How does Necrovalley Shrine compare to Vanity's Emptiness?

The #2 thing in this game that makes people lose it in their pants the fastest has got to be nothing other than so-called legacy support. (#1 of course being the act of anything with a vagina coming within 300 feet of an actual card, tactic or gameplay rule.) Because of that, a lot of people were very excited when the full LVAL spoiler dropped and people realized that Gravekeeper's Saniwa did not mean that every GK card in the set would be sub-par.

I noticed a lot of people getting especially excited for (or upset over) Necrovalley Shrine, which is basically a Gravekeeper take on Vanity's Emptiness. Although I think the card is useful, I certainly don't share the opinions I've read that it's completely broken, especially when you can just use the regular Emptiness. Because of this fact, I decided to put together a short comparison of how Shrine stacks up against its inspiration, just to add to the public knowledge out there in the community.

Pros of Shrine

1. It's a Spell, so you can activate it the same turn you draw it to stop monsters that might be summoned during your turn. Battle Fader, Gorz, Tragoedia and Mystic Tomato are good examples.

2. This card doesn't come crashing down as soon as you lose a single card of any kind - it HAS to be either Necrovalley, or your only Gravekeeper on the field.

3. You can still summon Gravekeeper monsters, effectively making it one-sided compared to Emptiness which hurts you 100%. Although Gravekeeper's don't Special Summon that much, this is still a bonus.

Cons of Shrine

1. Since it's a Spell, it's impossible to chain this to a Special Summoning effect and basically give your opponent something thick up their ass.

2. You have to have two different cards on the field constantly to not only keep this thing up, but to even play it in the first place. Anyone who's played Yugioh for more than ten minutes can grasp how difficult it is to keep a single card out due to the way the game is played. Now you want me to keep two of them???

3. What happens if you want to Special Summon a non-GK monster, like a Malefic? With Emptiness you'd just play a Spell and it leaves immediately. But how exactly do you feasibly "turn off" Shrine? Ram your Gravekeeper into something, thus passing the Battle Phase you likely needed the Malefic for in the first place? That doesn't sound too good. What happens if you even have more than one Gravekeeper? Well, if you've got two you could overlay them for a Rank 4 and... oh wait, there IS no Gravekeeper Xyz monster right now. Well... uh... you could always ram both of them, right? I think this is only a small problem in the grand scheme of things, but it is worth pointing out how freaking difficult it is to get away from Shrine without practically bleeding card advantage.


These are all of the points I could come up with to compare Shrine to Emptiness. Hopefully, this will help you guys see why I'm not that fond of Shrine, and why I also think that many Gravekeeper decks will just stick to the regular Emptiness, barring some important shift in the format. Thanks for reading!