Let's get things started with one of the best Sneak Promos of all time! Back in the day, Dark Grepher was a huge enabler for Dark Armed Dragon decks due to its ability to not only unload high-level Destiny Heroes and other monsters from your hand without even eating up your Normal Summon, but also was an easy-to-search Warrior and could load the Grave with any number of other great Darks like Plaguespreader Zombie. At present, Dark decks generally aren't doing as well as they have historically, and the ones that have been seeing success are mainly archetype decks that don't have much use for Grepher's services (Gravekeepers, Dark World, Inzektors). It's anyone's guess as to when we'll see this guy become competitive again, or even if. However, I still believe he's a powerful Graveyard filler with a combination of decent stats and great typing. It's just a matter of if we'll ever see another deck that can put him to work. 7.5/10.
081 Darklord Zerato
This card was an amazing finisher in DAD-Return decks back in the day, since you could bring it back off Return along with a slew of other monsters, then clear your opponent's field and kill them before this card would kill itself. But in modern times, I haven't found any killer application for this card yet. There are some cute tricks you can do with it in a dedicated Darklord deck and a combo with Celestial Transformation and Inferno Reckless Summon, but not much that really stood out to me as being viable. 4/10.
082 Darknight Parshath
Finishing with the Dark counterparts, this card is a bit less playable. It's hard for me to put my finger on it, but for some reason this card just isn't that good. 3/10.
083 Deepsea Macrotrema
This seems like some sort of combo enabler, but I somewhat doubt that someone can come up with a combo wherein that attack bonus actually makes a significant difference, such as if you were using it for an OTK. And without any great utility on its own, it'll basically be waiting for said combo to really become relevant. 1/10.
084 Allure of DarknessObviously, any time you have a "draw two" effect as a Normal Spell it bears mentioning. Even far past its glory days and a longtime resident of the Limited list, this card is still amazing. It was a pretty good card design also, allowing you to wait until after drawing to pay the "cost," but punishing you severely if you couldn't come up with the dough. Ultimately, I believe what took this to the list is the simple fact that there are WAY too many playable Dark monsters to have this card be fair at three. It simply gives you too much of a speed advantage over other decks, not to mention how DAD-Return and Tele-DAD would use its "cost" just to set up for some of their best plays. 9/10.
085 Metabo Globster
This card is pretty contradictory. It supports Tribute Summoning by giving you Tokens... but then prevents you from using those Tokens for a Tribute Summon. It's not the worst card ever; it's just strange how it has a very specific trigger and then expressly refuses to reward you in a way that would synergize with those triggers. 2/10.
I'm not sure what Konami's fetish was for printing Fish support WPs back in the day, but this one is pretty damn cool, at least in theory. As with many cards, it still hasn't really found a killer use yet, but it shouldn't be hard to in the future assuming more Fish cards come out. It does suck that this card can't tribute itself, but that would be extremely broken. 7/10.
087 Prime Material Dragon
Although I hate the concept behind this card (please stop letting bad players throw down monsters without thinking...), it's an excellent Dragon support since it allows you to overextend without fear of reprisal. I'm not sure what the anti-burn effect is relevant to, but that's always a nice little asset to have, right? 7.5/10.
088 Lonefire BlossomThe card that single-handedly revolutionized Plant decks everywhere. Now, any Plant can be easily brought to the field straight from your deck, regardless of its stats or anything else. 9/10.
089 Aztekipede, the Worm Warrior
A bit of random support for Insect decks. Aztekipede isn't a very amazing card, but it can be useful to drop a 1900 hitter for free. Still, it'd be nice if he actually did something... well, worthwhile. Milling a card is about as random as it gets, and there's absolutely no guarantee that what you milled won't help your opponent in the end. 2.5/10.
So, that brings the average rating for this set to 5.25/10. Easily the best average from all of the sets I've reviewed so far, to the best of my knowledge. Thanks for reading, and in a few days we'll take a look at the World Premieres from Light of Judgment.
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