Summoned Skull

Why he got replaced as Yami Yugi's ace monster, we have no idea.

Summoned Skull, one of the first duel monsters and one of the most recognizable in the franchise, has a long history of retrains and different versions attached to it. At 2500 ATK and 1200 DEF for a single tribute, Summoned Skull remains perhaps one of the best tribute normal monsters, beating out Red-Eyes Black Dragon in attack, while being cheaper to summon than Dark Magician. However both cards long left Summoned Skull in the dust when it came to support and retrains (you can even fuse Red Eyes with Summoned Skull, but the resulting love monster still has nothing on Blue Eyes), and while Summoned Skull has received love in recent years it still lacks many of the luxuries those two have gotten. Additionally, the Archfiend archetype has been power crept to absolute shit, with its gambling-based effects just not being very good, fun! But not good and with far little benefit in the current state of competitive.

Archetype (or lack thereof)

Somewhat unintuitive Summoned Skull is part of the Archfiend due to the clusterfuck that was, you guessed it, the aftermath of the Satanic Panic. As was usual for companies at the time Upper Deck, Yugioh's worldwide distributor at the time decided to censor a lot of stuff they thought would anger parents at the time. In this particular case, the word they were covering up was the word Daemon, which was used generically in the name of a lot of cards like how Dragon and Magician was and still are used. Unfortunately for the translators eventually Archetypal Effects that based their effects on the names of monsters eventually came into existence and with that came a number of Archetypes that included a lot of older cards, most prominently and of note this article Daemon. Daemon was translated to Archfiend at that point to mimic how the Demon monster type was translated as Fiend previously, but there was still the problem of all the random cards that were now part of the Archetype but didn't have it in their translated name. They didn't want to go back and errata the names of the cards so instead they errata the text of the new cards to include or exclude certain cards from the effect. This lead to a lot of stupid situations and bloated text and eventually lead to the creation, many years later mind you, of Archetype Conditions that allowed a card to be specified as part of an Archetype without it being in the name. TLDR: Summoned Skull's name is actually Summoned Daemon and Archfiend is actually Daemon. Translation can be very dumb across cultures.

Now that bloated history lesson is out of the way we can actually talk about Summoned Skull's Archetype, Archfiend. Archfiend, as you should know if you actually read the previous paragraph, didn't actually start out as an Archetype but a generic word used in card names. As such you'd rightly guess that the initial cards all had no real synergy except for the cards that actually made them an Archetype, a set of chess fiend demons that resembled Summoned Skull. So as that was the case you would expect the designers to either find a way to fold the old unrelated cards in to the new Archetype or just focus on the new set of cards when making new Archfiend cards, right? Right? Well no they made an entirely unrelated set of sport-themed Archfiend cards focused loosely around Red Dragon Archfiend, the ace monster of the rival of 5Ds. As these were the monsters of a major rival they would of course support this set of Archfiends right? Right...? Nope, they completely ignored them and went on to produce a lot of random retrains of Summoned Skull, most of which were useless. Not to mention this entire time, and to this very day, cards were still being produced with Archfiend in the name as if Archfiend was still a generic term adding even more unrelated cards to this mess. Finally, in 2010 Starstrike Blast a set of strong royalty-themed Archfiends was started who while more cohesive and powerful than any pervious Archfiends were still only decent.

So surely with all these various cards, along with a searcher or two in Archfiend Heiress, you've got to be able to make something approaching a good deck? Eh it's fine but barely stands up to other causal decks. Even with all the support it's received over the years the Archetype still isn't consistent and doesn't have a real game plan. Abuse the fact their Dark Fiends, a very well-supported and powerful group of monsters? Nope there are most other proper Fiend Archetypes that can do that significantly better than Archfiends and the ones that can't basically pack filler trash. Exploit the few actually good cards the Archfiends have in Archetype like Archfiend's Awakening or god forgive Mazera DeVille. Despite them being part of the Archetype the deck is terrible at using them and doesn't even have a way in Archetype to summon ritual monsters like Archfiend's Awakening!

The simple fact of the matter is that Archfiends are a mess that has been redone multiple times now and no one at Konami seems interested in trying to fix. Besides Summoned Skull no one really cares about Archfiends except those people who are interested in trying to find some way to sort this mess out. And we haven't even gone into specifics as to why they're really terrible as this article is specifically about Summoned Skull in particular! What we're trying to impress upon you is that despite being a very popular card Summoned Skull has no really supporting Archetype besides its strange retrains. These retrain are the only proper support the card gets and well... Just take a look in the next section to see.

Notable Cards, the retrains

Skull Archfiend of Lightning

New and Improved™

The first and most prominent of the retrains of Summoned Skull and the most versatile. Skull Archfiend of Lightning inherits Summoned Skull's original stat line in addition to a dice-based effect to put it in line with the other Archfiend monsters. However, unlike those Archfiend monsters, Skull Archfiend of Lightning has a chance to actually DO SOMETHING with its effect rather than fall limp. Though being only a self-targeting negate doesn't win it many points. Pandemonium is a must here as it would be with all Archfiend monsters that demand life points.

Archfiend's Manifestation

Manifest me a better series please

Archfiend's Manifestation is one of the first Summoned Skull support cards and is the fusion monster of the series. All Summoned Skulls on the field gain 500 ATK, giving them a BEWD level stat line, in addition when it's sent to the graveyard by an opponent's card, you can special summon a Summoned Skull from the deck. The 500 ATK boost is by no means terrible but it's pretty narrow in scope when a lot of the Summoned Skulls you'll be summoning are probably its XYZ and Synchro incarnations, as well as the fact that special summoning can be both negated and or made to your opponents advantage with Ash Blossom and Maxx C respectively.

Archfiend's Awakening

You motherfucker, I was having a dream about Gemini Elves, SISTERS THEY WERE!

Now we're getting into some spicier stuff, Archfiend's Awakening possesses the basic 2500 ATK 1200 DEF stat line but its effects are pretty damn good. It can't be destroyed by battle except with a ritual monster (Watch out for Nethys, Dytrons, Relinquished, and the occasional Blue-Eyes ritual deck) nor is it affected by monster's effects except those of ritual monsters so the same warning applies. Definitely not one of the support Summoned Skull's but can be a heavy hitter with the right combination of monsters on the field.

Archfiend's Ascent

Everything looks better in black

Pretty basic for an XYZ monster, possessing a potential two-time card destruction prevention, though it should be clarified, it does NOT negate the destruction effect, only saving the selected cards. Finally, like all Extra Deck Summoned Skulls, you get a free Summoned Skull special summon if it leaves the field to the graveyard.

Archfiend's Call

I am the visible invisible shield

Archfiend's Call rounds out the Extra Deck summoned skulls with a targeting effect negation, protecting your Summoned Skulls from targeted effects from monsters, spells or traps. However watch out for stuff such as Raigeki, Lightning storm, hell, and the entire fucking Rai-spell family. Having Archfiend's Ascent also on the field can lessen the damage from those cards up to two times.

Trivia

Is actually based heavily on the Magic the Gathering card Lord of The Pit. While the original concept for the card game in the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga was a sort of rules-light version of MTG most of the cards weren't actually based on cards from MTG, Summoned Skull being a prominent and important exception.