The Venom monsters will make their appearance in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX in the not too distant future. Until then, Tactical Evolution gives us a glimpse of the trouble they will cause the academy’s finest.

Venom Contagion

Venom Counters don’t do anything on their own, just like Spell Counters. The Venom Counters are used as a reference for other effects. In Tactical Evolution we have several approaches to creating Venom Counters, but only two intended uses for them. We begin with cards that generate Venom Counters.

The three basic Venom monsters help to spread the Venom Counters onto your opponent’s cards. Their effects can only be activated during your own turn, in either of your main phases. When you activate the effect, you will select one of your opponent’s monsters as a target, and when the effect is resolved, you will place the appropriate number of Venom Counters onto the targeted monster. The stronger two of the three, Venom Snake and Venom Boa, are not allowed to attack if they use this effect, but their partner, Venom Serpent, has no such restriction.

These three monsters aren’t exactly the toughest around, so to keep them safe we have Ambush Fangs. It is essentially the Venom deck’s very own Negate Attack, with the added advantage of placing one Venom Counter onto the monster that tried to attack. The sequence is interrupted briefly when the battle step is fast-forwarded to the end step. During most duels this won’t even be an issue, because we seldom carry out any effects in the end step.

When you have Vennominon the King of Poisonous Snakes or Vennominaga the Deity of Poisonous Snakes on your side of the field, you can take advantage of Venom Shot to safely generate two Venom Counters while also tossing a Reptile from your deck into your graveyard. Vennominon and Vennominaga are always happy to have another Reptile in the graveyard, and those two Venom Counters will serve another purpose. It’s all part of a master plan leading up to our next two cards.

Runaway Fever

We begin with Venom Burn, a card that makes your opponent suffer for the damage done to his or her monsters.

“Select 1 monster with a Venom Counter(s). Remove all Venom Counters from that card, and inflict 700 damage to your opponent for each Venom Counter removed.”

Venom Burn’s general purpose is to chip in additional damage that hastens the end of a duel. Its potential is measured by the number of cards you use to generate Venom Counters and the longevity of the monsters that accumulate them. Once you are satisfied with the number of Venom Counters you have accumulated on a monster, you need only activate Venom Burn to drain them away and inflict damage to your opponent accordingly.

With the popular, aggressive builds we see these days, you wouldn’t want your opponent’s monster sitting around for very long. To really get the most from Venom Burn, you may want to consider a stall approach, using Venom monsters and other Venom cards to spread Venom Counters onto one monster. After you’ve reached a good threshold, you hit your opponent with Venom Burn to seal the win. With multiple Venom monsters you, can generate several Venom Counters in one turn, letting your opponent succumb to the toxicity.

If you like to use Ojama Trio, as I do, you may find that the Ojama Tokens can be helpful as storage bins for Venom Counters. These little guys aren’t likely to be tributed and they aren’t very popular for offensives. Outside of mass removal, you can expect that they will hang around for a while. Sure your opponent could summon Snipe Hunter and slowly pick them off, but that also means he or she is discarding and taking a chance on a die roll just to destroy one of his or her own monsters. It’s always an odd situation to be in.

The Slaughter Swamp

Venom Swamp favors a more aggressive build. It combines an ATK-decreasing effect and monster removal, both of which are beneficial to the Venom monsters.

“Monsters lose 500 ATK for each Venom Counter on them. Destroy a monster if its ATK becomes 0 by this effect. During each player's End Phase, place 1 Venom Counter on each face-up monster, except ‘Venom’ monsters.”

Venom Swamp’s first two effects are continuous, and are applied to any monster that has Venom Counter(s) placed on it. Each individual Venom Counter saps the monster’s ATK, taking it closer to the 0 ATK value desired by the controller of the Venom Swamp. When the accumulation of Venom Counters causes a monster’s ATK to drop to 0, that monster succumbs to the venom and is destroyed. This can occur at various times during the turn, depending on the cards used to generate the Venom Counters.

The actual destruction of the afflicted monsters does not begin a chain. The monster is destroyed whenever the accumulation of Venom Counters seals its fate, no matter whose turn it is or what game phase you happen to be in. If your opponent has Card Trooper with 400 ATK and you use Venom Snake to place a Venom Counter onto it, the Card Trooper will be immediately destroyed by Venom Swamp because the loss of 500 ATK drops its ATK to 0.

Monsters that have already dropped to 0 ATK before receiving Venom Counters and monsters that have an original ATK of 0 will both survive the Venom Swamp because its effect was not responsible for draining the monster’s ATK to 0. We don’t often see monsters have their ATK dropped to 0, but you can run into the occasional monster that has 0 original ATK. If you’re using the Venom Burn combination with Ojama Tokens, you’ll understand what I mean. The Ojama Tokens already have 0 ATK, so placing Venom Counters on them while Venom Swamp is active doesn’t harm them. Your opponent’s other monsters won’t be quite so lucky, so you can still use Venom Swamp to slowly finish them off while the Ojamas accumulate Venom Counters.

During the end phase (either yours or your opponent’s), Venom Swamp infects every face-up monster on the field with one Venom Counter. The only monsters that can escape the toxins are the “Venom” monsters mentioned at the beginning of the article and the two masters of the serpents, Vennominon and Vennominaga. Unlike the previous two effects, the act of spreading Venom Counters begins a chain and can be countered if possible. The usefulness of being able to respond is certainly debatable, but if your monster is next on the chopping block, you may want to take advantage of it.

Next week, we look at Vennominon and Vennominaga. Until then, send all comments and questions to Curtis@Metagame.com