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Doomkaiser Dragon
Card# CSOC-EN043
Doomkaiser Dragon's effect isn't just for Zombie World duelists: remember that its effect can swipe copies of Plaguespreader Zombie, too!
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Sometimes I’ll use The Light of Play to highlight cards that I’d use in tournament decks. Other times, I’ll look at things that deserve attention and can possibly rock, but need a bit more effort and cleverness to do so.
Today’s one of those days. With enough wit and know-how, Magical Hats can rock!
You didn’t misread that. I just said that Magical Hats can rock.
 When you think of Magical Hats, you probably think of it as a fun little card that stalls for a bit but is a waste of space. “Maybe it can save my monster!” Maybe it can and maybe it can’t. In the minds of most duelists, Magical Hats is in a category of cards that kids play because they saw Yugi use it one day after school. This trap is part of a little group of unplayable cards that are fun because they’re wacky. I don’t like to call these cards “unplayable” because that’s a negative term. I prefer to use “funplayable.” And I say that with a big, satirical grin.
But Magical Hats is more than your average funplayable card. It’s got a lot of cool uses, and is quite powerful and unique in its capabilities. It can do some useful and basic things when used properly.
A few uses for Magical Hats are obvious. It can save a monster that you don’t want to be attacked and destroyed in battle. Or, it can turn one monster that your opponent needs to punch through into three monsters that your opponent needs to get out of the way before he or she can attack directly. Taken in this context, it’s no wonder why the card is written off as purely situational and a poor pick for Constructed play. Luckily, Magical Hats does a lot more than that.
To begin with, Magical Hats turns a monster of your choice that you control into face down defense position. If you have an attack-position monster that an opponent’s powerful attacker is going to use as a gateway to your life points, you can turn a monster that was once a weakness into a defensive wall. Something like Spear Dragon, Fairy Meteor Crush, or a monster using the effect of Enraged Battle Ox is still going to be a problem (especially if it runs into one of the zero-defense “hats”), but against anything else this can be a surprising and effective play. Remember, if you’re turning Spirit Reaper face down—making a tasty bit of bait for an opponent—the Spirit Reaper will successfully go face down because its effect needs to make a check at both the activation and resolution of the effect targeting it. Because Spirit Reaper is face down when Magical Hats resolves, it can’t make that second check.
Perhaps the most valuable part of this aspect of Magical Hats’ effect is that it lets you turn flip-effect monsters face down. This means you can reuse these monsters’ flip effects on your next turn or when they’re flipped as a result of battle. Book of Moon can give you the same luxury, but the rest of Magical Hats’ effect has some interesting synergy with several flip-effect monsters, so with the right intent, this card is worth considering.
 For instance, if you want to keep reusing Magical Hats, you can continuously cycle Mask of Darkness as long as you don’t attack and destroy it. Let’s say I set Magical Hats on my turn, you attack my face-up Mask of Darkness on your turn, and I respond by activating Magical Hats and targeting the Mask. The Mask goes face down, and up come two decoys from my deck that will hopefully save the Mask. On the next turn, I flip the Mask face up, take back Magical Hats, set it again, and hopefully the loop will continue. It’s not a bad little cycle of defense, as long as I can keep the number of an opponent’s attackers down.
Even better, I could activate Magical Hats and have monsters like Hane-Hane and Penguin Soldier face down on my side of the field. If you attack and hit my monsters, I’ll use their flip effects to bounce the cards I targeted with Magical Hats’ effect into my hand. For the cost of a single face-down monster and a trap, I just gained up to two spell or trap cards of my choice from my deck. While I lose one summon, it’s a two-for-two trade that just let me get Pot of Greed and a little card I like to call “Whatever I Need To Wreck You Next Turn.” Though there are other ways to get a spell or trap card into your hand, I’m hard pressed to think of a combo that is as simple and useful as this one.
Because Magical Hats’ effect lets you grab any spell or trap you want, there are some interesting combos you can do that don’t involve just getting stuff into your hand. When you pull two copies of Fuhma Shuriken for the two hats, the opponent is in a lose-lose situation. Either the opponent attacks and risks destroying the Shuriken (taking 700 points of damage for each one they destroy), or he or she does nothing, knowing that the Shuriken are going to be destroyed by Magical Hats’ effect at the end of the battle phase, at which point the opponent has to take 1400 points of damage. Regardless of what the opponent does, that 1400 damage is going to be difficult to escape. The same trick works with Black Pendant, only in multiples of 500 instead of 700.
Also, remember that Magical Hats thins your deck, which is always convenient.
 Different types of decks are going to do well with Magical Hats to different degrees. A straightforward Beatdown deck isn’t going to like Magical Hats as much as a Lockdown deck. What Magical Hats helps the most is that rare breed of not-quite-viable deck that needs a single card to work, especially a non-field spell, which is often thought to be impossible to search for reliably. For instance, in decks that try to win with Final Countdown, the Magical Hats and Penguin Soldier combo can be incredibly helpful. You can use the combo in the early game to bring out Final Countdown and then either bump it into your hand with Penguin Soldier or bring it into your hand from the graveyard via Magician of Faith. None of these three cards suffer from lessened utility in such a deck: Magician of Faith is always useful, Penguin Soldier prevents the opponent from building a swarm that a deck like this can be hurt by, and Magical Hats can give more of the defense needed to last the twenty turns until you can claim automatic victory.
All in all, it’s fair to call Magical Hats a misunderstood card that is rarely used to its full potential. If you play any sort of Lockdown variant, this can be worth testing out. Magical Hats is a nice little piece of underused tech that an opponent will never see coming. If you’re playing a deck that it might fit into, or if this article has piqued your interest in trying a deck that can get a boost from a good hatting, give this card a shot!
—Jason
Want to get in touch? Have a favorite card that you feel is underplayed? Email me at Jason@metagame.com. |
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