally wanted Vigilante Neos’s effects to reflect both the situation surrounding Elemental HERO Air Neos, as well as the abilities of Ravedactyl as a character. However, I couldn’t find much information about who Ravedactyl is as a character or what he’s capable of, so I decided to give Vigilante Neos an effect resembling but inverting Air Neos’s own. Because Air Neos wasn’t reprinted due to its resemblance to Ravedactyl, I decided to add the text of “This card cannot be used in a Duel.” that some illegal cards have at the bottom of their frame. Custom cards are all illegal in official tournaments anyway, so it technically does have a non-meme purpose for being there, not that I’ll be bothering with that text on my other custom cards.

To represent the situation with Air Neos in Vigilante Neos’s effects, Vigilante Neos takes on the attribute of its non-Neos Fusion Material and shuts down monsters with the same Attribute, i.e. monsters with too much resemblance to it. To invert Air Neos and Air Hummingbird’s effects benefiting you based on your LP deficit or gaining LP, I opted for a burn effect. To tie that effect back to the lawsuit, I made its damage based on the number of monsters on your opponent’s field or in their GY that share Vigilante Neos’s Attribute on the field, i.e. applying monetary damages for copyright infringement. Because it’s supposed to be more of a darker, vigilante hero or anti-hero, I opted to swap the usual Neos Fusion Monster mechanic of shuffling materials and itself into the Deck with banishing materials and itself instead.

Graig Weich, the CEO of Beyond Comics Inc and creator of Ravedactyl, has put out a YouTube video briefly outlining what he can say publically on the matter, and has also given a much lengthier interview on YouTube with Ruxin34 on the subject as well, saying he had to defend his copyright of Ravedactyl and hadn’t forbidden the re-printing of Air Neos, and he seems chill and genuinely passionate about his characters. With all this coming to light, hopefully Konami feels less disinclined to re-print Air Neos whether out of spite or to avoid paying royalties, or if there are legal reasons they can’t, Graig and Konami can work something out so that everyone gets what they want.

Elemental HERO Vigilante Neos is based on Elemental HERO Air Neos and Beyond Comics Inc’s Ravedactyl. I created its artwork using an image of Ravedactyl provided in a Reddit post about the discovery, as well as the card arts of Dark City and Neo Space. All copyright for Ravedactyl goes to Beyond Comics Inc.

Syzygy, the Black Sun Dragon

1 LIGHT Dragon Xyz Monster

(This card’s original Rank is always treated as 8.)

Must be Xyz Summoned with the above material. (Transfer its materials to this card.) ① You can only control 1 “Syzygy, the Black Sun Dragon”. ② Once per turn, if an opponent’s card or effect is activated that targets this card, or if this card battles a monster (Quick Effect): Inflict 1000 damage to your opponent. ③ During the End Phase: Return this card to the Extra Deck, and if you do, Special Summon 1 LIGHT Dragon Xyz Monster attached to this card. (Transfer this card’s materials to the Summoned monster.)

I was watching a YouTube video by Red from Overly Sarcastic Productions about a recent solar eclipse in America. For some reason, my brain decided to take that and give me an idea for an eclipse-themed custom Yu-Gi-Oh! card despite the fact that I’m already in the middle of playtesting and iterating a whole custom archetype. So, here it is: Syzygy, the Black Sun Dragon.

While I was doing stuff after watching the eclipse video, my brain started thinking about how to represent an eclipse as a card, and it quickly settled on “well, the moon covers and uncovers the sun, so an Xyz Monster, which covers up its materials, that then leaves the field and uncovers said materials would be a perfect fit”. So immediately the card being an Xyz Monster and returning to the Extra Deck and Special Summoning the material it used was locked in. To best fit that, having a single Xyz Monster as material rather than non-Xyz Monsters with an alternate summoning condition seemed the most suitable for the eclipse flavour.

As for why LIGHT Dragon Xyz Monsters, an eclipse is basically a LIGHT object being covered up by something to create a DARK phenomenon, and the ring of light visible around the moon during the eclipse could (and I wouldn’t be surprised if it has somewhere in history or mythology) be interpreted as a dragon of fire encircling the moon and the sun. Additionally, the ranks of LIGHT Dragon Xyz Monsters are mostly comprised of the Hieratic monsters (i.e. dragons embodying the sun) and Galaxy, Photon, and Galaxy-Eyes monsters (i.e. dragons embodying galaxies of stars, or the light that comes from them), which was a perfect fit.

Since Syzygy only used Xyz Monsters as materials, that opened the possibility of making Syzygy Rank 0, which I stuck with since that would give the card more visual similarity with an eclipse due to the black gap where the Rank stars (i.e. the sun) would normally be. As for its level condition, I opted to make it Rank 8 since the number 8 looks similar to how an artists rendition of how the start or end of an eclipse or a partial eclipse might look, with the sun and moon overlapping to form an 8.

For the damage effect, my intention there was to capture how you should not look directly at an eclipse without the appropriate glasses or telescope filter because it will damage your eyesight, so if you so much as look at Syzygy (with a card or effect) or it makes you look at it, it will damage your life points. Lastly, the name contains a couple of references to other media properties. First, while “syzygy” is a scientific term for three celestial bodies configured in a straight line, the only reason I know it is because it is also the name of a track on the Destiny 2: Lightfall soundtrack that plays during a raid encounter where you are interacting with planets, i.e. creating a syzygy. Second, “Black Sun” is a reference to the Avatar: The Last Airbender episodes “The Day of Black Sun” parts 1 and 2, which feature a solar eclipse as a central plot point.

Syzygy, the Black Sun Dragon is based on solar eclipses. I created its artwork using free stock images provided by Jongsun Lee (the eclipse in the background) and Ricardo Gomez Angel (Syzygy’s flame texture) on unsplash.com, and provided by OpenClipart-Vectors (the dragon design used as a layer mask over the flame texture) on pixabay.com.

Details

Development: April 2024 – June 2025

Latest Errata: June 2025

Format: Advanced Format

Made With: GIMP, www.cardmaker.net

Copyright

Yu-Gi-Oh! is the creation of Kazuki Takahashi and the property of Studio Dice / Konami. All copyright for Yu-Gi-Oh! goes to them. My custom cards are fan cards I designed based on various inspirations from Yu-Gi-Oh!, as well as other media properties and real life inspirations. All copyright for my cards’ non-Yu-Gi-Oh! bases go to the appropriate creators as noted above.

All card artworks and anime images used in my custom cards’ artoworks were sourced from yugipedia.com for Yu-Gi-Oh! card arts, from the appropriate source media or wikis for cards inspired by other media properties as noted, or from stock image websites as noted, and as such, I do not own them. All images used were then edited and combined in GIMP as outlined under each card. Their rules text follows a hybrid of the original Japanese cards’ numbered effect formatting, and the Problem-Solving Card Text format used for English-language cards, using the most recent cards as examples. The finished card images were created using www.cardmaker.net.