Bill: Okay, I play Change of Heart on your face-down monster and flip summon it.

Tom: Drat . . . it’s Magician of Faith.

Bill: Oh, boy! I get back Monster Reborn and play it on my Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning. I then attack you with my mighty monster to win the—

Tom: I flip Waboku. *grins*

Bill: Grr . . . fine. It’s only a one-turn stall anyway. Have your petty Magician of Faith back.

Tom: Much appreciated. I draw, then play Dark Core on your Black Luster Soldier.

Bill: Aw, jeez! That sucks, big time!

Tom: I play Swords of Revealing Light and summon Tsukuyomi to flip my Magician of Faith face down. Just to note, I have a Nobleman of Crossout and a Dark Core in my graveyard, and I have two Night Assailants left in my hand.

Bill: Wha—

Tom: Care to summon a monster? *smiles*

Bill: I seriously hate you.

Mike: See? Tsukuyomi, once again, has proven to be a powerhouse when used with flip effects. He seriously handed your butt to you on a platter, Bill.

Bill and Tom: We know! We know! Enough about Tsukuyomi already! Jeez! We know it’s strong, and you’ve said it like fifty billion times!

Once again, Tsukuyomi comes to the rescue. Of course, it requires targets for its effect to trigger, and what better choice than a flip effect monster under your ownership? It’s always nice to get that flip effect activated over and over. This applies especially to monsters like Magician of Faith and Mask of Darkness, which may not only improve your hand size, but Tsukuyomi allows you to reuse powerful restricted cards such as Swords of Revealing Light and Pot of Greed. There are also powerful monster removal flip effects, such as Old Vindictive Magician, and a few nasty pumped up old guys like Hane-Hane from Soul of the Duelist. My personal favorite of the monster removal effects is Night Assailant, since it’s used not only as defense and monster removal, but also as a hand-managing utility.

In fact, both Magician of Faith and Night Assailant are deadly flip effect monsters. Their benefits, combos, and weaknesses (similar to most flip effects) will be covered today . . . oh, and I’ll be mentioning Tsukuyomi occasionally in this article. I’ll be doing it a lot in the future, but don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll get tired of constantly praising Tsukuyomi in a few articles, and then I’ll pick a new card to promote like crazy. Maybe Skull Servant . . . or maybe not.

The Card’s Breakdown

Magician of Faith is one of the most popular flip effects, and is also among one of the first highly used effect monsters in Metal Raiders, along with other gems such as Mask of Darkness, Thunder Dragon, and Dream Clown. Its stats, like almost every flip effect monster, leave something to be desired. However, when running Magician of Faith, you’re sacrificing an attacking or defending monster for a really useful spell recursion effect.

When Magician of Faith is flipped face up, you may choose any spell card in your graveyard and add it to your hand. This means you are able to reuse Pot of Greed, Premature Burial, Painful Choice, or any other spell from your graveyard. If you really want to annoy your opponent, you can return Swords of Revealing Light to keep him or her from attacking for a longer period of time. The Light attribute also helps Chaos decks benefit from Magician of Faith once it kicks the bucket—as if Chaos needed more help, right? As a Spellcaster, Magician of Faith is obviously a logical choice for a Spellcaster or Dark Magician deck.

Night Assailant can technically be seen as the polar opposite to Magician of Faith, both in terms of looks and their affiliations. Magician of Faith is a spellcaster of light, while Night Assailant is a demon from the depths of the abyss. Similar to Magician of Faith, Night Assailant has poor stats but compensates with a versatile effect, which is perhaps more useful than that of Magician of Faith at times.

