Card of the Week #18: Wind-Up Rabbit

During either player's turn: You can target 1 "Wind-Up" monster you control; banish it until your next Standby Phase. This effect can be used only once while this card is face-up on the field.

Yeah, mainstream card, but there's a reason. Some rulings, first:
This card can banish itself.
This card is RETURNED on the field, not special summoned.
This card's effect is SS2, so you can chain it to cards like dark hole or trap hole.

Nothing to explain, just that they all show why this card is awesome.

Let's take a close look:
Wind-Up, great archetype we've got, with tons of supports.
EARTH, yeah, yet other supports.
LV3, more and more uses.
Beast-Warrior, Horn-friendly.
Stats, 1400 ATK, goes under BTH, but that doesn't matter since this card could avoid it anyway, but <1500 ATK is a key for cards like Giant Rat. 600 DEF, low, but you won't use this, anyway.

So, why am I reviewing such a mainstream card? You know I tend to hate mainstream things, but this one is different: I fell in love with it.
Basically, I started using this in madolches because it was a LV3 monster that stayed for looong time on the field that could have go into invoker with mew (that summoned a Gelato from the hand to get a search), SS another gelato from the deck and do Excalibur or, obviously, Tiaramisu.
After that, I started playing it in Yubel, since it was a mainstay on the field that would never get rid, so that I could use it to slowly beat the opponent.
Then, the Rabbit-mania appeared. I'm playing it in tons of places, wherever it has a little of use and I have an engine that can do semi-consistently R3s to go into Zenmaity.

The card itself is a star in Wind-Ups since it can trigger Factory and Magician with ease, comboeing and such.
However, what are the points in this card that makes it so awesome?
Being Wind-Up has some supports, if you want to try something strange splashing them into something else, just be sure to play tour guide since she's indirectly a recruiter for wind-ups with zenmaity.
Being EARTH is also quite awesome, and being LV3 could let you go into Naturia Synchros.
Being SS2, this card survives to pretty much everything.
Since it returnes instead of SS, you can use this card to avoid things like Black Garden, and that's the main reason why I wanted to talk about this in first place.
Using this with black garden could, theorically, be a 2800 Beater that avoids pretty much everything, supportable via horn that is theorically again a 1600 ATK bonus on all the beast monsters. Great deck, I should re-build it for this meta.
Garden slows down opponent's moves, generates tokens to ATK to deal damages to the opponent, and if you summon waghu at full ATK, too, you should have already won the game.
Along with the World Tree you should be able to fully control the field, wanghu controls <1400 ATK monsters, garden reduces their attacks to not let wanghu be destroyed, and world tree destroys anything, maybe even burden of the mighty to control even more opponent's monsters.
Using Horns to gain card advantage and ATK advantage, rabbit that's a 2800 attacker, Evilswarm Thunderbird (OCG) that is a 3900 attacker, that should be good enough with some protection for your field spell, for your wanghu and eventually your world tree.
Good deck is good.

Well, this was quite all, today I'm kinda tired, and I've got to play the piano briefly as an audition for a band, but that's not the problem, lol.
See Ya.

Leyvaten LaDD Loop

You can Special Summon this card from your hand or your Graveyard by removing from play 1 face-up monster you control equipped with a "Dragunity" card(s). When this card is Normal or Special Summoned, you can select 1 Dragon-Type monster in your Graveyard, except "Dragunity Arma Leyvaten", and equip it to this card. When this card is sent to the Graveyard by your opponent's card effect, you can select 1 of the monsters that were equipped to this card when it was sent to the Graveyard, and Special Summon that monster from the Graveyard.

The LeyvaLaDD Loop, it always fascinated me. For those who don't know, the Leyva-LaDD Loop is a loop that uses Leyvaten to equip LaDD with its effect, and then, when Leyva or LaDD is destroyed, you use LaDD's effect to SS Leyva and equip it with LaDD once again, forming a loop.
I always liked this one, since it was, theorically, a 2600 ATK Wind-Up Rabbit (always stays on field, this more often than rabbit), only it has few holes:
1."When...You can" effect on this card's equpping effect;
2.Banishing or bouncing cards, that would break the loop;
3.Destroying your whole field.

