UkayPro Forums: Articles

Welcome back to the final part of the ORCS series. I've had to split the final article in 2 due to image limits on the site, so there is 9 parts rather than the 8 seen on TCG Shiyo. Unfortunately the final two cards still don't work propery...

Now we have all the other cards that I feel don’t fit into any particular other category.

Reverse Buster: Level 4 1500/0 Light Fiend

This card can only attack face-down monsters. If this card attacks, your opponent cannot activate Spell or Trap Cards until the end of the Damage Step. If this card attacks a face-down Defense Position monster: Destroy that monster (without applying damage calculation).

Reverse Buster is just like Sasuke Samurai and Mystic Swordsman Level 2, except he has 1500 attack. Unfortunately this comes coupled with the ability to only attack face down monsters. This means that on the turns when you’ve cleared all your opponent’s monsters out it cannot inflict any battle damage. It also means that all its attack stat does is prevent a few monsters killing it by battle in your opponents turn. No one really plays the older face down killing cards and I doubt we’ll see that much out of this either.

Chow-Len the Prophet: Level 4 1800/200 Fire Spellcaster

Once per turn: Declare 1 card type (Spell or Trap Card) and target 1 Set card in your opponent’s Spell & Trap Card Zone; look at it, and if the target is the declared type, it cannot be activated this turn.

This card is far more useful for gaining information that it is for sealing cards, since if you protect him you can reveal all your opponents set cards and play around them appropriately. He really shines when they only have 1 card though, because it means it’ll always be useless during your turn. Another thing it can do is force the opponent to set extra cards, potentially leaving them open to cards like Heavy Storm.

Dark Blade the Captain of the Evil World: Level 4 1800/1500 Dark Warrior

Once per turn: You can banish 1 DARK monster in your Graveyard to target 1 Level 4 or lower LIGHT monster your opponent controls; equip it to this card. If this card would be destroyed, you can destroy 1 of those cards instead.

Having received a promotion since MFC Dark Blade is back and better than ever. Here we have the latest anti-light card. He basically absorbs an opposing light monster and uses it to protect himself. He might make an interesting side deck choice against Light decks like Agents, should you be playing a Dark heavy deck. If the opponent cannot remove him outside of destroying him they’ll likely have to destroy him twice in a single turn, otherwise he’ll just absorb another light monster next turn.

Numen Erat Testudo: Level 5 1800/0 Water Aqua

Neither player can Special Summon monsters with 1800 ATK or less.

Nowadays we generally special summon lots of smaller monsters and use them to make larger more powerful monsters, which this card will cut off. Unfortunately with cards like Thunder King still in heavy use and cards like Sabersaurus around a card like this won’t stick around for long should you summon it.

Full Force Strike: Normal Spell Card

Target 1 face-up monster you control; this turn, the target cannot be destroyed by battle, and neither player takes Battle Damage from battles involving the target. If the target battles a monster this turn: Destroy the monster it battled after damage calculation.

This card basically turns your monster into a piece of walking monster removal for a turn, whilst protecting it from battle. However as mentioned many times before the generic removal cards, such as Smashing Ground, do this job much better in most cases.

Double Defender: Continuous Spell Card

Once per turn, if you control 2 or more face-up Defense Position monsters, when your opponent declares an attack: You can negate that attack.

This is yet anothere stall card that could be added to slower decks such as Final Countdown. However decks like that don’t tend to keep monsters on the field anyway. In most general decks though this deck won’t see much use. I could potentially see it being useful for something like PACMAN, but even that’s a stretch.

Dicephoon: Quickplay Spell Card

Roll a die. If the result is 2, 3, or 4, destroy 1 Spell or Trap Card on the field. If the result is 5, destroy 2 Spell or Trap Cards on the field. If the result is 1 or 6, you take 1000 damage.

This is meant to be a luck based version of MST. 2/3rds of the time it’ll be as good as MST, 1/6th of the time it’ll be better and 1/6th of the time it’ll be much worse. Unless you like gambling you’re just better off sticking to the ordinary MST.

Counterforce: Normal Trap Card

When a battle between face-up Attack Position monsters is negated: Inflict damage to your opponent equal to the difference of those monsters’ ATKs.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t see this happen very often at all, so I think it’s unlikely you’ll ever be able to cause burn damage with this card under most circumstances.

Over Capacity: Normal Trap Card

When your opponent Special Summons a monster: You can banish all Level 2 or lower monsters on the field.

This card is meant to be an anti-level 2 card, however it’s not like level 2 monsters are exactly causing much of a problem for the game right now anyway. About all it does is screw over Sea Lancer by ridding the field of their Ronintoadins. Maybe at one point in the future it will become useful if level 2 cards ever became a problem, but not right now.

The Huge Revolution is Over: Counter Trap Card

If an effect of a Spell, Trap or Effect Monster that would destroy 2 or more cards on the field is activated: Negate that activation, and banish it.

As part of the continuing story that goes on amongst some of the cards in Yu-Gi-Oh! it would seem like the Huge Revolution has failed to overthrow the Tyrant and its leader are soon to either be captured or killed. Card background aside this is basically Starlight Road except it doesn’t summon a Stardust. Maybe if you already played three of those and needed more protection you might use this, but otherwise Starlight Road is the better card.

Royal Prison: Continuous Trap Card

While this card is face-up on the field, neither player can Special Summon monsters from the Graveyard.

Here we have a more limited replacement card for Royal Opression, except this time the people are in prison rather than being merely oppressed. Against some decks this could do wonders, such as Darkworld, whilst others like Dino Rabbit will barely be affected. This card is definitely an interesting Side Deck choice.

Sealing Ceremony of Katon: Continuous Trap Card

Once per turn: You can banish 1 FIRE monster from your Graveyard to target 1 card in your opponent’s Graveyard; banish that target.

This is sort of like a Dark Smog for Fire types, except the problem is that it runs contradictory to what fire decks usually want to achieve nowadays. Since Rekindling came out Fire monsters want to remain in the Graveyard, rather than get banished, so the problem is that this card will hurt your own strategies whilst it hurts your opponent. If you use it well enough it can hurt them more than you, but I doubt most Fire decks will find the space for it, apart from maybe in the Side Deck.

Interplanetarypurplythorny Dragon: Level 5 2200/1100 Dark Dragon

If a monster you control is destroyed by battle or by a card effect and sent to the Graveyard: You can Special Summon this card from your hand.

Here we have a TCG exclusive with a very long name which is meant to provide a little extra offense or defense when one of your monsters is destroyed. I can see this being incredibly useful during the Sneak Preview if you do a draft, but I doubt will see much play beyond that.

Tour Bus From the Underworld: Level 3 1000/1000 Dark Fiend

When this card is sent to the Graveyard: Target 1 monster in either player’s Graveyard, except “Tour Bus From the Underworld”; shuffle that target into the Deck.

So many people were so hyped up for this card speculating about its effect an what everything in the picture might mean. Unfortunately people were by and large disappointed when it was finally revealed because it wasn’t anything game breaking. However it is actually a very useful card that I imagine we’ll be seeing lots of as a single card. You can either use it to ruin opponents plays by putting cards like Glow Up Bulb or Grapha back into their deck, from which it’s harder to get them back from. Or you can use it to reuse some of your own cards, like Reborn Tengu, Tour Guide herself or your restricted cards.

White Night Queen: Level 7 2100/800 Light Fairy

This card cannot be Special Summoned. Once per turn, you can destroy 1 face-down card on the field.

White Night Queen gets better and better the longer the longer she can stay on the field, since every turn she can destroy an opponents card for free. This means you can gradually destroy their defenses and take out their monsters once these have fallen. Unfortunately she cannot be special summoned, making her fairly difficult to summon and under most circumstances she would need to live for 2 turns in order for her to become break-even. Also her attack points are woefully low for a level 7 monster, something as simple as a Cyber Dragon could take her down. Honestly it’s too much effort to summon her and keep her alive for what you get out of it.

Sweet Corn: Level 2 0/0 Earth Plant
http://images2.wikia...n-TP13-JP-C.jpg
Once per turn, during your Main Phase 2: You can pay 500 Life Points; Special Summon 1 “Grain Corn Token” (Plant-Type/EARTH/Level 1/ATK 0/DEF 0).

Sweet Corn is meant as tribute fodder, should you be able to successfully keep him alive for long enough. However protecting monsters with 0 attack and defense for extended periods of time can be quite difficult. The game already has plenty of ways to get tribute fodder and this doesn’t really add much to that capability.

Driven Daredevil: Level 7 2400/2100 Earth Warrior
http://images1.wikia...-DDY3-JP-UR.jpg
1 Warrior-Type Tuner + 1 or more non-Tuner Warrior-Type monsters
If this card is attacked by an opponent’s monster that has more ATK than this card, this card cannot be destroyed by battle. Then, destroy the monster that this card battled with at the end of the Damage Step.

If this card worked when it attacked as well as when it gets attacked this would be much better. As it stands you will practically never use its effect, instead it is meant to act are a deterrent to the opponent attacking you. This essentially turns it into a 2400 attack wall, meaning it can try to take cards out when it’s not facing down larger monsters. I do question how often you’d ever have the requirements to summon it and why you’d choose it over one of the other level 7s already available, but at least it gives you more options.

And here we are at the end of the long slog that’s been the ORCS cards. In future I hope to start things a little earlier, so I don’t have to write so much within a single week next time. Thank you to everyone that’s read this far and I hope you’ve found it useful in some way. Expect to see something about Dragons Collide at some point in the future and I'm open to suggestions for what you'd like looked at.
Read story →    0 comments   

Welcome to the second to last part of the articles on ORCS from TCG Shiyo. We’re nearly at the end now, with just the final selection of cards to go. Due to issues with displaying images here it's being split into two halves. Thank you to all of those who’ve stuck with me so far. Here we have all the remaining cards that I decided I would struggle to place into a certain theme. Arguably some of these could be considered anti-meta cards though. To try and organise things better I have split these into Xyz cards and everything else. The Xyz cards includes both support for them, and cards which work against them.

