While Force of the Breaker was being previewed, players were already working on their designs for the Crystal Beasts. While some players focused on what was possible and how they could make the theme work, many looked for ways to stop them from working at all. Whichever method you choose is in rough shape if you don’t know how the Crystal Beasts work.
The Beasts offer their controller a unique ability to dictate whether they will be sent to the graveyard or absorbed into the spell and trap card zone when they are destroyed. This ability and the support cards that take advantage of it have certainly made them a team for consideration. This week, we will examine this process and see how it interacts with other effects.
Crystallization
Every Crystal Beast includes the following text:
“If this card is destroyed while it is in a Monster Card Zone, you can place it face-up in your Spell & Trap Card Zone as a Continuous Spell Card, instead of sending it to the Graveyard.”
While a Crystal Beast is face up on the field, this effect is always on and waiting for the Crystal Beast to be destroyed. For the most part, it doesn’t matter how that happens. All that matters is that it is face up when the destruction occurs. This effect does not begin a chain, and is simply performed at the time the Crystal Beast monster is destroyed. To make things easier, we are going to refer to this process as “crystallization.”
If your face-up Crystal Beast is destroyed by a removal effect like Smashing Ground or Ring of Destruction, when the monster is destroyed, you will decide if it goes to the graveyard or gets the crystallization treatment. Since this decision is entirely yours to make, you can pick and choose who goes where when multiple Crystal Beasts are destroyed simultaneously. This is helpful when you have limited space available in your spell and trap card zone and you don’t want it flooded with every Crystal Beast you have.
If a face-up Crystal Beast is destroyed in battle, it is easy enough to determine what will happen, but what about face-down Crystal Beasts? If a face-down Crystal Beast is attacked, it will be flipped face up before damage is calculated to determine if it should be destroyed. If the Crystal Beast is the weaker monster, its effect can still be used to place it into the spell and trap card zone. At the end of the damage step, when the destroyed Crystal Beast should be sent to the graveyard, you can either allow it to go on its merry way or place it into the spell and trap card zone.
Passive vs. Aggressive
When players began trying to figure out how to wreck the Crystal Beasts, some of them came to the conclusion that removing them from play would be the right approach. They already had reasons for using cards like Macro Cosmos to disrupt other decks, so why not adapt them to this purpose as well? Attempting to remove the Crystal Beasts from play has its own share of problems however.
If a Crystal Beast monster is destroyed while a card like Macro Cosmos or Banisher of the Radiance is face up on the field, the player controlling the Crystal Beast is given the usual choice, with a slight twist. In this situation, the Crystal Beast can either become a continuous spell card or be removed from play. This lazy attempt at removal doesn’t do much to stop the crystallization process, but it can disrupt the support cards that need the graveyard for their supply of Crystal Beasts.
More aggressive cards that remove monsters from play are actually quite effective against the Crystal Beasts. When your opponent summons a Crystal Beast with 1500 or more ATK (like Crystal Beast Topaz Tiger), if you activate Bottomless Trap Hole, the Crystal Beast monster will be destroyed and removed from play. The player who summoned the Crystal Beast won’t be able to place it into his or her spell and trap card zone, even if that player wanted to.
Monsters with this sort of offensive ability will have the same outcome. This makes monsters like Dark Magician of Chaos, D.D. Warrior Lady, and D. D. Assailant a problem for the Crystal Beasts. When a Crystal Beast battles with one of these monsters, there is a good chance it can find itself removed from play without any chance to even think about crystallizing. Naturally, this only occurs if the offending monster in question is actually able to apply its effect.
Negating Crystallization
While it may not be possible to chain to the crystallization ability, it is possible to negate it with the right cards. The effect for crystallization is active while the Crystal Beast monster is face up on the field, and this is the territory of negation reserved by Skill Drain. Any Crystal Beast monster destroyed while Skill Drain is applying its effect will not have the option to crystallize and will instead find its way straight to the graveyard.
Sometimes, this negation comes from a monster that destroys the Crystal Beast in battle. Dark Ruler Ha Des and his Fiend-type minions are more than capable of dishing out the same kind of negation any time they destroy a Crystal Beast in battle, thanks to the blessings of their Dark Ruler. Dark Balter the Terrible will accomplish the same task.
Now that we have the basics down, next week we will shift our focus to the Crystal Beast support cards. The Beasts have their own collection to pull from within Force of the Breaker, but that’s not enough! We’re Yu-Gi-Oh! players. We don’t just stop with one set—not when we can use every available set to try and make our deck as amazing as possible.
Until next time, send all comments and questions to Curtis@Metagame.com