This Fiend acts as a Swiss Army knife in a way, since it possesses a few different uses. The first use of Night Assailant is its flip effect, which destroys a monster on your opponent’s field. Monster removal is an asset to many decks, especially since the Advanced format has brought an end to the mass removal spells Raigeki and Dark Hole. Night Assailant’s second use is its other effect, which returns a flip effect monster from your graveyard to your hand if it’s sent from your hand to the graveyard. This is a nice counter to cards like Delinquent Duo and Chaos Emperor Dragon if you’re unfortunate enough to be hit by either of them. It’s also a nice way to reuse your dead Magician of Faith. Its third use is an offensive combo, using Night Assailant’s second effect if you have another Night Assailant in your graveyard. If Night Assailant is sent from your hand to the graveyard as a result of your card effect, cost, or anything controlled by you, your other Night Assailant in the graveyard can be returned to your hand. This creates a nifty loop as long as you keep a Night Assailant in your hand and graveyard. This also helps abuse effects like Dark Paladin—it’s actually a little too abusive. Then there’s Dark Necrofear, which already has so many powerful Fiends to feed from. Night Assailant makes Slate Warriors even worse.

The Cards in the Metagame

Magician of Faith has almost always been seen in the tournament environment since its release over two years go. Its spell recursion effect has always made it a popular choice for Control decks, and this ability became even more popular as Legacy of Darkness was released—also known as the birth of fiend spawn Yata-Garasu. Magician of Faith gained a boost in popularity for a while, though this eventually died down, with its face only being seen in a few decks at the occasional tournament. Invasion of Chaos, with its reign of Chaos on all duelists, tournaments, humanity, and the universe, also supported more play of Magician of Faith due to its Light attribute. Even with one of the Chaos monsters pinned down in the Advanced format, Magician of Faith still reigns as one of the most-used flip effect monsters in the tournament environment.

Night Assailant was given the same tournament treatment as the Ancient Sanctuary set, and it was dismissed as not being worth a spot in any tournament deck. It’s sad but true. Few decks have utilized Night Assailant’s effect to its full potential despite its Dark attribute, which could be used for Chaos decks. The main reason it’s not seen in Chaos is because Light attribute Effect monsters are the most desired. The Dark attribute already has Mystic Tomato, Jinzo, and Don Zaloog. Night Assailant is mainly a counter to hand destruction effects, which makes the fact that it was hardly played surprise me even more. Control is still a tier one or two tournament theme, falling short only to Warrior/Chaos and Burn thanks to the Advanced format.

How to Use and Counter These Cards

The universal flip effect combo must be mentioned here. Tsukuyomi is a “flip effect recycle” each turn when summoned. This allows you to reuse any flip effect, including Magician of Faith, Night Assailant, Mask of Darkness, Hane Hane, Gravekeeper’s Guard, and so on. Protecting your flip effect monsters will certainly be the challenge, but Swords of Revealing Light, Gravity Bind, Level Limit - Area B, and Messenger of Peace are some card that will help keep those monsters protected from attacks. Magician of Faith can reuse Swords of Revealing Light as well, which allows you to seal your opponent’s attack every turn no matter what. Be sure to watch out for monster removal traps. Your opponent won’t be sitting idly by as your Tsukuyomi starts killing him or her slowly and painfully, since it’s an underused card that is causing so many problems.

Magician of Faith can easily be special summoned with Apprentice Magician. These two cards make great use out of Spell Counter/Spellcaster decks. Apprentice Magician adds spell counters to monsters that benefit from them, and Magician of Faith helps you benefit from your already used spell cards. Other than surprising your opponent with Apprentice Magician’s search effect, Magician of Faith has few combos on its own. Its effect is pretty straightforward . . . okay, its effect is purely abusive. In a way, Magician of Faith is a combo with every spell card in your deck.

Night Assailant's general combo is to be used in an ongoing discard loop for card-discarding cost effects. This includes monsters like Tribe-Infecting Virus and Dark Paladin. Dark Paladin easily abuses Night Assailant the most. Technically, as long as Dark Paladin is not destroyed by trap cards, monster effects, or attacks in some cases (not many monsters can overpower this deadly Spellcaster), your opponent’s spell cards are completely locked down. Combine this with Sorcerer of Dark Magic, and your opponent will be left with only monster cards to use. How will you summon Sorcerer of Dark Magic? This can be done through sacrificing special summoned Chaos Sorcerers or by using Magical Scientist to special summon two copies of Sanwitch.