Xyz

Xyz monsters was a new type of card many people never thought would take off compared to the synchro monsters. However the ease of summoning them and the release of increasingly more powerful cards is gradually changing that.

Kurivolt: Level 1 300/200 Light Thunder

During your Main Phase: You can target 1 Xyz Monster with Xyz Materials; detach 1 Xyz Material from it, and Special Summon 1 “Kurivolt” from your Deck. This card cannot be used as a Synchro Material Monster.

Kurivolt is the Kuriboh monster for the ZeXal era, many people were expecting it to be called Kuribolt. This is meant to be an anti-Xyz card, but can also enable them. The idea is to summon one, use it to detach an opponent’s Xyz material and summon a second, then use the second to do the same and grab a third. From here you can make Xyz like Galaxy Queen.

Darklon: Level 1 100/100 Dark Fiend

When this card is Normal Summoned: Until the End Phase, treat face-up monsters you control as DARK monsters, and increase their Levels by 1.

This can help you summon higher Rank Xyz monsters, such as Tiras and Adreus. Unfortunately it’ll get beaten up next turn since it’ll be left on the field alone. I doubt many people will use this, but it maybe one day we’ll have lots of Rank 5s people are desperate to summon.

Galaxy Storm: Quickplay Spell Card

Target 1 Xyz Monster with no Xyz Material; destroy it.

This is meant as an anti-Xyz card, but to be honest you’re betting off sticking to generic removal cards instead.

Star Light, Star Bright: Normal Spell Card

Target 1 face-up monster you control; all face-up monsters with the same ATK or DEF have their Levels changed equal to that target, until the End Phase.

Once again another card intended to make Xyz summons easier. Unfortunately in a lot of cases the only time you’ll only be able to meet the criteria for this card is when you have 2 copies of the same monster on the field, in which case it’s pointless. I suppose you could match Tour Guide to a Monarch?

Xyz Burst: Normal Spell Card

If you control a Rank 6 or higher Xyz Monster: Destroy all Set cards your opponent controls.

Here we have a combined but reduced power Raigeki and Harpies Feather Duster. Unfortunately in most decks it’s incredibly difficult to get Rank 6 or higher Xyz out right now, apart from in something like Evols. Even then I don’t think this card would be worth using.

Galaxy Wave: Continuous Spell Card

Each time you Xyz Summon, inflict 500 damage to your opponent.

Unless someone builds an OTK/FTK around summoning 16 Xyz in a turn (which I expect is quite hard with only a 15 card Extra deck) I don’t see this card getting any use.

Xyz Reflect: Counter Trap Card

Negate the activation and effect of a Spell, Trap, or Effect Monster that targets 1 Xyz Monster on the field, and destroy it. Then, inflict 800 damage to your opponent.

If you summoned lots and lots of Xyz this might be useful, however as with lots of Spell and Trap cards you’re generally better sticking with the generic cards instead. Or just let your Xyz monsters get targetted anyway. It’s usually not the end of the world if it happens, and this card could be unusable for entire games if you fail to summon any Xyz anyway.

Xyz Reborn: Normal Trap Card

Target 1 Xyz Monster in your Graveyard; Special Summon it, and attach this card to that target as its Xyz Material.

Here’s monster reborn specifically for Xyz monsters, except in this case it also gives them a new Xyz Material. Just like Reflect it’s useful if you summon lots of Xyz monsters, but nearly all the time you’ll be better of using Monster Reborn.

Number 96: Dark Mist: Rank 2 100/1000 Dark Fiend

3 Level 2 monsters
At attack declaration, when this card battles an opponent’s monster: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; halve that monster’s ATK, and this card gains ATK equal to the same amount.

This card can kill anything in battle and cause 100 damage (provided it can be destroyed in battle), which makes it a useful killing machine for 3 battles. Unfortunately it’s usually very hard to get 3 level 2 monsters on the field at once, barring something like Sea Lancer decks which can abuse Ronintoadin for this purpose.

Come back next time for the very last part of the series.
Read story →    0 comments   

Welcome back to part 2 of the remaining themed cards from TCG Shiyo. We’ll be starting things off with the new Dark cards.

Dark

Dark is one of the most supported types in the game and has plenty of very powerful monsters, themes and support cards, so it’s no surprise this set gives them even more support.

Dark Mambele: Normal Spell Card

If you control 3 or more DARK monsters: Target 1 face-up card on the field; banish it.

This is apparently meant to be Dark Armed Dragon’s signature attack, but it’s nowhere near as good as he is. Chances are if you control 3 or more Darks already there’s very little that you wouldn’t already be able to handle with them. It’s likely that this sort of effect would be most useful in the times you don’t have enough monsters on the field to even use it. With plenty of generic removal out there I don’t see this card as worth using.

Creeping Darkness: Normal Spell Card

Banish 2 DARK monsters in your Graveyard; add 1 Level 4 DARK monster from your Deck to your hand.

This is an interesting Dark Reinforcement of the Army. If the text is correct it unfortunately can’t search for monsters below level 4 which is disappointing. Otherwise you could for example fetch Tour Guide, use her to make Leviair and then bring back one of the monsters you just banished. But you can’t do that. As it stands it could be useful for a dark deck focused on level 4s that abuses banished cards, but we don’t see much of that right now. It could be fun to use it to banish two Scout Planes in a Cosmos deck though.

Mist Valley

Mist Valley are a Hidden Arsenal theme all about bouncing. Whilst they’ve never made any real impact on the game some cards like Mist Valley Falcon can be fun for abusing continuous Spell and Trap cards.

Shrine of Mist Valley: Field Spell Card

Once per turn, when a WIND monster is destroyed by a card effect and sent to the Graveyard: You can Special Summon 1 Level 3 or lower WIND monster from your hand or Deck. That monster’s effect(s) is negated.

Obviously with this card you want to be summoning them from the deck whenever possible, since it stops you from losing cards. This card can help you end games, by making it so cards like Mirror Force or Torrential Tribute can’t protect your opponent once they get below a certain amount of lifepoints. Outside of this I see it either being useful to get monsters with graveyard effects, tuners, or anything you want to bounce with cards like Falcon. Unfortunately it’s competing with Divine Wind of Mist Valley, which is a much more active aggressive field card, so it may be outshone by that.

Insect

Insects get a big boost this set from the Inzektors, but they also get a friend in the form of Danipon in the OCG imports.

Danipon: Level 2 600/600 Earth Insect

When this card is destroyed by battle and sent to the Graveyard, you can add 1 Insect-Type monster with 1000 or less DEF from your Deck to your hand.

Danipon is the counterpart to Gokipon, able to fetch the high attack low defense insects, like I suppose Jirai Gumo? Oddly for a battle recruiter it gets it to your hand, which is much less useful than being on the field. Honestly I don’t think it’ll see use in Inzektors and those are really the only insects worth playing, so until other themes come along I doubt this little guy will be seeing play. On the positive side I see it being useful in the Sneak Preview should you play some draft games and you happen to pull some Inzektors.

Beast

Once upon a time beasts were a force to be reckoned with through Green Baboon. Unfortunately in the West we never saw Baboon Drain at its full power, and then they changed how he worked, so he was no longer good. Nowadays thanks to Horn of the Phantom Beast many of them can once again be turned into a threat, although its often just used in TG decks now.

Vampire Koala: Level 4 1800/1500 Earth Beast

When this card inflicts Battle Damage to your opponent, except by a direct attack: Gain Life Points equal to the amount of Battle Damage inflicted.

This is a fun little card that can really boost your lifepoints once you give it Horn. Not really much else to say.

Koalo-Koala: Level 6 2800/200 Earth Beast Fusion

“Sea Koala” + “Tree Otter”
You can send 1 Beast-Type monster from your hand to the Graveyard to target 1 monster your opponent controls; destroy that target.

This is a sort of new boss for beasts, or more specifically Koalas. If you want to build a deck around this it would possibly be fun, but I doubt this’ll ever really approach being competitive.

Dark Synchro

Dark Synchros were a set of monsters used by the villains in 5Ds at one point, who all had negative levels. In the real game though they merely need Dark tuners to make them, since we wouldn’t want to get into all the problems of making Yu-Gi-Oh! players subtract.

Dark Diviner: Level 4 2000/1000 Dark Fiend

1 DARK Tuner + 1 non-Tuner Insect-Type monster
This card cannot be destroyed by battle. If this card attacks an opponent’s monster that has higher ATK than this card: That monster’s ATK becomes the same as this card’s, until the end of the Battle Phase. When this card destroys an opponent’s monster by battle and sends it to the Graveyard: Send the top 3 cards of your opponent’s Deck to the Graveyard.

Getting together the required materials for this card can be quite a pain, but once you summon it it can be quite a pain for the opponent. During your turn it can basically kill nearly any monster your opponent has, whilst milling their deck. Against decks like Plants this is a very bad idea, since it may help them. However for decks like Dino-Rabbit getting Rabbit to the graveyard is pretty good for you. Much like Spirit Reaper when worst comes to worst you can just hide behind this guy until your opponent manages to draw an out to it.

Dark Flattop: Level 8 0/3000 Dark Machine

1 DARK Tuner + 1 or more non-Tuner Machine-Type monsters
Once per turn: You can target 1 “Reactor” monster or “Flying Fortress SKY FIRE” in your Graveyard; Special Summon it, ignoring the Summoning conditions. When this card is destroyed and sent to the Graveyard: You can Special Summon 1 Level 5 or lower Machine-Type monster from your hand.

This is apparently Sky Fire support. I can honestly say I’ve never seen anyone play that deck ever, so I highly doubt this will see much play. Saying that it does actually seem pretty good in that deck should you choose to play it and manage to somehow summon Flattop.

X-Saber

The final themed support in the set goes to X-Sabers, a once mighty theme brought down by new decks and rule changes on a vital card. Konami have come up with an inventive way to introduce new X-Sabers through the M (or Missing) X-Sabers. If you know roman numerals you should know X is 10, so it makes sense for the X-Sabers to total 10 members, and gain an extra 10 from the XX-Sabers to bring them to 20. If you follow this line of reasoning it stops them adding anymore on, but Konami have obviously decided some of them went missing and never got counted.


