Rise of Destiny saw the first round of battle at the recent Sneak Preview event, and I’m hoping many of you got a chance to enjoy it. With the set’s wide release right around the corner, I thought it best to dive into the new set headfirst and see what we can learn.

This week, we’ll begin by looking at the monsters in Rise of Destiny.

Normal Monsters

Woodborg Inpachi, Mighty Guard, and Bokoichi the Freightening Car all have 500 ATK. This was done intentionally so that they could be combined with the spell card Machine Duplication. The swarm tactic of bringing multiple monsters into play in a single turn is at work here.

This has several uses, both in Sealed Pack and in Constructed. The first use is the tribute mechanic provided by bringing multiple monsters into play. You can easily fill your field with monsters required for a tribute summon during that turn or the next, depending on what has occurred up to that point. This swarming of Machines also benefits the new powerhouse Machine on the block, Perfect Machine King. The best-case scenario, where you play anywhere from one to three monsters per turn, adds up to a quick line of defenders, especially when Woodborg Inpachi is used.

Effect Monsters

The Creator is the new powerhouse on the block. It’s the monster equivalent of Monster Reborn, adding a new dimension to gameplay. Complete with its own avatar, The Creator Incarnate, The Creator should make an impact in the Advanced format and find itself a following. You can have great fun with The Creator in decks using many high-level monsters and it finally gives the Thunder-type another monster to boast about.

The final form of Mystic Swordsman, Mystic Swordsman LV6 is best used in an attempted “lockdown” style of play. The most fun you can have with this card is to bounce your opponent’s face-down monsters back to the top of their deck so that their next draw phase is wasted by drawing the same monster from before. Naturally your opponent can always stop setting monsters in order to avoid the bounce, but that means he or she needs to contest with Mystic Swordsman LV6’s 2300 ATK. Normal summoning this monster in Sealed Pack will be a difficult task. Hopefully your opponent will think you have set Woodborg Inpachi instead.

A sign of things to come, the introductory level Silent Swordsman LV3 offers very little. You can expect that its next form, the Level 5 version, will make up for this in some way.

My calculations show an 85 percent chance that Nightmare Penguin will appear in Water decks very soon. If Crump can make up numbers, then so can I. A monster from the “Enter the Shadowrealm” stories in the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, its effect has been modified to mix into the TCG. Giving you an effect similar to Hane-Hane and Umi in one card, Nightmare Penguin should be good in both Sealed Pack and Constructed.

The first thing you should notice about Heavy Mech Support Platform is that it’s a Union monster with a twist. The effect of the Union monster has changed in order to protect its equipped monster from any form of destruction, not just from destruction in battle. This makes Union monsters more versatile than before and should be a great boost to their deck type. It also gives Machines a +500 kick in the ATK and DEF, something the Machine monsters will thank you for, especially Machines like Needle Burrower.

Another card to emerge from the virtual world, Perfect Machine King gains 500 ATK for every other face-up Machine-type monster in play. You can use Machine Duplication to speed up this process or D.N.A. Surgery to turn every monster into a Machine.

Sasuke Samurai #4 has the ability to take down almost any monster in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG with a single blow. It all comes down to the toss of a coin.

Harpie Lady 1, Harpie Lady 2, and Harpie Lady 3 are now striking out on their own in a new formation. Each of the sisters is blessed with their own effect, but they are also fitted with the quirk of having the same name. How does this affect deck construction? Well, it means that if you have three copies of Harpie Lady 1 in your deck, you no longer have room for any of the others. It also means they are compatible with Elegant Egotist, a real blast from the past.

Raging Flame Sprite is the kind of monster thatMucus Yolk wishes it could have been. Raging Flame Sprite gets started right out the gate and can become very mean in a hurry. I would expect anyone using a Stall/Burn deck with Gravity Bind and Level Limit – Area B will have some fun with this card.

Gaia Soul The Combustible Collective will destroy itself in the end phase, so make quick use of it while you can. If you offer both tributes toward its effect, you will have a 4000 ATK monster with built in ATK>DEF overflow damage. This is just the kind of monster the Pyro-type needed.

Old-school gamers will remember Big Core from the days of “Gradius.” This is the Vic Viper’s long-time enemy. Some form of this ship appears in every “Gradius” game to try and stop the Vic Viper and its sister ship’s quests. The effect of this monster mimics the shielding the vessel uses to protect its weak central point, the big core. Each shield needs to be destroyed one by one until the core is exposed and the vessel can be dealt the final blow. Big Core works in a similar way, being immune to destruction in battle until the counters, like the shields, are depleted. Sorry, but you can’t just wait a few minutes for it to blow up on its own.

Fusilier Dragon, The Dual-Mode Beast is great because it has an alternate means of arriving onto the field. If you get this Level 7 monster into play with a special summon or by offering the tributes, you will have it at full power You can also decide to summon it without the tributes and have its stats lowered in exchange. Try having fun mixing this one with Metamorphosis to bring out a monster like Gaia the Dragon Champion, St. Joan, The Last Warrior from Another Planet, and Twin-Headed Thunder Dragon. They may not be more powerful than the Fusilier Dragon, stat-wise, but they are certainly a neat trick for the Metamorphosis deck to get a powerful monster into play with relative ease.

I’m not sure which one of A-Team: Trap Disposal Unit is Mr. T, but I suppose it doesn’t matter. You can swarm these monsters out with Machine Duplication and get yourself a nice run of anti-trap cards to keep your monsters from getting pushed around.

Magical Scientist meets a very mean comrade in the fusion of Dark Blade and Pitch-Dark Dragon, Dark Blade the Dragon Knight. Having access to 2200 ATK and the possibility to remove up to three monsters in your opponent’s graveyard from play is just not nice. Magical Scientist certainly didn’t need anything to make it any more powerful, but then maybe this wasn’t their intention.

Next week . . . the spells and traps of Rise of Destiny.