Intro to Rituals

Hey guys! Once again Dam Son here with another Intro To Articles featuring the most underrated , but also my favourite, summoning method of the game - Ritual Summoning.

  

Ritual Summoning, unlike other summoning method, requires 3 components to perform

1.  A Ritual Monster, 
2. their corresponding Ritual Spell 
3. Sufficient monsters and/or levels for tribute.

Normally, Ritual Summoning is rather inconsistent and see no play at all in the Yugioh Meta due to said steep requirements. However some Ritual Archetypes made it possible as their Ritual Spells can cater to the summon for ALL their Archetype's Ritual Monster. Successful Ritual Archetypes also have their own ways to search out their deck to get their required combo pieces, thus boosting consistency.

Examples of such archetypes includes Nekroz, Cyber Angels, Gishki, Black Luster Soldier and Prediction Princess.

Trivia & Facts:

1. Ritual Monsters can be revived from the grave by cards like Soul Charge only if they were summoned properly beforehand. However, most strong Ritual Monsters have the effect which limits them to be summoned only via Ritual Summon.
2. Ritual Spells are identified by the little fire icon symbol on their top right hand side of the spell while Ritual Monsters are identified by their iconic Blue Background.
3. Monsters tributed for Ritual Summon do trigger their "upon tributed" effects. (E.g. Hieratics)
4. Ritual Summoning for the love of Konami does not tribute the monsters as cost.
5. Ritual Summoning is considered a Special Summon.

The Staples
There are many Staples and Must-Plays in Ritual Decks which boosts its consistency and are the reason Rituals might (I do hope so) dominate the Meta someday.

Like Nekroz once did.

Manju of The ten Thousand Hands/ Senju of the Thousand Hands/ Sonic Bird
Bread and Butter

Manju searches either Ritual Monster or Spells upon being Normal or Flip Summon. Senju searches for only a Ritual Monster while Sonic Bird searches for a Ritual Spell both upon being Normal or Flip Summon. These cards are normally your go-to card as Ritual Decks tend to not Normal Summon. Your searchers hence fill the void and abuse your entitled once-per-turn normal summon. In these Meta, Sonic Bird is not usually played as most Ritual Archetype have their own spell searchers, like Nekroz of Clausolas.

Preparation of Rites

Preparation of Rites is a plus 1 card by salvaging a Ritual Spell from the grave and Searching out any level 7 or lower Ritual Monster from the deck. This allows you to recover resources after performing your Ritual Summons.

A Moment of Silence for Preparation of Rites's Limitation...and Stratos' Forbidden Status

Pre-Preparation of Rites

Moving on, Pre-Preparation of Rites, like its counterpart, is also a card which generates a plus 1. Preparation of Rites searches out both a Ritual Spell and a Ritual Monster from the deck to the hand, halving the difficulty of performing the summon by gathering the required components. The only catch is that the Ritual Monster's name must be on the Ritual Spell's Text. This means that Pre-Preparation of Rites cannot be abused to search out Archetype Ritual spells since these spells have the Archetype name listed in the Card Text but not the Card Name

However, this card is very useful for Ritual monsters that aren't part of a archetype with a full-blown ritual monster lineup. But we will get to that later on.

Ritual Sanctuary

Initially a card meant for the Cyber Angel archetype, this field spell allows you to swap any dead spell card for a LIGHT Ritual Monster or any Ritual Spell. This card can be teched along with a playset of Terraforming and Chicken Game to boost consistency.

Advanced Ritual Art

A card for all generic Ritual Monsters. It substitutes the ordinary tribute from hand and/or field to milling a Normal Monster which has the same level and using it as tribute instead.

Supportive Ritual Cards

Remember when I mentioned about Archetypes that don't focus on Ritual Summoning but do support Rituals? Well there really isn't any term to group them up so lets just go with Supportive Ritual Cards.

(Do comment if you have a really cool and awesome name to group them up. It will really help a lot!) 

These type of cards include Malacoda, Netherlord of the Burning Abyss, Blue-Eyes Chaos MAX Dragon and many more. Normally such supports are avoided due to their inconsistent nature however with the release of Pre-Preparation of Rites, decks like Ritual Burning Abyss were made possible. Do note that even though Blue-Eyes Chaos MAX Dragon is a Supportive Ritual Monster, it is not searchable by Pre-Preparation of Rites, as it doesn't have a ritual spell counterpart.

Another type of 'Supportive Ritual Cards' are those that do not belong to any archetype but can be used along for support and tutoring. Examples are Saffira, Queen of Dragons, Sauravus, the Crown Ancient Sage and Radiant Divine Bird Vene.

By the way, Don't you think that Saffira and Sauravus are a couple? Even their Ritual Spell seem to match that of a wedding ceremony!

The Infamous Djinn of Rituals

Remember how Nekroz Deck use to dominate the Meta with the Infamous Djinn, Releaser of Rituals? Well do you know that Djinn, Releaser of Rituals belongs to an Archetype all about having additional effects upon being tributing by a Ritual Summon. Lets go through them briefly. Do note that the Archetype name is called Djinn of Rituals and should not be confused with the Djinn Archetype which is made up of Music Based Xyz Supports.

Djinn of Rituals all have 3 similar effects that they share.

• All Djinn of Rituals can banish themselves from the grave to act as tribute, effectively serving for tributes for two ritual summons.
• All Djinn of Rituals give the Ritual Monster additional effects, if they partake in the summon of that monster.
• All the Djinn of Rituals have the name Djinn, [Name] of Rituals. So I will just go through them by listing their [Name] and not their full name for convenience's sake.

Releaser of Rituals

The main Djinn of Rituals. This card prevents your opponent from Special Summoning while the Ritual Monster is face up on the field. If your Ritual Monster were to survive, it is a Walking Vanity's Emptiness

Presider of Rituals

This cards allows you to draw a card whenever your Ritual Monster destroys a monster by battle. A rather slow card and I don't see any play for it anytime soon as there are other better Djinn of Rituals.

Cursenchanter of Rituals

While the Ritual Monster is face up on the field, all Synchro Monsters effects are negated. This might see play as a counter pick against Synchros Deck one day, if Synchros does really pick up the pace.

Prognostictor of Rituals

This card forces your opponent to discard a card whenever your Ritual Monster destroys a monster by battle. Similar to Presider, there are better options.

Disserere of Rituals

The Ritual Monster is unaffected by Trap Effects. This is a rather poor card to opt for since the meta isn't currently flooded by trap cards affecting the monsters. It is more like negation and floodgate traps

Demolisher of Rituals

The 2nd best card which is best comboed with Releaser. Demolisher gives your Ritual Monster a hex-proof status - making your Ritual Monster is untargetable by card effects.

Tour Guide From the Underworld

Although not a Djinn card, Tour Guide searches your Djinns and can go for rank 3 plays, and dump your Djinn into the grave, prepared for a banish for tribute.

Tour Guide can also go into Leviair, the Sea Dragon to reuse your banished Djinns.

Conclusion

Rituals is a very underrated and easily forgotten mechanic of the game that I hope will be meta again.
At this point, a moment of Silence for the Death of Nekroz.
Do remember to check out our other interesting articles from Ken Sir and Geo.
Once again Dam Son here and signing out.