Over the weekend, the dueling world was introduced to what might be the most important promotional card ever produced: Grandmaster of the Six Samurai. This monster was the result of a lot of hard work by folks over at UDE, and boy does it show. In chess, Grandmaster is the highest title a player can receive without winning a world championship. Players all around the world respect and look up to those who hold the title. Similarly, our very own Grandmaster is more than capable of commanding the respect of every duelist in the world. Its abilities are above and beyond anything we ever expected from it, and as the Sneak Preview weekend approaches, we count down the days until we can get our hands on this card and vanquish our opponents with it. What will the release of Grandmaster of the Six Samurai mean to the metagame? I’ll get there in a second, but first, for all of you who haven’t seen the card yet, make sure you’re sitting down. Check out the effect text we put together from the official site: this one’s going to blow you away.

Grandmaster of the Six Samurai

Level 5

EARTH/Warrior

You can only have 1 "Grandmaster of the Six Samurai" monster on your side of the field. While you control a face-up "Six Samurai" monster, you can Special Summon this card from your hand. When this card is destroyed by your opponent's card effect, add 1 "Six Samurai" monster from your Graveyard to your hand.

ATK 2100/DEF 800

Before you go all skeptical on me, let me assure you that I’m not making this up. Check it out on www.yugioh.com if you like. There’s a good chance you haven’t seen any other “Six Samurai” monsters, but trust me when I say that Grandmaster takes a set of new monsters that are already pretty good and launches them straight into contention with all the other top decks in the format. Before you can understand exactly how good the Grandmaster is, however, you’ve got to understand what the Six Samurai are all about. Traditionally, the Warrior type is known for three things: low-level monsters that prioritize effects over stats, the ability to swarm the field quickly, and a lack of good high-level, high-power monsters. The Six Samurai are a set of six different monsters (one for each attribute) in Strike of Neos that exemplify the first major aspect of the Warrior type. One of them can destroy a face-down spell or trap every turn, another can attack directly, and yet another can replicate the effect of Mystic Swordsman LV2 without requiring you to leave a 900 ATK monster on the field. Additionally, each of the Samurai has a special ability that lets it evade destruction by allowing you to destroy a different “Six Samurai” monster it its place.

There’s just one little catch: in order to get these powers, you need a second “Six Samurai” monster face up on your side of the field with a different name. Thematically, it presents the Six Samurai as the ultimate team. When they get together, there isn’t a force on earth that can stop them. Unfortunately, there’s this little thing called the “One Normal Summon per Turn” rule that stops you from simply dropping a bunch of Samurai on the first turn and going to town with effects. This is a bit of a pain, considering that the prevalence of Cyber Dragon and monster removal spells make it difficult for a given Samurai to stay on the field long enough to wreak some havoc.

Fortunately, the Six Samurai are really good at offering players the extra summoning power they need to cut through the opponent’s defenses. In fact, Grandmaster of the Six Samurai is really indicative of the kinds of tactics the Six Samurai employ to get the jump on their opponents. Let’s say, for example, that your opponent is playing a Gadget deck. He opens with a set Sakuretsu Armor and a Yellow Gadget. You summon The Six Samurai – Yaichi (which can destroy a set spell or trap as long as you skip his attack that turn), then special summon Grandmaster, then special summon my preview card for this coming Sunday, Great Shogun Shien. Yes, this all works. Yaichi gives up its attack for the turn to destroy the Sakuretsu Armor, and then you attack for 3400 damage. That’s almost half the opponent’s starting life total, and if he or she thinks that Smashing Ground and Fissure can help, he or she has another thing coming. Of course, why you can’t just bash your way out of this with simple removal is a story for another time (Sunday in fact). But the fact that you can even do it at all is a testament to how useful Grandmaster really is. It’s Cyber Dragon, only better.

Seriously, think about it for a second. Grandmaster of the Six Samurai has the same level and attack strength as Cyber Dragon. It can also be special summoned for free if a certain condition is met. Unlike Cyber Dragon, however, Grandmaster is useful both when you’re in a unfavorable position or when you’re winning and getting ready to wrap up the game, and since it always brings back a Six Samurai from the graveyard if your opponent blows it away with an effect, you’ll almost always have monsters to play. Grandmaster can even bring itself back from the graveyard, making it nearly impossible to permanently defeat. Cyber Dragon only wishes that it was as resilient as the Regis Mark V, which you cannot defeat because it is invincible (and voiced by Michael Dorn). The one thing you need to be careful about is that you don’t get to bring back a card if you substitute the destruction of another Samurai with the destruction of Grandmaster. If you could, it would be possible to create a nearly unbreakable lock with Grandmaster, Shien, and another Six Samurai. Still, you can only have one Grandmaster on the field at a time, so eventually there will come a time when you want to let your first one go.

Now, I said above that there are three things that Warriors are generally known for. On their own, they represent a wide variety of useful effects. With Grandmaster, they can officially swarm the field better than any other Warriors in the game, and with Great Shogun Shien, the Six Samurai get an excellent high-level monster that is rather uncharacteristic of their type. The group as a whole is the most cohesive Warrior strategy in the game. No more using Reinforcement of the Army to get a random monster that likely pays for its utility with minimal ATK and DEF and little to no support. When you’re playing the Six Samurai, you’re going to be dropping a Samurai with a killer effect followed by a Grandmaster and immediately shifting control of the duel in your favor (barring the interference of, say, Torrential Tribute). Even if Torrential does interfere, you’ll still be able to get a card back from your graveyard so you can try again next turn. That’s the real point.

While most Warrior decks have to roll over and die if they get hit by mass removal after they swarm, Grandmaster makes comebacks not only possible, but probable. Now that’s power. Sure, its scope may be limited specifically to the Six Samurai deck, but once you see all the cards that the Samurai have to offer and add Grandmaster on top of that, you may have a sudden irrepressible desire to duke it out with your opponents. This is one Sneak Preview you sure don’t want to miss, so head over to the official page and find the event nearest you. I’ll be back on Sunday with another preview, but keep on checking Metagame.com every day to see a brand new card from Strike of Neos, and until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale