Hero Spirit is the most straightforward of the three new cards. Like Treasure Map, it’s a normal trap card, but its effect is a lot easier to understand and use. It reads, “You can only activate this card during the Battle Phase of a turn in which a monster on your side of the field that included "Elemental Hero" in its card name was destroyed as a result of battle. Make the Battle Damage dealt by 1 of your opponent's monsters 0.”

While it took some legwork to figure out where to use Treasure Map, it’s pretty easy to see that Hero Spirit wants to be in an Elemental Heroes deck. In short, it’s an enabling card that allows Elemental Heroes to maintain control of the field on both defense and offense.

“On offense, you say?”

Yup, on both defense and offense. Let’s get defense out of the way first.

If you’re under fire from two monsters and one takes down an Elemental Hero, you’ll be able to render the second monster useless. If that second monster is attacking directly, it won’t be able to deal any damage to your life points. If it attacks another monster, it won’t be able to touch it, since battle damage needs to be applied in order for one monster to destroy another in combat. It’s the same ruling that allowed an attacking player to flip Waboku, run his or her Gemini Elf into an opponent’s Gemini Elf, and have his or her own Elf survive the fight.

That’s what gives Hero Spirit its offensive potential. In this era of Monarch-packed metagames, there are a lot of monsters running around with 2400 ATK, and often, two of them will tangle and destroy each other. Hero Spirit can make those situations work in your favor. Just smack an Elemental Hero into a bigger monster, flip Hero Spirit, and mark the big baddie for Spirit’s haunting. Then you can attack that monster without fear, even if you’re sending an equally sized monster in to do the deed. You lose Hero Spirit and an Elemental Hero, but you’ll keep your Mobius or Jinzo. That’s a pretty good trade!

It’s also a fun way to shut down Cyber-Stein decks. Cyber End Dragon and Cyber Twin Dragon aren’t nearly as good at winning games if they can’t deal damage. A well-timed Hero Spirit can buy you the extra turn you’ll need to punish a duelist for paying 5000 life points with Cyber-Stein’s effect.

Remember that you can balance out the loss of your Elemental Hero with some of the Elemental Hero support effects. Cards like Hero Signal, or the upcoming Enemy of Justice spell O – Oversoul, will allow you to replace or re-summon the monster that was destroyed. Elemental Heroes are all about combos and synergy, and Hero Spirit fits that style of play perfectly.

Block, Stock, and Barrel

Finally, we arrive at my favorite promo from the set! Blockman is a Rock-type monster with the Earth attribute. A level 4 monster with 1000 ATK and 1500 DEF, it’s searchable with Sangan and can be special summoned from the deck with Giant Rat. Here’s its effect:

By Tributing this face-up card, Special Summon in Defense Position a number of "Block Tokens" (Rock-Type/EARTH/Level 4/ATK 1000/DEF 1500) equal to the number of turns this card has been face-up on your side of the field. These tokens cannot declare an attack.

If you can keep it around long enough, Blockman can give you an incredible amount of field presence for the investment of just a single card. Blockman’s internal clock counts both your turns and your opponent’s, so if you summon it and it survives on the field until your next turn, you’ll be able to tribute it for three Block tokens, giving you three monsters for the price of one. If it survives until the turn after that, you’ll be able to tribute it for five Block tokens, which is pretty unbelievable. From that point on, you’ve got a lot of options.

The most basic way to use your Block tokens is to just let them sit on the field. They come into play in defense position, and the opponent must punch through them all before he or she can get to you. That can take quite a while. Blockman is a defensive powerhouse, but that’s only the beginning of its power.

While the Block tokens can’t attack, they can be tributed, and that’s where the fun really begins. Mobius the Frost Monarch, Blowback Dragon, and Dark Magician of Chaos can turn those Blocks into raw card advantage, destroying the opponent’s cards or retrieving a powerful spell from your graveyard. Heck, you don’t even have to mess around with a fancy effect to enjoy free tributes. Go ahead and flop something big like Blue-Eyes White Dragon and watch your opponent cringe.

You can use them for Ritual monsters too, in order to pay the tribute cost of the ritual spell. They’re really great for this, since Block tokens have an inordinately high level for token monsters. Sheep tokens are only level 1, but Block tokens are level 4, so two of them will net you Ruin, Queen of Oblivion, or Demise, King of Armageddon, making these deadly monsters far easier to summon.

My favorite thing to do with Block tokens is to hurl them at your opponent.  will let you tribute each Block token for 400 damage, while Cannon Soldier can shoot them off for 500. For the cost of one Blockman and two turns of patience, you can easily dish out 2000 to 2500 damage. When combined with cards like Scapegoat and Treeborn Frog, we could have the “building blocks” of a successful burn deck (no pun intended).

You can even summon Blockman and tribute it immediately to get a single Block token. Why would you want to do that? Check out Megarock Dragon. It’s a win-condition level card that gets 700 ATK for every Rock monster you remove from the graveyard at the point of its summoning, so you can pull some tricky plays with Blockman to support it. Even if you tribute Blockman for just one Block token, you don’t lose field presence, but you do get another 700 ATK for the Dragon. That’s pretty useful.

In fact, the Rock attribute allows for some other neat tricks with Blockman, too. You can search it out of the deck with Rock Bombardment, using it to deal some damage while dropping Blockman in the graveyard. Then, you can fish it back out with a card like Call of the Haunted or Premature Burial. This could be a really useful trick for that burn deck I was talking about, since the combo dishes out damage, thins your deck, and gets you to your Blockman a little more reliably.

Plus, it just looks cool. Come on, a monster made out of Lego blocks? It’s way cooler than the Blue-Eyes Rainbow Dragon I made last night at 3 am . . .

Regardless of what promo you pull from the Special Edition sets, there aren’t any “dud” promos to be had. Blockman and Treasure Map are both really useful, and Hero Spirit would trade well on Yu-Gi-Oh! GX fandom alone. If there are still some Duelist Pack Special Edition sets in your area, consider picking up a few. They’re the best deal to come around in a while, and you’re bound to pull some really cool cards!

—Jason Grabher-Meyer