M-X-Saber Invoker: Rank 3 1600/500 Earth Warrior

2 Level 3 monsters
Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; Special Summon 1 Level 4 EARTH Warrior or Beast-Warrior-Type monster from your Deck in face-up Defense Position. Destroy that monster during the End Phase.

Invoker is easy to summon for X-Sabers thanks to Fullhelm and Dark Soul, but he doesn’t have to be restricted to just X Sabers. Having no material requirements means you can easily put it in the extra deck for Warrior or Beast-Warrior based decks and call on it occasionally. I think the idea is meant to be to make Invoker and then use its effect for another Xyz or even a Synchro summon, since the monster won’t stick around for long, or do much otherwise. However you’ll need an awful lot of monsters already on the field to do this anyway, and I wonder if you wouldn’t just be better skipping Invoker sometimes anyway? This cards best use would however appear to be outside of X-Sabers, instead being used to give Koa'ki Meiru a big boost. This card can be used to summon Urnight, who in turn can get Crusader, who can kill something, retrieve a card and then turn into Utopia with Urnight, allowing you to protect Invoker for next turn and go again.

Thanks for reading all the way through, don’t worry we’re nearly at the end now. We’ve just got the remaining cards in the set to look at now and I’ll be finished with the ORCS Overview.
Read story →    0 comments   

Through the past 5 articles here and on TCG Shiyo I have covered the main themes represented in ORCS, however this does not represent the entirety of the themed support the set has to offer. Several over themes gain new cards, however this rarely goes above 2 cards, so wouldn’t be worth writing about on their own. Instead I’m going to be focusing on them here, and due to the sheer numbers I’ve split the article in two, to reduce the amount you need to read at once. For the final part of my ORCS Overview I’m going to look at all the remaining cards in the set.

Gagaga

To start things off we have the new Gagaga cards. This is a new theme introduced for ZeXal and looks to be the home of the Dark Magician Girl equivalent for the series. So far the theme is very small, with only Gagaga Magician thus far released, but maybe we’ll see more down the line.

Gagaga Girl: Level 3 1000/800 Dark Spellcaster

You can target 1 face-up “Gagaga Magician” you control; this card’s Level becomes equal to the Level of the target. If you Xyz Summon an Xyz Monster using only this card and “Gagaga” monsters, the Xyz Monster gains this effect. ● When this card is Xyz Summoned: Target 1 face-up Special Summoned monster your opponent controls; the target’s ATK becomes 0.

Here we have ZeXal’s DMG. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it valued higher than its playability deserves, just because its a popular female card. This is meant to be paired with Gagaga Magician to allow you to create any Rank 1-8 Xyz monster, that doesn’t have specific requirements. This makes them quite a handy pair and I imagine a quite fun deck could be built around them. The bonus effect the Xyz monster gains means that many big threats will suddenly be nullified as their attack hits 0.It’s interesting, but we won’t see it in anything but fun deck for now.

Gagagabolt: Normal Spell Card

If you control a face-up “Gagaga” monster: Target 1 card on the field; destroy that target.

This is a very nice piece of removal, allowing you to take out any card on the field by choice. However with the current lack of Gagaga monsters it’ll actually be quite hard to use. If there were enough monsters to fully build a deck around them this card would be brilliant, unfortunately there aren’t.

Gagagaguard: Normal Trap Card

If you control 2 or more face-up “Gagaga” monsters: This turn, monsters you control cannot be destroyed by battle or by card effects.

This is a nice piece of protection, however like bolt there are simply too few Gagaga cards at the moment for it to really be of much use. In addition the idea is to Xyz with your two Gagaga, not leave them on the field.

Gogogo

Here we have another series of card with funny looking names.

Gogogo Giant: Level 4 2000/0 Earth Rock

When this card is Normal Summoned: You can target 1 “Gogogo” monster in your Graveyard; Special Summon the target in face-up Defense Position, then change this card to Defense Position. If this card attacks, it is changed to Defense Position at the end of the Battle Phase.

There is currently only one other Gogogo monster in the form of Golem, which means his effect is incredibly limited. If there were more it might actually be a useful card. In addition as a standalone card it’s basically Photon Crusher who I’ve already given my thoughts on previously.

Utopia

This set brings us our first Chaos (or C) Number in the form of Utopia Ray, and is also accompanied by a support monster. If they’re going to do Chaos versions of all the numbers at least it means Konami will be able to fill sets for a while since there are meant to be 100 Numbers.

Number C39: Utopia Ray: Rank 4 2500/2000 Light Warrior

3 Level 4 LIGHT monsters
You can also Xyz Summon this card by using 1 “Number 39: Utopia” you control as the Xyz Material. (Xyz Materials attached to that monster also become Xyz Materials of this card.) You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; it gains 500 ATK and 1 monster your opponent controls loses 1000 ATK until the End Phase. You must have 1000 Life Points or less to activate and to resolve this effect.

Here we have what’s meant to be an updgrade to Utopia. Unfortunately all it really amounts to is a last ditch beatstick. Under normal circumstances it offers no advantages over Utopia since it loses the attack preventing effect and doesn’t even gain any attack points. Once you go below 1000 LP it is useful for killing monsters with up to 4000 attack, but it’s rare you’ll see anything go that high. It’s honestly not worth summoning over the normal Utopia barring fairly rare late game situations. Although I suppose Ultimate Offering Gadgets could have fun with it by ruining its own lift points and dropping 3 of them in a turn.

ZW-Unicorn Spear: Level 4 1900/0 Light Beast

You can target 1 face-up “Number C39: Utopia Ray” you control; equip this card from your hand to that target. It gains 1900 ATK. If the equipped monster battles an opponent’s monster, the opponent’s monster’s effect is negated during the Battle Phase only. You can only equip 1 face-up “ZW – Unicorn Spear”.

Unicorn Spear is actually a pretty nice card. As a standalone card it’s a capable beatstick sitting at 1900 attack, meaning it can match off with just about every low level card that currently sees play in the game. When teamed up with Utopia Ray it turns him into a powerhouse capable of taking down monsters with between 4400 and 5900 attack and negating their effects in battle. It also means he can cause pretty hefty damage in a direct attack.

Unfortunately being limited to only a single monster means this will never see play outside of a dedicated deck, which in itself will rarely ever see play. It’s such a shame that a good card like this is wasted on such a substandard card. If you somehow manage to equip it to another monster through their effect (such as Relinquished) they'll get the added boost as well, although generally this'll only be used against you, rather than for you.

Fish

Fish have been a odd deck for a while. They’ve received bits and pieces of new support for a long time now, but they’ve never really made that big of an impact on the game. Individual cards like Fishborg Blaster have been strong enough to warrant banning, but this was usually due to a variety of reasons outside of dedicated fish builds focused on Super Ancient Deepsea King Coelacanth, not that he wasn’t great there. GENF brought us new Fish/Aqua/Sea Serpent cards and support, but by and large these haven’t really done anything. Since Fishborg went fish have disappear back to the deep, with only Sea Lancer from the new cards seeing any sort of play. ORCS provides two new cards to add to the fish arsenal, unfortunately I’m doubtful they’ll change much.

Shocktopus: Level 4 1600/800 Water Fish

When this card is destroyed by an opponent’s monster by battle and sent to the Graveyard: You can target that monster; equip this card to that target. The equipped monster’s ATK becomes 0, and it cannot change its battle position.

Sharktopus is of questionable usefulness. The idea is meant to be that by taking this card down the opponent’s monster becomes easy picking for your other fish cards. However the game is filled with generic removal and even fish themed removal like Fish Depth Charge, that can do the job much better and without worrying about using up your summon for the turn on something that might not even make an impact. It can be useful for defeating things like Stardust, but I don’t think the card is worth using.

Splash Capture: Normal Trap Card

When your opponent Xyz Summons an Xyz Monster: Banish 2 Fish-Type monsters in your Graveyard; gain control of that monster.

This is the Fish decks answer to Xyz monsters, and it does it pretty well. The deck has no difficulty getting Fish in the grave so it should be live after a couple of turns. Unfortunately not every deck does Xyz summons with any regularity, so it won’t always do anything. In addition once the opponent knows it’s in your deck they’ll try to make other plays instead to render it a dead card. It could be an interesting Side Deck card for fish decks (should anyone dare to play one), but I don’t see much other use for it.

Charmers

The Charmer series of cards are a long running fan favourite in Yu-Gi-Oh! (at least amongst a certain type of fan). Apparently obsessive fans in Japan even managed to cause the artist for the original 2 forms of the charmers to go into hiding because of their hounding of her. What truth there is in this I don’t know, but there is quite a difference in art style come their 3rd iteration. Recently we’ve seen Light and Dark additions to the group as well as the return of the original Charmers (or suspiciously similar looking cards) in the Hidden Arsenal sets.

Familiar-Possessed Dharc: Level 4 1850/500 Dark Spellcaster

You can Special Summon this card from your hand or Deck by sending 1 “Dharc the Dark Charmer” and 1 DARK monster you control to the Graveyard. When this card is Special Summoned this way: You can add 1 Level 3 or 4 LIGHT Spellcaster-Type from your Deck to your hand. If this card that was Special Summoned this way attacks a Defense Position monster, inflict piercing Battle Damage to your opponent.

Dharc is just like the other Familiar-Possessed cards. His smaller form is meant to steal an opponents monster and then transform into his more powerful form. However unlike the rest he can fetch a Light Spellcaster once he’s summoned, making him by far the most useful. I’m sure it’s possible to build a fun deck around Dharc and some spellcasters, unfortunately Darks are a bit out of favour right now, although Inzektors and Ninjas hit at the same time, hopefully bringing with them plenty of Dark monsters to try and steal.

Archfiend

Archfiends have been around the game since Summoned Skull, however after the Chess Archfiends there’s never really been a coherent theme, and this remains true here. However being a fiend means they can find uses in other places, such as Dark World.