Quite some holes, aren't they?
However, reading some cards recently and thinking (at school, we were doing math, I just didn't want to do anything and wrote some random things on my diary while thinking on this), I noticed how lots of these holes can be fixed:
1.Can't, but there aren't lots of cards that will make it lose the timing.
2.That was quite the problem back in time, but since no one plays D.D.Crows anymore, it's good, and veilers just stop the loop without breaking your set-up.
3.As we learnt with Yubel, it's not that big of a problem if we do play cards that can be chained and can survive to a mass nuke. Feel free to try Tour Engine+Rabbit.

The loop is kinda flexible, you have multiple ways to trigger it and to set-up it, and if you lack something, you can still play and stall, like leyva, equip redmd, once leyva is destroyed, SS redmd, if he survives, SS Leyva back during your turn and equip something else.

What's more this deck can count on some draw cards, such as:
1.Advance Draw, if you use it on Leyva with LaDD equipped it's basically a PoG;
2.Trade-In, helps set-upping, lets you draw other pieces for the combo other than the one you just discarded;
3.Cards of Consonance, we play aklys, and sometimes even phalanx, being both searchable via ravine, that's not bad.

To set-up the grave we've got, other than trade-in, even ravine, that's searchable via terraforming.

To revive Leyva to start the loop we've got REDMD, virtually 3 call of the haunted, monster reborn and LaDD itself, other than normal summoning, but that's quite hard to achieve.

To summon ladd and control a bit we can even use Photon Sanctuary, if you like, but we play few LIGHT monsters, I believe they aren't enough.

Mystellatein isn't a bad choice, too, but it's for more pure builds, with phalanx it's either double tribute fodder or LV8 Synchro.


Sadly recently I've got some problems on DN, I can't stay logged for more than 20 minutes, usually, after that it automatically closes, still trying to understand it. For this reason, I've got no time to test and fix, so it's subsequently hard to update the blog, but I believe I can do something.

Stay Tuned.

Card of the Week #17: Gravekeeper's Spy

FLIP: Special Summon 1 "Gravekeeper's" monster with 1500 or less ATK from your deck.

GKs, yup. No rulings for this one, easy and short effect.
Let's take a close look:
-Gravekeeper monster, supports, supports everywhere, necrovalley mainly.
-DARK, should I say something? This attribute has probably the higher number of supports, probabl even more of the LIGHT one.
-Spellcaster, spellcaster support, wonder wand, and Secret Village of the Spellcasters (yeah, lol).
-Stats, nice body, 1200 ATK and 2000 DEF, respectively 1700 and 2500 under Necrovalley, great, isn't it?

Set this, opponent attacks, get another monster, possibly XYZ or Synchro. I really like this card, it was a quite popular engine alongside guard or descendant, before the tour engine appeared.
I want to talk about this card because of some things I'm thinking of. I really hate laggia, so I like Snowman Eater a lot, I was going to review that, but then I noticed that it was in the main page of wikia, so I decided not to. Thinking of some cards with a similar effect, I thought of guard. 1900 DEF, bounce effect, not bad, really. However the review is on Spy, and not Guard, and there's a reason. In quite some time I learnt some tricks with Spy. Other than being a R4, he is compatible with Necrovalley to be a 2500 body, to give quite some problems to the already named Laggia, but even without it you can take care of cards like Thunder King. However, leaving apart this ordinary stuff, I learnt how this card's type is awesome. Spy, Summon another GK, bounce the other GK (if you summoned one that's not LV4) for Birdman, then go into Arcanite with Spy. If you summon a LV4 gravekeeper you can then just bounce Spy to reuse it and go into arcanite however. But, that's not all, if you bring Recruiter you can bounce Spy to reuse it and go into a random LV6 Synchro, while searching with Recruiter's effect. However, the main thing is Secret Village of Spellcasters. I truly love that card. Summon Spy, he gets attacked but not destroyed, get a monster, activate Village and have two bodies (one of them is 2000 DEF, the other could be pretty much anything) that lock your opponent's spells. A thing like this would be game against Dark World, but even heroes can't do too much, based on the build, though. Just solemn once their Stratos and you've won.
Just think of a deck that plays Gravekeeper's Spy, Gravekeeper's Guard, Gravekeeper's Descendant, Gravekeeper's Recruiter, Birdman, Village, Necrovalley (well, good card, if you play against a spellcaster deck you don't want to lose right away during game 1, do you?), tons of protection...
I like it.
Good Match-Up against Dark World, Rabbit Laggia, little advantage against Wind-Up, sad match-up against Inzektors, Chaos Dragon and Magical post-ABYR. Inzektor can be killed just using some protections before he can pull off some loops and comboes, Chaos Dragon puts quite some giant monsters on the field, so it's difficult to win against them, but if you manage to go into colossal fighter you should have win, while Magical is quite different. If you have Village, they'll bypass the spell-locking effect, but if you have Necrovalley they'll kill it right after activating their field spell, that they can search way faster than us. I'm siding Cursed Seal of the Forbidden Spell for that exact reason. If you can forbid the opponent's field spell, you shouldn't have problems anymore against spellcaster decks, go into necrovalley and you're just fine. With the side deck we can shift into a village-only build, against decks that do automatically lose against this card, or into a regular (or little teched) gravekeeper, so that you can use the advantages you still have.
I was even thinking of a little madolche engine. 3 Majoleine, 1 Butlerusk, get to search what you need, but that's just a concept.

