Card of the Week #19: Doomcaliber Knight

Cannot be Special Summoned. During either player's turn, when a monster effect is activated: Tribute this face-up card; negate the activation, and if you do, destroy that monster.

I wanted to review this card from quite some time, yesterday talking with a friend of mine I thought about reviewing this today, and so it was. Here, have some rulings:
-Tributing is a cost;
-The "cannot be special summoned" part of the effect is a condition;
-This effect does not target.

The first two don't need explanations, just keep in mind that you can use his effect even with skill drain on the field and that that "cannot be special summoned" can't be avoided no matter what.
The third one, instead, is a logical thing. As you all know, you can't target cards in hand or deck, so if this card hits a card in hand or deck, this means it can't target. That's the same reasoning that's behind Trishula's rulings.

Let's take a close look, shall we?
DARK, yeah, supports, and given his effect even chaos fodder;
LV4, usually a lovely level, but with this card it doesn't really matter, just keep that in mind for eventualities;
Fiend, some other good supports;
Stats, 1900 ATK is great, and everyone seems to forget that this card has a great defense, too, 1800 is really something.

I love this card, that's it. Great stats with great effect. Negate monster's effect to stop their plays, at the worst it's 1 for 1 trade, so it doesn't matter, expecially if you have some cards to back you up.

Well, why this card? As you should know, I like controllish and antimetish things, so that cards that are always there in these decks are my favourite ones. To be honest, I hated Doomcaliber initially, probably because of some bad experiences I had against him, but then I started playing chaos stun for something like 2/3 formats (before BLS was limited again) and this became one of the big three of the deck, alongside Thunder King and Chaos Sorcerer.

Why is doomcaliber so awesome? Doomcaliber has a particular ability: can negate any monster's effect, no matter where and when. The problem is that his effect is mandatory, but that's not a problem if you can work with him. Summon this, set 1 warn, 1 bribe and 1 dimensional prison and you are ready to win. While playing this card the main thing you need to control is YOUR field, and not only your opponent's. If you have nothing to back you up after you use his effect you're probably done for. I'd rather not summon him in place of sumoning him without any back-up plans or other antimetish cards in the backrow.
While you have to play being aware of this, this card is great because it can destroy giant monsters if they have mandatory effects or stop your opponent from using them if they don't have anything else to kill doomcaliber. If they do have them, you have your backrows, so anything's fine and you'll continue stopping your opponent's cards while locking your opponent's monster's effect with your still-on-the-field Doomcaliber Knight.

A pro that's at the same time a con is that doomcaliber can negate cards from everywhere, both fields, both hands, both decks, both graveyards, both banished zones, basically everywhere.
While this can be used from your opponent to kill your doomcaliber without high costs, or sometimes without any cost at all (treeborn frog is an example), you can use this to stop your opponent's key monster's effects, like the only monster's effect that inzektors will need to start comboeing, that rescue rabbit your opponent is trying to use, that Stratos your opponent is trying to summon (that has a mandatory effect, of course), that dark world's effect that your opponent used wasting a discard card only to kill that 2200 beater you have on the field (cause he gets the 300 ATK bonus from gateway, of course) and so on.

Speaking of Dark World, even though I never played them competitively recently, I started building an antimeta build that features triple doomcaliber. I'm actualyl developing this with a friend of mine that's way more expert than me about this deck, but I definitely think it has potential.
Being able to generate +1s or generally not to go into some -1s, and the ability to play skill drain, it makes Dark World a perfect deck for antimeta/control. Being Doomcaliber fiend, too, he gets the +300 ATK from gateway, making him a 2200 beater against TK or even cyber dragon, while being able to stop effects from the hand or graveyard, other than field if skill drain is not active.

I should, one day, do a general guide to control and antimeta decks, I felt the need of it sometimes.

Well, this was all, hope you liked the card and the post. Check out LFN and YGO's post about him, too, as he did a fast post about that card mained against the meta.
See Ya.