I’ve long believed that a big part of mastering the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG involves balancing synergy and utility. Synergetic combos win games, but too many dead combo pieces can cost you victory just as quickly. Always having useable cards can give you a tactical advantage over your opponents, but unmatched cards on their own can’t overcome big synergies. On a macro level, finding the perfect equilibrium can be the key to unlocking a deck’s full potential. On a micro level, some of the best cards in the game are ones that excel in both categories: cards like Snipe Hunter, Sangan, and Card Trooper.

So if a card is skewed all the way toward just synergy (or just utility), it’s usually either pretty poor or completely amazing. This is especially true in the case of synergy-centric cards. Think about stuff like Card of Safe Return, Destiny Hero - Disk Commander, or Soul Exchange. They’re all basically useless on their own, but with the right combo, they’re outstanding. If a card is going to be heavy on synergy and low in utility, it needs to be the kind of thing you’d build a deck around.

That brings me to another of the world debut Secret Rares from Gladiator’s Assault. Veil of Darkness was yet another surprise that nobody saw coming, and though it’s a dead card on its own, it has an incredibly powerful effect.

Veil of Darkness       

Continuous Spell                                                      

During your Draw Phase, if you draw a DARK monster, you can reveal it and send it to the Graveyard to draw 1 more card.

There’s a lot of things Veil of Darkness won’t do. It won’t give you field advantage. It won’t protect your life points, make tributing easier, or deal damage. It won’t give you card advantage either. In fact, you’re going to have to spend a card placing Veil of Darkness on the field, and that factor alone is probably responsible for the low demand for this spell. However, where others see a Secret they don’t want to pull, I see opportunity. For each thing this card can’t do, there’s something awesome that it can do.

Acceleration toward Target Cards

I’ll begin with a brief discussion of one of the lesser attractions this card holds (simply because the bigger draws are, well, enormous and will take a while to discuss). While there really isn’t a card in existence that mirrors Veil of Darkness’s effect, a comparison can be drawn between the Veil and Magical Merchant. Like the Merchant, Veil of Darkness allows you to forgo monsters you would have topdecked in order to get to spells and traps, giving you more control over your ability to draw into key non-monsters.

The cool thing, though, is that while Magical Merchant could only ever get you to spell and trap cards you needed, Veil of Darkness accelerates you toward anything. You don’t have to discard a Dark monster you draw: the effect is optional. So if you’re digging for Breaker the Magical Warrior or Snipe Hunter, you can take a chance and pitch any undesirable Dark monster you aren’t looking to topdeck, spinning the wheel one more time to try and get to the ones you want. It’s sort of like Card Trader, but you can use it over and over instead of just once per turn.

Of course, the big difference between this spell and Card Trader is that Veil of Darkness lets you . . .

Load Your Graveyard!

Ever since Labyrinth of Nightmare introduced everyone’s favorite purple monkey to dueling, the graveyard has become increasingly important. Two of the current Advanced format’s top three decks—Zombies and Perfect Circle Monarchs—are dependent on getting particular cards into the graveyard in order to create winning combos. Other competitive strategies like Big City, Dark World, and Volcanic Monarchs also focus on sending and recurring particular cards to and from the graveyard. The presence of live cards in the graveyard is so important right now that Macro Cosmos is competitively viable simply because it can stop all these decks from having access to their graveyard tricks.

Dark monsters are a particularly good match for the type of effect Veil of Darkness offers, because many of them profit from other Darks in the graveyard. The first thing most of us probably thought when we saw Veil of Darkness was how good it could be with Strike Ninja. If Veil of Darkness can survive on the field for just one turn, it can discard multiple Dark Monsters, and every pair that gets sent to the yard will be another dodge for the Ninja (and another stymied Sakuretsu Armor). That translates into an immediate tactical advantage: Strike Ninja can do his trick way earlier than normal. It also gives a long-term strategic advantage because you know you’ll be able to create a disparity in card presence and effectively negate a lot of your opponent’s monster removal.

