Courtesy of Breakers of Shadows.
It’s finally here, that’s right! It’s a pendulum engine that can be splashed into just about any deck that uses Level 2 to 5 monsters and it’s also very compact and consistent, only requiring a single card to make a complete scale. To top it all off, it’s made entirely out of easily accessible commons, meaning it’s also budget. I’ve been experimenting a lot with this engine trying to find out ways to reinvigorate old decks with the new pendulum mechanic.
The Performapal Pendulum Engine:
So what is the engine, it’s pretty simple and many people might already be aware of it, considering it’s utilized in the Performapals Dracoslayer deck or Pepe, if you’re so inclined. The engine really revolves around two cards Performapal Skullcrobat Joker and Performapal Monkeyboard. Both are pendulum monsters and both provide really consistent search utility so you can consistently build scales with little to no effort.
Performapal Monkeyboard
Level 6 / Pendulum / Beast / EARTH
1000 ATK / 2400 DEF
Pendulum Effect: Unless you have a “Performapal” card in your other Pendulum Zone, this card’s Pendulum Scale becomes 4. During your Main Phase, if this card was activated this turn: You can add 1 Level 4 or lower “Performapal” monster from your Deck to your hand. You can only use this effect of “Performapal Monkeyboard” once per turn.
Monster Effect: You can discard this card; reveal 1 “Performapal” or “Odd-Eyes” monster in your hand, and if you do, reduce the Levels of monsters in your hand with that name by 1 for the rest of this turn (even after they are Summoned/Set).
Performapal Skullcrobat Joker
Level 4 / Pendulum / Spellcaster / DARK
1800 ATK / 100 DEF
Pendulum Effect: You cannot Pendulum Summon monsters, except “Performapal” monsters, “Magician” Pendulum Monsters, and “Odd-Eyes” monsters. This effect cannot be negated.
Monster Effect: When this card is Normal Summoned: You can add 1 “Performapal” monster, “Magician” Pendulum Monster, or “Odd-Eyes” monster from your Deck to your hand, except “Performapal Skullcrobat Joker”.
The functionality is quite straightforward. When Joker is normal summoned he can search any Performapal from the deck. When Monkeyboard is played in the pendulum zone he can search a Performapal from the deck. That means, if you have either one you can always search the other and the then have that one search the opposite scale. For example, normal summon Joker and have Joker search Monkeyboard. Play Monkeyboard and have Monkeyboard search another Performapal with a 5 or higher scale. With this very simple combo you can make a completed scale and it only requires one card and it yields you what is potentially an infinite 1800 ATK level 4 beater.
Accompanying Pieces:
The obvious follow-up question is: what is the other pendulum monster you pair with Monkeyboard? There’s actually quite a few that are usable and kind of falls down to preference in the end. Naturally, you could just use Skullcrobat Joker as you opposing scale, giving you a 1 to 8 scale, but this exhausts your Jokers quite quickly and restricts you to only pendulum summoning Odd-Eyes, Magicians and Performapals, and I’m looking for splashable so that won’t work. You can also search non-Performapals with Joker, but when you play them as scales Monkeyboard’s scale becomes a 4, which is also no what I’m looking for, so I’ll eliminate that possibility as well. With those qualifications, we’re left with the following:
- Performapal Silver Claw (5)
- A beater that can boost all your Performapals ATK.
- Performapal Lizardraw (6)
- Draws cards by destroying itself.
- Performapal Mufflerlion (5)
- Allows for wombo combos when you destroy monsters by battle and provides some minor defense.
- Performapal Cheermole (5)
- Gives ATK boosts where there’s already ATK boosts.
- Performapal Guiturtle (6)
- Draws a card when you play another Performapal in the opposite pendulum zone.
The two 6 scales, Lizardraw and Guiturtle, are both good for drawing cards, making them the first choice for most people. The 5 scales are about ATK boosting and manipulation and I’m personally more drawn to them because they are more relevant when being treated as monsters than the 6 scales, but it’s hard to deny drawing cards. Of all the above, the Cheermole and Mufflerlion are both fairly reliant on the rest of your deck being Performapal based, making them less splashable, so I’ll once again narrow it down to the last three.
