Battle Pack 2 Revelations and the general GOOD support of Shadow Specters

Two topics today, both are about “revealed cards”. First up, the newly revealed cards of Battle Pack 2!

Battle Pack 2: Reprint season alert!

Aah, Yu-Gi-Oh reprint season. It’s the time were prize hunters try to get rid of their foil cards at the highest possible price, or keep praying that their collection of money cards doesn't get hit by a stray reprint bullet. The season starts in June with packs like Gold Series (surprisingly absent this year), the August tins, the Battle Pack, a new Duelist League pack, a new Structure Deck, the Legendary Collections, a new Astral pack and closes with the November tins.

First up this year is Battle Pack 2. Until last weekend, most of the revealed cards weren't noteworthy. But last weekend that changed, when the European shops received their boxes and some just couldn't wait to open them. But unlike any Konami article on the pack, these revelations WERE interesting. These are some of the revealed cards that I consider interesting:

• Sinister Serpent: One of those classic forbidden cards that will never get off the list. Kind of hard to obtain as well, so this reprint is good.
• Plaguespreader Zombie: Used to be such an amazing card! Will be great again once Shadow Specters will be released! So pick up your copies!
• Chaos Hunter: Annoyingly hard to obtain and a nice first reprint. Also, it's a nice tech versus Dragon Rulers!
• Tour Bus from the Underworld & Tardy Orc: I kind of laughed at these two cards. They were overhyped at their release, and thus failed to meet expectations. The cards are not that great after all. Strange to see them reprinted in “this” set, since they’re not that great in sealed play either (Giant Orc >> Tardy Orc).
• Cardcar D: GREAT! This is a great addition to any battle pack and a lot of people were expecting this. Now it’s actually confirmed.
• Mermail Abyssmegalo: I nearly coughed up my coffee when seeing this and a confirmation picture. Here? Battle Pack reprint? Good for the Mermail fans trying to obtain a not-so-pricy version. But how good is this card going to work in Battle Pack?
• Mecha Phantom Beast Hamstrat: Seriously? This soon? Well, I guess that will please MPB-fans at least. This at least means that a MPB deck will be a bit cheaper (considering Dracosack is a +100$ card).
• The Forbidden Trio (Chalice, Lance & Dress): Sucks to be you if you recently bought your copy of Dress/Lance for 10-15$. They’re getting a(nother) reprint. The forbidden trio works in any version of the Battle pack, so they will always have a chance of reprint in these kind of sets.
• Shard of Greed: Never should’ve been a secret rare, so it’s nice to see this card reprinted.
• The Golden Apples: Interesting reprint. Hardly saw this secret rare card in any binder, even though nobody played it. Card is like Gorz, but in trap form.
• Overworked: Nice reprint of this Short print card. Will be necessary for the September format, because I doubt Fire Fists will get hit (hard).
• Breakthrough Skill: I’m surprised. Didn’t expect a reprint of this card this soon. But it’s nice either way. More and more people are seeing that this card is useful, so a reprint at this point can only be good.

With Battle Pack still not being the most expensive set, it’s interesting to buy with revelations like these. I wonder what other cards will be revealed this week (set comes out this thursday/friday).

If cards like these three don't convince you of BP2
Then I guess nothing will...

Shadow specter: Good, better, amazing

The next booster set that will be released in the OCG is Shadow Specters. Release date is July 20th. For the TCG, we will see this set somewhere in November.

With the launch of this new set coming closer, the latest V-Jump gave us a sneak peek of what’s to come in this set. And a lot of people (including me) were amazed at the revelations. I’ll give you a “cards to look forward to” post when the set is fully revealed, but let me just post a few of the cards that got people hyped.

Granmarg the Hard Earth/Solid Rock Monarch: The first of the advanced Monarchs is introduced. These variants are Lv. 8, but can also be summoned by tributing a Tribute Summoned Monster (a monarch, obviously). The effect: Same as Granmarg, but this card destroys 2 cards instead of one. And if you tributed an earth monster (another Granmarg), you also get a draw. There are more free slots in this set, so I have the feeling we’re going to see MORE of these advanced Monarchs.

Unearthing of the Monarchs: If Advanced Monarchs weren’t enough, here’s a spell that you will remember. Why? Because this card is a Black Whirlwind/Wind-up Factory for Monarchs. When you tribute summon a monster, you can either search a regular monarch, or an advanced monarch. Only downside is the same as "March of the Monarchs". It remains on the field, so it blocks the Frog Monarchs variant.

Vampires: Yeah, the "old" archetype that gets a boost this time around is nothing less than Vampires. And while the set supports "cutie" zombies in their new (seemingly bad) archetype Ghostrick, the Vampires have good, dark artwork that deserves a round of applause. More on these new vampires in a future post.

Tree Spirit of the Meliaes: This XYZ requires 2 Lv. 3 earth monsters and either sends a plant monster from your deck to the grave (Dandylion or Spore) or special summons a plant monster from your grave (re-using Lonefire Blossom). Plant Synchro decks & Gigaplant OTK decks can rejoice (though this makes it quite unlikely that Glow-up Bulb would ever return, lol).

Pot of Duplicity: After the watered-down version of Pot of Greed (Pot of Duality), we now get a Watered-down version of Pot of Avarice in the form of this card. This card forces you to skip the battle phase and only works by sending 3 monsters of different types from your grave to the deck (still a plus-1). So obviously it cannot be used in many decks. But in the decks where this card DOES work, it will work even better than Pot of Avarice ever would (Evilswarm decks, Chaos decks, Norleras decks, Mystic Piper decks, etc). A word of advice: don’t underestimate this card; because having consistency and control is more powerful than having a battle phase.

Grisaille Gaol: You can see this card will pop up In Monarch and HERO decks as a side-deck card. When this card is active and you control a fusion/tributed/ritual monster, neither player can synchro or xyz summon and the effects of face-up xyz/synchro’s is negated.

Mistake: Neither player can add cards to their hands, except by drawing them. At this point in the meta, it’s the most anti-meta card there is. Every meta archetype searches cards. This card is an ideal “f**k-you” to your opponent, if you’re done searching and want to prevent your opponent from searching cards. Beware that if your deck focuses on searching that this card can easily backfire.

Makes you wonder what the other "advanced" Monarchs will be, huh?

There are more interesting cards in the set (though not as hyped), but I’ll keep those for when the set is fully revealed.

That’s it for now. V out.

PS: Yeah, the starter deck is out as well. Wonder why I didn't cover that before? Because it's EXACTLY the same as the OCG-variant (I covered that one). But instead of 2x5 cards in 1 pack, we got 1x10 cards in a pack, making it very easy to obtain all 15 extra cards.