Let's cover the final six exclusives!
Alright, I've got a LOT to say about this card.
1. It's basically meant to be support for the Fire Kings that will be coming out in the Structure Deck next month, but why on earth any sane person would use this over Goka is completely unknown to me. The comparison between those two cards reminds me of comparing Megalo to Leed; having to use more cards in its summon just makes it less viable.
2. I know a lot of you are wondering why this is Secret - don't worry, you're not alone. But if you compare this to Megalo instead of Leed, you can see that Konami is basically trying to get idiots who don't know much about Fire Kings (or building a deck entirely) to buy a lot of packs in search of this hard-to-pull card that supposedly works SO well with them. That being said, this card barely deserves to be a Rare in my opinion.
3. Sure it's cool that you could trigger two Fire Kings at once, but if you really had two Fire Kings out at the same time why would you want to give them up solely for the sake of this card who has no other effects of its own? (To me, that was the real mistake they made - not giving it any effect to use once it actually hits the field.) Not to mention the Fire Kings don't even really hang on to their field presence well enough to keep two monsters out very often in the first place, but hey - if you were really uninformed enough to think this card was worth playing, then you probably wouldn't even know that much in the first place.
4. Also of note is the fact that you must destroy two Fires whenever this card is Special Summoned - use your Reborn wisely. However, even a card this bad does still have its uses. As far as I can tell, if you don't control at least two Fires you don't activate the effect which is a nice technicality. You can also pair this with Fire Formation - Tenken and Skill Drain to negate its effects; Skill Drain being particularly potent as you could summon copies over and over as basically a free 2600 hitter. Conveniently, Skill Drain also works VERY well with the Fire Kings, but to be totally honest with you I bet Konami didn't even think of that when they were conceptualizing this card.
085 Mystical Fairy ElfuriaAs I said in Part 1, I believe this card is very interesting and unique. We've never seen an effect anything like this before, and to top it off, she's gorgeous. But those qualities don't exactly make her worth playing. Let's consider that there are about five different Wind themed decks - Harpies, Mist Valley, Dragunities, Gusto, and Phantom Beastcrafts. Which of these five decks would find it worthwhile to use their Normal Summon (or any other resources) on summoning this card instead of something that actually contributes to the goals of the theme? This card is cute, not gamebreaking. It's just a cool little trick that you can do if you happen to be really committed to Wind monsters and your opponent is really committed to Xyz summoning. If there were a lot more Wind attribute Spellcasters out there, then this could probably see some actual play - which reminds me, had they made it Psychic it would have been automatically playable in Gusto! Actually, now that I think about it, it's still somewhat usable in Gusto because that deck barely Xyz summons in the first place, plus it can reveal several different levels. But again, why on earth anybody would use this card to block random plays instead of using on-theme cards that actually advance their own agenda is a question for the noobs.
This card helps to bring the Noble Knight theme together, although if this is going to be their only Xyz then the deck is a little lackluster. Still, I applaud this card for helping massively in its own regard. You might think that in the wake of a successful Medraut + Arfeudutyr play, an effect that destroys backrow would be a little overkill. BUT, you can use this to destroy your own Noble Arms cards and re-equip them to use their effects over again, as well as discouraging your opponent from setting cards. Not to mention this card apparently avoids Starlight, which is a huge plus.
I'm pleasantly surprised to see a card being released that features such titillating artwork - wait for the Japanese release and then you'll see some REAL shit. Again, Konami is trying to give out some specific support but not doing too well at it. It's cool that Pyro focused decks have a Rank 4 that can reach 2700 ATK - believe me, it is. But the whole "banish 3" effect strikes me as very random and not a good contributor to actually winning a game, although on the bright side it's relatively easy to trigger it if you really need to. There are cards like Goka, Bonfire Colossus, and Generation Shift that can do so - the problem is that you're still not winning the fucking game. There must be some sort of combo or archetype that this card can really help, but I honestly cannot think of a single one. And while I will definitely concede that keeping the boost until the opponent's End Phase is decent so that they can't take advantage of the stat drop, would it really have been that bad to let the damn thing keep its ATK boosts? I'd rather the card do something like:
"(ONLY TWO FIRE MONSTERS. They don't have to be fucking Pyro types anymore.) Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; it gains 400 ATK. If this card has more than 2200 ATK: You can banish up to 2 cards from either player's Graveyard. This effect of "Infernal Flame Vixen" can only be activated once per turn."
Wouldn't that be so much better? But oh well. At least she's still fucking sexy.
Spellcasters have enough support, Konami. Now would be a good time to stop, since this card is pretty decent. For the price of not being able to kill someone, the first effect lets you avoid Warning, Bottomless, Torrential and make it slightly tougher for your opponent to Veiler you. The second locks down Mirror Force, Dimensional Prison, Gorz and Tragoedia. This is a pretty cool card, but I'm not sure if many Spellcaster decks will find room for it. You might be better off playing Typhoon, Lance and Spellbook of Wisdom which can protect you from a much wider range of threats. But still, I like this one.
It can be a little difficult to stack counters on this thing. You can only add counters on one occasion per turn,* and they can only be added from effect destruction. Again, Fire decks have the tools to gear up for that kind of situation, but a card this specific really merits its own particular deck rather than just random tech in an established Fire King strategy. Which is not to say that you couldn't do something like that - it's just that you'd probably rather play other cards instead of "random burn explosion trap huehuehuehue." Overall, I don't think this card is exactly horrible (Typhoon dilemma anyone?): it's just not something you'd typically want to waste deck space on. Which, come to think of it is kind of a recurring theme for these exclusives.
*This card appears to be worded so that if multiple Fire monsters are destroyed at once, it can get counters for all of them. Just like Bonfire, it's a nice little loophole, but not enough to make this really great.
So thanks for reading my reviews, guys. If you have a dissenting opinion about any of the cards, I'd love to hear it in the comments. I'll hopefully be posting my "hits and misses" sometime during this week. See you later!
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