Trance Archfiend: Level 4 1500/500 Dark Fiend

Once per turn: You can discard 1 Fiend-Type monster and have this card gain 500 ATK, until the End Phase. When this card is destroyed and sent to the Graveyard: You can target 1 of your banished DARK monsters; add it to your hand.

Trance Archfiend is a Dark World player’s new best friend. He can become a respectable 2000 attack and set of Dark World effects, meaning that some people may choose to use him over Fabled Raven. As an added bonus he can rescue Dark monsters from being banished. (Just like the Birdman he’s got ahold of on the card) This means if your opponent has banished your more powerful Dark Worlds thinking they’ll be safely gone forever, this guy can bring them back and cause more problems.

Dragon

Dragons have existed since the dawn of the game and have an enormous amount of monsters at their disposal, but even so their impact on the game as a theme has been fairly limited. Nowadays you’ll still see people playing decks based around Red Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon (REDMD), but they barely make a dent on major events most of the time. This set provides them with one new cards to add to choose from.

Divine Dragon Apocralyph: Level 4 1000/1500 Dark Dragon

Once per turn: You can discard 1 card to target 1 Dragon-Type monster in your Graveyard; add it to your hand.

Apocralyph is a useful card allowing you to turn a card in your hand into any Dragon in your graveyard. The card can be an interesting reverse toolbox when combined with Future Fusion, allowing you to get any Dragon in your deck into your hand. The best use I see for this card is to fetch a REDMD and then summon it by banishing Apocralyph.

Gemini

Gemini were meant to help make Normal monsters more meaningful to the game again, but by and large Gemini as an individual theme has never really done anything. Il Blud briefly lead the way for zombies, but is now nearly forgotten, Gigaplant has fueled Plant OTKs for years now and Neos Alius and Gemini Spark have made Light Anti-meta decks a force to be reckoned with.

Darkstorm Dragon: Level 8 2700/2500 Dark Dragon Gemini

This card is treated as a Normal Monster while face-up on the field or in the Graveyard. While this card is face-up on the field, you can Normal Summon it to have it be treated as an Effect Monster with this effect:
● Once per turn: You can send 1 face-up Spell/Trap Card you control to the Graveyard; destroy all Spell/Trap Cards on the field.

Darkstorm Dragon is a nice walking Heavy Storm, unfortunately it’s just much easier to play Heavy Storm. It might work for fun in Dragons, but I doubt it’ll see much play.

Come back next time when I’ll be finishing off my look at the remaining themed cards within ORCS.
Read story →    0 comments   

Welcome back to the latest part of the ORCS Overview from TCG Shiyo.

Now its time to look at the new clockwork creations offered by the Wind Ups in the set.

Wind-Ups were first introduced to us in GENF and were intended to be one of the introductions to Xyz summoning, with their ability to manipulate levels and get lots of equal level monsters on the field at once. They have some very useful cards in the form of Wind-Up Magician and Wind-Up Factory, but we’ve seen little of them in competitive play so far. The only card we’ve seen so far that gets any use is Wind-Up Zenmaines, and that’s purely because it’s a very good Rank 3 Xyz and not because it’s a Wind -Up. However soon expect to see a lot more of them, but probably not in dedicated decks, for reasons we’ll see later. This set gives us several new monsters as well as a little bit of support.

Monsters

Effect Monsters

This set gives us some very important new additions to the Wind-Up theme.

Wind-Up Rat: Level 3 600/600 Earth Beast

During your Main Phase: You can target 1 “Wind-Up” monster in your Graveyard; change this card to face-up Defense Position and Special Summon that target in face-up Defense Position. This effect can only be used once while this card is face-up on the field.

Wind-Up Rat is the revival monster for the deck, and it does this job pretty well. Like most Wind-Ups his effect is restricted to only once whilst it is face up, which means it won’t be getting you too much advantage. Rat is very small, but by switching itself to defense mode it means you won’t likely be taking any battle damage, should it still be around in the opponent’s turn. The main purpose of this card is to make Xyz monsters though, since it can easily revive another level 3 Wind-Up and make cards like Zenmaines or the new Zenmaity.

Wind-Up Honeybee: Level 1 100/300 Earth Insect

When this card is destroyed by battle and sent to the Graveyard: You can Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower “Wind-Up” monster from your Deck.

Wind-Up Honey is the recruiter for the deck, which will make assembling key pieces for the deck even easier. However the deck can already do this so easily that I wonder how much extra use it will be.

Wind-Up Shark: Level 4 1500/1300 Water Fish

When a “Wind-Up” monster is Normal or Special Summoned to your side of the field: You can Special Summon this card from your hand. Once per turn: You can activate 1 of these effects.
● Increase this card’s Level by 1, until the End Phase.
● Reduce this card’s Level by 1, until the End Phase.

Here we have a TCG exclusive Wind-Up who does marvels for the deck by easily enabling Rank 3-5 Xyzs. Firstly he basically turns any Wind-Up into a Marauding Captain of sorts, meaning getting two monsters on the field is easier than ever before for the deck.

His level shifting effect is useful for two reasons, firstly it opens up Rank 3 and Rank 5 Xyz, giving access to many of the Wind-Up Xyz as well as powerful cards like Leviair. Secondly unlike most other Wind-Up monsters the effect is only once per turn, not once whilst face up. This means that merely by keeping the card on the field you can guarantee being able to use the effect of Factory every turn, for example. This means you can tailor your search to the situation and actually summon it on the same turn, unlike most other times when factory would trigger after having already used up your normal summon. I think we’ll be seeing a lot of him in the Wind-Up decks to come.

The Xyz

In this set we gain two new Xyz. One an integral part of a powerful loop, the other the king of the Wind-Ups.

Wind-Up Carrier Zenmaity: Rank 3 1500/1500 Water Machine

2 Level 3 monsters
Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; Special Summon 1 “Wind-Up” monster (from your hand or Deck). When a face-up “Wind-Up” monster you control is destroyed and sent to the Graveyard (except during the Damage Step): You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card to target that monster; add it to your hand.

Here we have the key card that enables a devastating new loop that we’ll be seeing a lot of soon. In terms of an actual Wind-Up card it is very good at it’s job, giving the deck more swarming/ searching power and retrieving fallen comrades. It is also very easy to summon, with cards such as Rat and Tour Guide making it possible with one card. However its low stats mean that it’s doubtful it will live for more than a single turn. Fortunately its purpose will usually be fulfilled within a single turn, especially if you’re using it for the loop.

The Wind-Up loop consists of 3 cards, Rat, Hunter and Zenmaighty. The steps are as follows:

1. Summon Zenmaighty and either have Hunter attached as an Xyz material, or in the graveyard. At this point you want as many Rats in your deck as possible.
2. Use Zenmaighty (detaching Hunter if necessary) to summon Rat.
3. Use Rat to revive Hunter.
4. Use Hunter to tribute Zenmaighty to send a random card from the opponent’s hand to the graveyard. (It sends, not discards, so even Dark Worlds fear this.)
5. Now you’ve got 2 level 3s on the field and can make another Zenmaighty. Now you can repeat from step 2 until you run out of Rats.

Once this is over you’re free to make another Rank 3 like Zenmaines, or do whatever else you like. Doing this can strip your opponent of 3 cards, whilst still leaving you with either 2 monsters or an Xyz monster. Very soon expect to see quite a lot of people building decks based around pulling this loop off as quickly and consistently as possible.

Wind-Up Arsenal Zenmaioh: Rank 5 2600/1900 Wind Machine

2 Level 5 monsters
Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card to target 2 Set cards on the field; destroy them.

Here’s the king of the Wind-Ups, who will presumably for now at least be the big boss of the deck. If you can successfully summon this card it can put your opponent in quite a tough spot. They can’t afford to play monsters face down or be destroyed, but if they play them face up they can be run over by his 2600 attack. In addition he can tear apart the back row if there are several cards face down. This is assuming they don’t tear him apart first, which is likely to happen when there are lots of face downs there. However if he’s successfully summoned before the opponent can set lots of cards it means you’ll probably get free shots for a couple of turns, because the opponent risks losing lots of important cards before they can use them.

The support

There’s limited support in this set coming from a single Spell card and a single Trap card.

Weights & Zenmaisures: Normal Spell Card

Target 2 face-up “Wind-Up” monsters you control with different Levels; your opponent chooses 1 of them, and the Level of the other monster becomes the same as the chosen monster’s, until the End Phase. Then, if your opponent chose the monster with a lower Level, you can draw 1 card.

If you choose to play this card it can put the opponent in quite a bind. Wind-Ups have access to Xyz monsters of all ranks corresponding to their levels. This means that by playing this card your opponent can’t escape an Xyz and they’ll probably have to choose between a tough to kill Zenmaines and giving you a free card, or a Zenmaioh who will start to tear them apart. It’ll be interesting to see how much use this card sees, since it’s not often you want to let your opponent make your play. It will also likely have varying results depending on what player you face, since they won’t all understand the decision they face fully.

Zenmailstrom: Normal Trap Card

Tribute 1 “Wind-Up” monster you control with 1500 ATK or more; Special Summon 1 “Wind-Up” monster from your hand. Then, you can Special Summon 1 “Wind-Up” monster from your Deck with the same ATK as the monster Special Summoned by this effect.

This card is meant to be designed as a way to get a very quick Xyz summon, but I don’t think the deck really needs that much help as it is. Just keeping a Wind-Up on the field for a turn will usually give you acess to this sort of thing anyway, and you’ll also lose less cards in doing so. If you’re desperate you can have this set from a previous turn and use it on a normal summoned Wind-Up to get an Xyz, but honestly with something like Shark around, what’s the point?

Hope people have enjoyed this look at the Wind-Ups. Next time I’m going to look some of the smaller bits of support for various themes dotted about the set.
Read story →    0 comments   

Welcome back to my Order of Chaos Overview from TCG Shiyo. Following on from Photons I’ll be looking at the other new theme which was introduced in PSHW that receives an extra boost from ORCS, which is Evol.

