Log Horizon Overview: Living in the Database

Log Horizon was a much hyped Extra Booster when it originally appeared in Japan, partly thanks to unique cards like the Level 3 Shiroe and the relatively high density of good cards. However, this hype died down fairly quickly, with the deck disappearing from the competitive scene within a few weeks. The set is about to make an appearance in the English game, so I think it’s about time to revisit the set.

The Reappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya

In case you missed the news, the latest restriction list (effective March 2nd) made some important changes to the game, making Haruhi a viable deck again. In the new environment, the deck won’t be as good as during it’s prime, but it’s good news to the old time fans who’ve been hanging onto the deck for years, or the newer players who’ve always wanted to play the deck, but been told the restrictions ruined it.

March 2nd Restriction List Updates

Kantai Collection

Banned: Junyou, 2nd Hiyou-class Light Aircraft Carrier

Pick 1 of 3:

Hibiki, 2nd Akatsuki-class Destroyer (New)

Hatsukaze, 7th Kagero-class Destroyer (New)

Akagi Kai, Akagi-class Aircraft Carrier

The new changes for Kantai Collection mean that it’s likely to still be a good deck, but will no longer be the defining force of the game. The deck now has to pick between anti-heal, anti-salvage and one of its many game enders. So far, It looks like most people are favouring anti-heal with Hibiki, because she’s just a good card, regardless of the fact you also get anti-heal added on.

The new changes also mean that Kantai get back one of their best early plays in the form of Inazuma, and Musashi is once again allowed to roam free. Kantai’s finishing power will be just about as good as before, but other decks can fight back better because their entire game plan is no longer shut down.

Anti-heal will still be a thorn in the side of old revived decks like Zero no Tsukaima and Haruhi, but it no longer feels like you should just throw in the towel when you sit down across from Kantai Collection.

Haruhi

Banned: The World Has Lost Its Colour (New)

Pick 1 of 2:

Trouble Girl Haruhi

Dress Up Nagato

The most important change here is that Summer Festival Nagato is no longer on the pick 3. This means the Alien deck finally has access to more than 4 cards for the entirety of its Level 2 to 3 game. You can either go the burn route with Trouble Girl, or messing up your opponent’s stage with Dress Up. I’ll go into more detail on this later.

Index & Railgun

Removed from Pick 3: Kuroko, Tokiwadai’s Lady

Railgun got its big 1/1 back, but it seems people have mostly moved on to Green anyway, so this is likely to have little impact on the game.

A History Lesson

Before going into details on the deck and where it stands now, I thought I’d cover a bit of my history with the game of Weiβ Schwarz, since it and Haruhi are directly linked to each other.

My first exposure to the game was back in the summer of 2010, during a trip to Japan. I picked up a few random Yuki cards (I think Usual Nagato from the TD and something else), not knowing anything about the game. I just intended to use them as tokens for Yu-Gi-Oh! because I liked the character.

A bit later, at the very first Hyper Japan in London, Bushiroad were there demoing the game. One of the choices of demo decks was a modified version of the Haruhi TD, with the 3 Aliens support added in. So of course, I had to try it out and quickly realised how good the support cards was. It was then that I realised the random cards I’d bought were from this very game. That event would be the start of the game for me, and the start of the Weiβ Schwarz scene in the UK. If Bushiroad hadn’t been there, the long time dedicated players that I know would never have gotten into the game.

After that, namimo and I got started on building Haruhi decks, back in the day when you could actually still buy TDs. She started off with SOS Brigade, whilst I went with Alien. It was always a pain fighting against The World Has Lost Its Colour (aka Emo Swing) whilst it was still legal. At some point we discovered Yuyu-tei, and the world of single cards was opened up to us.

A bit later the Haruhi Extra Pack would be released, which gave the Alien deck a massive boost, leaving the SOS Brigade deck in the dust. I would eventually settle on the famous 9 Level 3 Red / Blue build, but this would come too late for the French WGP in 2011, where I opted to go with Evangelion. In hindsight, testing them against each other to decide what to use was a bad idea, because Evangelion had the better match up.

Eventually, the deck would get restricted and fall from grace. I’d still play the deck sometimes, but it was a shell of its former self. Along the way I built other decks, like Robotics;Notes (because Science), and Usual Haruhi (because Level 3 unkillable Reversers are fun, for me), but would generally fall back to Evangelion. Silly decks like Deck Out and Traitless would get added along the way

After moving to Japan I managed to pick up a Lucky Star deck, newly bolstered by the Comeback Campaign and Kung Fu Master Konata, which quickly became my go to deck. Other decks were improved with new cards and ideas, and new decks like Wooser and Log Horizon were built.

Every time the new restrictions game around, it would always be a case of waiting and hoping that the restrictions on Haruhi would one day be lifted, especially in the face of Kantai Collection. The Zero no Tsukaima unrestriction in December gave me hope, as I waited for the February announcement.

With the restrictions lifted, I can finally go back to where I started 5 years ago.

The Deck

It feels like 2011 again!

Above you’ll see what my deck currently looks like, along with the 14 extra cards that I can swap in if I want to convert it into a Blue deck making using of Dress Up Nagato.

For the benefit of new players, I’m now going to give a run down of the options available to the deck. Since I’m primarily and Alien player, I’m only going to focus on the cards for either the Red / Blue or Blue versions of that deck. You’ll need to look elsewhere for most of the Green / Yellow options, and even good Red stuff like Usual Haruhi won’t be getting space in here, because it doesn’t really benefit the Alien build.

Level 0

We’ll be starting off at Level 0, where you’ll find the central card for the deck along with the cards you need to get your game started.

The Core

Aliens, Nagato & Asakura & Kimidori (hereafter called 3 Aliens) is a cornerstone of the deck, and you can usually tell how your game will go based on how quickly you can get one of these into your hand.

The give global 500 to all of your other Aliens, and you can pay 2 and Rest it to search your deck for another Alien. Often your first choice will be another copy of itself, followed by copies of Summer Festival Nagato for later in the game. At other times you might just search for a card you can play now, such as one of the many 0 cost cards, or a safety buffer like Magician Nagato & Shamisen.

The card is also useful for paying out Climaxes from Stock, since the deck is usually very cost light in the early game. Just make sure not to use it too much and run out of Stock for actually playing your Level 3 cards.

The key to your Front Stage in the early game will be Nagato Yuki, who boasts Hand Encore, and + 2000 in the opponent’s turn. Some modern cards get away with that power all the time now, but it’s still nothing to scoff at. It’s fairly easy for her to be 4500, which isn’t that easy to beat, and you can always Encore her when that does happen.

Once you hit Level 1, she might even hold off some weaker Level 1 cards thanks to your counter, but don’t count on that happening too much.

She’s a bit weak on the offense, but you have other cards for dealing with threats.

Reversers

Depending on which Deck you’re playing, you have a choice of 2 Reversers. Either a normal one in the form of Onsen Haruhi, or a Stock Reverser from Kyon & Koizumi. I’d personally favour the former in Red / Blue for the colour fixing, with the latter being a better standalone card for the just Blue version.

On top of Onsen Haruhi’s regular effect, she can also give an SOS Brigade card +1500 when she gets Reversed, which in an Alien deck is pretty much restricted to the above Nagato Yuki. This can get you a quick 2 for 1, or mess up opponents who aren’t paying attention to your effects and attack her first.

Kyon & Koizumi is a stronger standalone card because they can get rid of cards that are immune to usual Reversing effects, and can deal with cards that have Encore or other annoying effects. Ideally you’d want to use them to get rid of Memory Anti-heal cards like Hibiki before they get a chance to use their effects. The problem is that they have 1500 compared to the usual 1000 you find on the Anti-heal cards. In the past, this wasn’t much of an issue, since Hibiki backed up by Hatsukaze was 1500, but now I reckon she’ll be sitting at 1000 most of the time. An opponent who knows what they’re doing would also never leave it in the 1500+ range anyway.

Filling out the Aliens

You’ll want most of the rest of your Level 0 cards to be Aliens, because you need as many on Stage as you can get for Summer Festival to be useful.

My personal pick to round off your Level 0s is Usual Nagato, who gets a quick burst of power on play. When played from your hand, she gains 500 times the number of Aliens on Stage, meaning that at worst she’ll still be 3000. With just 2 supports, she’ll easily hit 5000, which can deal with nearly any threat during Level 0. If you still have her during Level 1, she can reach 6000, which can handle a few straggling Level 1s, or take down Reversers without costing you a more important card.

Nekomimi Nagato is a vanilla. I see no reason to play this when you have access to far better Level 0 Nagato cards already.

Eating Watermelon Nagato is a change for the upcoming Swimsuit Haruhi and Nagato, which I feel is mostly a waste. You’ll get out a reasonably powerful card for during Level 0, but you’ll usually waste their free Encore effect keeping another Level 0 alive.

Why play this when you have the 3 Aliens?

Wedding Dress Nagato is a PR card that came with the first run of Nagato sleeves, so good luck finding either now. The Haruhi and Nagato ones are generally sold out, and have been for years, but you can sometimes still find the Mikuru ones. I always found it odd that the character whose whole point is meant to be her moe appeal, is actually the least popular of the 3.

This card lets you heal on play for the cost of 2 Stock. This is the sort of effect you’d expect on a 3/2, except she of course has a much smaller body, and if you’re stuck for cards, can just use to attack with for no cost. With the return of the Level 3s, this card is pretty much obsolete now. You only used to run it because you couldn’t play any Level 3s other than Summer Festival.

Observer Nagato is another support card that can also act as an attacker thanks to her 2500 Power. She gives all your Aliens +500 during your opponent’s turn, making her a decent alternative to the 3 Aliens if you haven’t got them already. One of the better choices for the deck.

The remaining Level 0s either work with cards you don’t play (Nagato and Kyon’s Little Sister in Yukata), or are support for Book cards (Nagato in Apron), which you don’t really have enough to support playing.

Colour Fixing

The obvious choice at Level 0 for added colour fixing is Flower Bouquet Haruhi. As well as being a normal assist, she has a rare type of effect that works when you hit a specific trigger, in this case a Gate. By paying 1, you can send an opponent’s Level 1 or lower from the Front Stage to the Waiting Room. Not only can you kill a problem card, but you can also pay the Gate out immediately. The net result is a +2 for you, with no worry about the Climax being stuck later.

Highest priority to take out are big 1/1s you can’t otherwise deal with, annoying cards like Runners, and things you don’t want getting Reversed, like Anti-Heals or on Reverse searchers.

As you approach Level 2, this will usually move up front to clear space on your Stage.

Night of the Summer Festival Haruhi is an alternative (and much more expensive) option, who works as a backup for the 3 Aliens, who can also get Trouble Girl into your Hand. By paying 2 and Resting her, you can add a character from your Waiting Room to your Hand. She should add some consistency to the deck, but I’d be careful with her stock cost.

If you really want to pull off combos with Onsen Haruhi, then look no further than Dress Up Haruhi. If she Reverses something she can rest one of your other characters and move them Back Stage. Since she has SOS Brigade, this is the perfect card to team up with Onsen Haruhi. Onsen Reverses a card, pumps Dress Up to 3500 at least. Dress Up Reverses a card then moves Onsen Back Stage. If you pull this off you’ll take out 2 cards for the price of none.

She’ll probably lose next turn, making it just a +1, but at least Onsen Haruhi will probably be able to deal with the new threat as well.

A slightly more unusual choice for Red is Super Editor-in-Chief Haruhi. Her first effect is largely pointless, since very few of your cards will have book trait. You will sometimes get random power boosts off when Trouble Girl Haruhi gets Reversed. Or if for some reason you’re playing this in Blue, Dress Up Nagato.

Instead, you’ll be playing her for the second much rarer effect, anti-Brainstorm. If your opponent hits a Climax whilst doing Brainstorm, you can pay 1 to burn them for 1. This could steal you random games here and there, but isn’t something to rely on.

Other Utilities

The final Level 0 I’m going to highlight is Xmas Party Kyon’s Little Sister. The reason for her inclusion in the deck is because it’s the only reasonable Brainstorm the deck has access to. The 2/1 Yuki won’t be much good to you earlier on in the game.

She has a really niche effect, which gives +1 Soul to a Kyon character for every Climax you hit. Don’t forget that as Kyon’s Little Sister, she counts as a Kyon card too. Most of the time she’ll just be used for deck fixing, but you can also use her for massive Soul hits when desperate, or as a way to side over big cards for damage.

Level 1

For most of the decks Level 1 game you will be relying on vanilla cards to carry you. If the opponent has Reversers and not too big cards you’ll fall back on your 1/0s, but if you need to take out something big, you can bring the 1/1 in. From this point on, cards will be pretty much exclusively Blue, barring counters and the Trouble Girl cards.

Vanillas

Onsen Nagato & Mikuru might just be a vanilla, but it shouldn’t be underestimated. Will usually be 6500, and can reach 8500 with your counter.

If you have to beat things, bring in Standy Mode Nagato. Can reach 10,000 on defense.

Support

The rest of your Level 1 will be filled with cards to help keep your vanillas alive.

Swimsuit Haruhi & Nagato gives one of your characters free pseudo-Encore on play, allowing them to be Rested again if they get Reversed. Very useful if you want to ram something in for damage, but don’t want to suffer a direct attack next turn. Also helps gets around Reversers, and can put your opponent in a pickle if your cards have equal power, or you fall within their counter range. Whatever happens, you won’t lose your card, and your opponent will either be down a counter, or a card on Stage.

Magician Nagato & Shamisen is one of my favourite cards in the game, and a key card to the deck. For starters it gives +1000 Power to a card in battle, but if you have 2 or more Aliens on Stage (which really isn’t hard), you can give another 1000 Power to any of your characters. You can put all 2000 into one card to keep them safe, or split it across two to make sure both cards stick around. The second card doesn’t even need to be an Alien, so you can help out Trouble Girl too.

Kimidori is an interesting Alarm card, that will probably be cut for space in most modern builds. She gives +1000 Power to all your Aliens when on top of the Clock, which is helpful for pushing over bigger cards with your vanillas. Her second effect can also give a card the ability to draw a card when it reverses something, but you’ll probably fairly rarely use this.

Other Aliens & Events

If you’re playing the Blue build, you’ll probably want to round out your Level 1 with Glasses Girl Nagato, who combos with the other Book Climax. When she attacks, all your Aliens gain ‘Pay 1, draw a card on Reversing opponent’s card’. This is useful for replenishing your hand, and instantly paying out Climaxes.