Just for the sake of knowing, I wrote this without any pre-thinking, since the planned CotW would have been Snowman Eater, so I improvised everything.
That's All, Stay Tuned.

Beast: Potential and Uses

I'm actually working on Beast decks, with uniflora and such, abusing of Naturia Beast (and Barkion, too, sad it is Dragon). I must say this, it is quite awesome. It still is a beta version, but it works just good. I'm going to review this the next week, I believe I will have improved it until then.
So, so, Beasts, why are they awesome? They've got a personal reborner, and a reborner for the reborner itself, usable once per turn each turn. What's more, we've got search power with Key Mouse, field presence with Chain Dog, that offers material for synch and XYZ, and an instant lv4 Synchro with Lock Cat. We've got some mill power with ryko, and super-nimble mega hamster that searches ryko, so technically more mill power, or other cards. If the opponent summons a first turn zenmaines and attacks your face-down hamster, you'll get to summon your key mouse, and, during your turn, synch them both into naturia beast. Kinka can SS Key Mouse, too, and go into formula to draw one card, or you can summon uniflora with kinka and then SS naturia beast with uniflora's effect, effectively summoning naturia beast with kinka-byo.

This deck has a main advantage, though, it's card advantage.
Summon Kinka, SS Uniflora, eff Uniflora, SS Naturia Beast, bounce back kinka during the end phase. Clear +1. Or even double chain dog into lavalval chain, that should result into 1 lavalval chain, and 1 XYZ LV4. +2.
The main disadvantage this deck has is the limitation on the monsters usable. Only beasts.

As said, I'll do a review on the deck, but here are some cards I do play, I'll explain them on the review, though:
Dark Desertapir
Green Baboon
X-Saber Airbellum


Well, well, I won't spoiler anything else, just wait for the review on the deck.
Stay Tuned.

La Paura: Yubel

Monsters: [20]

3 Armageddon Knight

3 Dark Grepher

2 Doom Shaman

1 Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys

1 Sangan

2 Tour Guide

3 Wind-Up Rabbit

2 Yubel

2 Yubel - Terror Incarnate

1 Yubel - the Ultimate Nightmare

Spells: [11]

1 Allure of Darkness

1 Dark Hole

1 Foolish Burial

1 Heavy Storm

1 Monster Reborn

3 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Reinforcement of the Army

2 Swing of Memories

Traps: [9]

3 Call of the Haunted

3 Limit Reverse

1 Solemn Judgment

2 Starlight Road

The extra is kinda randomish, but it's ok, I'd say I'll add an Excalibur since I forgot him, maybe -1 giga-brilliant, since it was there just to fill some slots.

