Metagame.com - Take Your Game to the Next Level

Effect: While you control another "Six Samurai" monster, you can tribute a "Six Samurai" monster to destroy a monster on the field.

What are we looking at here? Quite possibly a revitalization of the Six Samurai archetype. Lately, they haven’t had much to brag about with Gladiator Beasts dominating the scene, but that’s about to change.

Fixing Current Problems
What was one of the biggest problems for the Six Samurai archetype? Defensive maneuvers. In the past, the growing emphasis on cards like Solemn Judgment, Crush Card Virus, and Threatening Roar limited this deck’s ability to mount successful attacks and quell the opponent’s forces. Not anymore. The Hand sits at a quiet 1600 ATK, which gives you a solid weapon against Snipe Hunter and Gladiator Beast Bestiari. Its level 3 status gives you a good attacker to use in the face of Level Limit - Area B and Gravity Bind. Another benefit to its level is that it gives your deck a good amount of variety for Reasoning. This was another problem with the Six Samurai deck: a major one, in fact. The predictability of Reasoning led to an opponent calling "four" without a second thought. Since at least 50% of your monster line-up was often level 4 in recent builds, you had another major issue: lack of surprise. On top of that, when the opponent called "four" and you ended up getting Spirit of the Six Samurai, you didn’t have much to boast about. With Hand in your deck, your opponent can call "four" and you can hit a Hand to attack for 1600 or destroy any monster: a much-needed improvement to the usefulness of Reasoning.

What’s really amazing about this card is its Exiled Force-like effect. It deserves some serious attention because you can activate this effect as many times as you please, so long as you have Samurai. Let’s think about this for a moment. What does this imply? Well, for one thing, you no longer have to worry about those pesky extra copies of Grandmaster of the Six Samurai in your hand. If there’s anything that annoyed me, it was getting extra copies of the Grandmaster when you couldn’t use them. With Hand of the Six Samurai, you can put those Grandmasters to good use. For example, let’s say that your opponent has Gladiator Beast Heraklinos on the field without any face-down spells or traps (not an uncommon situation since Heraklinos needs fuel for its effect). Your hand, before you draw, consists of three cards: Grandmaster, Grandmaster, and Reasoning. Typically, there would be nothing in your deck to stop this lock-down and your inclination would be to scoop. Exiled Force isn’t too fantastic in a Six Samurai deck due to its lack of synergy and The Six Samurai - Zanji is your only bet, but that would leave you with a lonely Grandmaster and a Reasoning.

What if you draw Hand? Suddenly, the situation has improved dramatically. You summon your Hand, then special summon one of your Grandmasters. Next, tribute your Grandmaster to destroy Heraklinos, and special summon the next Grandmaster to the field. Now you have a combined ATK of 3700 to work with. Also, you have that Reasoning handy. If you play it, your combined ATK power can range from 4200 (with Spirit of the Six Samurai) to 6200 (with Great Shogun Shien). You have nearly unlimited upside potential with any card that emerges from Reasoning, plus control of the game.

How about a different scenario? Your opponent has Dark Armed Dragon on the field along with Destiny Hero - Fear Monger, and Destiny Hero - Disk Commander in the graveyard. To top it all off, your opponent has a face-down trap too. After looking through the graveyard, you deduce that the unknown card is either Mirror Force or Return from the Different Dimension. Unfortunately, your opponent is sitting at 5000 life points and seems to have absolute control over the game. So what can you do?

If your deck was modified to accommodate Hand of the Six Samurai then you have options. Imagine that you had Double-Edged Sword Technique face down on the field. In your hand is Grandmaster, Reinforcement of the Army, Book of Moon, and The Six Samurai - Irou. You have Hand, The Six Samurai - Yaichi, Zanji, and Spirit of the Six Samurai as your only monsters in the graveyard.

Flipping down Dark Armed Dragon with your Book would help you get rid of one threat, but that Fear Monger will fetch your opponent two cards next turn. Not good. Flipping down Fear Monger isn’t much help either. What it comes down to is creative use of the Sword Technique. You can play this in a variety of ways, but I’ll just outline one.

First, flip your Sword Technique to fetch Yaichi and Hand. Use Yaichi’s effect to destroy your opponent’s face-down trap. Now, use Hand’s effect to tribute your useless Yaichi to destroy Dark Armed Dragon. Then normal summon Irou and special summon Grandmaster. Tribute Hand of the Six Samurai to destroy Fear Monger, and you’re clear to attack for 3800 life points. You leave your opponent at a precarious life point total and you’ve avoided hefty damage yourself from the Sword Technique. You could play this differently. You could have gotten Hand and Spirit with Sword Technique instead, and activated Reinforcement to get Yaichi. In this case, you have Grandmaster, Yaichi, Hand, and Spirit on the field. Like before, use Yaichi’s effect to destroy the face-down card. Tribute Hand to get rid of Fear Monger. Play Book of Moon to turn Dark Armed face down. Equip Spirit to Grandmaster and attack the Dark Armed to get a card. You still take no damage from the Sword Technique.

Hand is also very good with other recursion cards like Return of the Six Samurai, Premature Burial, Monster Reborn, or The Warrior Returning Alive. Return of the Six Samurai will function a lot like the now-Forbidden Call of the Haunted, and how it could once bring back Exiled Force for a quick solution to a larger monster. Another use for the Sword Technique is to summon two targets for Hand’s effect in order to clear the way for an assault. A Six Samurai favorite of mine, Cunning of the Six Samurai, works great with Hand. You can trade your spent Yaichi for a Hand in the main phase. The result? You’ll destroy two cards: one monster and one spell or trap. Something else to think about: you can trade a Six Samurai monster while attacking in response to your opponent’s Phoenix Wing Wind Blast, and then proceed to eliminate your targets in the second main phase.

Implications and Final Thoughts
With the introduction of Hand of the Six Samurai, the Six Samurai archetype gets that much better. You can still launch blitzkrieg attacks against your opponent for major damage: that hasn’t changed at all. However, you no longer have to fret when your opponent turns into the Great Wall of China in order to thwart your carefully planned assaults. Threatening Roar and Waboku are no longer such a problem for the Six Samurai since you have access to better monster destruction outside of battle. This is something the Six Samurai deck has struggled with intensely in the past. Exiled Force has always been a good Warrior card, but it didn’t help with the highly synergistic nature of the Six Samurai deck.

I think it’s amazing that a single card can dramatically change the viability of a well-designed monster archetype. Has this happened before? Absolutely. Do you recall the release of Elemental Hero Prisma and how it skyrocketed the viability and speed of the Gladiator Beast archetype? I believe the same will occur with Hand of the Six Samurai and it would be a shame if you missed the upcoming Sneak Preview. The sooner you get your copies of Hand, the more time you’ll have to design an enhanced Six Samurai deck. Six Samurai fans, like myself, have a bright future ahead of them in the competitive arena.

Until next time, remember to focus and have fun!