The Evol theme is based around the idea evolution, as the name might suggest. It consists of 3 stages of monsters, Evoltile, Evolsaur, and Evolzar. This is meant to follow the evolution of Reptiles into Dinosaurs and finally Dragons. As you can see from the final stage this isn’t exactly scientifically accurate. The purpose of the Evoltiles is generally to summon the larger Evolsaur monsters who can then be used to make the Evolzars who can have quite devastating effects.

By now most people playing should be more than aware of Evolzar Laggia and Dolkka and how powerful these cards can be, thanks to the Dino-Rabbit deck. I’m sure their original intention was to be used within their own theme, but the Evol cards themselves can’t quite match Rescue Rabbit for speed and efficiency of getting out two of their boss monsters. This set introduces a new boss for the deck in the form of Evolzar Soldde and support to summon him quickly. Thankfully he can only really be summoned within the theme, or Dino-Rabbits would be even more devastating, however I don’t think it’s comparable in strength to the older two Evolzar.

The Monsters

Evoltile

This set brings us three new Evoltile, all who make summoning the Evolsaur that much easier.

Evoltile Pleuros: Level 1 200/200 Fire Reptile

When this card is destroyed and sent to the Graveyard: You can Special Summon 1 "Evolsaur" monster from your hand.

This card is a quick and easy way to summon the bigger Evolsaur monsters, however it has a couple of important drawbacks. Firstly it’s a “When” optional card, meaning in some circumstances it will miss the timing. Although given the size of the card it’s unlikely to ever be destroyed by much other than battle, so this won’t often be an issue. Secondly it only summons Evolsaurs from your hand, which means the card is an inherent -1, and cards like that usually need fantastic versatility to justify the -1, such as Book of Moon. Unfortunately this is not the case for Pleuros. In addition only summoning from the hand means there will be times you can’t even use his effect. As such I don’t really think much of this card.

Evoltile Casinerio: Level 3 1600/400 Fire Reptile

At the end of the Battle Phase, if this card destroyed an opponent's monster by battle: You can Tribute this card; Special Summon 2 Level 6 or lower FIRE Dinosaur-Type monsters with the same name from your Deck, but their effects are negated. Banish them during the End Phase.

Casinerio on the other hand is a much better Evoltile. Basically once it destroys something by battle you’ll be able to get one of your Evolzars out. By trading it for Cerato you can get Laggia or Dolkka. If instead you use the new Elias or Terias you can make Solda. Admittedly something like Jurrac Guaiba works better at getting the Rank 4 ones out due to its 100 extra attack, but Casineria has a little more versatility. Unfortunately this also makes it easier to foil, since its effect won’t go off during the damage step like Guaiba.

Evoltile Najasho: Level 2 100/2000 Fire Reptile

If this card on the field is Tributed: You can Special Summon 1 “Evolsaur” monster from your Deck.

The final new Evoltile is a rather good TCG exclusive. Unlike Pleuros, this card summons Evolsaurs from the deck, making this effect an even trade off. In the deck there will probably be no problem tributing this card, either for an Evolsaur, other high level monsters or for cards such as Compulsory Evolution. Najash makes it much easier for the deck to swarm the field and summon the Evolzars, and as such I’m sure will see some play in Evol decks.

Evolsaur

The new Evolsaur honestly don’t have anything that impressive about them and seem to be mainly there as stepping stones to the new Evolzar.

Evolsaur Elias: Level 6 100/2400 Fire Dinosaur

When this card is Special Summoned by the effect of an "Evoltile" monster: You can Special Summon a Level 6 or lower FIRE Dinosaur-Type monster from your hand.

The whole point of this card is clearly to summon another level 6 dinosaur and make Soldde, however it does it by draining your hand. If you were trying to make Solda without using Casinerio this would be the better choice, but most of the time you’ll be doing it via Casinerio anyway.

Evolsaur Terias: Level 6 2400/600 Fire Dinosaur

When this card is Special Summoned by the effect of an “Evoltile” monster: It loses 500 ATK.

Bringing Terias out via an Evoltile has no advantages over Cerato, barring the fact it’s level 6. Once again the make purpose of this card is for making Solda. His 2400 attack is useful in some situations should you ever have to tribute summon him though.

Evolzar

This set only brings us one new Evolzar, who the rest of the new monsters have practically been dedicated to summoning.

Evolzar Solda: Rank 6 2600/1000 Fire Dragon

2 Level 6 Dinosaur-Type monsters
While this card has Xyz Material, this card cannot be destroyed by card effects. When your opponent Special Summons a monster: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; destroy that monster.

Much like the other two Evolzar this card is capable of restricting the actions your opponent can make, in this case Special summons. However destroying the card is much worse than preventing it in the first place, since there are more ways to prevent this, and some cards don’t mind being destroyed. Its protection ability can make it quite a pain to destroy, but with Dimensional Prison, BLS, Caius and Forbidden Lance flying around nowadays there are still plenty of ways around it. It honestly doesn’t match up to the older two Evolzar in my eyes.

The Support

Evol get several new support cards to play with in this set, of varying usefulness.

The Spells

Primordial Soup: Continuous Spell Card

Once per turn, during your Main Phase: You can shuffle up to 2 “Evolsaur” monsters from your hand into your Deck, then draw the same amount of cards. You can only control 1 “Primordial Soup”.

Here we have a themed Card Trader. It can be useful for returning those Evolsaur to the deck to allow you to special summon them with your Evoltile, however it doesn’t really offer much advantage over Card Trader. The only thing going for it is the fact it can be used during the Main Phase rather than the Standby Phase, which is admittedly a much more useful time to use it. However being restricted to only Evolsaurs means it’s unlikely you’ll often get to use its effect. I don’t see it getting used.

Evo-Force: Normal Spell Card

Tribute 1 “Evoltile” monster you control; Special Summon 1 “Evolsaur” monster from your Deck. That monster Special Summoned by this card’s effect is treated as if it was Special Summoned by the effect of an “Evoltile” monster.

This card gives the deck extra speed and works very well with Najasho. Combined you can easily summon any of the Evolzar, or alternatively keep the two monsters on the field. Normally you lose a card when you play this, but Najasho can turn it into an even trade off. As such I expect we’ll mostly see these two cards used in conjunction.

The Traps

These are all about special summoning in a variety of ways.

Degen-force: Normal Trap Card

Tribute 1 Level 4 or higher Dinosaur-Type monster you control; Special Summon 2 Level 3 or lower Reptile-Type monsters from your hand or Graveyard.

As you might guess from the name this card is meant to downgrade your Evolsaurs back to Evoltile. It isn’t restricted to just this, but will not likely find use anywhere else. This can be used to make an easy low Rank Xyz monster, or alternatively to follow up into more Evolsaurs. Turning an Evolsaur into two Casinerio at the right time could be quite painful for the opponent.

Evo-Branch: Normal Trap Card

Target 1 Reptile-Type monster you control; destroy it, and Special Summon 1 “Evoltile” monster from your Deck in face-down Defense Position.

This card is designed to abuse Westlo and to a lesser extent Pleuros (I believe the destruction and special summoning happen at the same time). Since Westlo has a flip effect it’s the ideal choice for this card and will easily let you make up for the -1 you suffer for playing this card. It has its uses, but it’s very restrictive in what it can do.

Instant-Evo: Normal Trap Card

Tribute 1 Reptile-Type monster you control; Special Summon 1 “Evolsaur” monster from your Deck.

This is basically a trap version of Evo-Force, however it doesn’t count as being an Evoltile effect. This is useful for cards like Terias, but not for ones like Cerato. It’ll be interesting to see which of the two cards is favoured by the Evol players.

Come back next time when I’ll be taking a look at the new Wind Ups you get to play with.
Read story →    0 comments   

Welcome back to the 3rd article from TCG Shiyo

With the two major themes of ORCS now finished it’s time to move onto the other themes, of which there are several, such as Photons, Wind-Ups and Evol. Most of these themes have a smaller presence in the set than Inzektors or Ninjas, so there is of course less to talk about. Of the remaining themes Evols probably have the largest amount of new support, however now I’ll be looking at Photons.

Photons were introduced in Photon Shockwave and are a new light based theme, so can of course benefit from cards such as Honest. With ORCS they get a few new monsters, which I’ll look at first, followed by their new spell card.

The Monsters

Photon Lizard: Level 3 900/1200 Light Dragon

You can Tribute this card you control: Add 1 Level 4 or lower "Photon" monster from your Deck to your hand. The effect of "Photon Lizard" can only be activated once per turn

First up we have Photon Lizard, who seems like an alright monster. Getting cards from your deck is always good, tributing a monster to do so, not so much. Compared to other searchers like Reinforcement of the Army or Stratos this effect just seems poor. You use up your normal summon, and a monster to only get a level 4, leaving yourself open to attacks. I realise the idea is usually to follow it up with Photon Lead to special summon it, but it just seems like a waste of cards to me. About the only worthwhile use I see is for the next card in the preview.

Photon Thrasher: Level 4 2100/0 Light Warrior

Cannot be Normal Summoned or Set. If you control no monsters, you can Special Summon this card (from your hand). If you control another monster, this card cannot attack

Photon Thrasher is essentially the Cyber Dragon of the deck, just easier to summon . Although to be fair since Cyber Dragon is already a light I can see you playing him in a Photon deck anyway. This card is designed to work with Photon Lizard. You can tribute off Lizard to fetch Slasher and have a 2100 on the field easily. Not being able to attack if you control other monsters is a massive disadvantage and I can see this card becoming a burden if you want to try and push for more damage.

Photon Crusher : Level 4 2000/0 Light Warrior

If this card attacks, it is changed to Defense Position at the end of the Damage Step.

There’s not much to say about this card really. These sort of cards have existed in Yu-Gi-Oh! for years with various different stats and restrictions on when they can change back. Fortunately Crusher can change back next turn, but with only 0 defense he’s unlikely to live that long. He’s probably better suited as a deterrent than an actual attacker.

Photon Leo: Level 6 2100/1100 Light Beast

When this card is Normal Summoned: Your opponent shuffles their hand into their Deck then draws the same number of cards

Honestly unless you know the opponent has a specific combo assembled in their hand you want to stop, I don’t see the point in this. You’re probably just as likely to improve their hand as you are to make it worse, or make no real overall change.