Before continuing with the deck, though, I wanted to talk about the title. Reading some of my posts, I noticed how the titles were plain and reduced to the essential. I just wanted to enphatize them a little more, so I decided to use some Italian words in the title, to give something more. I'll translate what it does mean at the end of every post with that kind of title, just wait till the end of the post.

Continuing to the deck, I like it very much, it's still under quite some testing, but it does work wonderfully. I'm thinking of a second nephthys, or an hand of nephthys, probably the second one, but don't know what to take out, maybe an allure since I never want to banish anything.

What about the deck itself? It is quite good, because I play 3 grephers, 3 armageddons, 1 reinforcement of the army, 1 foolish burial, for a total of 8 cards to pitch yubel/shaman. What's more we have 3 call of the haunted, 3 limit reverse, 2 swing of memories and 1 monster reborn, for a total of 9 reborners, excluding shaman himself, of course.
This deck does work because of opponent's MSTs and random backrow hate. Given this, you can even SS your yubel with call to prevent OTKs and if the opponent uses MST or something to kill yubel during the battle phase, you'll get another one. Since this other one is immune to MST there aren't many choices, if you want to do something, just go in MP2, but this has blocked your opponent's OTK, and we're fine with that.
Aside this -1 generator for the opponent, we have a terminator on the field when the first yubel is killed, Terror Incarnate. During your end phase, this 0/0 not destructible via battle and when removed from the field it summons another yubel, destroys all the monsters except itself on the field. Removing opponent's monsters is a piece of cake, then. Since this does prevent OTKs and even stops people that try to accumulate monsters to win after they have quite some resources, this card is so awesomely good. However this itself isn't game winning, and there our 3 main condition arrive:
1.Wind-Up Rabbit, the easier to achieve, a 1400 beater that survives pretty much to everything, even your incarnate. Since this is searchable from both sangan and zenmaity, other than being played in three copies, at mid game you usually have 2 or 3 of them, and once your opponent has no monsters you can directly attack with them. Good Card is Good.
2.Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys, awesome one. Consider that being at 1 and not searchable, except via foolish+reborner, it is harder to achieve, but it works awesomely. Kills all of the S/Ts while your incarnate kills all of the monsters. 2400 ATK, good one, that's why I'd like to put Hand in, to use this more frequently.
3.Yubel - the Ultimate Nightmare, well, more of a win condition this is something that lets you win the game. Kills your opponent monsters without any problem, deals some damages, and then direct attack with your other cards. Sad it gets killed via incarnate's effect, but consider that reborning a yubel while incarnate is on the field will mean you'll have a nightmare and an incarnate, not bad.

What's more, we do have another card that helps us winning: Wind-Up Zenmaines. This card isn't destroyed via incarnate's effect, but it kills an opponent's S/T, clearing the field to atk with Rabbits and such. Another good card.

However, what lets this deck win is its ability to start comboeing, there are tons of ways to summon incarnate, let's see the main ones:
Blind MST, the main one, your opponent MSTs your face-down Call or Limit, you just do chain it on yubel and you'll have your opponent crying because he minused just to give you your key monster.
End Phase Limit Reverse, during the opponent end phase, activate limit reverse and SS yubel, during your turn, turn yubel in DEF and have your incarnate.
Doom Shaman, have shaman on the field with his effect enabled, SS Yubel, during the end phase tribute Shaman for Yubel's effect, then destroy Yubel for shaman's effect and have your incarnate.

I believe that's all. Hope you liked it, try it if you want, just be sure you have some time before starting, because it will take at least 10 minutes, exceptions aside.
And, as post closer, "La Paura" means "The Fright/Terror". The first translation is more appropriate, but the second one is perfect for the post.

Card of the Week #16: Arcana Force XXI - The World

When this card is Summoned, toss a coin: ● Heads: During your End Phase, you can send 2 monsters you control to the Graveyard to skip your opponent's next turn. ● Tails: During your opponent's Draw Phase, add the top card of their Graveyard to their hand.

Awww~ this card brings back memories. Well, let's see some rulings:
You can't tribute tokens or any monster if macro cosmo or dimensional fissure is on the field for this card's heads effect.
This card can be sent, alongside another card, to pay this card's cost (for heads effect).

