Friday, February 14, 2014

Legacy of the Valiant Korean World Premieres - Review

Hey guys! Now that we finally have full info on the very first set of Korean World Premieres that were added to Legacy of the Valiant's release, I figured I'd do a quick review of them. Let's get started!


LVAL-KR081 Flowbot

To me, this card looks like an obvious bit of non-themed Sylvan support. I'm thinking Flowbot was also made partly to give the Sylvan deck better access to Meliae of the Trees, since it's honestly a little stupid that the first-ever Plant archetype doesn't even have a good way to summon such a powerful Plant support card. Now, you can begin using Crane Crane as a quick way to summon Meliae, and thanks to Marshalleaf being nearly a 3-of staple, it's not like this is the only target Crane Crane will have going for it. Plus, this card isn't just useful for its stats alone - the reason why it looks like such an obvious support card in the first place is because not just one, but two of its features synergize very strongly with the Sylvan strategy. You not only have more excavation targets to hit, but if you hit this guy, he helps set you up for your next excavation too. This card is honestly great and I hope we get it in the TCG soon. 7/10.


LVAL-KR082 Humpty Dandy

Coming off such an amazing first card, you'd probably be rational to guess that the others will be pretty decent as well, right? Well, Humpty Dandy is here to say no! I'm not sure if there's any hidden use or combo for this card that I'm not aware of, but looking at it by itself, it's bad. Flip Summon Effects are still slow and hard to abuse just like they were before, especially when the only thing they do is give you an ATK boost. Don't get me wrong, 2200 ATK isn't exactly useless, it's just way too small of a payoff for the effort it takes to get this guy to work. Aside from his septum ring, I do love his art though - kind of looks like Ojama King on heroin. 1/10.


LVAL-KR083 Outer God - Nyarla

It seems like this card is meant to be an enabler for decks that use Rank-Up Magic cards, since it can change itself to any Type, Attribute and Rank you could possibly want with the right provisions. Is there a practical, powerful use for that? Honestly, I have absolutely no idea yet. And even if we do find one, I'm not sure that it's worth all of the resources that would go into making this card in the first place, as well as possibly changing his stats.

However, he also makes it easier to play cards like Xyz Shift and Black and White Wave. And it's good that he's still a 2600 wall if he gets Veilered (god forbid), but it would obviously be better if that was an ATK stat instead so that he could kill something. Also, it would be great if merely glancing at this card didn't give me nightmares. 3/10.

LVAL-KR084 Dragonroar

This is another entry in a very small group of cards that basically support the Dragon Rulers without explicitly naming them as beneficiaries, and as such they don't necessarily have to be played with them. Dragonroar is kind of a mixed bag. While it is very difficult to get all 4 elements in the Graveyard for most decks, shuffling a card into the deck is an extremely powerful form of removal and it doesn't even cost you anything related to your card advantage. Plus, it's a Quick-Play Spell and thus extremely versatile as far as timing goes.

I guess if you're playing a deck that can routinely find itself stacking all 4 elements in the Graveyard consistently then this might be something to consider (if you also don't have anything better to do with those monsters and don't mind banishing them), but generally speaking, there are very few decks capable of playing this card competently, and I imagine that most of them would have a hard time making it live in any reasonable time frame anyways. Despite how powerful this card's effect is, we really should be expecting more in exchange for such a tricky, off-the-wall cost. Maybe if it shuffled two cards back? I don't know. I LOVE the art though. 3/10.

LVAL-KR085 Planck Scale

This card is pretty weird, but I don't think it's as bad as it looks. I basically see it as a support card for low-Ranked Xyz monsters, and the best way to use it is probably to create some kind of OTK. I know that better than most people, since I've personally designed decks that could stand to benefit from such a thing.

Basically, the bad news with Planck Scale is that if your deck is relying on an OTK combo that doesn't even kill somebody without this card's help, then it's probably not a great deck. Why? Well, it's a pretty bad gameplan to have to rely on drawing this card, setting it, and then waiting an entire turn to get to use it. The good news is that the card does more than just that one thing - you can obviously use the other half of the effect to shield yourself from some attacks, or even just use the boosting effect to help you kill some random monster that would become a problem otherwise.

But a further issue is that even these utility-boosting aspects of the card could be a lot better. If you're trying to stop attacks for me, then how about you just stop ALL attacks instead of only the ones that come from a niche group of monsters? That sounds like a useful effect to have on hand, especially if I'm hypothetically playing a deck that needs time to gather some combo pieces for an OTK. And if I'm forced to use this card prematurely to defend myself (or kill something), then can't there be something else I can do with it later on when I finally have my combo set up? 3/10.


So altogether, those five scores earn an average of 3.4/10. Not exactly great, but it's way better than nothing. Now all we need to do is keep an eye out for these cards to make an appearance here in the TCG so I can drool over Dragonroar's art in person! Thanks for reading.


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