Light the Way with “Arequus the Shining Mars Saint”! [VJMP]

Yeah that must have been a mistake. This is clearly designed for K9; doesn’t help DM, Mikanko or HERO’s gameplan

They said it was meant to support the Tactical-Try pack themes? Really? That’s . . . a much more extreme reach than usual, if so. Setting aside how everyone’s basically settled on the obvious theme the card DOES support, let’s, uh, try to unpack the Konami-made claim.

Searchable monster (via Chaotic Elements) that comes out for free if you have face-up backrow . . . okay, so in DM, Mikanko, and HERO that’s . . . Circle, one of the Dances, or a Vision HERO? Okay, that’s that part of the stretch reached.

Can destroy a piece of face-up backrow of yours in order to draw 1 . . . I think about the only use case I can think of for that in the three themes in question is specifically popping Mayowashidori to get it in position to revive something. That’s it. You could maybe say ‘oh, Faris put a Vision HERO in the backrow and this will let me pop that to draw 1 and feed this to an Xyz’, but then we’re A) reinventing an Upstart Goblin badly and B) an idiot because even if we ignore for a moment that this kills the Arequus and costs three cards in-hand (this, Faris, and Faris’s discard) for 1 draw, odds are you won’t have an Xyz because FARIS HERO-LOCKS YOUR EXTRA DECK, which neatly brings us to the primary problem this guy has.

WHAT ARE WE MAKING WITH THEM?!

Dark Magician doesn’t have any Rank 5’s and LIGHT Pyro does nothing to satisfy a single Fusion he particularly cares about, so the only home this fella’s finding is either ‘used as material for a generic Link like Verte’ or ‘fed to one of the Deck’s Rank 7 Xyz as a mat’, and that second point begs the question of ‘okay, what are they popping to get themselves popped?’ To which I have no good answer because I can’t think of a piece of Dark Magician backrow you WANT to pop while it’s face-up.

Mikanko, we have the same problems Dark Magician’s looking at for using this to make anything and for the draw-and-feed effects we come up to an order of operations issue; when you’d be wanting to be drawing cards (early- or mid-combo) you likely don’t have the new Xyz out already so no feeding this to them for another swing, and when you have the new Xyz out I’m not sure they really . . . want anything to the point of popping a piece of backrow to go fishing?

And finally, HERO. HERO, HERO, HERO. The only thing this is for them is a material for The Shining, Koga, or Neos Lord, which is absolutely nothing this deck didn’t already have plenty of (and that’s before we get to asking if a HERO deck especially WANTS to be making The Shining by this point, to say nothing of whether Mask Change II has better things to do with its airtime), because none of the deck’s native Links want a LIGHT Pyro (at best Cross wants a Warrior, at worst the other three want HEROes) and every other Fusion — yes, even the comically permissive Brave Neos, who has a ‘you must be this small to ride’ sign on his second mat — is pickier than that. Their only real avenues for getting a draw off him are popping a Field Spell or Vision HERO (to no real benefit since that’s two cards for one draw) and the only thing you’re likely to be attaching him to afterwards is the top of your GY.

This is, without a doubt, one of the most mismarketed promos they’ve ever made that’s still legitimately of decent use to a current Deck (that, naturally, is none of the ones they apparently pitched it for).

Ashened are DARK Pyro and focus on DARK Pyro.