She’ll only see play in Blue, because there’s no space for the Climax in Red / Blue.

Message on a Bookmark is a useful event card which is probably past its prime. You pay 1, draw 1, discard 1, heal 1, send it to Memory. So you can dig into your deck, heal and compress for later, all at once. Currently I think it’s hard to find space for it over actual character cards, and you probably don’t want to leave yourself even more exposed to anti-heal.

It’s still a good card, so other people may find space for it.

I know there’s also the Ryoko card, but honestly, I’ve never felt compelled to use it, so that will be left out.

Level 2

At Level 2 you’ll play very few actual Level 2 cards, so I’m going to group Summer Festival Nagato into here, since that’s when she gets played.

What’s Level 3?

Summer Festival Nagato has finally been released from the restrictions list, now that decks can actually do things about her.

She has an incredibly easy to fulfil early play requirement, of having 4 or more Aliens on Stage. You can just drop down all your Cost 0 cards, then suddenly a 10,000 2 Soul appears. Just be careful of anti-Change / early play counters, which are much more common than when she was released.

In addition to this, she has a Climax combo which allows you to heal 1 and gives her +3000 Power for the turn. She’ll usually be hitting for 15,000 and will get over most other cards. In an ideal world, you will keep on pulling this combo off over and over again with multiple Summer Festival Nagato and never leave Level 2.

She still remains relevant in Level 3, because she still heals and still beats things in battle, it’s just that the opponent’s cards are probably bigger now.

Supports

Your primary late game support is Guitarist Nagato, who gives global Level support in the opponent’s turn, and Book triggers an extra kick. Whilst around, any book triggers you hit allows you to draw an extra card and discard one. This can happen quite often in the full Blue deck.

Thanks to Guitarist and a copy of the 3 Aliens, your opponent will usually be trying to get over a stage full of 12,000s from sometime in Level 2, whilst knowing you also might have a 2,000 counter waiting for them.

Your Ryoko counter is the surprise trump card of the deck, and the card most likely to make your opponent question whether you’re cheating or not. It sends their Climax to the Waiting Room, shutting off their Climax combos and potentially robbing them of their stat boosts.

Watch out for on attack combos, since it’ll be too late to stop them, and remember that some Climaxes apply their effects on play, whilst others do it whilst they’re in the Climax slot. Don’t make the mistake of using this card for no effect.

I’m not a big fan of the Koizumi & Nagato counter, but at least it’s searchable and bigger than the 1/0. 2500 Power is still a but underpar for a 2/1 counter, but you’ll be playing it for the bonus effect. By discarding a card you can put two cards from your opponent’s Waiting Room back into their Deck. This can stop attack phase salvage cards, and slightly decrease your opponent’s compression. Back in the day, I rarely used this effect.

There are further Level 2 options, like Flower Viewing Nagato, who has a spammable +2,000 to Alien Brainstorm, or China Dress Nagato, who is a decent wall with Encore. However, I feel that since the deck got a proper Level 3 game back, it’s no longer worth thinking too much about them. Kyon’s Sister is cheaper stock wise anyway.

Level 3

Level 3 is where you try to end the game, and where you’ll see a different line up depending on which of the Pick 2 gets chosen.

The choice for most people will be Trouble Girl Haruhi, if not for her own effect, but for the fact that playing her allows you to use other cards which add to the consistency of the deck. She is a simple and powerful card.

Haruhi heals on play, then combos with a Gate to burn for 1 on attack for free. Multiples of her can very quickly end the game when you’re attacking 6 times. She doesn’t even need to have anything to fight, like Akatsuki, and can quite happily just ram into bigger cards.

Don’t you wish Commons were this good now?

Your other choice is Dress Up Nagato, who has a unique effect that hasn’t been printed since. Shuffle Time comes close, but that’s random. On play she sends all of your opponent’s Stage to Memory, then you can put them back wherever you like. You can bring supports Front Stage to beat them in battle, move Bodyguard’s like Naotsugu out of the centre slot, and remove Markers and lingering effects from every card your opponent has.

Whatever happens, your opponent’s Stage is going to be messed up.

On top of this, she can also get an extra heal off if she reverses something on the turn she’s played. This is pretty easy when she’s got supports to fight.

Dress Up Nagato is definitely still a strong card, but I think the extra cards around Trouble Girl make her more worthwhile.

Climaxes

There are 3 main choices for Climaxes, depending on which build you’re making.

Nights of Remaining 2 weeks will be in your deck whatever you do, because you’re always going to be playing Summer Festival Nagato.

If you’re playing Red / Blue you’ll need Someday in the Rain for Trouble Girl.

If you’re playing full Blue you’ll mostly want Struggle in the Information Controlled Space, since it works with your Glasses Girl Nagato, and makes Guitarist even more likely to get her bonus.

You might also feel like teching single copies of the +2 Soul or +2,000 +1 Soul Climaxes in the Blue deck, but I personally just prefer 8 Books.

Hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my take on the Alien deck. I’m certainly looking forward to playing it in tournaments from next Monday. If you have any questions or comments, you can drop me a message on here, or find me on Twitter @Xagor1.

Adventures in Nipponbashi Part 1

Welcome back! After a long absence I’m going to be recounting some of my experiences with TCGs in Japan.

Since I’m in Osaka, this gives me access to Nipponbashi, which is essentially the Osaka equivalent of the much more famous Akihabara. Personally I prefer Nipponbashi, possibly because of my interests, or just because I’m more familiar with the area and have seen more of it. To me, Nipponbashi seems bigger, but that might just be because it’s more spread out, and has lots of smaller shops.

If you’re after card games, Nipponbashi has a huge number of card shops around, including Yellow Submarine, Hobby Station, Card Pal, at least 3 C-Labo, and many more too. The shops stock a wide variety of cards, most covering many games, with a few focused around specific titles. Series will often be split into different displays, or sometimes even different floors.

In addition to the boosters, single cards, sleeves and other playing goods, many shops will also have a play area where you can sit down and play cards with other people. These areas could be upstairs, or in the larger shops even next to the card displays.

If you’re after Yu-Gi-Oh! cards you can find these at practically any card shop, and I’m sure if you browsed the single cards for long enough, you could find practically anything you needed. It is worth shopping around though, because prices will vary from shop to shop (this is true for any of the games). There were also quite a lot of Vanguard cards around, as well as the multitude of other Japanese games, like Weiβ Schwarz, Z/X, Chaos TCG, and many more that I don’t even know the names of. I even spotted an advert for the new Attack on Titan expansion of Sieg Krone, which I imagine is popular amongst some fans.

Since for now I’ve mainly been eyeing up the Weiβ Schwarz cards, I’ve not really paid too close attention to the Yu-Gi-Oh! cards on offer, but may look closer into this later.

So far I’ve made two trips into Nipponbashi, the first of which was a rather quick look around, but the second allowed me to take things more at my pace.

My first trip to Nipponbashi was mainly in search of the special Wooser TD set for Weiβ Schwarz, which had been released that day. However, since it was only produced in very short numbers I had expected it to be quite hard to find, and my suspicions were confirmed when I could not locate a single copy. Despite seeing adverts in lots of shops, and on the streets outside, the best I could manage was finding one place that seemed to be sold out.

I also tried looking around a bit for some Weiβ Schwarz singles I was looking for, but to relatively little success.

During my return trip to Nipponbashi two days later, I pretty much had a free day, so was able to explore more and check more shops. My search for Wooser was more successful, finding one lone set in the first shop I entered (which I’d also been to 2 days ago). Despite further searches throughout the area, I was not able to locate a second set, but I’m just happy to have been able to find a single copy.

After this I set off again looking for single cards, and trying to find Hobby Station. I’d been informed they were holding a Wooser tournament, and was hoping they might have more copies of the cards too. Unfortunately they didn’t, and I wasn’t feeling up for trying to navigate my way through a tournament with Wooser at the time.

The search for singles was mixed. My main goal for the day was Literature Club Nagato (a 4th copy), the support Saten from the Railgun S TD (for the No Attribute deck) and the Chris card from King of Fighters (as a present). In addition to this, I kept my eye out for a few Signs, but those are generally too expensive to think about at the moment.

I managed to locate one relatively expensive Literature Club Nagato, but decided that I didn’t need it for that price just yet. I couldn’t locate the Saten, and do wonder if just buying the TD would be easier at this point. I did however find one copy of the Chris card, which is honestly the first time I’ve ever seen it in person before.

After searching around the shops for cards, and getting something to eat, I decided it was time to try and play a few games. This first of all involved finding people playing Weiβ Schwarz, and then working up the courage to ask them to play in broken Japanese.

Finding people to play was relatively easy, because a few of the shops had a couple of people playing, it was just a matter of picking one. In the end I settled for the C-Labo in the basement of Gamers, because it had one of the biggest playing areas. At the time I think it was mostly full of Yu-Gi-Oh! and Vanguard players, but I did manage to locate a few pairs playing Weiβ Schwarz.

Eventually I managed to work up the courage to ask for a game, and then sat down to play a long series of games with a variety of decks and against a variety of decks, using everything except my Robotics;Notes deck. It was lots of fun even if I didn’t quite understand everything that was going on, and my opponents and their friends seemed to be having fun seeing some of the fun decks I brought out.

The first game saw my Evangelion deck facing down a Love Live! deck. Things got off to a bit of an iffy start for the deck, because Shinji was nowhere to be seen, but thankfully the Level 0 and 1 Reversers were able to put in some good work. I don’t think Shinji made an appearance until really late on, when he had to go Centre Stage, to help me overcome more powerful threats.

When I got to Level 2 I was able to get two Finishing Blow Asuka out, which helped bolster Cooking Asuka, as usual giving me a fairly cheap but strong Level 2 game. Once my opponent reached Level 3 though, they soon fell before superior power.

During this time I just kept on drawing Level 3 cards, to the point I actually had 5 in my hand at one point, although one would eventually be Clocked. By the time I needed to play them, I was at 2/6, so lots of those heals ended up being wasted, but it was worth it for the board control. During the opponent’s next turn they lost their Centre Stage, either due to being forced to suicide, or thanks to Counters, but it did push me up to 3/6 in the process.

I won on the following turn with a series of direct attacks.

Next up I decided to switch to one of my fun decks, namely my Glasses deck, at which point my opponent switched with one of his friends, who I’d continue to play for the next 6 games. He started off with another Evangelion deck, but with more Blue than I choose to play.

Unlike in my previous game, he was able to start off with double Shinji, which meant he had a bit more power to work with. The glasses deck didn’t do anything particularly fancy at first, mainly having to rely on Tabitha at Level 0, then vanillas at Level 1. Thankfully, I think my opponent was lacking useful cards early on, so I was able to build a little bit of Stock.

Once I hit Level 2 I was able to fill the Back Stage with Chihiro, and start building a Stage of Literature Club Nagato, whilst generating a big pile of Stock.

I managed to fend off my opponent’s Level 3 Asukas thanks to Battle Mode, and even though a Climax combo Shiki failed to defeat another Level 3 Asuka, I managed to win whilst still at Level 2. I’d been waiting for a chance to drop the Miyuki with the silly heal combo, but never got the chance.

Next up was No Attribute vs Prisma Illya, which was my first encounter with some of the new cards, like the new Trigger. I opened with two of the Global support for the deck, but unfortunately didn’t have anything really to make use of this fact, so was quickly forced to Level 1.

Once at Level 1 I filled my Stage with 3 copies of Maya, who managed to give me some board presence for a while, thanks to their Encore. When more powerful threats appeared, the Saten Climax combo helped to deal with them.

Unfortunately, my Level 2 game was terrible, with my only Level 2 card being the Lucia Change. At the time there were no Level 3 Lucia in the Waiting Room to change into, but fortunately I remembered Triggering one on the previous turn. This meant I could pay it into there with the Stock requirement for the Level 2. Fortunately the Level 3 was able to survive through a turn thanks to my counter.

By the time the Level 3 game started I’d managed to gather 3 Saten in my hand, which I’d hope might be able to keep me in the game a bit longer, however the Illya and Miyu I was facing down made this problematic. After two of them joined Lucia on the Stage, I only had enough Stock for the final Saten to reach full strength. This meant I was only able to defeat Illya on that turn.

On the following turn my opponent played another Illya and used the Climax combo for the pair, giving burn to everyone, and making Miyu strong enough to defeat Saten. Despite the Soul reduction from my Saten, it wasn’t enough for me to survive the turn, and I was defeated by an attack from Miyu.

Next I decided it was time to switch over to the non-attribute themed decks, starting off with the Miyuki deck out. Coincidentally my opponent switch to their Lucky Star Twins deck, so it was sort of a Lucky Star showdown.

In this game it didn’t really matter what my opponent did, because Miyuki is the biggest card in the deck, and aside from her I don’t think anything else even breaks 3500 Power. In this game my opponent and his friends seemed quite impressed and excited that I happened to be playing a deck with Banana Parfait.

The deck got off to quite a good start starting out with both Kyon & Itsuki and the 3 idiots. The latter even managed to stay around for a while by repeatedly throwing themselves in front of the new Miyuki searcher PR card. I even opened up a copy of Suginami and my Encore support, so had hoped my Level 1 game was going to be set up as well.

Unfortunately though, as the game progressed I only ever had that one Suginami, so I was never able to establish my Stage properly. I was able to get rid of 4 Climaxes before Refresh, and since my opponent had triggered some of them, they ended up with a deck of 2 Climaxes.

Unfortunately because of my bad Stage position I struggled to build Stock, and due to repeatedly drawing Events I could no longer risk suiciding Suginami. My only hope pretty much rested on the opponent Triggering both Climaxes, allowing me to attack for game. Unfortunately I was defeated on the turn that they hit their first Climax.

Next I switched to the Usual Haruhi deck, which is one of the most annoying decks you could possibly face, as anyone who has ever played against it before can attest to. Initially my opponent and his friend were confused by the deck, thinking that it was maybe some kind of KyoAni deck, but once I reached Level 1 it became clearer. My opponent did seem to at least enjoy seeing this deck in action though.

The early game started off well, with me being able to use Onsen Haruhi to take out any threats, and build stock with other cards. I even had the pieces for Onsen + Dress up combo, but never had a chance to pull it off due to my opponent only playing 1 card at a time during Level 0.