Rapid explanation to the first one:
That's because this card specifically says that you need to send them to the grave, and not randomly tribute or destroy.
Let's give it a close look, then:
Arcana Force, got some supports, we'll see some later, but mainly light barrier;
LIGHT, tons and tons of supports, if needed, even chaos material;
LV8, Trade-In-able, then you can draw and SS it back from the grave to use its effect;
Fairy-type, quite some supports, one could say they're few, and it wouldn't be wrong, but there are some quite useful for us, we'll see some later;
Stats, 3100 for both, awesome stats, almost nothing can run over this thing.

Awesome card. I believe anyone tried at least one time the World Lock, right? For new players, a World Lock consists of using this card's effect to repeatedly make your opponent skip his turn, and subsequently winning.
I decided to review this card mainly to talk widely about the world lock, because it has pretty much no uses outside this deck, not even in arcana force deck.

Performing the Loop
There are multiple ways to perform the loop. Before anything else, you must have the World with its Heads effect enabled, usually light barrier is used, but even Reversal of Fate is a popular card. Then, once this is settled, what about the tribute fodder? Here are quite some engines:
Frog/Samsara Engine, double tribute fodder, good, probably the one best known, but it needs you to have no spell/traps. This one is bad. If you want to use reversal, you can't summon treeborn, if you want to use light barrier, you can't summon lotus. Meh engine, there's something way better.
Double Samsara Engine, slower than the one over here, but at least you can use reversal of fate. Sadly, reversal isn't searchable, so this makes this engine quite bad.
Drill Warrior Engine, probably one of the best. This engine is quite good because it has speed mainly, but even because if you can't summon the world, you've got one more win condition. Basically, go into Drill Warrior, SS 2 Eaters, banish drill and tribute the 2 eaters for World's effect, SS back drill on your turn, SS 2 eaters, rinse and repeat. This does work because the World says "send to the graveyard", and not "tribute". What's more, you can use eaters themselves as tribute fodder for world. Let's say you summon drill warrior, SS double eater, tribute them for world, eat two levels from world, banish drill, tribute the two eaters for world's effect, rinse and repeat.
TragoEater Engine, it's like the drill warrior engine, only that this one is less specific. Summon Trago, SS the two eaters, tribute them for world, eat from tragoedia and tribute eaters for World. When you've only few levels on tragoedia, just copy an high level monster's level and continue.
Ninja/Bazoo Scout Plane Engine, use scout planes as tribute fodder for world's effect, then banish them with Dark Ninja or Bazoo the Soul Eater, and retrieve them. Ninja is more searchable, but Bazoo has an hidden gem: since the opponent's end phase will never come, its atk will never decrease, so you can infinitely increase its attack.

The ones I like the most are the Drill Warrior Engine, the TragoEater and the Scout Plane one, even if I see this one less stable compared to the other two, but consider that trago isn't searchable, so either you send it to the grave and then reborn or something like that, or you hope into drawing that.

Good Cards
Good cards to abuse the situation we're in:
Psi-Blocker, banish one card's use, next turn banish another one while still having the first banished. That's because your opponent's end phase will never come, like Bazoo. Good card, you can use this to prevent cards on World's summon, and then continue forbidding other cards.
Number 16: Shock Master, another good card, sad this does block your own cards too, and is quite difficult to bring, expecially if compared to psi-blocker. The one above is preferable.

I like Psi-Blocker alot, I'm using it in lots of decks actually, good card is good.

Advantages and Disadvantages
The deck has its PROs, but even has its CONs, as everything in this world (yeah, random wannabe-cool statement):
PROs
If the opponent has nothing on the activation of main things (world's summon, world's eff, crows on eaters and such), he's in a worst situation than if he was facing a yata lock, since even an eventual necro gardna wouldn't save him.
Is truly funny and can play even if you can't do the loop, but changes from situation to situation.

CONs
Takes quite some time to set-up, but luck has a great part in here.
It's not meant to be competitive, but if you were looking for a funny deck, you've got it.

Overall:
Awesome Card for a Good Deck. Card is funny, that's all. (Awesome stats, and love the Artwork for some reason)

That's All Folks.

Yubels, Guess Who's Back? Back Again? Yubel's Back!

