Cards to look forward to in the Duelist Advent Pt. 1 - Monsters

As promised, an overview of the more interesting cards that can be used in many decks, from the latest set in the OCG: the Duelist Advent.

Regular Effect Monsters

• Satellaknight Sham: If summoned, you can inflict 1000 damage to your opponent. BLAM! You're dead! Thank god it's effect is restricted to once per turn, or this card would be broken from the get-go. This Light Lv. 4 warrior is easy to search, spam and re-spam each turn. I think Chain Burn fans have already fallen in love with this one.
• Artifact Chakram: Artifacts are interesting monsters overall. This one basically saves a backrow card if a spell/trap is targeted for destruction and special summons itself afterwards. Talk about rendering an MST useless. Oh, yes, and it has the usual Artifact effect (when destroyed in the backrow, special summon it).
• Artifact Longinus: An other interesting Artifact. When a card effect activates that banishes a card you control, you can tribute this card from the field OR YOUR HAND to ensure none of your cards can be banished this turn. That's an amazing side-card you want when facing certain decks (*cough*Prophecy*cough*) that banishes a lot (*cough*Monarchs*cough*).
• Bunborg 001: This is a nifty little tuner that can special summon itself from the grave when you special summon 2 (or more) machine monsters at the same time. And that's something that's easily achieved in machine decks, due to cards like Machine Duplication, Geargiagear, MPB Dracosack (yes the 2 tokens are machines, lol) and the new card from Dragons of Legend, Soul Charge.

Pendulum Monsters

From this point onward, effect monsters can have a pendulum scale, to be used for pendulum summons. Because those monsters have a double effect, I'll split them off from regular monsters. And since the number of Pendulum monsters is rather low at the moment, the effects are mediocre to "nice" at best.

• Foucault's Spellstone Cannon: It's Pendulum scale is 2 and during the end phase of the turn you activate it, you can destroy a face-up spell or trap card (like a field spell or opponent's pendulum zone cards.
• Entermate Tiptoad: This aqua card is easily recyclable and has a fun Pendulum effect (its regular effect is meh). When active in the Pendulum zone, once per turn, you can change the attack and defense of 1 face-up monster. Always interesting to get rid of annoyingly strong monsters. It's got a pendulum scale of 3. Its primary use will be frog decks, who'll keep their summons around Lv 3 anyway.
• Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon: The central monster of this set and the key monster of Yuya, the new YGO protagonist. When active in your pendulum zone, you take no battle damage in a battle involving a pendulum monster (meh), but more importantly; you can destroy it to search for another Pendulum monster. It's a nice "starter" Pendulum monster that's also interesting to use in (Chaos) Dragon decks.

Right now, the number of (really) interesting pendulum cards is low, but considering it's the first set, that's somewhat expected. People still need to figure out how this is going to work in their respective decks (IF it' going to work in their deck) and that will take some time getting used to. I expect the following sets to have more (and more interesting) pendulum cards.

Ritual Monsters

Saphira the Dragon Princess: Here we have a Ritual monster that works amazingly in Hieratic decks. Use Advanced Ritual Art to send Labradorite Dragon/Wattaildragon to the grave and summon this princess. She's a nice 2500 beater with nice defense. And during the end phase of when she's summoned, or when a Light monster is sent from the hand/deck to the grave, you can use one of her three effects. And that is: A: Draw two cards, discard 1; B: discard 1 random card from your opponent's hand; C: Recycle 1 Light monster from your grave. Other options are using this card in a Lightsworn deck to constantly recycle Honest (lol), or using it in a Herald of Perfection deck to recycle fairies for Herald's effect. Interesting card, indeed.

Extra Deck monsters

The number of extra deck monsters is so small. 2 fusions, 2 synchro's and 2 Xyz. It's been ages since there were only so little extra deck monsters.

• Gongfu, Cosmic Dragon of Brilliance: An interesting first Genryu synchro. When summoned, you can bounce cards on the field up to the number of different attributes of the Genryu monsters used in the synchro summon. Next to that, you can destroy 1 card you control (like Scrap Dragon) to revive a Lv 4 or lower monster from your grave (nice). The only downside is the low attack of this card.
• Reincarnation Dragon Samsara: If this card is sent from the field to the grave due to your opponent (battle/effect), you can target any monster (safe this one) in any graveyard and special summon the target. It's a Lv 5 Dragon, so it's very easily summoned with Debris Dragon and a Lv 1 monster/token and it can so easily be revived by cards like Queen Dragun Djinn and Lightpulsar Dragon (for max abuse).
• Stellaknight Deltatheros: Summoning this and keeping Xyz Material to it prevents your opponent from using cards like Torrential Tribute, Bottomless Trap Hole or Solemn Warning on any summon that follows it. Also, you can detach 1 material to pop one card on the field. Nice card, with a little extra twist when used in Tellaknight decks.

Afterword

That's it for now. Next time, I'll cover the more interesting spells, traps and ocg exclusives. Until then, V out.

Note: These are fan interpretations of the Japanese card names. Names and effects are a subject to (possible) change when they come out in the TCG.