Thursday, May 2, 2013

TACHYON GALAXY PREVIEW: Totem Bird

http://www.konami.com/yugioh/articles/?p=4890

Here we go again! Unexpectedly coming only one day after Monday's double-preview, here is the latest World Premiere reveal from LTGY:


Totem Bird
Wind / 3 / Winged-Beast / 1900 / 1400
2 Level 3 WIND monsters
During either player’s turn, when a Spell/Trap Card is activated: You can detach 2 Xyz Materials from this card; negate the activation, and if you do, destroy it. This card loses 300 ATK while it has no Xyz Materials.

So, I think we can instantly draw some comparisons to Evolzar Laggia here. It's basically a more balanced, lower-ATK version of Laggia that can't stop a Summon while also being exclusive to the Wind attribute. It seems like the general consensus throughout the community so far is that, while cool, this card isn't quite enough. It has awkward requirements that make it tough to summon, and the low ATK is off-putting. 

I would suggest making it Rank 4, but then Harpies (and possibly MPBs) would instantly make it way too good. So I guess the next path of action would be to simply hang on to this card until more Level 3 Wind monsters are released... the only problem is, Konami doesn't seem to give quite as much support to the Wind attribute as they do others, so that could end up being a long wait. Even LTGY itself, supposedly the "wind support set", has very few cards that actually DO anything for Winds (which I'm guessing is the reason why this card was even made in the first place). 

The ATK drop also seems strange. 1900 is not especially powerful for an Xyz monster in the first place (just ask Steelswarm Roach), so why exactly did they feel it needed to drop as a trade-off for using its effect? If I could've, I'd have made this card have 2000 ATK with no drop. It's only fair when you consider how extremely narrow the opportunities are for summoning this card with the card pool we currently have. Though it does make opening with double Kageki in Samurai not quite as bad, if you can find the space in your Extra Deck. 

I will say though that this card can be devastating when dropped at the right time in a play sequence going for a big offensive push, similar to how one of my versions of a Uranus Agent card would function. The big problem is... does that strategy even really exist yet? The answer is probably no - although I could always be proven wrong, it looks as if the sheer lack of Wind monsters in the game is seriously hurting this card's viability, and it honestly doesn't seem as if this problem will ease for some time. This coupled with unimpressive stats means there is definitely something left to be desired, even though the effect can often be very powerful. So that's all for now, thanks for reading!

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