I remember it was a chilly evening in February when Julia Hedberg, Jason Grabher-Meyer, and I were riding around in the back of a cab looking for somewhere to eat in Durham, North Carolina. In an attempt to ignore the sound of our stomachs gnawing on our spinal columns, Jason and Julia began to talk about the cards from the Jaden and Chazz Duelist Packs. The discussion finally came around to Inferno Reckless Summon. I had never heard of it, so Jason explained to me what it did.

A couple of weeks later, I managed to get a copy of this card. As I examined it, I realized how much fun it could be, and I began to think of all the other cards that would have great synergy with it. Let’s take a closer look at what it can do.

Inferno Reckless Summon

Quick-Play Spell Card

You can only activate this card when 1 monster with an ATK of 1500 points or less is Special Summoned to your side of the field. Special Summon all cards with the same name as the Summoned monster from your hand, Deck, and Graveyard in face-up Attack Position. Your opponent selects 1 monster on their side of the field and Special Summons all cards with that same name from their hand, Deck, and Graveyard.

Before we begin, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: you cannot activate this card in the damage step. For all of you Mystic Tomato lovers out there, I’m sorry. I know that some of you may shy away from this card since your opponent gets to special summon as well; however, there are some cards we can use in order to help us minimize that particular drawback. The first card on the top of my list is Ojama Trio. Give your opponent those ugly tokens, and feel free to activate Inferno Reckless Summon. Even if your opponent has no monsters (which is hopefully the case), he or she does have those tokens, which will fulfill the requirements for Inferno Reckless Summon. And since there is no card called “Ojama Token,” your opponent won’t be special summoning anything.

Another card that can help us achieve our goals is Creature Swap. It’s a great way of using that flip summoned Magician of Faith, or any other flip effect monster that has already been used. Go ahead and give it to them with Creature Swap, and take whatever cool monster your opponent may have at the time. Special summon your monster of choice, play Inferno Reckless Summon, and your opponent will have to special summon whatever you gave him or her. If it’s an attack position Magician of Faith, I’m positive that he or she won’t be too pleased with that.

Kirk Leonhardt of Team Enigma fame let me in on one of his favorite cards to use with Inferno Reckless Summon—Gilasaurus. If your opponent already has a face-up monster, then go ahead and special summon this Dinosaur before activating your Inferno Reckless Summon. It’s a very effective way to flood the field with these ravenous monsters. Remember, in order to pull this off, your opponent already has to have a monster on the field. This will not work if you special summon Gilasaurus, and your opponent, having no monsters, elects not to special summon a monster from his or her graveyard. If they do this, you cannot activate your Inferno Reckless Summon, so make sure that your opponent already has a monster in play first.

Gravekeepers, while already known for their ability to swarm the field, get a huge boost with this quick-play spell card. Flip summon Gravekeeper’s Spy, special summon Gravekeeper’s Assailant or Gravekeeper’s Spear Soldier, and when they hit the field, go ahead and activate Inferno Reckless Summon. Instead of the Spy, you can use Rite of Spirit as well. While these combos can win you superior board presence, you have to make sure you have enough monster zones available in order to maximize the advantage this tactic can gain you. Also, you have to make sure Necrovalley is not out on the field when you attempt this, or else the monsters you special summoned will immediately get their ATK boost and will then become too big to use with Inferno Reckless Summon. The ideal move is to play Necrovalley after you’ve recklessly special summoned your monsters.

Marauding Captain is another reliable way we can special summon a monster in order to fulfill the activation requirements of Inferno Reckless Summon. We have a wide variety of monsters to choose from here. One of my personal favorites is to normal summon the Captain, then special summon Proto-Cyber Dragon before playing Inferno Reckless Summon. You can then immediately bring out three copies of Cyber Dragon on to the field. Make sure your opponent doesn’t have a Bottomless Trap Hole with your name on it though, or else you will be very unhappy (unless you happen to have a set Return from the Different Dimension, in which case I’m sure you’ll think of something evil to do with it).

Cyber Dragon rushes aside, another monster you can special summon with Marauding Captain in order to fully take advantage of Inferno Reckless Summon is Mataza the Zapper. I’ve always been a big fan of Mataza, and the idea of getting all three of them at once sounds like loads of fun. You can also use Elemental Hero Wildheart instead, and your opponent can feel free to try to Torrential Tribute or Bottomless Trap Hole to their heart’s content, as I’m sure these particular Elemental Heroes won’t mind. If you really want to be coldly efficient about you superior board presence, then go ahead and equip one of your monsters with United We Stand and watch your opponent cringe.

Finally, I’d really love to use Celestial Transformation and special summon Majestic Mech - Goryu. Since this particular Goryu will be at half ATK (1450 to be precise) when it hits the field, you can then activate Inferno Reckless Summon to bring out two more full-strength Goryus. That’s a lot of ATK power on your side, all of it piercing ATK power as well. For all you advantage junkies out there, you can also try to use Celestial Transformation and Inferno Reckless Summon with Airknight Parshath to apply some very uncomfortable pressure on your opponent.

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing this. As always, I’m happy to receive comments and feedback from any who care to email me at baldNbeautifuljudge@yahoo.com.

Before I forget, I’d like to note that some of you have already emailed me about my last article about the double-tributers. It turns out that some of you caught the mistaken fact about using Unshaven Angler to tribute summon for Ocean Dragon Lord – Neo Daedalus. What really happened was that I had originally wrote about [Levia Dragon - Daedalus, but my copy of Neo-Daedalus was upset that I didn’t write about it, so it changed what I wrote and sent it to my editors. I promise you that won’t happen again, as I put it back in my binder, and placed my Chaos Emperor Dragon – Envoy of the End next to Neo-Daedalus to keep it under guard.

Thank you again for reading, and I hope all of your draws are lucky ones!