Aliens - Failed Cards, Archetypes, and Sometimes Mechanics in Yu-Gi-Oh

Years ago, I remember having so much fun with these guys in Duel Links. Such a shame Counters isn't a good mechanic in modern yugioh.

This deck had a fun playstyle. To bad it tripped and broke both it legs at the starting line.

I cannot deny, Master Duel actually opened my 3rd eye when it came to Reptiles and aliens, I just wish there was one more piece of solid support for Ogdoadics and Reptalinnes for making it more consistent to make sure Cosmic Slicer stayed on the field. One thing I will always praise YGO for is their accidental synergies, a perfect example of this is Reptiles, as well as generic insects, being able to fit 4-5 different archtypes into one consistent deck is why I do love YGO.

They're still real to me, darn it!

One of the first archetypes I tried to use, hopefully they do a retrain on it

Gol'gar was good because you could place the a counters on it rather than your opponent's monsters. So you did not have to worry about them all getting removed prematurely. Combine this with the fact that Code a ancient ruins is a soft one per turn, you could active the effect multiple times. I had several games where I summoned three Gol'gars in a single turn for an OTK. Not saying it was the best, but Gol'gar did give the Aliens a nice boss monster that rounded them out and gave them a fighting chance.

Synchro Era were the closest that Aliens were to becoming playable, and in Edison formats I've heard word of people tinkering with the deck (because it feels like everything is playable in Edison to a degree), but support came out too slowly. It got one card in 2016, one in 2020, and 2 in 2021. The game had sped up too much I think the archetype can spread A Counters fairly effectively, and as of Zer'oll, now has a gameplan using those A counters, but again, by the time we got to that gameplan, it was too late to make a large difference

It's amazing to see the paradigm shift in Yugioh with you own eyes just seeing the difference between all the other aliens and then the introduction of Recombination Device. You can really tell the difference in eras between the cards between "Summon and put an A counter on a thing" and "6 lines of text that does like 4 separate things that tries to improve the entire archetype as a whole" lol

I love Aliens, but man they frustrate me. Like they had the right idea with Overlord, using tokens to special summon and applying even more tokens. They had the right idea with Zer’oll, being a big floodgate with decent attack (plus just being in the extra deck is better). They sort of had the right idea with Recombination Device, being a Foolish Burial and ROTA that lets you put counters. And being part of the reptile boom would in theory help them out. But alas, ET didn’t find home in my deck box and stays in the binder. Here’s hoping we get more though to tie things together.

Cosmic Fortress constantly bouncing Swords of Revealing Light was a fun moment in my life.

A field spell that gives protection by removing a counters and states that monsters with a counters cannot be tributed or used as material for link, XYZ or synchro summon except for reptile monsters. I kept fusion open as that way it's not a full lock from the extra deck

Can't wait to see that one guy that's gonna mald at Duel Logs for calling their favorite archetype a failure. 😅

If the rept-pile of Ogdo, Alien, and Reptilianne ever gets a fantastic boss monster on the level of Ultimate Conductor Tyranno, it could become a competent rogue strategy

Alien's gimmick are perfectly fine and cohesive IMO, they put a-counters, and then debuff monster with said a-counters. Just that they suffer for being old AF, all they need is a wave of modern support and they could easily be playable. Give them better alien mars for example.

Let me guess Alien decks are useless going first since you can't place A-counters since there are no monsters on the enemy side.

My favorite deck in highschool ❤. I remember getting destroyed by heroes, DAD, and six samurai 😭

I feel like A Counters could've been good if they also reduced Levels by 1 for each counter, and if the Level/stat reduction were baked into the counters instead of requiring monsters with reminder text on them specifically on the field to do anything. The most funny thing to me is that because of the way Yu-Gi-Oh rules and rulings have decided to handle search effects, Crop Circles can only fail to find and burn you for 2000 only if the last legal target is somehow removed from your deck in a higher chain link above Crop Circles, because you can't legally activate cards like Crop Circles without at least one legal target, even if the targets are in a hidden zone like the deck.

Alien is my first ever deck in duel links, and i had lots of fun with it

They may be bad but the Alien Kid/Planet Pollutant virus with Zer'oll is really funny

Gol'gar Control was an actual thing back in the day. You could repeatedly bounce stuff like Swords of Revealing Light, Call of the Haunted, and Fiendish Chain and accumulate A-Counters to pop things.