By the time I reached Level 1, not only had I built a decent pile of Stock, but I also at had least one of  each combo pieces already in my possession, with the Y-shirt card, Usual Haruhi and Dress Up Mikuru in my hand and Mikuru Asahina already on the Stage. Thanks to “I have no interest in ordinary humans” I was able to complete the full set up.

From here on out it was just a matter of killing things and dealing damage with two copies of Usual Haruhi and one of Mikuru Asahina, before having everything run away to Memory. Eventually once my opponent played a Level 3, I had to switch up the Stage to allow for a second Dress Up Mikuru. Apart from this I’d just heal when the opportunity arose via the Da Capo Blue heal combo.

As usual, the deck cancelled a lot, and eventually won the battle of attrition.

Next, I decided it was time to move back to Neo-Standard, and continued the Haruhi theme with my Nagato deck. This faced off against a Shana deck, which actually had very few Shana cards in it, instead focussing around Hecate and Wilhelmina.

Early game I was able to start with the 3 Aliens card and Nagato Yuki, providing a good starting wall. My opponent followed up with Empty Existence Hecate, which meant I had to use Usual Nagato to clear their stage, and fortunately I didn’t get them to Level 1 just yet.

On the following turn I added another copy of the 3 Aliens to my Stage, bolstering the power of my Aliens some more. Once we were both at Level 1, my powered up vanillas were able to overcome his cards, and this was helped by the fact that Kimidori ended up on top of the Clock.

By the time I reached Level 2 I had a massive pile of Stock, which meant I was able to search for, and play, 2 copies of Summer Festival Nagato. I already had a 3rd copy in my hand, but at that point in time the Waiting Mode Nagato I already had on the Stage wasn’t under threat. Both Summer Festival Nagatos managed to survive the turn, so that on the following turn I could get the complete trio out. The game then turned into protect Nagato, whilst building up my hand and Stock.

The Witch counter and another copy of Kimidori helped make sure my Stage could not be broken, and with 2 copies of the anti-Climax counter in my hand, I was pretty sure I’d be safe. Thanks to some fortunate cancels my opponent’s Hecate could not break my defences, meaning that in the end I was facing a completely empty Centre Stage on the turn I finally drew the right Climax.

This allowed me to heal away 3 damage, and put Kimidori back on top of the Clock, ready to weather more attacks. However I won that turn, whilst still at 2/1, making the set up unnecessary.

For what turned out to be the final game of the day, I switched to my weakest non-gimmick deck, which is my Tabitha deck. It features nearly purely Tabitha cards, with the only exceptions being her familiar, Sylphid, and one of the Louise Concentrates. Since the deck is mostly full of vanillas and unremarkable cards, its only real play is to try and get a Level 2 8500 with Encore out during Level 0, which did not happen here.

It was facing off against a Green Rewrite deck, featuring Lucia and Shizuru, which has just a few more tricks up its sleeve.

I started off the game with several copies of Sylphid, and Tabitha of the Yukikaze, which is quite frankly one of the few good cards in the whole deck, so I was expecting to have a pretty good start to the game. Unfortunately though, my opponent Changed into two copies of the 1/0 6000 Shizuru on turn 1, which put me in a bit of trouble.

I managed to force suicides though, thanks to 3 copies of Sylphid and 2 Tabitha of the Yukikaze and a Climax card. This did dent my hand quite a bit.

Once the game progressed beyond Level 0, my deck struggled to put anything too impressive on the Stage, having to make do with the 1/1 vanilla, until Louise finally brought back the Level 1 with Change.

From here on I kept on getting luck with Climaxes, which allowed me to do better in the game than I really should have done. First of all, my opponent Changed out the Level 3 Lucia, who got bounced away by a Wind Trigger on the next turn. Then they played Shizuru a Level early, who also got bounced away on the following turn.

When the game finally reached Level 3 properly, they could both be played normally, and thanks to Lucia’s Climax combo, my Centre Stage was soon empty, and I’d taken large amounts of damage. This left me at about 3/5 compared to their 3/0. Even at the best of times the Tabitha deck wouldn’t be able to break their field, and my hand was far worse than that. Aside from the bounce Climax combo, the deck really cannot do much about Level 3s with a decent Power.

Even though I had options to play from my Hand, I decided to take my chances with Louise, and happened to hit two Climaxes, bringing back two copies of the 1/0. I added to this the Great Performance version of the Level 3, and decided to ram everyone into my opponent’s cards, hoping for a little bit of damage, and then maybe to cancel lots with an empty Stage next turn.

Instead I attacked with a 1/0, hit a 2 Soul Trigger and it went through. Then the same thing happened with the other 1/0. Then finally the Level 3 hit, once again for 3 damage, which also wasn’t cancelled. Somehow I won that game, even though in all honesty I probably should have lost. From what I could tell, I think my opponent was getting a bit of gentle mocking from his friends for managing to lose to a Tabitha deck of all things.

After that my opponent and his friends had to pack up and head off home, so after our thank yous, I also decided it was enough cards for one day.

Coincidentally during my games, another English speaker had arrived at the shop and had been playing my first opponent, and we ended up exchanging details with the chance of playing or meeting again in the future.

Please visit again, and maybe you’ll get to hear more about some of the TCG related activities I get up to.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Preparing for War of the Giants

The second Yu-Gi-Oh! Battle Pack has been out for a while now, and we’re fast approaching YCS Brussels, the first major event to make use of this pack. With this in mind we’re going to be taking a look at some of the more complicated or unfamiliar parts of the cards on offer. Thankfully, since the introduction of Problem Solving Card Text (PSCT), you can largely work out what cards do simply by reading them. However there are still a few that might not be clear to everyone, or involves more obscure game mechanics that don’t crop up during the normal course of play.

Remember, that whilst I have tried to at all times be factually accurate, this is not to be taken as an official source.

The Battle Phase

One of the most important aspects of playing with this pack will be knowing how everything in the Battle Phase works. Since it’s much harder than normal to get rid of monsters directly via effects, you’ll instead have to rely on defeating them in battle. Rather than give a full and comprehensive explanation of the Battle Phase, I’m instead going to concentrate on some of the less familiar aspects.

“If this card attacks”

There are a few cards in the set which contain the above phrase, namely Goblin Attack Force, Goblin Elite Attack Force and Axe Dragonute. On the face of it, this might seem easy to understand. You might think that if you declare an attack with your monster, it has attacked, however this is not true. In order for the card to have counted as attacking it must have entered the Damage Step. This clear on Axe Dragonute where the timing of its effect shows that it must successfully battle for this to happen.

You might now be wondering when this detail is actually relevant? In this set, the most likely scenario will involve replays when cards like Metal Reflect Slime are played. If the Goblins halt in their tracks because of a replay they will not be forced into defense position.

During Damage Calculation

Something that can be very confusing in Yu-Gi-Oh! is what can and cannot be used during the Damage Step, especially during specific instances such as ‘During damage calculation’. Since this set does not deal with the full complexities of the game, you will mainly need to deal with when attack / defense modifiers can be played. Unless the card specifies that it can be used during damage calculation, such as on Prideful Roar or Injection Fairy Lily, the card cannot be used at that time. This means that cards like Shrink or Forbidden Lance cannot be used against them. These can however be used at any prior point, allowing you to get around cards like Zero Gravity.

Ancient Gears

Both the Ancient Gear monsters in this set come with an effect which prevents the activation of Spell/Trap cards until the end of the Damage Step, making them quite deadly monsters to face. There are also two aspects of this effect that you need to be careful about.

Firstly, they prevent the activation of Spell / Trap Cards, but have no power over their effects. This means that the effects of already face up cards could still be used. Within the pack, this will mean that cards like Zoma the Spirit can still cause burn damage, even if destroyed by Ancient Gear Golem. This is important to know because that amount of damage could decide the outcome of a game.

Secondly, the fact that they last until the end of the Damage Step means that no cards can be used until you’re completely out of the Damage Step. This might not seem particularly relevant, because most cards that you’d use during the Damage Step would be used before the monsters battle it out. However, there are cards like Sinister Seeds, which can be used when a monster is destroyed by battle, which would be prevented by the Gears. For support of this idea, check out the official rulings on Torapart vs Hero Signal.

To round things out I’m going to be looking at a few individual cards that will be used during the Battle Phase that might potentially cause problems or misunderstandings.

Hyper Hammerhead

Hyper Hammerhead can still return monsters to their owners hand even if it’s destroyed by battle. If it needed to stay face up on the field the card would say.

Mecha Phantom Beast Hamstrat

If attacked face down, the tokens will not be summoned until after battle has occurred, meaning they cannot protect Hamstrat.

Bull Blader

If Bull Blader chooses to use his effect, but still destroys the card in battle anyway, the card will still be treated as being destroyed by his effect. This is because after being defeated in battle, the monster isn’t actually sent to the Graveyard yet. Which means Bull Blader has another opportunity to destroy it, this time with his effect, which will send it to the Graveyard. This means that cards like Time Machine cannot be used to bring the monster back to life, because it was not sent to the Graveyard as a result of battle.

Fiend’s Sanctuary

The Token summoned with Fiend’s Sanctuary can still be destroyed by battle. Just because the opponent takes the battle damage does not mean they cannot defeat it in battle.

Equip Cards

Equip cards are another important matter in Battle Pack play that doesn’t normally come up too often during Advanced Format play. The set even includes monsters which can turn other monsters into equip cards, or monsters that can turn themselves into equip cards. If you’re familiar with Inzektors then a lot of this will be familiar to you, otherwise this information might help you win games.

For monsters which equip other monsters to themselves, such as Truckroid, the equipping and effects gained by doing so are due to his own effect. This means that negating Truckroid’s effect with cards like Breakthrough Skill would cause him to lose all of his equip cards and revert back to 1000 Attack. If however you tried to use something like Forbidden Lance, aside from the 800 attack loss, he would be unaffected. This is because the equips themselves don’t actually do anything.

If on the other hand a monster such as Shocktopus equips itself to another monster, it will function exactly the same as a normal equip card. This means that Forbidden Lance could be used to temporarily halt the attack reduction, but it will not cause Shocktopus to go to the Graveyard. The same will apply for all regular equip cards in the set.

Finally, you might be wondering how the protection from targeting conferred by Forbidden Dress functions with regards to equip cards. Despite the fact that equip cards will continuously target the monster in question, Forbidden Dress only prevents the initial targeting of cards. This means that equips already active will be unaffected by the Dress, and that it you chain Dress to the activation of an equip card it will already be too late.

Individual cards

Next up I’m going to be looking at some individual cards that can often cause confusion and problems.

Exodius the Ultimate Forbidden Lord

Exodius must be able to shuffle back at least 1 monster in order to be summoned.

Phantom Dragon

You must have at least 2 free monster zones for Phantom Dragon to lock, otherwise you cannot summon it.

Mausoleum of the Emperor

You cannot mix and match lifepoint costs with tributes. You must do one or the other.

Card Guard

The counter does not protect himself. It must be given to something else first.

Flame Tiger

You may activate multiple copies of Flame Tiger during the same Draw Phase, but if you do, only the final one to activate will resolve properly.

God Cards

The God cards all share a common effect which protects them when they are summoned. However it only prevents cards being activated at the instance of summoning. It does not extend for any period of time beyond this. Ever since cards like Creeping Doom Manta came out, you can always find someone who believes that effects like this either work for the turn, or for the entirety of the duel. Which in the case of the Gods, would quite frankly be unfair.

Unanswered Questions

Finally, I present you with two questions that I do not know the answer to.

If nothing can withstand such temperatures, why are there monsters that Frostosaurus cannot destroy in battle? Nothing should be able to stop its glacial rampage.

If Gene-Warped Warwolf has incalculable strength, why does his attack say 2000?

Yu-Gi-Oh! Explaining the End Phase

The most important tournaments for most competitive players are on the horizon, the WCQs. To aid in preparation for these, I thought it would be an appropriate time to take a look at some of the rules and game mechanics that are likely to crop up during the course of these events. An important thing to remember is that none of what I say should be interpreted as official word from Konami.

To start things off I’m going to be looking at the End Phase in detail, and trying to explain some of the intricacies involved. For most of the lifespan of Yu-Gi-Oh! the End Phase has been of little consequence to the general flow of play. It was merely when a turn ended, and maybe you had something happen during the End Phase, like the effect of Lightsworn monsters. However recently some of the finer details of the End Phase have become rather more important to performing well at the game.

Resolving effects during the End Phase

When you reach the End Phase there will often be two things you’re concerned with. Either effects which activate in the End Phase, or effects which last until the End Phase. How these two interact can be quite important, especially if an effect that lasts until the End Phase is preventing you from properly resolving an effect with activates in the End Phase. The situation gets even more complicated if some of the effects are mandatory whilst others are optional. When these issues arise, there’s a sequence of events you should follow to try and resolve the issue.

1. The turn player may activate or finish effects. If they do, restart the cycle. If not go to Step 2.

As usual in Yu-Gi-Oh! the first player who has the choice of making an action during the End Phase is the turn player. At this point they could activate or finish any of the mandatory or optional effects they have. This might be relevant if both players have an effect that activates in the End Phase, but the turn player wants to use their one first to prevent the opponent from using theirs.

For example, let’s say both players have a Wind-Up Zenmaines on the field, ready to use their effects. However the opponent’s one doesn’t have any materials left, meaning that if it were to be destroyed again it wouldn’t get a chance to use its effect. In this scenario the turn player can choose to activate the effect of their Zenmaines first, destroying the opponent’s and preventing them from using the effect of Zenmaines.

Once this is over we return to the start of the cycle and start all over again. This can be important for a couple of reasons. Firstly it means that the turn player has the opportunity to activate or finish all of their effects which work during the End Phase before the opponent does. This can give the turn player a lot of control over how the flow of the End Phase goes, and will even prevent the opponent from getting a chance to use some of their effects. Secondly there is the fact that the effect you’ve just activated or finished will have changed the game state. This might result in even more effects that want to activate, so it’s important not to miss them out.

As you’ll see later, after each step it’s possible to return to the beginning and start over again.  By leaving some of your optional effects until this point it’s possible to get around your opponent’s mandatory effects. This will be very relevant for Prophecy players, because they’ll want to use Justice during their End Phase without things like a pesky Effect Veiler getting in their way. It is possible to return to this point once all or some mandatory effects have been dealt with, but we don’t necessarily need to have ended the turn yet. This is the perfect opportunity to slip in effects like Genex Neutron or Justice of Prophecy, now that they’ve been freed from Effect Veiler’s influence.

