Spell Chronicle

Spell Chronicle — Power Evaluation

Final Score: 24 ± 6 · Confidence: Medium

• Intrinsic: 26 · Deck: 28 · Meta: provisional
• Primary role: Recovery/Recursion · Secondary: Utility

Why it scores here

Spell Chronicle only converts after a long, opponent-controlled delay: it demands the entire hand as a cost, banishes 5 Spells/Traps from the Deck, accrues counters only when the opponent activates a Spell Card, and then lets the opponent choose which banished card you get back. Its stats, rarity and view count earn nothing here — the only positive signal is that 19 sampled decks (mostly Witchcrafter, 2.05 copies on average) still run it, which confirms it is playable in a Spell-recursion shell but not that it is strong. With 0 recorded combo appearances and 0 guides, that deck count cannot raise the score, and the 500-damage-per-banished-card clause when it leaves the field makes removal actively painful. This is a net card-disadvantage engine whose payoff is slow, non-disruptive and partly chosen by the opponent.

Axis scores

Calculation

Weight profile: 0.7 Recovery/Recursion + 0.3 Utility (default). Intrinsic ≈ 26, Deck ≈ 28, Meta = provisional. Modifiers: Self-burn liability on removal (-3). Final formula: 0.40*Intrinsic + 0.60*Deck

Strengths

• Fully generic, no archetype lock or summon restriction — it can be registered in any Spell-heavy deck
• Banishes 5 Spells/Traps from the Deck, which can set up strategies that care about a large banished Spell/Trap pile
• Can eventually return one banished card to hand, giving a form of delayed recovery from the banished zone
• Observed in 19 sampled decks at 2.05 average copies, with 8 lists running the full 3 — real, non-trivial adoption in Witchcrafter shells

Weaknesses

• Activation sends your entire hand to the GY for no immediate board presence or card advantage
• Chronicle Counters are placed only when the OPPONENT activates a Spell Card, so the engine can stall completely against Spell-light decks
• The opponent chooses which banished card you add to hand, so the payoff is often the worst of the five
• Leaving the field deals 500 damage per currently banished card (up to 2500) — normal removal becomes a burn on the controller
• No negation, no removal, no disruption: it does not interact with the opponent's board at all
• 0 recorded combo appearances and 0 guides — there is no evidence it converts into a meaningful end board

Counters / choke points

• Any Spell/Trap removal (Mystical Space Typhoon, Cosmic Cyclone, Knightmare Unicorn) both blanks the engine and triggers its damage clause on its owner
• Decks that activate few or no Spell Cards never let it accumulate Chronicle Counters
• Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring or similar negation aimed at the activation leaves the hand already committed
• Fast, Spell-light combo decks that close the game before two opponent Spells ever resolve

Best use

Slow Spell-based recursion/setup piece in Spell-dense decks; not a starter or win condition. Decks: Witchcrafter, Spell-heavy GY/banish-recursion strategies, Magician's Right Hand control shells. Suggested copies: 1.

Evidence & gaps

• Verified: Card text: activation cost is 'send your entire hand to the GY; banish 5 Spells/Traps from your Deck'; Card text: a Chronicle Counter is placed only when the OPPONENT activates a Spell Card and it resolves; Card text: removing 2 Chronicle Counters lets the opponent choose which card banished by this effect you add to hand; Card text: leaving the field deals 500 damage per card currently banished by this effect; Card identity: Continuous Spell, no archetype, no ATK/DEF, legal in TCG/OCG/MasterDuel/DuelLinks with no banlist token supplied
• Observed: 19 sampled decks run it, all in the main deck, at 2.05 copies on average (8 lists at 3, 4 at 2, 7 at 1); Witchcrafter accounts for 14 of the 19 decks; Numeron 2; Sacred Beast, Yubel and Metalfoes 1 each; Top partners co-occur at 78.9% (Witchcrafter Schmietta, Madame Verre, Creation, Holiday, Unveiling, Patronus) and Magician's Right Hand at 57.9%; combo data records 0 appearances, 0 starter role, 0 material role, 0 payoff role, and no examples; 0 guides supplied; 0 usage statistics rows available; not a Top Card in any format
• Inferred: Sending the entire hand to the GY can feed Witchcrafter Spell GY effects, which is the most plausible reason a Spell-recursion deck registers it; Banishing 5 Spells/Traps from the Deck requires the opponent to activate two Spells before any card returns, so against Spell-light decks the engine effectively never pays off; Because the opponent selects the returned card, the expected value of the payoff is below a random pick from the five banished cards
• Data gaps: no combos supplied — combo conversion is text-only inference no guides supplied no banlist token — assumed 3 copies (unlimited) no usage statistics (StatisticsCard) — archetype inclusion % inferred from deck sample only no win-rate or end-board data, so the practical value of the banish-5 setup cannot be measured