Photon Circle: Level 4 1000/1000 Light Spellcaster

Halve any Battle Damage you take from battles involving this card.

This is pretty bad. I really don’t know why you’d want to play it over other cards. It’ll save you from little bits of damage and cause maths problems for some people, but other than that nearly all the time a bigger vanilla would be better.

Twin Photon Lizard: Fusion Level 6 2400/1000 Light Dragon

2 “Photon” monsters
You can Tribute this face-up card; Special Summon all of the Fusion Material Monsters used to Fusion Summon this card from your Graveyard.

This card is designed for swarming at the expense of card advantage. The idea is to fuse 2 monsters with more than 2400 attack combined and then tribute this straight away to get them back. This is generally a bad idea though. To be honest the best use I see for this is using it as an easy way to get out Galaxy Eyes Photon Dragon, but I’m sure there are easier ways to do that.

Photon Trident: Quickplay Spell Card

Target 1 “Photon” monster you control. Until the End Phase, it gains 700 ATK , and when that target attacks a Defense Position monster, inflict piercing Battle Damage to your opponent. When that target inflicts Battle Damage to your opponent: Destroy 1 Spell or Trap Card on the field.

This card is very good, it's just a shame the photons aren't really up to scratch right now, maybe in the future though. It’s basically a souped up Rush Recklessly for Photons. The added piercing means it can even be used to hit for lots of damage when going through a defensive monster. You could steal wins with it when the opponent is trying to hide behind low defense walls like Fluff tokens. Destroying a spell/trap card as well makes this even better, since it can open up the way for other monsters to get an easier attack in.

This is amazing support for a decktype that sorely needs it. Now they just need better monsters to go along with it. One possible way to overcome the shortcomings of all these monsters effects is to combine the deck with Skill Drain, since many have very good attack scores.

Next time I’ll be looking at the Evols, who have a respectable chunk of the set dedicated to them.
Read story →    0 comments   

I'm back with my 2nd article from TCG Shiyo

In Order of Chaos the other major theme from the set after Ninjas is Inzektors. These guys are the most hyped up new cards in the set, and many think they will go on to dominate the game after their release, or at least a deck incorporating them will. I’m personally a little more cautious right now. Given some of the things they can do they’ll undoubtedly be a good deck, but I think they’ll just be added to the list of good decks out there, rather than ruling over everything else. It’s been quite a while since we’ve had an unapproachable top deck and I don’t think it’ll happen here, I could be wrong though.

The Inzektors themselves are all Dark Insects. This means they have plenty of Dark support to go around, and can easily mix in Dark Armed Dragon or Black Luster Soldier to wreak extra havoc. The Insect part is less important since they’ll be the first Insect theme to ever have any real impact on the game. There are however a few potentially useful insect cards out there like Lair Wire, Insect Imitation and Verdant Sanctuary. Whether any of these will see use is another matter entirely though.

One thing to get out of the way straight away is the matter of their optional effects. Many people will be worried about the fact the cards say “you can” and will be worried they’ll miss the timing. You don’t need to worry about that though. The Inzektors are “If X you can Y” cards rather than “When X you can Y” this means that they cannot miss the timing. This is because “If” cards look for the event to happen and don’t care about its timing, they’ll activate once the current chain is over. “When” cards have to be used at exactly the moment after the event has happened, which is why they miss the timing if the event isn’t the last thing in the chain.

First of all we’ll be looking at the Inzektor monsters, who are of varying usefulness. The theme is built around Inzektors equipping themselves to one another and as such they all have the ability to either equip another Inzektor to themselves, or to equip themselves to a fellow Inzektor.

The Monsters

“The Big 3”

Undoubtedly the most important of the new Inzektors are Hornet, Centipede and Dragonfly, who can all work together to generate a lot of advantage.

Inzektor Hornet: Level 3 500/200 Dark Insect

Once per turn: You can equip 1 "Inzektor" monster from your hand or Graveyard to this card. While this card is equipped to a monster, that monster's Level is increased by 3, and it gains ATK and DEF equal to this card's ATK and DEF. While this card is equipped to a monster: You can send this Equip Card to the Graveyard to target 1 card on the field; destroy that target.

Hornet is arguably the key card to this trio, since it’s the only Inzektor we have (yet), that can actively do something whilst it’s an equip card. Most of the time it means you can use Hornet to destroy an opponents card for free, which is always nice. It also sets off the effects of the two Inzektors to follow, who require equipped cards to go to the graveyard to get their effects.

The stat boost gained whilst Hornet is equipped is an added bonus which would allow the other Inzektors, most notably Centipede, to take down threats to the deck, such as King Tiger or Thunder King, without needing to use up Hornet. Getting Hornet to the hand, or preferably graveyard fast will be very important to the deck. Likewise disrupting Hornet will likely be important to beating the deck.

Inzektor Centipede: Level 3 1600/1200 Dark Insect

Once per turn: You can equip 1 "Inzektor" monster from your hand or Graveyard to this card. If an Equip Card(s) is sent to the Graveyard while equipped to this card (except during the Damage Step): You can add 1 "Inzektor" card from your Deck to your hand. While this card is equipped to a monster, that monster's Level is increased by 3.

Centipede is the beatstick of the trio at 1600 attack (2100 if boosted by Hornet) and is also the deck’s tutor. Combined with Hornet you can destroy an opponents card and grab another Inzektor card from your deck, often doing all of this for free. Centipede’s most common search will likely be the next card Inzektor Dragonfly.

Inzektor Dragonfly: Level 3 1000/1800 Dark Insect

Once per turn: You can equip 1 "Inzektor" monster from your hand or Graveyard to this card. If an Equip Card is sent to your Graveyard while equipped to this card (except during the Damage Step): You can Special Summon 1 "Inzektor" monster from your Deck, except "Inzektor Dragonfly". While this card is equipped to a monster, that monster's Level is increased by 3.

Dragonfly is the wall of the Inzektors, capable of defending himself from cards such as Reborn Tengu or King Tiger Wanghu. He’s also another tutor for the deck, but this time he special summons them to the field, rather than adding them to the hand. Unlike Centipede he is restricted from fetching himself, which is understandable, since otherwise you’d swarm the field with 3 Dragonflies, a Centipede and destroy 4 cards in the process which simply wouldn’t be fair. Instead you’ll have to settle for destroying 2 cards, getting a Dragonfly and Centipede on the field and an extra Dragonfly in your hand. And that will often be done for free. From here you can make a Rank 3 Xyz such as Zenmaines and then repeat it all next turn.

Because of these cards your opponent will be very wary of putting too many cards on the field at once, because it will just lead to easy targets for Hornet to pick off. This leads into the popular suggestion to combine them with Wind Ups and use the Hunter loop (Using Hunter, Rat and Zenmaighty) to ruin their hand. Your opponent will be stuck choosing between losing their hand if they hold back, or losing their field if they commit too much.

There are several other Inzektor monsters out there, unfortunately they aren’t a patch on these 3, that’s not to say some of them aren’t useful though.

The Rest

Inzektor Ant: Level 3 200/600 Dark Insect

Once per turn: You can equip 1 "Inzektor" monster from your hand or Graveyard to this card. While this card is equipped to a monster, that monster's Level is increased by 3, also it gains ATK and DEF equal to this card's ATK and DEF. If the equipped monster would be destroyed, you can destroy this Equip Card instead

Where Hornet provides offense Ant is meant to provide defense. Which he can actually do fairly well. Unfortunately I find it hard to justify using this card. Inzektors work much better as an offensive deck and don’t really have time to be wasting on defense. Ant can work well with Centipede and Dragonfly, but honestly I don’t see it being used much beyond a one-off to search for with Centipede once all your Dragonflies are spent.

Inzektor Giga-Mantis: Level 6 2400/0 Dark Insect

You can target 1 face-up "Inzektor" monster you control; equip this card from your hand to that target. While this card is equipped to a monster, that monster's original ATK becomes 2400. If this card is sent to the Graveyard while equipped to a monster: You can target 1 "Inzektor" monster in your Graveyard except "Inzektor Giga-Mantis"; Special Summon that target. This effect of "Inzektor Giga-Mantis" can only be used once per turn

Giga-Mantis is probably the best of the rest, allowing your Inzektors to overcome their size problem by boosting them to 2400. The special summon effect is an added bonus, since it can force your opponent to choose between facing a 2400 monster, or 2 smaller monsters. It also means that in more desperate situations you can destroy your own Giga Mantis with Hornet and replace it with another monster on your field. 1 or more copies of this card will be useful to have as extra choices for Centipede, or sometimes just as a beatstick for Dragonfly to summon.

Inzektor Giga-Weevil: Level 6 0/2600 Dark Insect

You can target 1 face-up "Inzektor" monster you control; equip this card from your hand to that target. While this card is equipped to a monster, that monster's original DEF becomes 2600. If this card is sent to the Graveyard while equipped to a monster: You can target 1 "Inzektor" monster in your Graveyard; Special Summon that target. This effect of "Inzektor Giga-Weevil" can only be used once per turn

Giga-Weevil is the defensive counterpart of Giga-Mantis, and much like with Ant and Hornet is the worse of the pair. Its defensive boost might be greater, but you’ll rarely ever want or need it. As such I see no real need to use it over Giga-Mantis.

Inzektor Grasshopper: Level 4 1700/1400 Dark Insect

Once per turn: You can equip 1 “Inzektor” monster in your hand or Graveyard to this card. While this card is equipped to a monster, increase the equipped monster’s Level by 2. While this card is equipped to a monster: You can send this Equip Card to the Graveyard; the monster that this card was equipped to can attack your opponent directly this turn. If you used this effect, this turn other monsters you control cannot attack.

Grasshopper is a new TCG exclusive and unlike the other small Inzektors is a level 4, which makes him a mismatch for the deck’s Xyz capabilities. On rare occasions the direct attack he grants might be useful, but I don’t think it’s really worth using.