What this means, is that optional effects that activate in the End Phase cannot be stopped by cards like Effect Veiler or Forbidden Chalice. Provided of course that the user of those effects is careful and knows how to navigate the End Phase.

2. The opponent may activate or finish effects. If they do, restart the cycle. If not go to Step 3.

After the turn player is done, it now moves onto the opponent who has a chance to make the same actions. Usually you will reach this step once the turn player has finish with all of their actions, or else they’re deliberately passing for some reason. There might for example be an action the turn player wants to try and make, but something of the opponent’s might be preventing this.

Just like with the turn player, on return visits to this step it’s possible for the opponent to bypass the mandatory effects of the turn player, by waiting until after they’ve been forced to resolve them. Just like with the turn player, they can wait to allow some of their optional effects to get around cards like Forbidden Chalice.

3. The turn player must activate or finish a mandatory effect. If they do, restart the cycle. If not go to Step 4.

Once both players have passed on making an action we reach a point where the turn player has to make an action with regards to one of their mandatory effects. If an effect is mandatory it has to happen, even if the player might not particularly want it to happen at that point. This can be where the interaction between the players becomes very important.

If the turn player has a monster which has had Effect Veiler used on it, they would really rather wait until after Effect Veiler has stopped working to use that monster’s effect. However, if the monster’s effect is mandatory they will have to use it before Effect Veiler finishes, unless the opponent chose to end Effect Veiler during step 2. This gives the opponent a degree of control over whether certain actions will happen or not. So they can for example prevent Lightsworn monsters from milling, or Spirit Monsters from returning to the hand.

The fact the cycle restarts if an action is taken during a step is very important here for cards like Light and Darkness Dragon. For example, if the turn player has a Spirit on the field and the opponent has Light and Darkness Dragon, once we reach this step the Spirit monster has to try and return to the Hand. Light and Darkness Dragon will however negate the activation of this effect, preventing the Spirit from returning to the hand. When we start this process again, we will eventually reach the same point, and the Spirit will try once more to return to the hand. If Light and Darkness Dragon still has enough Attack and Defense it will negate the activation of the effect once again. This pattern will repeat until eventually Light and Darkness Dragon runs out of negations and the Spirit monster can finally return to the hand. Ultimately, not only will Light and Darkness not do anything to the opponent, but it will also run out of the ability to use its effect.

4. The opponent must activate or finish a mandatory effect. If they do, restart the cycle. If not go to Step 5.

Once the turn player is done with all their mandatory effects it’s now time for the opponent to start dealing with their own. Often the opponent will not finish effects such as Effect Veiler until this point, because it will prevent the opponent’s mandatory effects from working properly. However as mentioned earlier it’s possible for optional effects to get around this, because you don’t necessarily have to use them until you’ve reached a restart from this step.

5. End the turn.

Now once that’s all over and done with, we can finally get around to ending the turn. By this point they both should have used all the effects they want to, and are ready to move on with the next turn. You might be wondering what happens if we’ve still got some optional effects left, because both players passed without making any actions, perhaps hoping the other one might do something. In those cases it is now too late to use those effects, both players have agreed not to do anything, so it’s now time to move on with the game. Being optional means you have the choice of using an effect or not, so if you forget to use it, there’s nothing you can do about it.

Of course, remember that at all of these steps, when an effect activates you have the possibility of chaining to it and normal rules with regards to this apply.

What actually happens at the end of the turn?

Once that is all said and done, you might think the turn is now over and there is nothing more to be done. However you’re forgetting one very important matter and that’s the issue of hand size. In Yu-Gi-Oh! the maximum number of cards you’re allowed in your hand at the end of the turn is 6, unless you’ve used some card to increase this limit. If you’re over the limit and you reach the end of the turn, the last thing you will usually do is discard for the hand size limit. So this means that if for example you have 7 cards in your hand at the end of the turn, you’ll need to discard 1 of them. Once that’s done the turn is over and it’s time to move onto the next turn.

However, there are some very special circumstances where other events may occur once you’ve discarded for hand size limit. If you discard a card that will activate, such as Dandylion, the effect will still activate. Similarly if you have a card like Dark World Grimoire, which actually interacts with the hand size limit discard, you can activate that. Once this chain has begun you may then add on chain links to this, just as you would for a normal one.

Some of you might be wondering if this is actually relevant to anything though, since most of the time by this point you no longer really care what happens. In decks which run Super Rejuvenation, such as Dragon Rulers this could be quite important though. With Dragon Rulers it can be quite easy to go past the hand size limit, especially with multiple copies of Super Rejuvenation. If you draw extra copies of the card due to the effect of the first one, it’s perfectly fine to use the 2nd or even 3rd copy whilst still in the End Phase to draw even more cards.

However if you’ve already broken the hand size limit, you might want the opportunity to draw even more cards, by adding on those that you discard due to the limit. Normally this isn’t possible, because you’re not allowed to manually start a chain once this discard has happened. If you want to do this you’ll need to discard cards like White Stone of Legend, which will start a chain, and allow you to add on another Super Rejuvenation. Since most of the cards that would cause this do not really fit into a Dragon Ruler deck, this is more something you’d try in a deck like Dragon Exodia. Dragon Rulers could however use Eclipse Wyvern for this type of play.

Once this is all over, if your hand is once again over the hand size limit, you will need to discard again until you’re back down to the limit. If any chains happen in response to this, you will repeat the pattern until you finally have the right sized hand and no more chains occur.

Until the end phase Vs until the end of the turn

One final thing that it’s important to be aware of is the difference between effects which last until the End Phase, like Effect Veiler, and those which last for the duration of the turn, like Maxx “C”. In the former case you need to follow the rules as set out earlier on. In the latter case the effect will continue until the turn is completely over. So for example, you’d still draw from the effect of Maxx “C” if the opponent summoned tokens from a Dandylion discarded for the hand size limit. Similarly they wouldn’t be able to use Dandylion’s effect if currently locked down by Shock Master.

Hopefully some people might find this useful as they get ready for their shot at the World Championship. Alternatively, those helping at the events might find this a useful refresher in case they have to deal with any of these during those events. I’m going to try and get a few more finished before the WCQs start, hopefully covering a few more important areas, and also some lesser known details that I find interesting.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Behind the Cards: Bujin / War God

After a long break I’m finally back with my latest look at the stories and mythology behind Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. This time I’m going to be looking at an upcoming theme, the 武神(Bujin) or War Gods as some are choosing to translate them. It will of course be a little while before we actually know what they’re going to be called in English though. As you might have realised these are heavily based on Japanese mythology, pulling in a legendary prince, a god, legendary weapons and some of the Tokusa no Kandakara (10 varieties of  the god’s treasure). Whilst researching this, I’ve realised that since most of the items the card are based on are old legends, or holy items the public aren’t allowed to see, it’s practically impossible to find images of them. As such I can’t compare them to the cards, like I did with the Mermails.

People

War God – Yamato

The key card to the deck, and the only actual Bujin so far, is Yamato. Whilst this is possibly just taken from an ancient name for Japan, it is likely based on the legendary Japanese prince Yamato Takeru. This seems quite likely given that we also have a Bujinki / War God Vessel based on the sword he wielded for a time.

His story was told within the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) and Nihon Shoki (The Chronicles of Japan), the oldest and second oldest books of Japanese history in existence, which chronicled many of Japan’s myths.  There are some differences in details amongst the two, for example in the Nihon Shoki, Yamato Takeru and his father were on good terms, whereas in the Kojiki they clearly were not.

Yamato Takeru was originally known as Prince Ōsu, and was son of Emperor Keiko, the 12th Emperor of Japan. After killing his older brother Ōusu, his father sent him away out of fear of his brutal nature, hoping he would be killed in the process. During his time away he defeated many enemies, earning himself the title Yamatotakeru (The Brave of Yamato) from one of his foes.

His father’s mind still unchanged, Kekiko sent him to the eastern lands, where the people disobeyed the Imperial Court. Grieving that his father wanted him dead, his aunt Yamato-hime showed compassion and lent him the legendary sword Ame no Murakumo no Tsurugi, which once belonged to the god Susanoo. We’ll be seeing more from both of these soon enough though, so I’ll save their details for those entries. After receiving the sword he travelled to the Eastern lands and defeated many more foes. Legend has it that during his time there he also composed the first Sedoka (a form of Japanese poem) with one of the old men. He eventually fell in battle with a demon, after ignoring his wife’s advice to take his sword to battle.

The anthropologist C.S. Littleton drew parallels between this story and that of the Arthurian legend, suggesting both were derived from an earlier Iranian story.

Weapons

War God Vessel – Murakumo

The majority of the War God cards are actually made up of the Vessels, sacred animals which aid Yamato is battle. These are based on legendary weapons or treasures from Japanese history.

The first of these is Murakumo, meaning Gathering Clouds, which some of you might recognise as the name of one of the clans in Cardfight!! Vanguard. As you can see from the picture, this is one of Yamato’s swords, and the name would suggest it is based on Ame no Murakumo no Tsurugi (Sword of the Gathering Clouds of Heaven) the legendary sword that Susanoo extracted from one of the tails of the eight-headed dragon Orochi. As mentioned earlier it was later owned by Yamato Takeru, who renamed it Kusanagi no Tsurugi (Grass Cutting Sword) in honour of the time it helped save him against a treacherous warlord by cutting the grass, in addition to its magical ability to control the wind. Some of the readers are possibly aware of the name Kusanagi, because it often appears in games or TV shows as a legendary sword.

Nowadays it is one of the three Imperial Regalia of Japan representing valour, alongside Yata no Kagami (The Eight Hand Mirror) representing wisdom and Yasakani no Magatama (Eight Shaku Curved Jewel) representing benevolence. None of these items are allowed to be viewed by normal people, traditionally only by the Emperor or specific priests, and as such no drawing or pictures of the real items exist, and some question whether the items exist at all. This means the image supplied above is of course just an artist’s impression of what these 3 may look like. The last time the items ‘appeared’ they were shrouded in cloth, meaning no one could actually see them. Kusanagi is currently meant to be held in Atsuta shrine, but since the priests do not allow anyone to view it, this cannot be confirmed.

As the theme expands I wouldn’t be surprised to see the other two Imperial Regalia appear in some form.

War God Vessel – Habakiri

Our second Vessel based on a sword is Habakiri, based on Ame no Habakiri (Slash of Heavenly Wings), which has many different names including Totsuka no Tsurugi (Ten-hands Long Sword), Ame no Ohabari (Tail-feathers of Heaven) and Worochi no Aramasa. As you can see from the names, they are often to do with birds in some way, so it makes sense that the card itself would feature a bird. As you will see later, it is also capable of transforming into its sword form.

The sword was held by Susanoo at the time of his banishment from the heavens. It would later be used by Susanoo to defeat Orochi, cutting off each of its 8 heads and tails. In the 4th tail he discovered the Ame no Murakumo no Tsurugi, which was covered above.

Treasures

War God Vessel – Hetsuka

Hetsuka and several of the other vessels appear to be based on the ten treasures known as the Tokusa no Kandakara (10 varieties of  the god’s treasure) which are enshrined at Isonokami shrine. They were holy items given to Nigihayahi, an ancestor of the Mononobe clan, by Amaterasu and brought to earth when he descended from Heaven. These treasures were essentially magical items that could be used in rituals for the purpose of exorcism or purification.

Hetsuka appears to be based on Hetsukagami (Mirror of the Shore), which was possibly a mirror that brought glory. This is reflected in the design of the card, which features a turtle-like animal, which could live by the shore, with a mirror on its back.

War God Vessel – Taruta

Taruta is based on another of the Tokusa-no-Kandakara, this time the Tarutama (Jewel of Plenty). This is apparently a jewel which makes armour it’s form, which I suppose means it turns into armour? Taruta features many jewels on his armour, mostly different coloured magatama, which I suppose is a faithful representation of the treasure and what it can do.

War God Vessel – Orochi

Whilst it would be easy to assume that this card is based upon the mighty dragon Yamata no Orochi, the design of the card, and the function of the Vessels in general lead me to believe otherwise. Firstly the Vessel only appears as a one-headed, one-tailed dragon, rather than with the 8 possessed by the legendary dragon Orochi. Secondly, all the other Vessels are weapons or treasures that are meant to help Yamato to become Susanoo, so why would one of them be one of Susanoo’s enemies?

It makes much more sense if this Orochi were based off another treasure, and fortunately one exists, Orochi no hire (Snake[-repelling] Scarf), which is another of the Tokusa-no-Kandakara. This one either repels snakes, or helps heal wounds inflicted by snakes. To me this fits, because this Vessels seems fairly scarf-like in its appearance.

Gods

War God Emperor – Susanoo

Our final War God card is their most powerful monster, their Emperor Susanoo, who is based on the god of the storms, of the same name. He’s previously appeared as the Spirit monster Susa Soldier, but is now back as the trump card in a new deck. He is the Shinto god of the sea and storms, and is also considered to be the ruler of Yomi, the land of the dead. He was born from Izanagi’s nose, when Izanagi cleansed himself of the pollutants from Yomi. He is the brother of Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun, and Tsukuyomi, the god of the moon. Tsukuyomi at least should be familiar to current players, since it’s probably the 2nd most famous Spirit monster in the game after Yata-Garasu.

Susanoo had a long standing rivalry with his sister Amaterasu, which eventually culminated in him destroying her rice-fields and killing one of her attendants. This lead Amaterasu to hide in the Ama-no-Iwato (heavenly rock cave). Even though she eventually left the cave, Susanoo was banished from Heaven as punishment. He descended from Heaven to the province of Izumo, where he met an old couple being tormented by the dragon Orochi, who had eaten 7 of their 8 daughters. In exchange for the hand in marriage of the final one, Kushinada-hime, Susanoo fought and defeated Orochi, by getting all 8 of its heads drunk. As he was chopping Orochi apart with Ame-no-Habakiri, he discovered the Ame no Murakumo no Tsurugi, which we have both already encountered. The latter was presented to Amaterasu as a reconciliatory gift, and eventually made its way down to earth via her descendant Ninigi along with the other Imperial Regalia.

