Crystal Beasts this. Crystal Beasts that. The Crystal Beast monsters and their support cards have been the focus of a ton of discussions and articles. You can bring them up in many discussions involving the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, and typically, you will hear positive things about this new theme from Force of the Breaker. Many of the support cards for the Crystal Beasts are, in fact, very powerful.

The challenge, however, lies with the new theme’s monster line-up. Crystal Beast Sapphire Pegasus is incredible, offering sufficient ATK power with an incredibly versatile search effect that will thin the deck of monsters while speeding up the effects of the new theme’s support spells. Crystal Beast Ruby Carbuncle also offers a powerful effect that is capable of ending games in one speedy turn. Many of the other Crystal Beast monsters are filler. Monsters like Crystal Beast Amber Mammoth and Crystal Beast Topaz Tiger are by no means bad, but they do not compare to more powerful and more splashable monsters such as Card Trooper. Because of this and the lack of some more powerful special summoned or tribute summoned finishers, the Crystal Beast’s monster line-up really needs powerful spell and trap support to allow the theme to keep up with the “good-stuff” decks you commonly see at a premiere event.

Luckily, the support does not disappoint! From potent draw power to great search power, the Crystal Beasts are good at doing what they are meant to do, and they do it consistently. The spell support even goes so far as to include a powerful finisher. Crystal Abundance is the perfect card for ending the game with the Crystal Beast theme, and is one of the primary reasons to consider running Crystal Beasts in a competitive environment.

Crystal Abundance does have a steep activation cost. In order to play it, you have to send four Crystal Beast monsters from your spell and trap zone to the graveyard. However, the effect you get in return literally screams, “I win the game!”

Yeah, that’s right. Crystal Abundance essentially wins you the game, barring any sort of shenanigans from the opponent that can be activated in response to your spell card (such as Threatening Roar). After all, Crystal Abundance not only wipes the field clean of everything, it also lets you special summon enough Crystal Beast monsters from your graveyard to the field that you’ll most likely fill up your monster zone. With enough big Crystal Beast monsters, this will instantly win you the game by allowing you to attack for over 8000 damage in one turn.

Players should be familiar with how powerful cards like this are. The cards that see significant tournament play tend to break the rules that players are familiar with. In this case, special summoning is essentially “breaking the rules,” since both players are usually only allowed one normal summon per turn. Even Monarch control is occasionally guilty of this, as it utilizes Treeborn Frog to make its Monarchs far more efficient.

However, it is the incredible power cards like Return from the Different Dimension and Dimension Fusion that make this rule-breaking concept so recognizable. Both of them let you go from empty-field to full-field with one simple activation and this can easily win you the game in one massive blow-out of a turn. Dimension Fusion has become more infamous lately with its use in Diamond Dude Turbo, allowing the Destiny Hero deck to explode in one huge rush of card and deck manipulation. However, in all regards, Return from the Different Dimension is the card that Crystal Abundance can best be compared to.

Return from the Different Dimension is a narrow card in that it requires you to focus at least part of your deck toward removing your own monsters from play . . . preferably from the graveyard. If you can remove a sufficient number of monsters, then it can single-handedly win you the game. These situations typically arise only late in a duel, when a win condition like this is truly necessary. Crystal Abundance is more narrow in terms of what decks it can be played in, but provides basically the same effect. Players who activate Return from the Different Dimension rarely ever lose unless they get greedy and try to win a turn earlier than necessary.

Crystal Abundance is also a win condition card, as I have mentioned earlier; it can win you the game the turn it resolves. Even if your opponent has a way to delay the inevitable, such as with a Threatening Roar, it would take a massive combination of effects to undo the damage the opponent suffered, as his or her entire field will be wiped out by Crystal Abundance while you have a field full of monsters waiting to end the duel. Since a majority of the Crystal Beasts lack real muscle, a card like this is a real gem to the deck theme . . . no pun intended.

However, fulfilling the requirements to activate Crystal Abundance can be tough. The best way to fill up your spell and trap zone with Crystal Beasts quickly will almost always be with Crystal Beast Sapphire Pegasus. It is undoubtedly the best monster card for the Crystal Beast theme, as it allows you to set up a spell and trap zone full of Crystal Beast monsters you want to have immediate access to, whether it’s through the activation of Crystal Abundance or with a card like Crystal Promise. Speaking of Crystal Promise, it is incredibly good at getting further use out of a previously destroyed Crystal Beast Sapphire Pegasus.

Since Crystal Beast Sapphire Pegasus is so important to the Crystal Beast theme, it is important that you summon it as early as possible. Sometimes, you won’t draw it in your opening hand. Crystal Beacon can allow you to search out this key monster in order to get your deck-cycling and spell and trap zone manipulation online as soon as possible. The advantage of all of these search effects (other than how they make your deck work consistently) is that they also thin your deck so that you can draw win conditions like Crystal Abundance faster.

One you get up to that fourth Crystal Beast monster in your spell and trap zone, activate Crystal Abundance and swarm your opponent with a torrent of rocks, gems, and destruction. After all, that’s what Crystal Abundance was made for. While the Crystal Beasts lack the strength to stand on their own as an aggressive, monster-oriented tournament deck, they have plenty of spell support that makes running the monsters as a theme worthwhile. The Crystal Beasts contain so much card and deck manipulation that it can be very easy to dig through your deck at rapid speeds, pulling out whatever you need. Consistency and the ability to explode with the right win condition are what make the Crystal Beasts an awesome deck strategy.