If you’re more of a blunt object type, you’ll love playing this card with Prometheus, King of the Shadows. While Strike Ninja provided defensive options as a result of his synergy with Veil of Darkness, Prometheus is pure aggression. For every extra Dark monster you send to the graveyard with Veil of Darkness, Prometheus can gain another 400 ATK. It’s not uncommon to have him remove five or more Dark monsters with the Veil feeding him, swinging for 3200 damage or who knows how much. The sky’s the limit, and Veil brings this type of play online really early.

Dark Necrofear is another monster that can profit from the Dark monsters ditched by the Veil. Virtually every card a Fiend deck wants to run (save Slate Warrior and Card Trooper) is a Dark monster to begin with, so it’s no leap to forego Slate Warrior for a few copies of Dark Mimic LV3, and from there enjoy a dedicated lineup of Dark Fiends. Send three to the graveyard with Veil of Darkness and you can drop Dark Necrofear at any time, swinging over Cyber Dragon and wielding a Snatch Steal-type effect in a format where Snatch Steal isn’t supposed to be possible. The new Evil Hero Infernal Gainer also helps this strategy.

There are a lot of non-Dark cards that can use the Veil to generate ammunition too. Bazoo the Soul-Eater can eat anything, not just Dark monsters, and Veil of Darkness can have the monkey at 2500 ATK for astoundingly long periods of time. Skull Lair and Veil of Darkness become a potent removal engine when combined, earning you massive field advantage with relatively even draws. The ability to discard a Dark monster and then bring it back with Premature Burial or Call of the Haunted is great too, especially when you factor in Dark Magician of Chaos’s Dark attribute. Pot of Avarice gets a lot easier as well.

Stuff You Didn’t Really Want To Draw Anyway

This is also a big factor. There are a lot of Dark monsters that duelists use, but go to a lot of trouble just to toss into their graveyards without actually putting in play. Destiny Hero - Malicious and Destiny Hero - Disk Commander are the two most obvious, but Destiny Hero - Dasher also becomes easier to use when you’re running the Veil. D. D. Scout Plane can be immediately sent to the graveyard for removal by Strike Ninja or Prometheus, and you can even plow through Necro Gardna. Loading Gardna into the graveyard with Veil of Darkness will let you negate an attack later on in the duel, without having to give up a draw to do so.

In fact, you can actually create a really cool Dark Warrior reverse Toolbox strategy thanks to Veil of Darkness. Zombyra the Dark and D.D. Survivor provide raw ATK, Mataza the Zapper can create big damage against a cleared field, and Don Zaloog punishes the opponent’s hand in the same situation. You can even play Greenkappa! The Warrior Returning Alive can fish any of them out of your graveyard, and the ones you don’t need can feed Strike Ninja.

Another cool combo for Veil of Darkness happens to be another secret rare in Gladiator’s Assault: Necroface. When Necroface is removed from play, both players remove the top five cards from their decks as well, and if there was a Necroface in those five cards, then you remove five more for the second copy. Played with a bunch of Dark monsters, Veil of Darkness makes it easy to get Necroface into the graveyard where it can then be removed. Remember, even if you have an empty deck, your opponent needs to draw next turn before you do, so you can feel free to tear yours apart with Veil so long as you use Necroface to send the opponent’s cards into oblivion by the end of the turn.

Veil of Darkness is probably one of the most versatile combo cards ever printed. It makes cards like Strike Ninja and Pot of Avarice much faster, creates a killer removal engine with Skull Lair, and gets a plethora of graveyard-live monsters where they need to be. It’s a boon for newly-bolstered Fiend strategies, speeds up Return from the Different Dimension and Dimension Fusion, and even makes some new deck ideas possible. It’s only going to get crazier when next year’s first booster set, Phantom Darkness, debuts: that set is all about Dark monsters. If you think you might want this card in the future, now is the time to get your copies. It’s only going to get better as time goes on.

—Jason Grabher-Meyer