Sunday, November 14, 2010

Kneel To the Frozen Sky: Brionac Dragon of the Ice Barrier



We have a level 6 WATER Sea Serpent with 2300 ATK and 1400 DEF. These stats make Brionac below average. Even Gaia Knight and Iron Chain Dragon can school him in battle and the attribute and type do not help very much at all.
The effect is what is so astounding. You can send cards from your hand to the graveyard in order to put cards on the field back to the owner's hand. This is primarily used in zombie decks in order to clear the way with massive Mezuki, Burial and Plague plays for the one turn kill, but it also ends up working for almost every deck as it is a generic Synchro. Most decks can easily make a level 6 Synchro, so it is basically an answer to cards that would otherwise cause you trouble, like Stardust, Colossal and Armor Master and in tough spots, Dark Armed Dragon.

You can also use his ability to put himself back to the extra deck, so that your opponent can't play there Mind Control and Brain Control. His effect is rather costly, so unless you REALLY need to get a card off the field or you are going for game, Goyo Guardian is a better choice or even Gaia Knight.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Shoot for the Stars: Shooting star Dragon



Here we have the counterpart to yesterdays Red Nova Dragon. Shooting Star Dragon is a level 10 WIND Dragon Synchro with 3300 ATK and 2500 DEF. It does need specific Tuners as well, requiring a Synchro Tuner and Stardust Dragon. Well, these stats are alright as far as a big boss monster goes. The non-generic Synchro stuff hurts, but there are plenty of ways to get out Stardust (Starlight Road) and Formula Synchron is not that hard to get out, so we can pretty much abuse that. Well, as always it is up to the effects to get things done.
The effects is 3 tiered, allowing you to activate each once per turn, even during your opponent's turn. The first one reveals the top 5 cards of your deck and then shuffles it. You get to attack with Shooting Star Dragon once for each Tuner revealed. This makes Shooting Star an Alpha Strike monster, as opposed to Red Nova which is a God monster that sits on the field and dominates. The second effect is that once per turn you can negate the effect of an opponent's acrd that destorys stuff on the field and negate it. Standard Stardust variant stuff there, but it's really useful. The third effect is the same as Red nova, allowing you to remove it from play to negate an attack.
As you can use these effects during either player's turn and the ease of getting out Stardust Dragon over Red Nova, I am going to have to say that Shooting Star is better, but not by much. Red Nova's indestructible option is far more attractive than a one per turn blanket negation. But the odds are you are going to be seeing more of Shooting Star Dragon in the weeks to come, as it is clearly a great monster and will win you the game most of the time it hits the field.
I am a little biased towards big scary dragons, but I have got to say, this is one of the first amazingly hard monsters to bring out that has actually been worth the effort in every single way.