Inzektor Exa-Beetle: Rank 6 1000/1000 Dark Insect

2 Level 6 monsters
When this card is Xyz Summoned: You can target 1 monster from either player's Graveyard; equip that target to this card. This card gains ATK and DEF equal to half of the Equip Card's ATK and DEF, respectively. Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card to target 1 face-up card you control and 1 face-up card your opponent controls; send them to the Graveyard.

This is meant to be the big boss of the deck, but unfortunately you’ll never really be making much use of it. The idea is meant to be to get two Inzektors, equip them with two other Inzektors and then Xyz summon this card. Unfortunately this is far too much effort. His effect is a sort of a short term Scrap Dragon, but unfortunately it can’t get rid of face downs which is where Scrap Dragon excels. He can get around Stardust Dragon though. Chances are Exa-Beetle will find a better home in non Inzektor decks that can summon level 6s easily.

The Support

Now we have all the support cards from Inzketors. In Yu-Gi-Oh! the generic spell and trap cards are so good it usually takes something fantastic to make themed support worth playing. Unfortunately this isn’t the case for Inzektors. They generally serve the purpose of fulfilling what Inzektors are designed to do, being mostly equips, they’re just not good enough.

The Spells

Armor Blast: Normal Spell Card

Target 1 face-up “Inzektor” card you control and 2 face-up cards your opponent controls; destroy those targets.

This is the Icarus Attack / Offering to the Snake Deity for the deck. The advantage it has is that it can be used on Inzektor spell/trap cards. The disadvantages are that it only kills face up cards, and that it’s only a spell card. The other cards are good because of the element of surprise, which this lacks. For this reason and its comparative weakness I don’t see it being used much.

Inzektor Axe – Zektahawk: Equip Spell Card

Equip only to an “Inzektor” monster. It gains 1000 ATK. When the equipped monster declares an attack, your opponent cannot activate Spell/Trap Cards.

Zektahawk is another TCG exclusive for the deck. Whilst I get the design behind the card, boosting and protecting weak monsters so they can kill bigger monsters / deal more damage, with the amount of destruction the deck can throw out thanks to Hornet this sort of effect isn’t really needed. Sometimes it’ll help you topple something like Stardust Dragon, but often you’ll have already cleared out all their monsters / spell / traps before attacking, so all this will be is a themed Axe of Despair.

Inzektor Sword Zektkaliber: Equip Spell Card

Equip only to an "Inzektor" monster. The equipped monster gains 800 ATK and DEF. When this face-up card is sent from field to the Graveyard: Add 1 "Inzektor" monster from your Graveyard to your hand.

Like Zektahawk this is designed to help the weaker Inzektors, but the boost isn’t really needed for the reasons previously stated. Unlike the monsters, this card’s retrieval effect can miss the timing, which weakens it a bit. Much like Zektahawk I don’t see it getting much play.

The Traps

Inzektor Orb: Normal Trap Card

Target 1 face-up "Inzektor" monster you control; equip this card to that target. It gains 500 ATK and DEF. When an "Inzektor" monster you control is targeted by a card effect: You can send this face-up card to the Graveyard; negate that card effect.

I get the idea behind this card, because it can provide a surprise attack boost and protection from card effects, but often you don’t really care about your Inzektors being targeted by card effects. The protection will also kick in too late. If you could use Orb in response to a targeting effect and protect the Inzektor it would be better since it provides and element of surprise and wastes an opponent’s card. As it you have to use it ahead of time and then wait for the Inzektor to be targeted. It’s not really worth using. (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong on the protection bit.

Variable Form: Continuous Trap Card

Once per turn, you can activate 1 of these effects:
● Target 2 face-up "Inzektor" monsters you control; equip one to the other.
● Target 1 "Inzektor" monster you control that is an Equip Card; Special Summon that target in face-up Defense Position.

The final Inzektor card is Variable Form, which basically lets your Inzektors behave like Union monsters, equipping and unequipping themselves from the field. However I highly question why you would want to do this. You don’t want to turn your monsters into equip cards, because the ones on the field usually don’t really do anything useful as equip cards, and likewise the equipped ones don’t really do anything useful as monsters. Beyond using it to summon Giga-Mantis I don’t really see the point of the card.

Summary

As you can see there are some very good Inzektor cards that form a coherent strategy together, but there are also many Inzektor cards that are fairly lacking. Expect to see a lot of 3 of them, a few of 2 more and just about none of the rest in the near future. Since the core 3 cards can provide a nice advantage engine on their own expect to see them mixed with many different strategies once ORCS hits. Popular ones are likely to include Chaos Inzektors and Wind Up Inzektors. Also watch out for interesting tech cards like Heart of Clear Water, which most of you will never have even seen played before. I hope this has been useful for those of you that haven’t thought much about the cards before, and any comments or replies will be welcome.

Next time I’ll be looking at the Photon cards since they have a significant number in this set.
Read story →    0 comments   

Hello everyone, I'm Xagor and I'm a new addition to the article writers for this site.

Once upon a time (2008) I was one of the best players in the country, but nowadays I'm one of the more well known judges in the community. I'm currently writing a card gaming blog TCG Shiyo which currently looks at Yu-Gi-Oh! and Weiß Schwarz (Although I may soon be writing a bit on Cardfight!! Vanguard). Whenever I write Yu-Gi-Oh! articles they will also be appearing here to try and give something back to the site.

For starters we'll have the Order of Chaos Preview I did over the past couple of weeks. Since the set is now out it means I can update the names and card text etc and it will be an Overview, rather than a preview.

Ninjas are a theme that has existed in name for a long time, with Armed Ninja appearing all the way back in LOB. It wasn’t until Invasion of Chaos when we saw Fuhma Shuriken though, that “Ninja” itself became a theme. Unfortunately since then there’s been no real coherent theme to them, with Ninja appearing on other cards like the Karakuri, such as Sazank. About the closest we’ve got is the Goemon themed cards, like Goe Goe the Gallant Ninja and Lady Ninja Yae, but that’s hardly something to base a deck around. In Photon Shockwave we saw the beginnings of a revival with Senior Silver Ninja, who can generate huge advantage when combined with some of the earlier Ninjas and their flip effects. In Order of Chaos a new Armour Ninja theme is introduced as well as a host of new support cards, that finally make Ninjas into a playable theme.

Armor Ninjas

The core of the new cards are the Armour Ninjas, which consist of 4 effect monsters (1 for each element) and 2 Xyzs monsters. I’ll start by looking at the 4 effect monsters, unfortunately none of them are particularly impressive.

Flame Armor Ninja: Level 4 1700/1000 Fire Warrior

When this card is Summoned: You can target 1 face-up “Ninja” monster you control; increase its Level by 1.

Flame’s effect might be useful for making the Xyz monster Number 12: Crimson Shadow Armor Ninja, since it requires two level 5s, but I don’t see it being much use beyond that.

Air Armor Ninja: Level 4 1400/1400 Wind Warrior

When this card is Summoned: You can target 1 face-up “Ninja” monster you control; decrease its Level by 1.

As for Air the only time I see it being used is in combination with Earth to summon Blade Armour Ninja. Beyond that I don’t see decreasing level to be of any help.

Aqua Armor Ninja: Level 4 800/1600 Water Warrior

When an opponent’s monster declares a direct attack, if you have another “Ninja” monster in your Graveyard: You can banish this card in your Graveyard; negate that attack.

Of the four Aqua seems to most useful, since it replicates Necro Gardna in a more limited sense. Whilst being nowhere near as good as Necro Gardna (due to not being a quick effect), I can see it being useful sometimes in a Ninja deck.

Earth Armor Ninja: Level 5 1600/1200 Earth Warrior

If your opponent controls a monster(s), and you control no monsters, you can Special Summon this card (from your hand).

The purpose of Earth seems to be in aiding the summon of either of the Xyz monsters, since it makes it easy to get 2 warriors on the field in a single turn. However its stats are so weak it won’t be staying around for long if you can’t make use of it immediately. Other potential uses could be for the Ninjitsu cards, some of which we’ll get to later, since that extra level could sometimes make a difference.

Next onto the two Xyz monsters.

Blade Armor Ninja:Rank 4 2200/1000 Wind Warrior

2 Level 4 Warriors
Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz material from this card to target 1 face-up “Ninja” monster you control; this turn, that monster can attack twice during each Battle Phase.

Number 12: Crimson Shadow Armour Ninja : Rank 5 2400/1700 Earth Warrior

2 Level 5 monsters
Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; this turn, face-up “Ninja” monsters on the field cannot be destroyed by battle or by card effects. This effect can be activated during your opponent’s turn.

Of these two cards you are much more likely to summon Blade, since the deck will be filled with level 4 Warriors. Blade can cause a lot of damage by allowing a Ninja monster to attack twice. Even if you have no other Ninjas this effect can be used on itself to potentially cause up to 4400 damage, which can be quite a devastating blow.
Crimson Shadow on the other hand is meant to protect all your weaker Ninja cards from being destroyed in addition to itself. This can make it quite a pain for two turns. However it will probably prove too difficult to summon under most circumstances and will likely only be able to protect itself initially.

Of the two I see Blade getting much more use, with Crimson Shadow probably only being used by decks determined to get him out.

New Ninjas

In addition to the Armour Ninjas there are several new cards that are general Ninja cards, which I feel are much better than the Armour Ninjas. All 4 are effect monsters, and expect at least 3 of them to turn up in Ninja decks at the end of January.

Ninja Grandmaster Hanzo: Level 4 1800/1000 Dark Warrior

When this card is Normal Summoned: You can add 1 “Ninjitsu Art” card from your Deck to your hand. When this card is Flip or Special Summoned: You can add 1 “Ninja” monster from your Deck to your hand, except “Ninja Grandmaster Hanzo”.

First up we have the Grandmaster Hanzo, who will be key to all Ninja decks. Summoning him is an instant +1, and we all know how useful those can be.
His first effect nets you a Ninjitsu art card, most of which are trap cards. The details of most of them will be covered later, since they’re also new to this set, but there are two old arts, that of Decoy and Transformation. The former prevents a Ninja being destroyed by battle, which won’t be worth the card most of the time. The latter sacrifices a Ninja for a Beast, Winged-Beast or Insect type monster. Unfortunately it is now outclassed by the Super Transformation art, but it could still be used for fun Dark Simorgh builds.

