Ritual monsters have been with us ever since the first days of Spell Ruler, yet while many other aspects of the game have been developed and exploited, the ritual monster has long remained in the shadows. Strike of Neos intends to change this by giving ritual monsters a new ally in their struggle.

In order to help everyone prepare for the Strike of Neos Sneak Preview event this weekend, I would like to take this chance to reintroduce everyone to the mechanics of the ritual monsters. We will examine what is required to play them, how you perform the ritual summon, and what some of their support cards do.

Those Blue Cards of Mine

Normally the text of the ritual monster will have a brief section telling you what specific ritual spell card is used when summoning the monster. Thus far, only Relinquished is an exception to this, simply because it has so much text that it really doesn’t have the room. The ritual spell card itself also tells you which ritual monster(s) it can be used for. For example, Final Ritual of the Ancients says that it is used to ritual summon Reshef the Dark Being, while Black Illusion Ritual tells you that it is used to ritual summon Relinquished.

In order to perform the ritual summon, you must gather together the ritual monster, the ritual spell card it requires, and monsters that will be offered as tributes. Each ritual spell card instructs you to tribute monsters with a combined level total equaling or exceeding the specified value. These monsters are tributes from your hand, your side of the field, or a combination of both. When you succeed, your ritual monster is ritual summoned to the field.

These tributed monsters are not a cost. You do not have to reveal any card when you activate your ritual spell card nor tribute any monsters. You only tribute monsters when you resolve the effect, and then only if you still have the ritual monster in your hand and enough monsters to satisfy the required tribute. If the effect of your ritual spell card is negated, you won’t lose any cards beyond the ritual spell card itself.

You may have noticed that the text of some ritual spell cards (like End of the World from Shadow of Infinity) are worded a bit differently than other ritual spell cards. It requires you to offer monsters as tributes with a total combined level that is exactly equal to the ritual monster you will ritual summon.

Example: Ruin

Johnny wants to ritual summon Demise, King of Armageddon. He has the ritual spell card End of the World and four monsters in his hand: Giant Orc, Cyber Dragon, Jerry Beans Man, and Gemini Elf. He starts by activating End of the World, which says that he needs to tribute monsters with a combined level equal to Demise, King of Armageddon. Demise is a level 8 ritual monster, so the sum total of the levels of whatever monsters Johnny uses must total 8. Johnny can use both of his level 4 monsters as tributes, or combine his Cyber Dragon and Jerry Beans Man. Each combination equals a level total of 8. Any other combination would not be valid.

When tributing monsters to satisfy a ritual summon, you are allowed to go over the required level count, but you cannot do so by needlessly tributing additional monsters. Say you are using Black Illusion Ritual to ritual summon Relinquished and you have three monsters in your hand. Each monster is enough to satisfy the ritual on its own. Tributing an additional monster would be needless and not allowed. Players aren’t really tempted to do this anyway, since you usually want to use as few cards as possible for the ritual summon.

The act of tributing monsters from your hand to fulfill the ritual summon should not be confused with discarding a card. While the end result may be the same in both cases, the distinction in terminology is important. Cards with effects that activate when they are discarded will not activate if they are tributed for a ritual summon. (I offer my apologies to the Dark World monsters because they’re out of luck.)

Ritual Support

Ritual monsters received their first big break with Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands from Invasion of Chaos. This card combined the efforts of two previous entries from Spell Ruler, giving you access to half of the ritual equation when you needed it. Also provided in Invasion of Chaos was the ritual spell card Earth Chant, which followed its predecessor Contract with the Abyss from Dark Crisis. They made things interesting by giving a player the ability to use one ritual spell card for multiple ritual monsters.

Many players looked at the text of Contract with the Abyss and Earth Chant and came to the erroneous conclusion that they could use it to summon any monster they wanted as long as it had the proper attribute. While the text didn’t specifically state that it could be used only with specific attribute ritual monsters, it didn’t really need to. Ritual spell cards were designed for the specific process of ritual summoning ritual monsters. They don’t really do anything else.

Ritual Foregone was the first ritual support card to make it easy to special summon any ritual monster you wanted, but it came with strict limitations. The ritual monster you special summon cannot declare an attack and it is destroyed in the end phase. To make matters worse, when it is destroyed you are not able to special summon it from your graveyard because Ritual Foregone does not ritual summon the monster.

The ritual monster is still free to use its effects, assuming you don’t have to attack with it to activate them. You can use it to summon Dark Master - Zorc and try your luck at a roll of the dice or bring out Reshef the Dark Being and take possession of one of your opponent’s monsters. You can use it to pop out Relinquished for a quick grab-and-go. You could even use it to bring out Elemental Mistress Doriado and use her to fuel your element-based effects for a turn. Then, before ending your turn, you can use the ritual monster as a tribute for a summon or card effect.

Strike of Neos gives us new ritual monsters and new support cards to give them a helping hand. While the Six Samurai will likely receive a lot of attention, don’t forget that the ritual monsters have their uses as well. They won’t be too hard to get and may come in handy.

Until next time, send all comments to Curtis@Metagame.com