The theme ties all of the cards together in War God Emperor – Susanoo, linking in the legendary items and the legends of Yamato Takeru and Susanoo. Susanoo the card, is an upgraded version of Yamato, dual wielding the two swords that at one point belonged to the god Susanoo, which makes sense, given that one of them belonged to Yamato as well. The Tokusa-no-Kandakara then form some of his armour.

Events

War God End

The remaining War God support cards merely seem to be related to the cards, rather than the legends, barring War God End, which features the banishing of Susanoo from Heaven. Its name Bujinyarai appears to be derived from Kanyarai, the banishing of Susanoo from heaven, which is clearly shown in the card itself. This is also partly reflected in the effect of the card itself, where you get rid of a War God on your field.

The Bujin / War Gods are an interesting archetype that calls upon Japanese folklore and holy items for its inspiration. They’re all linked together quite well, and still have plenty of room for expansion, with more Imperial Regalia to go, and the rest of the Tokusa no Kandakara. Beyond this there are also plenty of other legendary figures and gods to call upon, so it by no means has to be a one set archetype. Hopefully this little venture into the mythology of Japan might inspire you to look a bit further, and maybe consider the stories behind the many other Yu-Gi-Oh! cards that draw their inspiration from the same source.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden & Limited Cards March 2013

March the 1st is upon us, which means it’s time for the new Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden & Limited list. These lists are rarely without controversy. Often as much for cards which don’t make the list, as those that do. This time the changes have been fairly light, with only one main deck taking major damage, and many more getting slight boosts. This list also bids farewell to a long time participant in the game.

Forbidden

Only two new cards have been Forbidden this time, one of which saw play in a variety of decks, the other only in a specific deck.

Sangan has been with us since Metal Raiders, with only a brief vacation in September 2004, when he last joined the Forbidden list. He returned during the following list, and has been Limited ever since. Throughout his time in the game Sangan has seen huge amounts of play, but this has often fluctuated based on what other cards have been good at the time. One of the most infamous couplings involved Crush Card Virus, allowing you to not only cripple your opponent’s plays, but also strengthen your own. Sangan has also proved useful for searching power cards, like Rescue Cat or Rescue Rabbit, giving decks quick access to some of their trump cards.

Most recently he’s been paired up with everyone’s favourite Tour Guide. This not only made searching for your power cards easier, but it also gave you a card to use with Tour Guide that you didn’t mind drawing during the rest of the game. If a deck ran one, you could just about guarantee it would run the other. It could be argued that Sangan going away was at least in part to decrease the power of Tour Guide, however this can’t be the only reason.

Sangan provided generic searching for just about any deck and it’s understandable why Konami would want to see it gone. One the one hand it weakens decks like Rabbit which can only search for their power cards via Sangan. On the other hand lots of decks have their own theme specific searchers now, and by getting rid of Sangan it might encourage their use a bit more.

The 2nd newly Forbidden card is Wind-Up Carrier Zenmaity, which has been a central part of Wind-Up decks since it was released. Originally players had to deal with a whole format of Wind-Ups being able to strip away your entire hand thanks to triple Zenmaity. Following its restriction the Wind-Up deck instead utilised Zenmaity to help pull off a huge series of Xyz summons, often resulting in a Shockmaster along with backup. By cutting Zenmaity out of the game completely it takes these sorts of options away from the deck and prevents it from being as much of a dominant force as before.

This along with the Limitation on Wind-Up Magician cuts a lot of power from the Wind-Up deck, but probably won’t kill it completely. Some people will likely still stick it out with the deck, like they did with Inzektors and Chaos Dragons after the last list, but don’t expect to see it making up such a large fraction of the top decks again.

Limited

This time the Limited list had 3 cards added to it, two coming from Unlimited and the last being upgraded from Semi-Limited. Two of these were fairly generic whilst one was deck specific. Oddly we’ve also ended up with a selection that also covers all 3 main card types.

Up first we have Wind-Up Magician, the only theme specific card on the Limited List. Like Zenmaity who we saw a minute ago, Magician was also involved with swarming the field and building up an impressive army of monsters. This is of course to be expected given the fact that he summons other Wind-Ups from the deck, allowing you to toolbox nearly your entire deck. Since this included other copies of himself, with the right set up, you could build quite a field in one turn.

By restricting Wind-Up Magician the deck is still allowed to use him to expand their field, but they can’t abuse him anywhere near as much as before. Even with Magician Limited and Zenmaity Forbidden, some imaginative players have already come up with other ways for Wind-Ups to completely swarm the field. However I doubt it will have anywhere near the consistency the deck experienced this past format.

Probably the most surprising addition to the Limited list is One Day of Peace. The card has been utilised in a variety of stall decks, as well as One Turn Kill decks. Decks like Final Countdown or slower Exodia builds greatly benefited from gaining a free turn, whilst faster decks like turbo Exodia builds or the notorious Gishki deck out benefited from the extra draw power. Towards the end of the format we even saw decks like Dark World making use of it for that one extra turn.

Despite the fuss over decks like these, they were hardly that well represented at major tournaments, both in attendance or performance, so it comes as a bit of a surprise that the card was Limited. This could be down to a general dislike Konami seem to have for stall decks. Personally I think it might have something to do with the fact it basically stops you playing Yu-Gi-Oh! properly for a turn, and that there’s very little your opponent can do to stop it.

Our final Limited card is Solemn Warning, a powerful trap card that has seen lots of play since its debut. Originally we saw decks running this card in triplicate, which soon landed it on the Semi-Limited list. Following this it wasn’t uncommon to have the ‘Solemn Trio’ as a standard basis for your Trap line-up. Given the high use this card has seen, it’s probably not surprising that it has finally landed on the Limited List.

Apart from just seeing high use, it is of course also a very powerful card, capable of stopping pretty much any summon in the game. It can even touch summons during the Damage Step, which have usually been able to go off safely. The 2000 Life Points payment is fairly trivial when it can seal your victory or ruin your opponent’s plans.

Due to the Limitation of this card, it should become a little easier for decks to summon their trump cards, although I’ll leave that up to the reader to decide whether that’s good or bad. It also means people will probably be a bit more careful with the card, because they’ll only have one to rely on.

Semi-Limited

The Semi-Limited list saw 3 new additions this time. Two of which loosened previous Limitations, with the remaining one adding a new card to the overall Forbidden and Limited list.

First up we have our latest member of the Forbidden and Limited club, Thunder King Rai-Oh. Rai-Oh is undoubtedly a powerful monster, with two useful effects, and a big body for a Level 4. However I’m a little unsure about the need to be Semi-Limited. Rai-Oh has usually been used in Anti-Meta decks as a way to slow down faster decks, rather than as a tool in the main decks. Although it does for example find its way into their Side Decks sometimes.

On the cards merits alone it probably deserves its new status, but I wonder if it might be better left at 3 as a way of controlling faster decks.

Tsukuyomi returned to play last format after a long vacation from the game. When that list was revealed I wondered whether its ability to reuse effects and kill lots of monsters would find it in use again, or whether the game had simply sped up too much for him to make any impact. It would appear the latter was true, because Tsukuyomi saw practically no play during the last format.

Like with several cards, this change now seems to be testing the waters about whether moving the card to Unlimited would be okay. Since it seems doubtful that Tsukuyomi, even at 2, will negatively impact the game, I think we may see him at 3 next list.

The only mainstream deck that he’s likely to find a place in is Prophecy, where he can benefit from the Spellcaster support, and provide the deck with outs to threats like Naturia Beast.

Advanced Ritual Art was similarly once a threat to the game, via the Demise One Turn Kill. However the game has moved on, and Demise and Ritual monsters in general are barely on the radar anymore. Advanced Ritual Art really only saw play amongst those brave enough to give Herald of Perfection a go.

I think it’s likely that this was done to give Ritual decks a little more power, maybe with the intention to Unlimit the card next list.

No longer limited

Most of the cards that have become Unlimited this time were once key components of powerful decks. However those decks have now fallen into the background compared to newer more powerful decks. These decks are able to reclaim a bit of their power, but even then I doubt they’ll be the threats they once were.

Blackwings used to be one of the most popular decks, certainly in the OCG at least. Ultimately it took several heavy hits on the deck to stop its widespread play, and the deck has never recovered since. Giving the deck back Kalut makes it stronger again, but I doubt we’ll be seeing Blackwings at the top table again any time soon.

I do wonder if even Black Whirlwind would be that bad anymore, given that Wind-Up Factory is still allowed at 3, but I wouldn’t hold my breath about this being moved down the list any time soon.

Like Blackwings, Lightsworn were once a deck to be reckoned with, and as such took heavy hits in older lists. Now though as their own deck they’ve just about faded from play. Instead standalone cards like Lyla or Ryko see play mixed into other decks for their useful effects and their ability to mill your deck.

Putting Lumina back to Unlimited means the deck very nearly back to full power, only lacking 2 copies of Charge of the Light Brigade. I think it’s unlikely this card will move up from Limited any time soon though, more due fact it can be used in conjunction with Lightsworn in decks that need cards in their Graveyards, than for its use in Lightsworn themselves.

I doubt this change to Lumina will have any real impact on the game.

Once again, Spore was a card that got hit to limit the power of Plant decks, but has since been allowed back because their power waned. With a once per Duel limitation on the card anyway, it never made much sense to be Limited anyway, since it can never be abused too much no matter how many copies you play.

By allowing 3 copies again, Plant decks could play extra copies of Spore, to either make drawing it easier, or just using one copy as a way to fuel another’s effect. It helps plant decks slightly, but in general the difference won’t be noticed.

Once again, Samurai used to be a major threat, but after previous Limitations and the introduction of new cards, the deck has declined. It still sees more play than decks like Blackwings or Lightsworn though, and occasionally actually manages to make decent showings at tournaments. By allowing a 3rd Smoke Signal, the deck regains a bit of its consistency, but I doubt a change this small will be enough to negatively impact the game.

It’s Semi-Limitation a year ago, as with Lumina, seems to have been a testing ground for whether Unlimiting the card again would be wise.

The final Unlimited card is Mind Crush, which is the only generic card amongst them. It used to be a big threat thanks to cards like Trap Dustshoot allowing you to see your opponent’s Hand, but those cards are no longer around. As such its uses and power have declined. Now you’ll really only find it in the Side Deck, or in Decks like Dark World, which don’t care about the negative side of the card.

Putting Mind Crush back to 3 might be a way to try and keep in check search heavy decks like Prophecy, or decks which use effects to summon from the Hand, like Mermail. Like with the rest of the Unlimits, I doubt this will have a negative impact on the game.

Overall Thoughts

The March 2013 list is remarkable in how little it actually does to the game compared to other lists. Only one deck, Wind-Ups, has been severely hit, and deservedly so. Whilst several other themed decks have seen their power increased by this list. Wind-Ups aside, it’s mostly been generic cards that have been moved up the list, rather than themed cards like in the past.

The big new or upcoming decks, like Mermail, Fire Fist and Prophecy have escaped the list, and will likely thrive for the next 6 months. Some would have liked to see these decks weakened, however I don’t think it would have been all that necessary. There has been a marked rise in diversity in the game recently, and Wind-Ups aside, there doesn’t seem to have been anything approaching a dominant deck. Without Wind-Ups around keeping everything else in check, it will be interesting to see whether anything might climb to the top.

One thing on the horizon to potentially worry about, is Divine Judgement of the Spellbook (or whatever its name might be), which could help push Prophecy over the top. Until the card actually reaches us though, it’s a little hard to judge whether it will ruin the game like some people say, or just add another powerful deck to the roster.

Personally I feel it’s good that the game is in such a place that several different themed decks can exist side by side, that are all powerful, but do different things, without one completely ruling over the others. It will be interesting to see whether Konami can keep this up in future, or whether we’ll once again see themed decks taken too far.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Behind the Cards: Mermail

For the first of a new series of articles, I’m going to be looking at something that’s interested me for a while, but that you don’t really hear much about. Yu-Gi-Oh! has thousands of cards and draws inspiration from a variety of sources, including the real world, works of literary fiction, Konami’s own properties and ancient myths to name but a few. Some of these are more obvious, such as the Noble Knights being based on Arthurian legend, or the many types of Dragons and other mythological monsters that inhabit the game. Many are less obvious or people simply aren’t aware that the cards are even based on anything. For example many people probably realise that all the spaceship and Core cards are based on Konami’s famous Gradius game, but how many realise that Getsu Fuhma is the protagonist of an old Konami game?

One recent example is the Mermail, which I’m sure people are aware of being Mermaids, and might realise some of the fish connections, but they probably don’t realise the full background of the cards. This is the first theme I’m going to be covering, looking at the inspiration behind the card names, and whether this has an resemblance or bearing on the cards themselves. Since the Mermail themselves can be subdivided into different categories, I will cover these one at a time.

Female Mermail and the Rhinemaidens

In Abyss Rising we were introduced to a trio of female Mermail Monsters, Abysslinde, Abyssgunde and Abysshilde, who all draw their names from the Rhinemaids in Der Ring des Nibelungen, or the Ring of the Nibelungs. The three Rhinemaids are Woglinde, Wellgunde, and Flosshilde, and you may notice that the Mermail all happen to share the same name ending. The Rhinemaids themselves are water-nymphs, although they have been portrayed as mermaids in some productions of the opera. As such, it’s not too much of a stretch that their Yu-Gi-Oh! counterparts would also be mermaids.

Whilst some factors in the Mermail design are drawn from their inspiration, they are still distinctly different. The Rhinemaidens act as a more or less a single entity, whereas each of the Mermail are clearly their own being. They might be linked through similarities in effects, but their art design shows a clear differentiation in terms of age and appearance. The Rhinemaidens are meant to be innocent, yet seductive and you could say this is reflected in the artwork used for the Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, although I would argue that Abyssgunde and Abysshilde more lie on the former end, with Abysslinde the latter. Although then again there are people into the younger end of the spectrum when it comes to anime styled art. Even though the original Rhinemaidens are meant to act as a unity, there is an implied seniority in Flosshilde, this is however not reflected in the Mermail. Abysshilde is the youngest of the three, with Abysslinde taking the role of seniority. I cannot say whether this was something taken into account during the creative processes for the cards though.

Finally, there is the support card Abyss-squall, which features all three of these Mermail, surrounding a glowing golden ring. One can only assume this is meant to be a reference to the Ring of the Nibelung, and when they receive the ring at the end of the opera.