That leaves us with Silver Claw, Lizardraw and Guiturtle. At this point it’s really just a matter of preference and deck relevance. Naturally, if you want to use the engine with a deck that has level 5 monsters, you’re then required to use the 6 scales because you’ll need them in order to pendulum summon level 5 monsters. The common engine for this instance that I see is 2 Lizardraw and 1 Guiturtle. If your deck only really needs level 4 and below, then I personally would be inclined to run 3 Silverclaw because it provides a lot of damage output and is also still a threat later if the opponent destroys it while it’s a scale.
Here’s the strengths and weaknesses of each:
- Performapal Silver Claw:
- Reasonable high ATK and attack boosting effect that benefits all Performapals.
- Level 4 for making Rank 4 XYZ in a pinch.
- Only a 5 scale, so it doesn’t support level 5 monsters.
- Performapal Lizardraw:
- 6 scale, the highest current Performapal scale.
- Draws cards, who doesn’t like drawing cards.
- Can be pendulum summoned back once destroyed, but is mostly unhelpful.
- Self exhausting because it destroys itself, meaning a slow deck might burn through its scale quickly.
- Performapal Guiturtle:
- 6 scale, the highest current Performapal scale.
- Draws cards more robustly than Lizardraw.
- Virtually impossible to pendulum summon once destroyed.
- Almost useless monster effect.
What Now?
So what can you do with this engine? Well, there’s actually some fun stuff to be done here when combined with older strategies. Here’s some interesting examples I could think of:
- HEROs
- You can pendulum summon Elemental HERO Shadow Mist, letting you search Mask Change and summon Dark Law, but also have access to XYZ summoning using the pendulum monsters and other HERO monsters.
- Madolche
- With Pendulum monsters, it’s infinitely more easy to perform Madolche OTKs. You can summon a Madolche Magileine and searcha card and pendulum summon it that turn. For example, searching a Madolche Anjelly and pendulum summoning it. From there, there are quite a few different plays, most resulting in you summoning a Madolche Tiaramisu. You can also pendulum summon a Madolche Beast-type monster and a Madolche Messengelato at the same time to trigger Messengelato’s effect. The deck seems to work very naturally together with the pendulum mechanic.
- Shiranui
- Me and my friend were looking over this new archetype from Breakers of Shadows and, we both thought it was interesting, but it’s bound by such a slow start and doesn’t look to be getting any more support in the near future. One of the simplest ways to crash the deck past the setup phase is by pendulum summoning a whole mess of them. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t, I just thought it might be interesting to try. With that being said, I’ll probably be trying to make some build with Shiranui because it reminds of Vayu Turbo, and I really liked that deck.
- Fluffals
- Both Fluffal Dog and Fluffal Owl can get their effects when special summoned from the hand. Logically then we might as well try doing so using pendulum summoning right? You could also theoretically better utilize cards like Fusion Substitute or The Dark – Hex-Sealed Fusion.
- Mecha Phantom Beasts
- Mecha Phantom Beasts was always a deck that struggled with only having a single normal summon since almost all of there monsters needed another monster on board before there full potential was realized. You would summon the first and almost be wasting it and then hope it survived until next turn so you could then use the combos provided by having two Mecha Phantom Beast monsters. Now, you can completely circumvent that problem by pendulum summon your Mecha Phantom Beasts. For example, Mecha Phantom Beast Coltwing special summons 2 tokens when it’s special summon while you control a Mecha Phantom Beast. So you can pendulum summon Coltwing with another Mecha Phantom Beast or normal summon the other and then pendulum summon the Coltwing. Naturally you follow that up with combos of many kinds.
There’s many more things you could do, but it’s really up to your imagination. I’ll most definitley be testing out lots of fun deck ideas in the future and I’ll post an article when I think I find something interesting. With that though, I’ll see y’all next week.
Written by: Kyle Oliver