Thoughts on Pendulums

Just a couple of things I wanted to put out there.
Most of you are probably already familiar with how they function. In case you don't, they have 2 numbers, one on the left, one on the right, and you play them like spells in either of your 2 pendulum zones, then, once per turn, you can special summon from your hand (or pendulum monsters from your extra deck) as many monsters as you want with levels between the pendulum scales of your monsters in the pendulum zones. If a pendulum monster would be sent to the graveyard while on the field, it goes to your extra deck face up, and can be summoned in that once per turn time as well. Since it's up on ygopro, those of you who were interested had a chance to try it.

I'm sure the mechanic itself seemed like a weird choice to many, most of us were probably expecting a new kind of extra deck monster (though pendulum monsters are that, in a way, even though they cannot be put in the extra deck during deckbuilding), but I believe there was sufficient thinking behind it.
Yugioh has some basic flaws. Not the regular whiny flaws, I am talking about actual flaws in its structure. In fact, one of those flaws contradicts the "omg, 1 special summon per turn plz" whine we hear often. First structural flaw is related to tribute summon mechanics.

When you start explain ygo to someone, you don't forget to say that lv5 or higher monsters require tributes to summon. That is actually a basic and defining characteristic of ygo, when compared to other card games. Yet, tribute summoning is currently avoided like the plague even though it is a core mechanic. It is fundamentally a -1 (or -2) and a slow one at that. It has mostly niche uses (specific monarch decks etc.) or that very specific time when you tribute your dracossac tokens, or that random time where you tribute summon your gorz for a very specific reason. That basically makes most high level monsters that have no specific way to be easily special summoned more or less useless, every time a boss monster is built in the form of a high level effect monster, the card designers must find a way to make it easily special summonable in addition to its actual effect, they have to keep finding ways around their own mechanic, which is a structural weakness in a game.

The second one is also relevant to how the game has gotten special summon oriented. That is the 1 normal summon per turn mechanic. Again, decks that have to depend on that, are either very control-ish (not often seen in the OCG) or doomed, again design has to provide special summon outlets to get around a core mechanic of the game, and in order to make use of the core mechanic, the special clause "when this card is normal summoned" has to be added, which is also currently a structural flaw.

It's not like other games which permit multiple summons based on resources have superior mechanics, those mechanics worked when the game begun, but ygo has just evolved too much by now, that core mechanics end up contradicting the current state of the game.

And all of this rumbling brings us to our subject. Pendulum summons are the answer to those issues in ygo. Even if your hand clogs with a bunch of monsters you cannot keep summoning consistently (madolche?), even if your high level monsters do not have specific conditions to special summon them built in, you can still use them through pendulum summoning.

Now, since it is a new mechanic, it has basic weaknesses. No, it is not OP, you are using your hand resources still, and most importantly, in order to perform it you need not 1, but 2 "field cards" that stick there without providing meaningful advantage. That is a severe weakness in a deck, think about how often field cards have to have a condition that generates advantage in them to be viable. Now, is it utterly useless instead? Not that either, it depends on their effects. Now, the viability of pendulum in general seems to be hinging on the effect of Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon. For those of you who don't know it
http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Odd-Eyes_Pendulum_Dragon
What it basically does is that it can be destroyed in the end phase to search a pendulum monster with 1500 atk or less. That is a pendulum effect, so it activates when it is in the pendulum zone. Because it is destroyed while in the pendulum zone, it goes to the extra deck, that means, even though it was destroyed, it can still be summoned via pendulum summon, and since you got 1 pendulum monster with its search already, that will probably be soon. That effectively makes it a +1, which goes a long way to alleviate the burden of having to have 2 continuous spell cards wasted, which is 2 wasted cards, making them just a -1 if you go ahead and consider them completely dead (that's not exactly the case though, but it is close).
The help of odd-eyes is also proof that pendulums can also get better in the future in simple ways, and because they do make up for a basic weakness, I feel it will actually be easier for us to see good cards that work with them, and also probably simpler cards.

All that being said, I find the look of pendulum cards very undignified.

I'm still confused on the "how to" of pendulum monsters. When you draw them, do you simply summon them in their respective zones like you would with a field spell, or must some condition be met like it would with XYZ, Synchro, Fusion or Ritual summoning?

Some thoughts on the matter, it brings up some interesting questions. Are pendulum monsters considered spell cards in the Pendulum Zone? If so, can we negate their activation/summon via Dark Bribe or something with the likes of Warning? Those are the kind of questions I look forward to being answered.

You just put them in the pendulum zone like activating a spell card. They can also be negated by cards that negate the activations of spell cards, like magic jammer, as they are considered spell card activations.
Also, pendulum summons can be negated (the act of dropping your hand as a pendulum summon when you already have 2 cards in your pendulum zones) and all the pendulum summoned cards die together. However Rai-Oh cannot negate that, as he can only negate 1 card as per its text (solemn judgment on the other hand can negate and kill them all).

Ah that's interesting. Rai-Oh can only negate 1 card at a time. Pendulum Summoning, if negated, will destroy everything in the Pendulum Zones like you stated?

Not in the pendulum zones, the monsters you are summoning.
Cards in pendulum zones are spells. You are using them to allow a pendulum summon.
A pendulum summon on the other hand is when I take a bunch of other monsters from my hand, see that their levels are between the scales of the cards in the pendulum zones and try to dump them on the field as special summons. Those are the monsters you are destroying when you are negating the summon since those are the monsters that are being summoned.

Oh so you never actually summon a Pendulum monster (unless stated by a card effect)

They act like all other effect monsters, so they can be summoned. Their differences from regular monsters are that
A) They can be activated as spells in the pendulum zones (note the green and orange colours, that is to indicate they can be used as both spells and monsters)
B) When they would be sent to the graveyard from the field, they are put face up on your extra deck instead of going to the graveyard, and then when you decide to do your pendulum summon, you can include pendulum monsters that ended up on your extra deck if their levels are correct.

Edit: made a slight error, corrected it, may have made it in the OP too, it is about when they are sent to the extra deck (they go to the extra deck whenever they would be sent from the field to the graveyard)

Oh I see. Now I have a proper thought for this: its a really balanced mechanic in my opinion.

Question: when do you gain a Pendulum Scale?

They are already on the monster, note the 1 under the blue diamond and the 1 under the red diamond. Those are the scales. If I place that on the right, its blue 1 scale (the one that is currently pointing to the field) is active and if I place this guy
on the left, its red 8 scale is active, that means I can pendulum summon monsters with levels from 2 to 7 (between 1 and 8 ).

P.S.: No monster with different scales is known as of yet, all known members have both red and blue scales equal, but I assume in the future we will get them.

I feel like Chronmancy and Odd-Eyes are going to be staples for a long while, Chronmancy may get replaced, but Odd-Eyes is definitely going to be a staple for any Pendulum-tech deck. I give it a few packs in for Pendulums and they will pick up their pace (as usual with new stuff.) Right now, its ok and I feel like as they are they do balance the game. However, if Pendulum effects begin to have direct correlation and directly affect any specific archetype, the game will become pretty crazy again and speed up even more so.

I do see that Konami did put sufficient thought into this. It takes up space in a deck to use these monsters, so that's a draw back in of itself it seems. I give them a slow hand clap for doing something right. Now we just have to see what happens and what they decide to do with them.