Mermail and Fish

Many of the Mermail draw their inspiration from fish, and this can be seen most notably in the male Mermail from Abyss Rising, such as Abysspike and Abyssturge. However later female Mermail also appear to draw inspiration from fish, possibly because they used up all the Rhinemaidens with the first trio.

Up first we have Abyssturge, who is based on the Sturgeon. The Sturgeon is one of the oldest families of bony fish, and is distinctive due to the fact it is partially covered in bony plates, rather than scales. You can see there are features of Abyssturge’s art that are clearly inspired by the fish he’s based on. The helmet he wears bears a resemblance to the head region of a Sturgeon. He also has bony plates running down his back, similar to those down the back of a Sturgeon. One notable difference is the fact that a Sturgeon is mostly a freshwater fish, with very few species that venture into the deep ocean, whilst Abyssturge looks to dwell in this region.

Our next Mermail is Abysspike, who takes his name from the Pike. Pike is the common name for the Esox genus, and is a shortening of Pike-fish, in reference to its elongated face. This can be seen in the exaggerated helmet Abysspike wears. The patterning on the fish portion of Abysspike is also similar to that seen on a Pike. I’m a little surprised that he focuses on hand to hand combat, rather than using a pike, but that might have been going a bit over the top on the references. There is the same issue as Abyssturge, in that they’ve based him on a freshwater fish, when he’s clearly an ocean dweller.

The last of the original male trio is Abysslung, who is based on the Lungfish, neither of which are the prettiest things in the world. Once again the Lungfish is a fresh water fish, but it does have the unusual ability to breath air, and shares some other characteristics with ancient fish. In this case, as well as the helmet Abysslung is wearing, I feel that his arm shields also bear similarities to the head region of the Lungfish. The larger build of the Lungfish also seems to be reflected in the heavier build of Abysslung when compared to the other Mermails.

Cosmo Blazer gave us a new male Mermail, Abyssnose, who seems to be based on the Peters’ Elephantnose Fish. The Elephantnose Fish is a native of West and Central Africa that prefers muddy, slow moving rivers. Its most striking feature is its elongated ‘nose’, which is actually just an extension of its mouth. It can be used for tasks such as self-defense or communication. The mask of Abyssnose features a longer central section which covers the centre of his face, similar in appearance to that of the Elephantnose’s mouth. Another interesting feature of the Elephantnose that has been expanded upon with the Mermail, is its use of a weak electric field. Since the Elephantnose has poor eyesight, it instead uses a weak electric field to find food and navigate. Abyssnose on the other hand uses his electric field as a weapon, shocking other fish like you see in the bottom right hand corner.

Abyssdine is our first female Mermail that doesn’t fit into the Rhinemaidens, and instead draws inspiration from a fish. Well this isn’t strictly true, since the Sea Angel is actually a type of sea slug, but its close enough. As you can see Abyssdine shares many aesthetic similarities to the Sea Angel, including the red tipped translucent tail section, the glowing orange interior and the wing like appendages. In addition her associated Trap card, Abyss-scorn shows her attacking with her tentacles, in a similar manner to how the Sea Angel attacks its prey. For the Mermail they opted for a female monster, possibly due to the perception that a Sea Angel has more feminine features, despite being an Hermaphrodite. On the plus side we do finally have a Mermail that’s actually based on an ocean dwelling species.

Even though its clear she derives her appearance from the Sea Angel, her name is likely derived from Undine, a water nymph. This should already be familiar to people who play Mermails. Although the Undine of mythology is not a robot like you get in Yu-Gi-Oh!

Oceabyss is currently the only Mermail we don’t have in the TCG, and derives her name from Exocoetidae, the family name for the Flying Fish. It’s likely her TCG name won’t be exactly this, but I’m not going to hazard a guess as to what that might be. The links between the two are fairly obvious, since Oceabyss has 2 pairs of wings, one large and one small, just like the real Flying Fish. She has also taken to the skies, rather than being just restricted to the seas like her real life counterpart. A Flying Fish doesn’t truly fly though, merely able to leap from the water and then glide on its wing-like fins. This is used to evade predators, but it looks like Oceabyss is more doing this to show off.

Mermail and Amphibians

A very small category of Mermail are those based on Amphibians, which currently only contains one member.

Abyssmander is based on the Salamander, a species of amphibian that can live on both land and in the sea. They have the unusual ability among vertebrates that they can regenerate lost limbs, but this doesn’t seem to be reflected in the card itself. Their living habits can vary based on which species the Salamander is, with some living fully aquatic lives, others splitting their time between the land and sea, and others just sticking to the land in their adult lives. Abyssmander looks to be one of those that spends the majority of his life living in the oceans, although you can still make out his lower legs, suggesting he might be able to walk on land if he wanted. Abyssmander is bulkier and less muscular than the rest of the Mermails, which might be a reflection of the appearance of some Salamanders.

Mermail and Extinct Fish

The most powerful group of the regular Mermails all take the form of giant fish men, rather than mermen or mermaids like the smaller ones do. They also all draw inspiration from species of large, long dead fish, rather than modern dwellers of the sea.

Abyssmegalo is based on the Megalodon, a species of giant shark, and one of the largest predators in vertebrate history. This is fairly fitting with his aggressive ability to attack twice. The Megalodon was a truly massive species of shark, possibly capable of growing to 20m, and with teeth that dwarfed those of modern species like the Great White. Beyond the fact Abyssmegalo has a shark-like face, I don’t feel the rest of him looks particularly shark-like, but this might be due to the fact he’s been anthropomorphised. He jaws don’t look quite as deadly as his real life inspiration, but its hard to judge his actual size relative to the other Mermails based on this card alone.

Abyssleed is based on the Leedsichthys, another truly massive ancient fish. Whilst probably not as big as a Megalodon, they could possibly reach up to 16m, with most being estimated to reach 10m. Unlike the Megalodon it doesn’t seem to have been an aggressive predator though, instead just extracting zooplankton that passed through its mouth and gills. Since Abyssleed is drawn with its mouth closed, it’s a little difficult to tell whether it has a huge mouth or not. The colour scheme on his body seems to be shared with some of the artists impressions of a Leedsichthys, however we cannot know its true colours. It seems a little odd to me that Abyssleed is a larger monsters than Abyssmegalo, given that the Megalodon was not only bigger, but also a predator. However I might be placing too much weight on how much these factors influenced the design choices. It might just have been that Konami picked out a big dead fish for this card, and didn’t think too much about the original.

Our final monstrous Mermail is Abyssteus, who draws inspiration from the Dunkleosteus. A Dunkleosteus was another giant prehistoric fish, a bit smaller than the Leedsichthys, only reaching about 10m at max. Instead of teeth the Dunkleosteus had two pairs of sharp bony plates, forming a beak-like structure. This feature is carried over into Abyssteus, who has a remarkably similar facial structure to a Dunkleosteus. The crushing power of this beak was likely the second strongest ever seen amongst fish, only being outmatched by the Megalodon. In addition to the powerful jaw, it could also quickly open its mouth, causing a powerful suction, allowing it to draw in its prey. Given its size, it doesn’t seem like it had predators, but bit marks suggests they would occasional cannibalise each other.

Mermail and Mythology

The final category of Mermail cards are those with links to mythology in some way. These come both in the form of their Xyz monsters, and their support cards. The Xyz monsters call on gods for their inspiration, whilst the support cards are based on legendary monsters. I’ve not covered Cetus here, since the name appears to be a general reference to large fish and sea monsters, rather than anything specific.

Abyssgaios is the most powerful Mermail, and it should be no surprise that he is based on Poseidon, the god of the seas. You might be wondering how this fits into his naming though, because the two are nothing alike. It would seem gaios is derived from Gaiēochos, meaning Earth-shaker, an alternative title for Poseidon, since he was also believed to be the cause of earthquakes. Poseidon was often depicted as an older gentleman with a beard and wavy hair, wielding his iconic three pronged trident. As you can see, Abyssgaios borrowed several of these elements and combined them merman attributes. In this case his lower half seems almost centaur like, except of course being that of a sea monster, rather than a horse.

Our second Mermail Xyz monster is Abysstrite, who is based on Amphitrite, the sea goddess and wife of Poseidon. Much like her husband she was often depicted wielding a trident. In this case, the design on Abysstrite even matches that seen on ancient pinax, with a ring located below the top of the trident. In archaic Greek legends she was of great importance, with authority over the seas and all the creatures that lived within. She was rarely mentioned with her husband, except to say that Poseidon was her husband. However in later Greek legends, Poseidon took on this role, with her demoted to his mere consort, and later to just being the personification of the sea.

Abyss-scale of the Kraken is based on the legendary giant squid that is meant to dwell off the coasts of Norway and Greenland. There is a good chance these legends were based on sightings of the Giant or Colossal Squid, which can grow to 13 and 14m respectively. When I first saw this card, I had assumed it was merely a suit of armour with tentacles coming out of it, to represent its link to the Kraken. Upon closer inspection it appears that it is actually just a suit of armour being presented by a Kraken which lurks in the background of the card, the top of its head just visible over the top of the armour.

Our final Mermail card, at least for now, is Abyss-scale of the Mizuchi, named for a legendary Japanese dragon, or sea serpent, associated with water. As with the Kraken it is possible that a Mizuchi is hiding behind the armour, as the dark tail like and fin like features at the edges might attest to. However it is difficult to tell whether these are just flourishes to the armour or not. Since there’s not really a set image for a Mizuchi though, Konami are free to do what they want with it.

 

This concludes my look at some of the details behind the cards that make up the Mermail theme. In many cases Konami just borrowed design elements from the fish that they are named after, but in others they seemed to do a surprising level of research, such as the Elephantnose fish’s ability to control a weak electric field. I hope this was an informative read, and might make you think a little bit more about where your cards come from the next time you play them.

If anyone is interested in hearing about details behind other cards or themes in Yu-Gi-Oh!, just let me know.

Abyss Rising Overview Part 9: World Exclusives

The World Exclusive cards in Abyss Rising provide new support for several themes, such as Ninjas, Spellbooks and Noble Knights, as well as new cards referencing one of the most famous scenes from the original anime.

Ignoble Knight of Black Laundsallyn: Level 5 2000/800 Dark Warrior

You can send 1 face-up LIGHT Normal Monster you control to the Graveyard; Special Summon this card from your hand or Graveyard. You can Tribute 1 “Noble Knight” monster; add 1 “Noble Arms” card from your Deck to your hand. You can only use this effect of “Ignoble Knight of Black Laundsallyn” once per turn. You can control only 1 face-up “Ignoble Knight of Black Laundsallyn”.

The latest addition to the Noble Knights theme breaks from previous traditions and gives us a Dark Warrior, instead of a Light one, which makes sense given that he’s actually an Ignoble Knight. As with the rest of the Noble cards his true strength won’t really be known until we have the complete set of Knights and Arms. Whilst it might also be possible to fit him into decks that run other Light Normal monsters, it doesn’t really make sense to use him there, since you won’t be able to benefit from the rest of his effect.

Ideally you’re meant to use Artorigus to Special summon Laundsallyn, since he’s part of the theme, in additon to being a Normal Light monster. After this by tributing another Noble Knight you get to search your deck for a Noble Arms card, allowing you to empower your other Knights. If you don’t control any other Knights you could even use Laundsallyn himself, but I would question the effort you’ve gone through merely to get an equip card.

Laundsallyn of course has competition from Hidden Armory, which can also search Equip cards, and is much easier to use, considering it’s a standalone card. However the fact you forfeit your Normal Summon / Set could be quite a drawback to its use in this deck. Given we’re nowhere near the full set of Knights yet, this is a little hard to tell though.

Laundsallyn can also be a useful way to move around your Noble Arms on the field by getting rid of a monster that one is currently equipped to.

Mermail Abyssmander: Level 4 100/2000 Water Fish

You can banish this card from your Graveyard to activate 1 of these effects.
• Increase the Level of all “Mermail” monsters you currently control by 1.
• Increase the Level of all “Mermail” monsters you currently control by 2.

Abyssmander is a World Exclusive Mermail, but seems a bit out of place compared to the rest of the theme. Instead of working when it goes to the Graveyard, or helping to send cards to the Graveyard, he instead waits in the Graveyard until he becomes useful. Until then he merely serves as a wall. This means you’ll either have to dump him to the Graveyard first, or merely use him as a blocker until he’s destroyed by your opponent.

Once in the Graveyard he opens up more Xyz options for the Mermail deck, by allowing you to increase their Levels by either 1 or 2. This would allow you to summon Rank 5 or 6 monsters with the smaller Mermails, and Rank 8 or 9 monsters with Abyssmegalo.

However I find it unlikely that most Mermail decks would go to the effort to include him. I imagine for most of them the Extra Deck space is already fairly tight, and there wouldn’t be enough space to fully make use of these options. In addition you’d usually be better served dumping the Atlanteans to the Graveyard with Undine, rather than spending your time on Abyssmander.

Red Dragon Ninja: Level 6 2400/1200 Fire Winged Beast

When this card is Summoned: You can banish 1 “Ninja” or “Ninjitsu Art” card from your Graveyard to target 1 Set card your opponent controls; reveal that Set card, then return it to either the top or bottom of the Deck. Your opponent cannot activate the targeted card in response to this effect’s activation. You can only use the effect of “Red Dragon Ninja” once per turn.

Red Dragon Ninja is the latest in the line of Ninja cards we seem to be getting in the exclusives each set. However instead of being used alongside the newer Ninjitsu Art of Super Transformation, Red Dragon Ninja is instead for the original Ninjitsu Art of Transformation. This provides you more options when using the original card, without having to compromise on the Ninja theme.

Red Dragon Ninja itself is a useful card for clearing out your opponent’s defenses, since it’s a mix of Night Beam and Phoenix Wing Wind Blast, but with a body. Since you get to see the set card, you can make an informed decision about where to send it. If it’s a card your opponent could immediately use again, and is a threat to you, you can send it to the bottom of their deck. This makes it unlikely that they’ll see it again this game. If you see that it’s a useless card you can instead return it to the top of the deck, stopping your opponent from making useful plays next turn.

