Card of the Week: November 9th

And the countdown begins! G Booster 5: Moonlit Dragonfang drops November 13th in Japan, and we're on the final few days before its release. The majority of the set has been spoiled, but we have yet to see the skill for Dragon Masquerade Tamer, Harry, as well as a few RRs. Not to mention the majority of the commons are still unaccounted for. The RRR lineup for the set has been largely disappointing, and there's quite a large disparity in usefulness among them, so the last hope of this set is for some amazing Rs and Cs (which, honestly, is very plausible). But for Today's Card of the Week, I'll be honing in on last night's big reveal, the last RRR:

Death Star-Vader, Chaos Universe 

[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]:[Counter Blast (1) & Choose a face down card named "Death Star-vader, Chaos Universe" from your G zone, and turn it face up] If you have a heart card with "Chaos" in its card name, choose up to one of your opponent's (RC) without a card, your opponent chooses a card from his or her hand, and puts it into that (RC) face down as a locked card. If the number of face up cards in your G zone is two or more, choose one of your opponent's rear-guards, and lock it.

The stride meant to revive "Chaos Breaker Dragon" that people have been on the edge of their seats waiting on since it was announced. Chaos Breaker was a plague back when it was first released, and very few people wanted to see it revitalized and have to experience that PTSD. However, Bushi did a very good job designing this monster.

Chaos Universe is one of those 2-stage strides, one that is usable as your initial stride, but has more benefits when used as your 2nd or more. His first-tier ability, which also requires a "Chaos" heart, is also his most intriguing one. You pick any unoccupied rear guard circle and force your opponent to lock a card there. What's most interesting about this is that, unlike similar cards like Cold Death Dragon or Omega Loop, the card doesn't not come from the top of their deck, but from their hand. While this may not seem like much, there are implications that make it one of Link Joker's best abilities thus far:


First of all, this is directly forcing cards out of the opponent's hand, and puts them in an awkward position. If they have a crappy hand, this will force them to call triggers or perfect guards. Or it may make them call attackers or boosters with on-call effects that they wanted to save for later. If they put down a good chunk of their hand early and rushed you, then they probably won't have many units in their hand that they want on the field once you're able to use this ability. It can really put a damper on their strategy.

But the biggest asset this skill has is that its a premature lock. The greatest weakness control abilities (retire, stun, lock, etc) have is that they can't do anything until after a unit has been called. You want to retire/lock a Tidal Assault? Ok, but Aqua Force has to call it first, meaning you've already been rushed or they've already triggered their 4th attack skills for a turn. You can't lock or retire it until its already done its damage and they don't care about it anymore. Or, as is more commonly the case, the opponent will just wait and not field anything until they want to make their huge push turn (i.e. a Lambros or Victoplasma turn), and since control decks don't have many ways of generating their own advantage, they'll likely take a huge hit from that.

However, Chaos Universe allows you to prevent those turns/plays from happening. Locking an Aqua Force player's front row before their Lambros turn means they can't leave their field open, free from your control, until they're ready to win. They won't be able to Lambros you the next turn since their front row is locked, and since you've forced a unit there, you'll be able to lock it the next turn and keep them in check. Chaos Universe adds the much-needed speed to lock that its been lacking to keep up with the meta.


The second part of the skill isn't much to write home about, at least from a design standpoint. It just gives you more bang for your buck. Locking a card from the opponent's hand is cool and all, but Counterblast 1 and a persona flip is a bit costly for that. 2 locks for that, however, is muy bueno. This card essentially does the same thing as Big Crunch: CB1 and Persona Flip at GB2 to lock 2 cards. The difference is that Big Crunch locks 1 column for 2 turns, while Chaos Universe locks down 2 columns (assuming you use your 2 locks on the front rows) for 1 turn. It should also be noted that Chaos Universe's first skill requires the opponent to have at least 1 open rear guard circle, so its pointless against a full field.

All-in-all, this was a really well-designed card. It expanded current game mechanics without breaking them, fixed a large weakness in the deck is was made to support, and isn't over powered or under costed for what it does. Star Vaders still suffer from not having a viable finisher unit, but grind decks aren't entirely extinct yet, so it'll be interesting to see how this card affects the meta.