When I saw that my second preview was a LV monster, I was a bit skeptical. While the effects of monsters like Horus the Black Flame Dragon LV8 and Armed Dragon LV7 are phenomenal, they’re extremely difficult to get out and can be dead cards in your hand or graveyard. The most successful Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG players tend to make the best use of their cards at all times, whether they’re in the hand, graveyard, or deck. While some players can make the idea work, no LV strategy has been able to Top 8 after the lengthy and grueling rounds of a Shonen Jump Championship.

When I read the LV4 and 6 variants of the card, I was a bit more pleased. The effects of both monsters are quite formidable, and they could probably hold their own in a deck not based on the LV8 monster. Then I got to Dark Lucius LV8 and immediately double-checked its effect with the editors. Here’s what I saw:

Dark Lucius LV4

Fiend / Effect

EARTH, level 4

1000/300

Your opponent’s monsters that this card destroys by battle have their effects negated. During your next Standby Phase after this card destroys a monster by battle, by sending this card to the Graveyard, Special Summon 1 “Dark Lucius LV6” from your hand or Deck.

Dark Lucius LV6

Fiend / Effect

EARTH level 6

1700/600

If this card was Special Summoned by the effect of “Dark Lucius LV4”, your opponent’s monsters that this card destroys by battle have their effects negated. During your next Standby Phase after this card has negated your opponent’s monster effect, by sending this card to the Graveyard, Special Summon 1 “Dark Lucius LV8” from your hand or Deck.  

Dark Lucius LV8

Fiend / Effect

EARTH, level 8

2800/900

If this card was Special Summoned by the effect of “Dark Lucius LV6”, your opponent’s monsters that this card destroys by battle are removed from play, and their effects are negated.

You’re probably thinking what I’m thinking, which is that Dark Lucius LV8’s effect text seems awfully short. That’s because there’s no pesky text limiting its ability to be summoned. You’ve still got the option to special summon Dark Lucius LV8 from your hand or deck by using the LV6’s effect. However, if you happen to draw and/or discard Dark Lucius LV8 throughout the course of the duel, you can still normal summon or special summon it like any normal monster. Though it won’t get its effect this way, it’s still got a whopping 2800 ATK, making it a potentially usable card no matter where it is.

With this newfound knowledge of our Dark Lucius monsters, let’s take a look at what we can do with them. Dark Lucius LV4 strikes my fancy quite a bit. Many popular strategies are based around the manipulation of monster effects. Dark Lucius LV4 outright negates them. This kind of power usually comes with hefty costs (such as Dark Balter the Terrible) or has a handful of restrictions (like Dark Ruler Ha Des or Twin-Headed Wolf). Others are limited in what they can negate, like Blade Knight or Drillroid. Dark Lucius does it all.

In a metagame where flip effect monsters and defensive plays are quite popular, Dark Lucius LV4 can tear through unsuspecting opponents. I’d like to see a Monarch deck function without that Treeborn Frog or when its Apprentice Magician engine is negated entirely by our tiny Fiend. Dark Lucius also works against a monster that destroys it back in battle. Yep, Sangan’s no match for this guy! While you’ll lose a monster in the fight, you won’t let your opponent search his or her deck with Sangan’s effect.

The LV6 Lucius is more restricted. You’ve got to special summon it using the effect of Dark Lucius LV4 in order to get its monster-negating effect, but it’s well worth the upgrade. Adding 700 ATK brings a lot more to the table than one might initially expect. The LV6 Lucius can beat down on recruiters like Mystic Tomato and Mother Grizzly, as well as Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive—cards that his little buddy couldn’t handle. With copies of Rush Recklessly and Blast with Chain to aid it, the LV6 can take down almost any commonly played monster and negate its effect to boot.

The LV8’s the real prize, though. Weighing in at 2800 ATK, this behemoth not only flattens and negates almost every monster it could run into, but it removes them from play as well. While this may seem insignificant when the monster’s graveyard effect is negated anyway, removing monsters from the game means the graveyard becomes less of a resource for your opponent. Premature Burial, Call of the Haunted, and Pot of Avarice all require monsters in the graveyard, and the utility of those cards is greatly increased when you’ve got a wider variety of monsters to play with. By removing the monsters from the game, you can turn your opponent’s graveyard-based effects from power cards to dead draws.

The first place you’d think to use these cards is definitely a Fiend deck. As Fiends, the three Lucius monsters fuel Dark Necrofear faster than any others. By constantly replacing themselves with larger variants, the Lucius monsters make getting three Fiends into your graveyard a piece of cake. Add to that the fact that they’re negating your opponent’s monsters (and therefore limiting his or her options) along the way, and you’re setting up for a Dark Necrofear that’s harder to deal with than your opponent might expect.

The Fiend deck is already one of the best around at negating monster effects. Dark Ruler Ha Des and Skill Drain are common in a Fiend deck, since the deck’s own monsters tend to either resolve in the graveyard or aren’t hurt by the activation of Skill Drain. Deck Devastation Virus is another card that prevents monster effects from being used as intended, this time by destroying all monsters with 1500 ATK or less. The Fiend deck works with that card quite nicely, since monsters like Giant Orc, Dark Necrofear, and Dark Ruler Ha Des each fill Devastation’s tribute requirements.

If you checked out my preview last week, you’ll remember a dastardly Fiend called Snipe Hunter. Dark Lucius LV8 and Snipe Hunter love working together to destroy cards on the field using Snipe Hunter’s effect. A 2800 ATK, level 8 monster is generally better in your graveyard than in your hand anyway, and you’ve now got another Fiend in your graveyard to use with the effects of Dark Necrofear, Call of the Haunted, Premature Burial, or Pot of Avarice.