Night Assailant’s effect can be used with cards like Magic Jammer and Dark Core obviously, but if you really want to see why Graceful Charity can be such a forbidden desire for a spot in each duelist’s deck (Get it, forbidden, as it’s banned in the Advanced format? Ha! I make bad puns.), try discarding two Night Assailants at the same time. Once Graceful Charity resolves, both Night Assailants’ effects are activated. The first Night Assailant resolves and it will return your second Night Assailant to your hand. Your second Night Assailant will resolve, returning your first Night Assailant to your hand. You’re probably thinking, “Gee, Mike, that sounds great, but how does that work? Your second Night Assailant’s already removed from the graveyard. Shouldn’t its effect disappear?”

That’s where you’ve been tricked by Night Assailant’s awesome power. Both Night Assailants trigger in response to each other, and similar to how you can chain Emergency Provisions to your traps and quick-play spells without stopping their effects, the returned Night Assailant’s effect will still activate, even if it has already left the graveyard. This is because the Night Assailant that returned the first triggered Night Assailant doesn’t negate the first Night Assailant’s effect.

Confused? So am I, and I typed that! Trust me, though, this combo is legal, and it basically gives you two extra cards for the price of one, making Graceful Charity or Card Destruction more powerful than Pot of Greed in terms of draw power.

There are two simple and game-changing counters to flip effect monsters. The first spell card is Nobleman of Crossout, which kills all copies of Night Assailant or Magician of Faith in both players’ decks, not to mention the one on the field. The second major flip effect killer is Change of Heart . . . I’m pretty sure that’s self explanatory. Be warned that a focused deck based on flip effects will most likely pack counters for these cards, such as Cursed Seal of the Forbidden Spell. Remember that before you play your anti-flip spells so quickly.

The best way to stop Night Assailant's discarding loop is to force the opponent to set that Night Assailant. You’ll need to put your opponent into a tight spot by ripping his or her monster zone to shreds by any means necessary. Do whatever you can to gain field control, and remember to play very aggressively, but be careful. Your opponent may plan for you to play aggressively and may place some traps on the field in case you go at him or her with an all-out assault. D. D. Designator also works to effectively destroy the Night Assailant loop, and Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer is another good option.

Are these cards overrated or underrated?

Without going into detail, Night Assailant can easily be labeled as underrated. As an Ancient Sanctuary common, this little Fiend was already shrugged off, despite its potential to be abused.

Magician of Faith goes two ways on whether it’s overrated or underrated. As a Light attribute sacrifice to Chaos monsters, it’s overrated. Most of the time in Chaos decks, I’d rather be running aggressive cards like Thunder Nyan Nyan over Magician of Faith, who is most useful in control builds. As a card with the potential to be abused by Tsukuyomi, or as a useful tool in Spellcaster decks, Magician of Faith is underrated. Many duelists haven’t noticed how well Apprentice Magician works with Magician of Faith. It’s recommended that you try out those two monsters along with Night Assailant. You’ll see how powerful weenies with ATK stats less than 500 can be.

As a little challenge to readers out there, I’ve got a question for you. In the Tsukuyomi analysis, I covered a “Tsuku-Lock” using Tsukuyomi and Mask of Darkness with Drop Off and Time Seal to keep the opponent from drawing. There is another trap card out there that, by using both Tsukuyomi and Mask of Darkness, can keep your opponent from ever defeating you through battle. This lock, unlike the Time Seal lock if your opponent has no cards in hand, can be broken. What is this card?

Want to know what card will be analyzed next time? Good question, as I don’t even know yet. My simple mind can only come up with so many ideas on cards that need to be analyzed, so I’m always taking requests. In fact, I love emails from readers, including requests, card questions, deck ideas, or Tsukuyomi combos that you wish to share. I’ll be posting ideas and combos that you, the readers, come up with if the combo is underrated, creative, and most importantly, works! Help contribute to those looking for a creative edge in the metagame, and you’ll have duelists praising you and making statues of you in honor of your great mind! Okay, so I’m lying about the statues, but your name will be mentioned here, and you will be praised as a creative duelist. Until next time, Metagame readers, “There’s a creative combo waiting to be invented by every duelist . . . that is, as long as it’s not a Spirit Fiend with 200 ATK.”