For those who don't know, the title was referring to Without Me, by Eminem.

Yeah, yeah, yubels, love them. I always loved this archetype because of it's destruction ability. I believe the main reason I love this is because of the fact it was the first original deck I built by myself. Macro Yubel, actually, using Scout Planes and Survivors to have a giant field advantage against the opponent, while having the antimetish factor offered from macro. At that time, XYZs didn't exist, but they would have been a great power-up for the deck.
So, recently, I found myself reading some old cards on wikia, and accidentally read "Yubel". Aw yeah, there we go. I started working on that, and actually built something that works. I'm into WU Rabbit recently, once I started using it in Madolches, I'm thinking of it pretty much everywhere, and after quite some time (well, not really, actually just 5 minutes), I realized it was perfect for the theme.
Let's firstly say, for those who don't know, that a yubel deck aims to the second form of yubel, terror incarnate, since it can litterally wipe out the field, while being the last man standing, not attackable (or, to be precise, is attackable, but no player would like to do that). What if we combine this with something that's not on the field during this card's effect's activation but that comes back later? Free advantage over the opponent.
I'm actually playing a great sending&reviving engine (3 grepher, 3 armageddon, 1 reinforcement of the army, 1 foolish burial, 3 call of the haunted, 3 limit reverse, 1 monster reborn, 2 swing of memories), that usually makes yubel incarnate during your first or second turn. While easily setupping this and destroying opponent's plays, we have to patiently wait for Wind-Up Rabbits (considering how we thin the deck, that's not even that hard) or tutor some with tour guide into tour guide into zenmaity into rabbit. After we did this, we're constantly in advantage over the opponent, if he doesn't want to die from Rabbit's attacks, he'll have to summon something, that can't attack neither rabbit nor incarnate (if he attacks rabbit, you'll just chain its effect, if he attacks incarnate, he's kinda dumb, and it will make no damage to us), then incarnate will destroy that monster, and the opponent minused of one just to avoid a simple 1400 direct attack. What if we have multiple rabbits, though? That'll be 2800, or even 4200, giant total attacks, aren't they?
However, once you encounter madolches (it happens, I did it, the single game last 1h and 10m, that because he wanted to end the game and I had to have dinner, but we were about to finish it, anyway) you'll have some hard time, since they recycle them forever, while accumulating cards. That's why I do play a teched Sacred Phoenix of Nephtys. 2400 ATK beater, destroyed in end, when summoned gets rid of chateau and other S/Ts, while incarnate gets rid of monsters. That'll make your opponent losing lots and lots of cards.
Don't know how much experience you do have, but probably you do know PACMAN, don't you? It's a quite awesome deck I'm playing actually, along with this, madolches and other things I'm trying, that goes into many +1s with des lacooda, while getting rid of opponent's resources with swarm of locust/medusa worm, and burning lps with stealth bird, wave-motion cannon and magical cylinder, while stalling with swords of revealing light and messenger of peace. Well, this deck is something like that. You basically never -1 yourself (while pacman does actually +1 itself alot) but you minus the opponent alot (compared to the -1/2 that pacman does). What's more, yubel has some more stall ability, and kills actually more, probably, while putting tons and tons of pressure on the opponent.
I'm liking this deck alot, because its worst match-up was inzektor, but now there are fewer, and this does work great. It has no particular bad match-up against other decks, has some good match-up here and there, but there's a problem. This deck does fear a true staple in every extra deck: Zenmaines.
Zenmaines' effect prevents it to be destroyed, and kills a card when you use that effect, that means that if incarnate tries to kill zenmaines, it'll just detach a material to kill incarnate itself (doesn't matter that incarnate will evolve, since even the destroying effect that nightmare has can be negated via zenmaines' effect, and destroying a card again).
Luckily, every player does play only a copy of this card, so once you kill the first, you're safe in most cases, except pot of avarice, that's why I'm considering maining crows here. Other than hitting zenmaines before poa, you can hit some combo pieces, and even that single hornet your opponent does play.

Conclusive thoughts: the deck has potential, should tweak a little more my actual build and then post it.
Ja Ne (See Ya, japanese for who doesn't know)