Extraterrestrial Excavation

[Atypical-Abbie]

A card that prevents both players from drawing or adding cards to their hand, EXCEPT by excavation. Yes, a strange thing indeed, but you may ask, how does one draw? Don't worry, you get to do that in the Standby Phase, as it excavates the top 3 cards of the Deck and adds 1 of them to the hand, but how does one get rid of it? Well, you can choose not to do that, in which case you place a counter on the card. If there are 3 on the card, it destroys itself. It can also only be activated once per Duel.

 

Neither player can add cards from their hand to their Deck, except by excavating them. During the turn player's Standby Phase. They can excavate the top 3 cards of their Deck, then they can add 1 of them to their hand and place the remaining cards on the bottom of their Deck in any order or they can send all 3 cards to the GY and place 1 counter on this card. When there are 3 or more counters on this card, destroy this card. You can only activate 1 "Extraterrestrial Excavation" per Duel.

[Darj]

I get the card's intention, but the way you wrote the first effect doesn't really work. Even if you excavate, effects that do so also indicate what to do with the cards afterwards (e.g. ad to hand, send to GY, shuffle into the Deck) so... you wouldn't still be able to add any card to the hand after an excavation. Pretty sure you have to try a different way to write it. Perhaps a "Neither player can add cards from their hand to their Deck, except by effects that excavate a card(s)" would do? Another alternative with more precedence is "Neither player can add cards from their hand to their Deck, except by the effects of cards that include an effect that excavates a card(s)", as see in Solemn Warning and Ghost Belle. The issue with the last one is that it would also allow any other effects that adds a card to the hand, as long as the card has an excavated effect printed on it.

 

That aside, well, this card is floodgate-ish by nature, and hopefully you are aware of the stigma towards floodgates. However, the drawbacks you gave it should suffice to keep it acceptable. If nowadays the formats are dealing with stuff like Thunder Dragon Colossus, this OPD Field that dies to backrow removal shouldn't be difficult to deal with. I like that you can run it along any deck with Terraforming so you can search for it if you drew both Terraforming and your key Field Spell that you don't really need on the field.

[Atypical-Abbie]

I get the card's intention, but the way you wrote the first effect doesn't really work. Even if you excavate, effects that do so also indicate what to do with the cards afterwards (e.g. ad to hand, send to GY, shuffle into the Deck) so... you wouldn't still be able to add any card to the hand after an excavation. Pretty sure you have to try a different way to write it. Perhaps a "Neither player can add cards from their hand to their Deck, except by effects that excavate a card(s)" would do? Another alternative with more precedence is "Neither player can add cards from their hand to their Deck, except by the effects of cards that include an effect that excavates a card(s)", as see in Solemn Warning and Ghost Belle. The issue with the last one is that it would also allow any other effects that adds a card to the hand, as long as the card has an excavated effect printed on it.

 

That aside, well, this card is floodgate-ish by nature, and hopefully you are aware of the stigma towards floodgates. However, the drawbacks you gave it should suffice to keep it acceptable. If nowadays the formats are dealing with stuff like Thunder Dragon Colossus, this OPD Field that dies to backrow removal shouldn't be difficult to deal with. I like that you can run it along any deck with Terraforming so you can search for it if you drew both Terraforming and your key Field Spell that you don't really need on the field.

I literally give an exception that says "except by excavating them", meaning that if you do, that overwrites the clause that prevents adding.

[Darj]

Oh, you are right. What happens to the card while it's excavated is still part of the excavation effect. Thought they were separate effects. I apologize for my mistake.