The fact your opponent cannot chain the set card to this effect’s activation makes it much more likely that you can get rid of the card, but as with Night Beam, extra cards could be chained to allow the targeted card to be used. This effect might also prove handy in keeping Red Dragon Ninja alive, because if you select something like Bottomless Trap Hole or Torrential Tribute, you can prevent the opponent from instantly killing Red Dragon Ninja.

The effect does have a few restrictions on it though. Firstly you need to banish a Ninja or Ninjitsu Art card from your Graveyard to activate his effect. This will be no problem at all if you just used the Transformation Art, since you’ll have a Ninja ready and waiting to get banished. During the normal course of play I also expect that it shouldn’t be too difficult to get one of these cards into the Graveyard prior to summoning Red Dragon Ninja. The other restriction on the card is that you can only use this effect once per turn, which is I suppose to stop a scenario where you can lock the opponent out of useful draws for several turns.

Slushy: Level 2 0/0 Water Aqua

When this card is Normal Summoned: You can send 1 “Slushy” from your Deck to the Graveyard. If you have 3 copies of “Slushy” total, either banished and/or in your Graveyard (combined): You can banish this card from your Graveyard to target 1 Level 5 or higher Sea Serpent-Type monster in your Graveyard; Special Summon that target. You can only use the Special Summoning effect of “Slushy” once per turn.

Slushy gives high Level Sea Serpents a new lease on life by making it easier to summon them than ever before. He could be used on his own merely as extra support in a Sea Serpent deck, but he also combines well with other powerful Water monsters like Swap Frog and Sea Lancer.

When using Slushy on his own it’s easy to get 2 copies into the Graveyard, since the first copy will dump the second, before very quickly being killed or used for some other purpose. The issue then becomes how to get the 3rd copy in there, which will either rely on using another card in the deck to send him to the Graveyard, or just simply setting the 3rd copy when you draw it. When combined with Swap Frog though, this becomes much easier, since not only can you discard Slushy to summon Swap Frog, but Swap Frog can also use its effect to send Slushy to the Graveyard. You’ll very quickly get all 3 Slushy in the right place, ready to start reviving your Sea Serpents.

Once Slushy is set up you can start bringing powerful Sea Serpents such as Daedalus and Poseidra back to life, and this can be repeated up to 3 times. Even if you just end up using these monsters for beatdown you’ll find that lots of decks can struggle when suddenly faced by huge monsters like them. Especially since they know the monsters will be right back next turn.

This can be extended when combined with Sea Lancer, who can recycle used copies of Slushy, allowing you to summon your powerful Sea Serpents even more often.

Abyss Dweller: Rank 4 1700/1400 Water Sea Serpent

2 Level 4 monsters
While this card has an Xyz Material attached that was originally WATER, all WATER monsters you control gain 500 ATK. Once per turn, during either player’s turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; any card effects that activate in your opponent’s Graveyard cannot be activated this turn.

Abyss Dweller is a useful Xyz monster for shutting down decks like Mermail which rely on cards activating in the Graveyard. As an added bonus it also gives Water decks a boost, meaning it will be a useful tool for Mermails as well as against them. Since it’s a generic Xyz it can still be played in other decks as well though.

To get the full potential out of Abyss Dweller you’ll need to use a deck with Level 4 water monsters, so that its power boosting effect will work. This is of course easiest to achieve in a Water based deck like Mermails, but decks which just happen to feature Water monsters, such as Wind-Ups (with Shark) can also manage. In the former case this can make all of your monsters more powerful, aiding you to a speedier victory. In the latter case it will probably just result in a more powerful Abyss Dweller, but this will still be useful, since a 2200 is considerably harder to get rid of than a 1700.

The most important part about Abyss Dweller though is its second effect, which thankfully works regardless of what materials it has. For a turn it can cause a one sided Soul Drain, locking your opponent out of Graveyard effects, potentially shutting down a lot of their plays. However just as with Soul Drain you need to be very careful when using this card. It does not negate anything, it merely prevents activations. This means if you chain Abyss Dweller to an opponent’s effect it won’t do anything. This will mean you may have to pre-emptively use its effect in order to stop your opponent. This may sometimes result in you wasting the effect though. It could however be useful against cards like Abyssmegalo or Genex Undine, who sent cards to the Graveyard as a cost for their effects. If you chain Abyss Dweller to those cards instead, the monsters used as Costs will never get a chance to activate.

Giant Soldier of Steel: Rank 3 1300/2000 Earth Rock

2 Level 3 Rock-Type monsters
This card is unaffected by other monsters’ effects. Once per turn, during either player’s turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; it gains 1000 DEF until the End Phase, and if it does, you take no effect damage from your opponent’s card effects this turn.

Giant Soldier of Steel is our first card which harks back to an older age of Yu-Gi-Oh! and upgrades a classic monster. It creates a fairly large wall, but can also be a useful tool against burn damage.

The normal defense on Giant Soldier of Steel isn’t too impressive at only 2000, but it does at least allow him to fend off most Level 4 or below cards. If the opponent does summon something larger he can then boost himself to 3000 defense, which should be enough to defend against nearly everything that commonly sees play at the moment. However you only get two chances at this, so you’ll need to find a way to actually fight back before he is defeated.

Immunity to other monster’s effects also helps make Giant Soldier of Steel a tough wall to break through, especially once the summon is successful. Apart from Dark Hole, most Spell and Traps that act as monster removal are reactive. This means that cards like Dimensional Prison or Mirror Force will be useless against him, and he’s too small to get caught by Bottomless Trap Hole. The Solemn Trio and Torrential can still hit him, but it might be better to save those for threats, rather than walls. This would normally leave you with two options, summon something bigger, which he can still usually block, or use one of your monster effects to destroy him, which he also blocks. This means that Giant Soldier of Steel can often buy you at leas two extra turns, in which you can try to rally the rest of your resources.

The big issue though is with how to actually summon him, without massively disrupting the rest of your deck. One deck that could handle this easily is Chronomaly who can simply add him to the Extra Deck and continue as normal. Another possibility would be to incorporate Rescue Rabbit and normal monsters, such as the original Giant Soldier of Stone, into your deck to allow instant summoning. Most other choices just end up being poorer versions of this, require you to use cards that wouldn’t fit the deck, or might be better off not used for the Xyz summon anyway.

Noble Arms – Arfeudutyr: Equip Spell Card

You can only control 1 face-up “Noble Arms – Arfeudutyr”. Equip only to a Warrior-Type monster. Once per turn: You can target 1 Set card your opponent controls; the equipped monster permanently loses 500 ATK, and if it does, destroy that target. (The ATK loss remains even if this card leaves the field or the monster becomes unaffected by card effects.) If this face-up card on the field is destroyed and sent to the Graveyard: You can target 1 face-up Warrior-Type “Noble Knight” monster you control; equip this card to that target. You can only use this effect of “Noble Arms – Arfeudutyr” once per turn.

Our latest Noble Arms card is Arfeudutyr, which allows you to clear out your opponent’s defenses in exchange for the strength of your monsters. What’s especially useful is the fact that it can destroy any set card, meaning it can take out both Spell / Trap cards and Monsters. This will allow you to pick and choose based on the scenario. The fact the monster loses attack each time will limit how many times you’ll get a chance to use this effect, because eventually it will become weak enough for your opponent to launch a counterattack against the monster.

A novel use for the card could be to equip it to an opponent’s Warrior, since it will allow you to destroy one of their cards in addition to weakening their monster, hopefully allowing your monsters to defeat it.

Arfeudutyr also has what I assume is the defining characteristic of the Noble Arms, which is the ability to be reused once destroyed. This prevents your opponent from using cards like Mystical Space Typhoon on it, and allows you to more easily use effects which require you to destroy one of your own cards. It also means the Equip will usually stay around as long as you can keep other Noble Knights on the field.

Spellbook Library of the Heliosphere: Normal Spell Card

If you have 5 or more “Spellbook” Spell Cards in your Graveyard: Reveal the top 2 cards of your Deck; add any revealed “Spellbook” Spell Cards to your hand, and shuffle any remaining cards into the Deck. You can only activate 1 “Spellbook Library of the Heliosphere” per turn. You cannot activate any Spell Cards the turn you activate this card, except “Spellbook” Spell Cards.

Heliosphere is a powerful Spellbook, but has quite strict activation requirements. Since you need 5 or more Spellbook Spells in your Graveyard before you can activate it, you may well find it useless during the first few turns of the game. It may also conflict with cards like Spellbook of Fate, which banishes your Spellbooks, and The Grand Spellbook Tower, which adds them back into your deck. Due to cards like these you may well find it difficult to keep 5 or more Spellbooks in the Graveyard, and thus make Heliosphere playable. I would assume that once the complete set of Spellbooks has been released, this card will become better, since it should be easier to fill the Graveyard with Spellbooks.

It also has two other restrictions. Firstly that you can only use 1 per turn, which prevents you gaining too much advantage in a single turn. Secondly you can only activate Spellbook Spell cards during the turn you activate it, potentially locking you out of cards like Monster Reborn, Heavy Storm and Dark Hole. Fortunately though the majority of the Spell cards in your deck will be Spellbooks.

The effect itself has an element of luck to it, since it could give you between 0 and 2 new cards. Your deck will be loaded full of Spellbooks though, so I would expect you to be able to get at least 1 card out of this most of the time. When it works to its full extent it’s essentially a Pot of Greed for the deck, which combined with the Tower could lead to a lot of extra resources for you.

I imagine we won’t see the full power of Heliosphere until the theme is complete though.

Spellbook Star Hall: Continuous Spell Card

Each time a “Spellbook” Spell Card is activated, place 1 Spell Counter on this card. All Spellcaster-Type monsters you control gain 100 ATK for each Spell Counter on this card. When this card with Spell Counter(s) is destroyed and sent to the Graveyard: You can add 1 Spellcaster-Type monster from your Deck to your hand, whose Level is less than or equal to the number of Spell Counters that were on this card.

Spellbook Star Hall is the second World Exclusive Spellbook in the set and it provides a power boost to your Prophecy monsters, as well as any other Spellcasters you happen to play. This can help you reduce your opponent’s Life Points faster, and get over pesky monsters in battle that you would otherwise have to use a Spellbook on. It also has a deterrent against being destroyed, since it can replace itself with a Spellcaster. Early on this could simply be fetching Spellbook Magician of Prophecy, but later in the game it might even allow you to get the High Priestess.

The power of Star Hall will grow the longer it remains on the field, so the earlier you draw it the better. At first it’s likely the small attack boosts will make little difference to the outcome of most battles, however eventually most of your monsters will turn into deadly threats. Eventually your opponent will be forced into a tough situation where whether they destroy Star Hall or not they’ll be in trouble.

The biggest problem this card has, is that it doesn’t do anything on its own, and relies on your other cards to be useful. This makes it a terrible card to draw when you’re in trouble.

Attack the Moon!: Continuous Spell Card

Once per turn, when the battle position of a Rock-Type monster you control is changed: You can target 1 Spell/Trap Card your opponent controls; destroy that target.

Our final World Exclusive card draws inspiration from one of the most famous scenes from Duelist Kingdom, where Yugi used his Giant Soldier of Stone to attack the moon and help defeat Mako. In a similar fashion, this card allows you to use your Rock monsters to destroy your opponent’s Spell and Trap cards. This could be a very useful effect, because it allows you to destroy a card per turn for free. Your opponent might even refuse to set cards, in order to save their resources until they can find a way around Attack the Moon!. Alternatively they might set multiple cards hoping you’ll hit the bluffs, allowing them to keep their defenses.

Attack the Moon! is not without its problems though. As with all continuous Spell cards it can make defending yourself a gamble. You’ll need to set extra cards to protect against your opponent’s plays, but by doing so you leave yourself open to losing lots of resources from cards like Heavy Storm. Since the card is built around position changes it might also prove difficult to capitalise on the openings offered by this card. For example by switching a monster to defense, you might clear out the opponent’s defenses, but you can’t then attack on that turn. The fact that monsters also often specialise in one stat means that your opponent may well kill your monster on the following turn, once you switch it to the weaker position.

Another problem is that Attack the Moon! can be a little slow. Unless you add on even more cards into the combo, you will have to wait until the turn after you summon any monsters to be able to use its effect. Sometimes you’ll never get this chance, because the monsters will be destroyed within a turn, making Attack the Moon! a deadweight. You could get around this problem though with cards like Stumbling, or Zero Gravity, which allow for extra position changes, allowing you to immediately destroy your opponent’s cards. They can also help with slowing your opponent’s plays down and protecting your monsters, thus allowing you to use Attack the Moon! for longer. This does leave you even more open to Heavy Storm than before.

For the final part of my look at Abyss Rising I’m going to be examining the OCG imports that were added to the set.

Abyss Rising Overview Part 8: The Rest

As with every set there are cards which can be a bit hard to categorise, or otherwise fall into very narrow categories. So as usual I’m going to fill an article with all of these leftover cards. The include removal cards, negation card and several new ways to steal your opponent’s monsters.

Bull Blader: Level 4 1600/1200 Earth Warrior

When an attack is declared involving this card and an opponent’s monster: You can activate this effect; during this battle involving this monster, neither player takes any battle damage, also destroy the opponent’s monster after damage calculation.

Bull Blader is a useful new warrior card that will usually at least force an even trade off with the opponent. Bull Blader will be an excellent card for cutting through defenses, but can also deal with bigger monsters as well. Anything in defense position will be an easy kill for him, allowing you to breach huge defenses, battle immune monsters like Spirit Reaper, and stop Battle Recruiters getting their search effects. When the opponent does go on the offensive he’ll at least take a card down with him though, and he can similarly be used to suicide with an opponent’s powerful monster.

The fact he prevents battle damage to either player with this effect will usually work to your advantage, since often only you would have taken damage anway, for example from monsters with high defense or higher attack. It would probably be rare to stop you causing more than a couple of hundred damage to the opponent anyway.

Achacha Chanbara: Level 3 1400/400 Fire Warrior

During either player’s turn, when a card or effect is activated that will inflict damage when it resolves: You can Special Summon this card from your hand, and if you do, inflict 400 damage to your opponent.

Achacha Chanbara is similar to Damage Mage and Eco from last set, except instead of responding to your opponent’s burn effects he can be used in combination with any burn effect. Following this he can also be used to try and inflict a little battle damage to the opponent as well.

