Card #53 - Haunted Mansion

Aarikku · Card #53 - Haunted Mansion

(Level Two) Haunted Mansion (Spell)
Category: Arena
Effect: Ghosts gain 300 ATK. When a Ghost you control is destroyed, you can shuffle it back into your deck and play a Ghost from your Graveyard with a lower Level than the shuffled card. This can only be done once per turn.
ATK:
DEF:
Creator: Eric

Happy Halloween!

Naardaas

Nice. This card works well fore Ghost decks. Like Accorsed Mausoleum, it allows you to boost your ghosts and recycle them too. Epic art as well. 'Nuff said. 4.5/5.

Aarikku

Thanks. The art took frickin' forever. Houses are not my speciality.

So. Let's break Haunted House into pieces and examine each. First off, it's a Level Two Arena Spell. Most Arenas are Level Two, except the ones that just boost ATK/DEF, so that's fine. The Arena Category gives it searchability by Map of Shmod, which is very good.

First effect: Ghosts gain 300 ATK. Ghosts generally have high levels for their ATK - Jack of the Lantern has 3400 on a Level 4, Puppetmaster is 2600 on a 3... so any attack boost is well-received. The 300 ATK also turns [Leric with a Sheet on His Head] and [Wight] into 2000 and 2200 ATK Level One beatsticks respectively.

That's not nearly enough for an Arena that focuses on such a small archetype. The next effect's where it's at. Whenever a Ghost is destroyed, you can shuffle it into the deck (thus preserving your important cards) to play a lower-level Ghost from the grave. Ghosts come in all the Levels from 1 to 5, so you should have no problem finding a suitable target. And, if you play The Puppetmaster off a destroyed Jack of the Lantern or Jack the Soul Reaper, its effect goes off.

The downside of this is that using the revival effect drains your Graveyard resources for later revival uses. So it takes a great deal of strategy (or just a bunch of Graveyard fuelling cards, a la Hell Mulligan and Shrodinger's Blood) to use a Ghost deck.

I'll give it a 4/5. It's not one of those Yugioh Fields that turns a 'meh' theme into an amazing theme (like Arcana Force's Light Barrier), but it certainly clears a path for the Ghost deck.

Naardaas

"For sale, 3-story house on 125 acres of prime land. 4 bed, 3 bath, kitched, library, and about a dozen or so angry ghosts. Do not bother lighting candles as they will likely burst into flames. In the even books begin to fly around the room, take cover. $400 thousand or best offer. Exorcism extra."