Card of the Week: November 27th

First off, Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I know it happened yesterday, but between family and school work, I didn't have the time or energy to put up a special article (Yes, I had work over break >.>). But anyway, here's this week's Card of the Week:

Destruction Tyrant, Hellrex Maxima

[Stride]-Stride Step-[Choose one or more cards with the sum of their grades being 3 or greater from your hand, and discard them]Stride this card on your (VC) from face down.
[ACT](VC)[1/Turn]:[Choose one of your rear-guards, and retire it] If you have a heart card with "Rex" in its card name, search your deck for up to one card with "Rex" in its card name, bind it face up, and shuffle your deck. If you bind a card, choose up to three units in your front row, and they get [Power]+4000 until end of turn.

If there was any doubt that this would be the card of the day, you don't know me well enough. With Tachikaze being my main clan, and this week revealing our 2 Fighter's Collection cards, I knew what today's article was going to look like. And honestly, when Squall Rex got revealed I was nearly heartbroken. After seeing the Nightmist and Infinite Zero Dragon support, I was super pumped for Spinodriver support, since the theme looked like this set would focus on Break Rides and Season 3 stuff. When I saw it was going to be "Rex" support, and the non-stride unit was a crappy G3, I was devastated. I still held out hope that the stride would redeem it, and boy was I shocked. Hellrex is a monstrosity.

Being restricted to a "Rex" heart, this guy is primarily going to work with Dark Rex, Deathrex, and Squall Rex. There are other "Rex" G3 units (Battlerex and Gigarex), but they're utter garbage. For a mere retire 1 cost, he'll bind 1 Rex from your deck and give your front row 4,000 Power. Binding from deck is incredibly powerful, since its an on-demand setup for Dark Rex or Squall Rex. The front row boost might not seem like much at first glance, since 4,000 to a 16,000 column is only 20,000, which doesn't break any numbers. However, it will allow an unboosted attacked to hit a Vanguard, and that isn't taking into account binding Dark Rex or Squall Rex from your hand, who are each another 3,000 boost. Since the lineup for Generic Tachikaze is really vanilla and lackluster (until we get our G-support in the Tactical Booster), you're going to be using a lot of the 10,000 and 8,000 vanillas. Sonic Noa (the 8,000) behind any Grade 2 makes 17,000, which actually breaks numbers with the boost. 10,000 Vanilla's with 7,000 boosters also break the 21,000 mark with this boost. What's even better is that one of the Grade 2 vanilla's, Megarex, is a "Rex" you can bind for this guy's effect, if you run out of your G3s for some reason. Something that may also be overlooked is that a 4,000 boost to himself means he won't suffer from being 25,000 Power if you stride him over Death or Dark Rex.

This guy's ability to be the first stride is astounding. It makes up for the crappy mid game the "Rex" deck has, and the power boost allows you to shove your opponent to high damage early. Then, with the ability to grab Dark Rex from the deck, he sets up for his own finishing turn. I wasn't expecting much from this guy, but he definitely delivered, and he's only going to get better when the Tactical Booster drops.