Unfortunately in terms of counteracting your opponent’s cards, then Eco would still be better (not accounting for the many other better ways of stopping burn). If you want to use it in combination with your own burn cards, then you’d simply be better off playing another burn card instead. The damage he causes is minimal, and it’s doubtful he’d be able to cause any battle damage with only 1400 attack.

Mogmole: Level 2 800/800 Earth Beast

When this card on the field is destroyed and sent to the Graveyard: You can Special Summon it from your Graveyard in face-up Defense Position. You can only use the effect of “Mogmole” once per Duel.

Mogmole is yet another way to maintain a little bit of field presence, which can then be used for Tribute summons or Xyz summons. In terms of uses for tribute summons, there already exist plenty of cards that will fill this role better though. For Xyz summons he could be used to summon Rank 2s more easily, but most decks that can regularly make Rank 2s (like Agents or Frogs) will not need the extra help.

At a very basic level he could also be used to simply block an extra attack.

Planet Pathfinder: Level 4 1000/1000 Earth Machine

You can Tribute this card; add 1 Field Spell Card from your Deck to your hand.

Planet Pathfinder is a monster version of Terraforming, but in most scenarios Terraforming or the theme specific Field card searchers would be better. Terraforming has the advantage of being faster, and not needing to use up your normal summon. Whereas Planet Pathfinder is a monster, meaning it can be used as a defender in desperate situations, or used for an Xyz summon, which is something Terraforming cannot do. This means it’s not completely useless when you run out of Field cards.

I still think the older cards will usually be better though.

House Duston: Level 1 0/1000 Light Fiend

When this face-up card on the field is destroyed by your opponent’s card (either by battle, and it was face-up at the start of the Battle Step, or by card effect) and sent to the Graveyard: You can Special Summon any “Duston” monsters of your choice from you hand and/or Deck to anywhere on the field, but you must Special Summon an equal number on each side.

House Duston is an interesting monster, the full power of which we won’t be seeing for a long time. Right now all it can do is give you an extra blocker, whilst unfortunately also giving your opponent an extra monster. As it stands there is very little reason to use House Duston, but this will change with future sets. It seems like Konami has plans to release the individual Duston, and seem like they’ll be used to clog the opponent’s field with useless cards.

Missing Force: Level 4 1500/1000 Dark Warrior

If you control no other monsters: You can Tribute this card to target 1 monster your opponent controls; take control of it until the End Phase. You cannot Special Summon or conduct your Battle Phase the turn you activate this effect.

Missing Force is another retrained Exiled Force, except this time instead of killing another monster it steals them instead. However there are some severe restrictions on this that damages the playability of the card.

Since you cannot Special summon during the turn you use this effect, you can’t turn the stolen monster into an Xyz before the end of the turn.  You also can’t conduct your battle phase, so you’ll be unable to deal damage or take out any of your opponent’s other monsters. It also uses up your Normal summon for the turn, so you will be unable to use the stolen monster for a Tribute summon. This basically means that the vast majority of the time you’ll just end up handing the monster back.

Unless you manage to steal something like Dark Armed Dragon you really won’t be able to do much with the monster, and won’t actually be able to get rid of it.

The only real way around this would be to use a card like Mystic Tomato or Call of the Haunted to summon them during the opponent’s turn, and then use the stolen monster for a Tribute summon on your turn. This may well be more effort than it’s worth though.

Forbidden Dress: Quickplay Spell Card

Target 1 face-up monster on the field; until the End Phase, that target loses 600 ATK, but it cannot be targeted or destroyed by other card effects.

Forbidden Dress is the latest of the ‘Forbidden’ items alongside the Chalice and Lance. Like all the others it modifies a monster’s attack, whilst also applying a bonus effect. In this case it grants immunity to targeting and destruction.

Immunity to targeting might seem useful on the surface, but when you realise it won’t stop effects that have already targeted the monster, you realise that this part of the effect will rarely do anything useful. To actually stop targeting you’ll have to use it preemptively, guessing what your opponent may have. This could often end up being wasted if this is your plan.

Immunity to destruction is the far more useful part though, since it can protect your monster and help maintain your field presence. However compared to Forbidden Lance which can protect from all Spell and Trap cards the only extra protection this gives is from Monsters. The problem there is that there’s a reasonable chance that if you’ve used Forbidden Dress to stop a monster from destroying yours with their effect, they’ll now be able to kill your monster in battle.

In most scenarios you will probably be better off sticking to Forbidden Lance instead.

Mind Pollutant: Normal Spell Card

Discard 1 monster to target 1 monster of that Level your opponent controls; take control of that target until the End Phase.

Mind Pollutant is a newer version of cards like Brain Control and Change of Heart, except it comes with a higher cost and more restrictions than those much older banned cards. Mind Pollutant requires you to have a monster in your hand, and not just that, but one that matches a monster on your opponent’s side of the field. In most cases this will probably mean you’ll be stealing  a Level 4 monster. Sometimes it will mean there’s a complete mismatch of cards and you’ll be unable to use it though.

Fortunately though once you’ve stolen the monster there are no restrictions on what you can do with it, so you’ll be able to turn it against its old owner.

The Humble Sentry: Normal Spell Card

Reveal your hand, choose 1 card from it, and shuffle it into the Deck.

This is clearly a joke card and a reverse Forceful Sentry. There’s no reason to use this unless you’re intent on taunting your opponent.

Battle Break: Normal Trap Card

When an opponent’s monster declares an attack: Your opponent can reveal 1 monster in their hand to negate this card’s effect, otherwise destroy the attacking monster, then end the Battle Phase.

Battle Break is the latest in a long line of traps which are capable of ending the Battle Phase, but offers both advantages and disadvantages compared to the other versions. The main advantage it offers is that it actually gets rid of the attacking monster, something cards like Threatening Roar cannot do. This means you can deal with threats immediately, rather than delay it for a turn, whilst also protecting yourself from follow up attacks. However you’ll still have to deal with those other cards afterwards.

On the other hand this card has disadvantages when compared to some of the other cards which end or skip the Battle Phase. For one, it’s not chainable, meaning you can’t use it to draw out your opponent’s Spell / Trap removal, whilst still keeping yourself protected. The biggest problem with this card though, is the drawback attached to the fact you’re getting a more powerful effect. Your opponent can simply reveal a monster in their hand to stop this card.

As a result, this card is wildly inconsistent and likely to fail more often than not. If you play a stall deck, your opponent’s hand will likely be clogged with monsters, making it useless. If you play a normal deck, the best time to use Battle Break would be when you’re both running out of resources, since it’s less likely to be stopped. However even then, the only time you could guarantee it working would be when your opponent has no hand.

In general you’d be better off sticking to cards which destroy / banish monsters, like Mirror Force or Dimensional Prison, or simply end / skip the battle phase, such as Threatening Road or Thunder of Ruler, rather than mixing them in Battle Break.

Memory of an Adversary: Normal Trap Card

When an opponent’s monster declares an attack: You take damage equal to the attacking monster’s ATK, and if you do, banish that monster. During the End Phase of your opponent’s next turn, Special Summon that monster to your side of the field.

Memory of an Adversary is a potentially useful Trap card that allows you to steal one of your opponent’s monsters, and permanently too. However it has restrictive activation requirements, and could hurt you quite a lot. Unlike other cards which allow you to steal cards from your opponent when you want to, this has to wait for your opponent to attack. Usually this shouldn’t be too hard, but it does mean you can’t touch a monster your opponent refuses to attack with. On top of this you’ll also take damage equal to the monster’s attack, meaning that after a certain point this card becomes useless. It also doesn’t offer much in the way of immediate protection. You will also need to wait an entire turn before you get their monster. In the intervening time it might become irrelevant or you could lose in that time. You will definitely need a plan for how you’ll survive that extra turn, because this card certainly cannot be used as last ditch protection.

However once you do steal the monster you get to keep it and do whatever you want with it. There are also a few advantages offered by this card over conventional methods of stealing monsters. Firstly it doesn’t target, allowing you to get around cards with immunity to that. It also Special summons your opponent’s monster back to the field, potentially allowing you to reuse some effects. This does however leave the monster open to cards like Bottomless Trap Hole or Torrential Tribute though.

Magic Deflector: Normal Trap Card

For the rest of this turn, negate all Equip, Field, Continuous and Quick-Play Spell Card effects on the field.

Magic Deflector is a similar card to Trap Stun, except of course for Spell cards, but it isn’t quite as far reaching. Rather than stopping all Spell cards for the turn, it excludes normal and Ritual Spell cards from its influence, not that many people use the latter. This means it can’t be used as an easy one turn answer to Spell cards, and will instead be relegated to helping defeat more specific decks. This is because for most standard decks its power won’t often extend beyond stopping Mystical Space Typhoon.

Magic Deflector would could be used to slow down decks that rely on Continuous / Field cards, like Samurai or Gravekeepers. Or alternatively break through cards like Level Limit Area B that are slowing you down.

I don’t think this card is likely to be anything more than a potential Side Deck card, and even then this would be entirely dependent on what decks are popular at the time.

That Wacky Alchemy!: Normal Trap Card

If a face-up Spell Card(s) in your opponent’s Spell & Trap Card Zones is sent to the Graveyard: You can Target 1 face-up monster on the field; destroy that target.

That Wacky Alchemy! is an interesting Trap card, offering targettd removal against your opponent’s monsters, or if you’re desperate your own. Compared to other targeted removal, it trades off a cost or later drawback in favour of a restrictive activation requirement. Fortunately though, this isn’t as hard to achieve as you might initially think.

At first glance you might wonder how you’d ever be able to use this card against the majority of decks, since they don’t play Equip, Field or Continuous Spell cards, making it quite difficult for a face up Spell card to make it to the graveyard. What you may not realise, is that any Spell card that your opponent plays will be face up on the field when they activate it. This means that any time they activate a normal or Quick-Play Spell card, once it’s resolved, you’ll be able to use That Wacky Alchemy!.

However, since this card will rely on what your opponent, you may find it too restrictive. Sometimes it will be a deadly surprise for the opponent. Other times you’ll end up stuck with it for ages waiting to do something with it, only for it to be destroyed by Mystical Space Typhoon. I suspect that for a fair few decks, only about a quarter of it will set this card off. The deck that this will probably work best against is Prophecy, which will be making use of a lot of Spell Cards.

Cash Back: Counter Trap Card

When your opponent activates a Spell/Trap Card, or monster effect, by paying their Life Points: Negate the activation, and if you do, return it to the Deck.

Cash Back is a Counter Trap that can ruin cards with a Life Point cost, which are usually very powerful effects. What’s more it sends them back to the deck, which is both a blessing and a curse. It will allow your opponent to reuse the card, should they draw it, which is not usually something you can do with Spell / Trap cards. However it does prevent them from immediately reviving a monster, which is a bonus. There’s no guarantee they’ll ever see the card again that game, but you’ll probably be a bit annoyed if you stop their power card, but see it again in a few turns.

The problem though is finding cards to use this on. The most common would of course be one of the Solemn Trio, but even these aren’t used by every deck. Outside of these it’s fairly rare to see cards with Life Points costs used, but you will find them in a few themed decks, such as Venus in Agents and Judgment Dragon in Lightsworn.

Unification: Continuous Trap Card

Once per turn, during each player’s Standby Phase: The turn player declares a Level from among the face-up monster they control, then sends all face-up monsters they control with a different Level to the Graveyard.

Unification is similar to Gozen Match and Rivalry of Warlords except for Levels, however it imposes much looser restrictions on the game. Instead of restricting what Levels you can have on the field at a time, it repeatedly gets rid of those which don’t match. This can potentially get rid of cards much faster, but doesn’t slow down the pace of the game, and mess up your opponent’s plans as much as the older cards.

Since you can still play cards of whatever Level you like during your turn, you will still be able to conduct your turns as normal, something you are usually unable to do under Rivalry or Gozen. On the one hand it means you’ll have to adjust your strategies less to accommodate this card, but on the other it means you won’t be able to shut down your opponent’s most powerful plays. Another matter to consider is that because it only affects Levels, meaning Xyz monsters are free from it’s influence, which, as with the rest of the card, is both a blessing and a curse.

The timing for this effect is also not particularly convenient, activating during the Standby Phase. This is probably the least effective time it could activate, since it’s likely to be when a player’s field is least powerful, having just taken hits from the opponent’s attacking force, and it allows for the field to be rebuilt each turn, preventing the other player from taking full advantage of any gaps this card creates.

Compared to its older relatives I don’t think Unification offers a great enough degree of disruption to the flow of the game. In addition, since most decks now focus on Xyz summoning, it wouldn’t be uncommon for this card to do nothing for several turns, either due to the presence of Xyz monsters, or just monsters with matching Levels.

Retort: Counter Trap Card

When your opponent activates a Spell/Trap Card with the same name as one in your Graveyard: Negate the activation, and if you do, destroy that card. Then you can add 1 card with that name from your Graveyard to your hand.

The final card from the original set is Retort, a powerful Counter Trap that would probably find most use in mirror matches. When used successfully Retort could turn the tide of the game, but how often this will happen is another matter.

In general there are some cards that most decks will play. In terms of Spells this usually consists of Monster Reborn, Dark Hole, Heavy Storm and probably Mystical Space Typhoon. For Traps this may include the Solemn Trio, Torrential Tribute, Bottomless Trap Hole and Mirror Force. These are all powerful cards and the ability to stop them whilst returning your own copy to your hand is undeniably a useful effect. Not only could this ruin your opponent’s plans, but it could also give yours a sudden boost. However this is only a handful of cards, and you can’t guarantee you’ll be able to use Retort when they are played. During the early parts of the game it’s also likely that Retort will be dead, because you won’t have drawn and used these cards for yourself.

As mentioned above, Retort would find its best uses in mirror matches, where in addition to all the regular shared Spell and Trap cards, you’ll also both be running theme specific cards as well. So for example with HERO decks you can add on cards like E-Emergency Call, Miracle Fusion and Hero Blast. Whether to Side Deck this card then comes down to how often you think you’d be facing the mirror match, and whether your deck actually has enough additional Spell / Trap cards to justify using Retort. If the deck only runs 1 or 2 extra cards it’ll not really be worth using Retort. Likewise if you reckon you’ll face very small numbers of mirror matches, it won’t be worth running just on the off chance you’ll meet the same deck. The space would instead be better suited to a card that could handle problem decks instead.

Now that we’re finally finished with the card from the original Abyss Rising set, it’s time to look at the World Exclusives and the OCG imports.