Not all Special Edition promos are created equal. Many have been tournament-defining exclusives, some have been long-awaited reprints, and a few are probably sitting in the shoebox under your bed, sandwiched between Skull Servant and Shapesnatch. But regardless of how useful a promo proves to be, you’re basically getting something for nothing on top of your purchase of three boosters, and sometimes that "something" can be truly earthshaking.
Kuraz the Light Monarch has been the source of heated debate in the weeks since its release was first announced. You can find it in the new Light of Destruction: Special Edition packs. They shipped to hobby stores last week, and you’ll find them in big retail chains starting Wednesday, but Kuraz himself was leaked uncharacteristically early. We knew about him months ago, and that’s given a lot of people time to create opinions on his playability. But whether you think he’s going to wreck face immediately upon arrival or not, I’m sure we can all agree that the sheer potential of this promo makes him more Phantom of Chaos than Vortex Trooper. The "Monarch" title isn’t just handed out indiscriminately: the vast number of uses for Kuraz has given him a strong position on the radar of competitive duelists.
Kuraz is unique in that his effect can be just as useful destroying your own cards as your opponent’s. Let’s look at the things you can do with it, and outline what resourceful duelists could accomplish across two different fields: defensive application and aggressive application.
Draw Two Cards with Recursion
The chief application of this ability is a combo with recursive cards like Premature Burial. If Kuraz is in your graveyard, just bring him to the field with Premature. When you activate Kuraz’s effect, target the Premature Burial and Kuraz himself for destruction: you lose both cards and draw two more. Since you only gave up one card in the process (that being Premature), you drew two cards for the simple expenditure of just one. It’s basically Pot of Greed for 800 life points.
The same can be done for a discard cost instead, if Kuraz was removed from play and you bring him back with D.D.R. - Different Dimension Reincarnation. A variant of the move is also possible with Monster Reborn. Since Reborn will remove itself from the field before Kuraz’s effect activates, you can’t destroy it with Kuraz’s effect like you could Premature or Reincarnation. However, you can always destroy Kuraz for one draw, and then get rid of your opponent’s most threatening card as well. The opponent will replace the card you destroy with a draw as well, but since each player loses one card and gets another, you’re not actually losing anything yourself, while you do generate an answer for any single threat on the field. Not bad!
Convert Dead Cards into Draws
In fact, you might be surprised at just how often any deck happens to have dead cards. Sure, combo builds are expected to have low-utility, high-synergy combo pieces kicking around at inopportune times—Kuraz has obvious utility there, turning those dead cards into better ones. But how about that Malicious you’ve had no reason to remove from the graveyard? The Armageddon Knight your opponent didn’t attack? If your opponent is playing defensively, you might as well trade your Bottomless Trap Hole for something more useful.
While any good deck should be built to avoid dead-card scenarios, they still occur in just about any strategy. The ones that can support Kuraz will find that summoning him can turn a bad hand into a playable one in a single turn, something few decks can do.
Trade Self-Replacing Monsters for More Cards
Traditionally, the conventional move to make with something like a flip-summoned Dekoichi is to try and force your opponent to trade something else for it, leveraging what might have been short-lived card presence into something more meaningful by simplifying the game. After all, the fewer cards there are on either side of the table, the more your card presence actually matters. Simplifying like this keeps your opponent from just swinging over Dekoichi to turn the tables, but it’s difficult to make that sort of simplifying play nowadays since there isn’t much card-for-card monster removal actually being run. By far the most popular of these cards at the moment is Bottomless Trap Hole, which has no relevance to Dekoichi, let alone smaller guys like Magical Merchant or Old Vindictive Magician.
Feeding such a monster to Kuraz won’t simplify the duel, but it will halt the risk of an attack that would wipe that monster out. Kuraz effectively does the opposite of the old "press Dekoichi into Sakuretsu" move, but he accomplishes a lot of the same goals, preserving your lead in card presence and eliminating your vulnerability to a counterattack.
Combo with Stuff You Want Destroyed
Sangan, Card Trooper, and Goblin Zombie do the same thing on the monster side, rewarding you with two cards total when Kuraz destroys each. Seeing as how all three are proven in tournaments, and at least one deck (Zombies) could potentially run five such monsters, Kuraz is definitely viable tech in certain strategies.
Limit Reverse makes things even better, giving you access to Card Trooper, Sangan, or Destiny Hero - Disk Commander, then giving you two targets for Kuraz’s destruction: the Reverse, and the monster it brought back. In this case you’re netting three cards total for Trooper or Sangan, and a whopping four cards with Disk Commander.
Where to Play Him Defensively
That leaves the question of where Kuraz is best used, and it’s a tough one. Crystal Beasts can play him as an alternative to Rare Value. Kuraz lets you destroy your own Crystal Beast monsters to draw cards and fill your spell and trap zone, getting you to the better effects of Ancient City - Rainbow Ruins in record time. You can also destroy monsters crystallized in your back row for a quick two cards, and then replace them with Crystal Blessing. All this is made easy considering the vast number of special summons Crystal Beasts can use to generate tributes, courtesy of Crystal Beacon and Crystal Promise.
Even without certain Japanese cards, Kuraz is a powerhouse in OTK strategies. Using him to draw through cards in a Magical Explosion deck is exceedingly good, and since Kuraz’s effect can be activated off of a special summon, Reasoning and Monster Gate become even more powerful than we’re used to. Not only does Kuraz provide a free effect off his special summoning, he also provides more variation in the levels of monsters you run, making Reasoning more reliable. In this case, Kuraz could be played to draw cards, to destroy what may be your opponent’s Solemn Judgment, or both.
Getting Aggressive
Kuraz can’t make a follow-up attack the turn he’s summoned and he replenishes your opponent’s hand, but the latter doesn’t matter if your opponent is defeated the turn Kuraz is played. That makes him a natural fit for any deck that can unleash a flood of special summons, from anything running Return from the Different Dimension to more offbeat choices like Harpies (flooding the field with Hysteric Party). If you can special summon a bunch of monsters in a single turn and need to clear the way, Kuraz may be your Monarch of choice.
Even if your deck can just maintain field presence (without necessarily generating it all in one turn), Kuraz may be a top pick. Consider Bushi Control, a deck that centers on The Immortal Bushi and usually features a strong Warrior lineup. Bushi himself is ideal tribute fodder—he’s like a Warrior version of Treeborn Frog, but he can only be tributed for other Warriors: a role Kuraz happens to fill. The deck can take an aggressive pacing and keeps monsters on the field thanks to stuff it might already run in multiples like Giant Rat and D.D. Warrior Lady. That means that when Kuraz clears the opponent’s field, you can have plenty of attackers ready to follow up.
The sheer potential of Kuraz the Light Monarch is ridiculous—in the hands of an experienced player who can see all the moves, he offers a range of options on virtually any turn he could be played. The difficulty at the moment is that he doesn’t seem to easily slip into any of the current top decks. However, with Monarchs mounting a big comeback over the past several weeks, and Lightsworn capable of making many of the defensive and offensive plays I discussed, it may not even require specialized decks in order to make tournament-topping appearances. With that said, watch out for new OTK variants and Bushi Control over the next six weeks. As players race to innovate for upcoming premier tournaments, and the fallout from those events settles into a crystallized competitive metagame, Kuraz can and will see play.
—Jason Grabher-Meyer