His 2nd effect gets you any Ninja monster except himself, which avoids the issue a certain E-Hero had. This means you can pick and choose a Ninja to suit the current situation.
Being a dark means you can fit Dark Armed Dragon into your Ninja deck, should you wish, and along with some of the light monsters coming up allows you to play Black Luster Soldier: Envoy of the Beginning.

Finally with 1800 attack he can stand up to most low level threats you see nowadays, except for Rai-Oh and Sabersaurus.

Masked Ninja Ebisu: Level 4 1200/1800 Wind Warrior

Once per turn, if you control a face-up “Ninja” monster, except “Masked Ninja Ebisu”: Return Spell/Trap Cards your opponent controls to the hand equal to the number of face-up “Ninja” monsters you control. This turn, “Goe Goe the Gallant Ninja” can attack your opponent directly.

This guy is mainly designed to support the Goemon cast, and will probably not find much use in standard Ninja decks. His effect can refill the opponents hand with magic/trap cards and allow Goe Goe to strip them of two cards in their hand. Unfortunately you’ll usually struggle to return more than 2 cards and get in a hit with Goe Goe. You could combine it with the Golden Ninja coming up to clear out an opponent back row, but its honestly better to just stick with Hanzo.

Upstart Golden Ninja: Level 4 500/1800 Light Warrior

Once per turn: You can send 1 Trap Card from your hand to the Graveyard; Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower “Ninja” monster from your Deck in face-up Defense Position or face-down Defense Position.

This card can give the Ninja deck with great speed, especially when combined with Hanzo. Since most of the Ninjitsu arts are Trap cards you should have little trouble getting a trap card in your hand to use his effect. If you have multiple traps cards you could even use them to summon multiple copies of Golden Ninja before finishing things off with Hanzo. Your spent Golden Ninjas can then be turned into Blade to cause some real damage. His defense means he can potentially stay on the field long enough to use his effect multiple times. This along with Hanzo will be essential to all Ninja decks.

White Dragon Ninja: Level 7 2700/1200 Light Dragon

Cannot be Special Summoned, except with a “Ninjitsu Art” card’s effect. Spell/Trap Cards you control cannot be destroyed by card effects.

Here we have a TCG exclusive card designed to work alongside one of the new Ninjitsu art cards. Once you summon him your spell and trap cards cannot be destroyed, which will be vital for a deck that is so invested in continuous trap cards. When combined with Safe Zone this card can be incredibly difficult to get rid of, since both cards will protect one another. His high attack score means that he will pose a threat to most cards and can trade off with monsters such as Hyperion and Grapha. Expect to be seeing quite a lot of this card when it’s released.

Ninjitsu Arts

Finally we come to the new Ninjitsu Arts cards. There are 4 continuous Trap cards and 1 Spell card. These cards will see varying amount of play, but there are two which you can guarantee to see in just about every Ninja deck.

Armored Ninjitsu Art of Alchemy: Normal Spell Card

If you control 1 face-up “Ninjitsu Art” card(s): Destroy all face-up “Ninjitsu Art” card(s) you control, then draw 2 cards.

This card will do practically the same thing for the Ninja deck as Magical Planter would (let you draw cards), however it’s searchable by Hanzo. Since it is more restrictive in what it can be used on we’ll have to wait and see which of the two cards will become the standard for Ninja decks.

Armor Ninjitsu Art of Freezing: Continuous Trap Card

When an opponent’s monster declares an attack, if you control a face-up “Ninja” monster: Negate that attack, and end the Battle Phase. While this card is face-up on the field, monster(s) your opponent controls cannot change their battle positions.

This card will prove useful for protecting your Ninja cards, since it can protect them for a single battle phase. In addition with the opponent unable to change the battle position of their cards if you follow up with a powerful monster you can pick them off whilst inflicting battle damage. This seems useful, but I’m not sure how many copies if any people will choose to use.

Armor Ninjitsu Art of Rust Mist: Continuous Trap Card

When a monster is Special Summoned to your opponent’s side of the field, if you control a face-up “Ninja” monster: Halve the ATK of that Special Summoned monster.

With plenty of decks focused around special summoning monsters this can put a real dent in your opponent’s plays. With this card in play your opponent may hold off on special summoning some of their cards, saving them for later. This card allows most of the new Ninjas, even some of the Armoured ones, to take down just about any monster your opponent may special summon. I expect the main use of this card will be to slow down the plays of the opponent.

Ninjitsu Art of Super-Transformation: Continuous Trap Card

Target 1 face-up “Ninja” monster you control and 1 face-up monster your opponent controls; send them to the Graveyard, then Special Summon 1 Dragon, Dinosaur, or Sea Serpent-Type monster with an equal or lower Level than the sent monsters’ combined Levels from your Deck to your side of the field. If this card leaves the field, banish that monster.

Here we have the big new Ninjitsu Art. The card is an inbuilt +1 by trading one card from both players for a card from your deck. There are potential issues with Xyz monster though. I believe that the card cannot be used on them, since they don’t have a level, but we should probably wait on official word.

This card opens up 3 different possible version of the deck, Dragon Ninjas, Dino Ninjas or Sea Serpent Ninjas.

For Dragon Ninjas there are plenty of Dragon cards out there, but the one at the forefront will be White Dragon Ninja, since it is also a Ninja, and directly helps the deck. There are also cards like Tyrant Dragon which can hit fairly hard and hasn’t seen any use for years. There are plenty of Dragon cards out there, so you’ll be spoilt for choice.

For Dino Ninjas the current favourite seems to be Jurrac Guaiba, which will help open up access to the Evolzar Xyz monsters. You could also surprise your opponent by throwing a 3000 attack Asura Priest at them in the form of Ultimate Tyranno.

Sea Serpent Ninjas will have access to cards like Codarus and Daedalus to add to the destruction of your opponents cards. However ALO and Forgotten Temple of the Deep don’t really fit with the Ninja theme, so there might be some consistency issues with this idea.

I expect we’ll see this in most Ninja decks.

Ninjitsu Art of Duplication: Continuous Trap Card

Tribute 1 “Ninja” monster; Special Summon any number of “Ninja” monsters, from your Deck, in face-up Attack Position or face-down Defense Position with combined Levels less than or equal to the Level of the Tributed monster. When this card leaves the field: Destroy those monsters.

Here we have the 2nd TCG exclusive, which alongside Super-Transformation I would expect to find in just about every Ninja deck, since it can be used both offensively and defensively.
If you’re on the offense you can use it to deal that extra bit of damage to finish your opponent off. It can also be used to dodge cards like Dimensional Prison, by allowing you to at the very least trade a Ninja for the same card and continue attacking.

If on the defense you can trade a Ninja in trouble for one better suited to the situation, for example something with higher attack power, or Sazank if you cannot defeat your opponents monsters in battle.

As a general use it can be used to build up advantage. You can use it to fetch Hanzo and grab another Ninja for example. If you give up a high level card, such as White Dragon Ninja, you can exchange it for both Sazank and Hanzo, giving you extra cards and the ability to send an opponents face up monster to the graveyard. It also allows you to make use of older ‘flip’ Ninjas such as Crimson Ninja should you choose to.

Like all decks Ninjas will develop over time, so some of what I’ve said might not bear out in reality, but hopefully this has given people some ideas on the deck if they’d previously passed it over. Next time I’ll be looking at the Inzektor cards, which are the big hyped new deck type from the set.
Read story →    0 comments   

Battle of the Kingdoms

It's that time of the year again. Time for the Yugioh qualifiers and finals to roll round again for 2012!

2011 saw Gamerz Events/ Konami introduce Battle of the Kingdoms, a new event in the place of Fortune Tour. 2012 sees Battle of the Kingdoms return for everyone to duel against the best players in different regions of the UK and aim to qualify for that all important Battle of the Kingdoms Final.

To qualify for the Final a player must attend a Battle of the Kingdoms qualifying event in a set UK region. They must participate in swiss rounds with the aim to win as many rounds as possible. A number of the top finishing players from each event will be invited to attend the Battle of the Kingdoms Final.

To maximise your chances of qualifying it is best to try attend the nearest two or three events to you.

Check out what locations are closest to you!*

*Information from the Irish forums via PJ

The general feeling will be that it has improved on last year with more qualifiers, particularly in South and Central England. It is especially good news for those in Birmingham or Brighton! This will allow players from these regions to attend more qualifiers as well as find one closer to where they live. Last year saw some of the qualifiers in these regions of England reach capacity and this looks to be a good way to rectify the problem.

The other differences to last year is the absence of an Irish qualifier and the absence of a North East qualifier that will see players from Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough needing to travel south to Manchester and Sheffield.

The 2011 Battle of the Kingdoms Final took place at the same venue as the UK Nationals, now an open event (no qualifiers required). It took place the day before the Nationals event and potentially saved a lot of money and time for people making arrangements to go. This seems a likelihood for being repeated this year but is yet to be confirmed.

Keep informed by the Ukaypro Tournament Information sub-forum for information on all the qualifiers as they become available:

<Ukaypro Tournament Info Section>





Dueling Network Competition

We will look to follow up on and expand the Ukaypro Dueling Network competition within the coming months. December saw forum user "Tom P" beat runner up "Alth" in the final in a T.G. Skill Drain mirror match.

There were prizes available for the finalists including an Ultra Rare Chaos Sorcerer as a small reward for playing and winning.
And more...


T.G. Skill Drain, Tengu-Plant synchro and Chaos variants were the most popular choices for the online event. The Rescue Rabbit Dino deck getting a lot of success in the recent YCS Brighton was not used in the event but the next one may see it enter the fray along with the new Inzektor archtype. Look forward to a online event, likely in February/March to coincide with the Battle of Kingdoms qualifiers going on to make for good top tier testing! The aim will be to have 16-20 players in either a swiss or knockout format.

Hope to see you soon!
Read story →    0 comments