Jump Festa 2013 Promo Review pt. 2

Here I am again! Let's go over these last four cards. As always, if you don't already know what they do or need a refresher, you can check here.

Beast God Vulcan

This card strikes me a bit as a replacement of Brionac. It's worth noting that the way it's being translated right now, you can still summon a Monster you bounce with his effect, then attack with it or do whatever. As long as you don't activate its effects, you're fine to do whatever the fuck you want, and I think that's pretty good. His stats are a bit icky for a Level 6 Synchro, but being able to throw away any opposing Extra Deck card or get a problem card out of the way for a more productive turn is something that I feel really shouldn't be ignored. Also, kick ass artwork.


Armor Kappa

 At first I thought this was just some decent Rank 2. It can use its effect to ensure that it survives a turn of attacks to become a 2400 attacker or 3000 defender in its own right, which are cool stats to have for a Rank 2. But then I realized that not only is this card Water, but it also discards for its effect... ATLANTEANS!!! What really makes this creepy though is the fact that most builds of Atlantean Mermails currently use two or three Deep Sea Diva, making this card very easy to bring out in those decks at times. So it works well with that deck, back to the card itself. I like that you can protect ALL your monsters with his one discard - that's really getting some bang for your buck. This card can probably do some pretty sweet late-game comebacks, given the right opportunity.

Secret Sanctuary of the Spellcasters

(There is a small discrepancy between the translations on the Wikia and on Manjyome. It would be better if this card only affected the opponent as Manjyome says, but regardless you probably wouldn't be running that many non-Spellcaster type monsters alongside this card anyways.) This card reminds me a lot of the Madolche theme - once you get all the parts and pieces in place, it'll bust your nuts to try fighting back. The trouble is getting everything set up in the first place, and this card is even worse at that. Just to clarify - you must not only have a Spellcaster type out to keep this card from self-destructing, but you also have to have another face-up Spell Card to resolve its effect. I won't lie, I'm glad this card kind of sucks because the effect is such a powerful potential contributor to a lockdown. Imagine if your opponent had this and Secret Village out at the same time (which is obviously the point of referencing that card in the name in the first place)? All of a sudden, Yugioh isn't very fun anymore. But at least this card is difficult to get running and even harder to keep running.

Token Christmas

 Not so easy to use right off the bat, but I'll bet some strategies out there (like the upcoming Phantom Beast Planes, from LTGY) can do something interesting with this card. There's really a lot of built-in difficulty though; let's run down the list:

1. Have more than one Token out - this already cuts down the number of decks you can use this with drastically.

2. They both have to have the same Level - If you're playing a deck that does summon a lot of Tokens, this one shouldn't be that difficult.

3. You have to have the exact same number of graveyard targets as the number of Tokens you tribute - Anybody who plays Yugioh knows that controlling your Graveyard can be very hard.

4. Those targets all have to have the same level too! - Wait, was that not hard enough? Let's make it even harder!

5. They can't use their effects - Kind of an obvious restriction nowadays with all of the powerful monsters that exist, but it still sucks.

6. They're nuked in the End Phase - it's way less worth it to even use this on your opponent's turn, so they basically made it a Trap for no reason other than to make sure you can't use it that quickly.

On the bright side, you can still attack with and overlay with the monsters you bring back, which can be useful sometimes. But outside of some crazy combo I haven't seen or thought of yet, overall, this card really sucks. At least the artwork is good imo.

Well guys, that's it. I hope again that I was able to help illuminate some of the uses for these new cards. Thanks for reading!