The dueling public, myself included, made some serious brou-ha-ha about the Counter-Fairy monsters found in Enemy of Justice. Not only were cards like Bountiful Artemis and Voltanis the Adjudicator playable, they also represented a leap forward for the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG from a design standpoint. Counter-traps weren’t just obscure: most were completely forgotten by the average duelist. By providing support for that particular trap type, Enemy of Justice brought an entire category of cards back into a state of tournament viability.

Looking back, Enemy of Justice wasn’t actually the first set to achieve this goal. Shadow of Infinity gave us Demise, King of Armageddon and Ruin, Queen of Oblivion, which are some of the best ritual monsters ever printed. There was probably a very conscious effort on someone’s behalf to make ritual monsters competitive, resuscitating an invested game mechanic that would otherwise go ignored. It’s a wonderful trend that speaks well for the future of the game.

Shadow of Infinity and Enemy of Justice revitalized two dusty card types, and now Power of the Duelist is going to build on that concept and raise the stakes. While fusion monsters have seen plenty of table time the past couple of months, they usually get there thanks to Metamorphosis and Cyber-Stein. Lots of duelists are interested in using fusion monsters, but very few actually want to fuse stuff to get to them. The reason? They usually require combos to get on the field. Either you go the old-fashioned way with Polymerization, or you have to play a theme deck and use the more efficient short-cut cards like Miracle Fusion or Dragon’s Mirror. After all that trouble, if Zaborg comes and wrecks your monster like the schoolyard bully that it is, you won’t be particularly happy.

Power of the Duelist changes all that! In less than a week, you’ll be able to properly summon fusion monsters without having to jump through all the hoops that you might expect. Check it out.

Future Fusion

Continuous Spell

Send, from your Deck to the Graveyard, Fusion Material Monsters that are listed on a Fusion Monster Card, and select that 1 Fusion Monster from your Fusion Deck. Special Summon the selected Fusion Monster during your 2nd Standby Phase after this card's activation. (This Special Summon is treated as a Fusion Summon.) When this card is removed from the field, destroy that monster. When the monster is destroyed, destroy this card.

It’s kind of like putting a fusion on layaway. You won’t get that big monster for two turns, but instead of a combo requiring certain cards, all you need is this one card (as long as the fusion material monsters are still in your deck). To me, that seems like a fair trade. I give you two turns, and you give me a free Cyber End Dragon. Good deal!

Future Fusion’s effect counts as a fusion summon, so you can use it to bring out monsters that Metamorphosis and Cyber-Stein just can’t manage. Dark Paladin and Elemental Heroes are fair game, with the latter being especially important (I’ll show you why in a moment). The ability to special summon fusion monsters is just the beginning. The fact that you can dump monsters from your deck into your graveyard can be even more profitable over the course of a long game.

Miracle Fusion and Dragon’s Mirror are alternatives to Polymerization that can remove fusion materials from the graveyard instead of taking them from your hand or field. In terms of card economy, they’re fabulous, but they usually aren’t very useful until the late game. After all, you need to get those fusion materials into the graveyard in order to get the most mileage out of Miracle or Mirror, and that means letting monsters get destroyed or discarded. These cards are often dead draws in your opening hand, and they can stay that way for ages if you’re unlucky. Even if Painful Choice wasn’t forbidden, it would still only be one card out of 40. The legwork required to load your graveyard with the proper monsters just hasn’t been worth it.

Enter Future Fusion. Even if it’s destroyed before it can special summon the fusion monster that you’re aiming to bring out, the proper materials are still in your graveyard. That makes it incredibly easy to summon big Elemental Heroes with Miracle Fusion, or powerful Dragons with Dragon’s Mirror. If you’re asking yourself what Dragon fusions are worth playing, think of Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon. Then imagine how brutal Return from the Different Dimension becomes when you have three copies of Blue-Eyes White Dragon in your removed zone. Interesting thoughts, huh?

In fact, a different spin on that concept is dominating tournaments overseas right now. Last week we kicked off our Power of the Duelist previews by looking at Chimeratech Overdragon and Overload Fusion. If you use Future Fusion to summon Chimeratech Overdragon, you can send as many Machines as you like to your graveyard. If Chimeratech makes it to the field, its effect will destroy Future Fusion and Chimeratech will explode. However, you still empty your deck as much as you like while at the same time loading your graveyard. That’s a deadly pair of abilities.

The immediate combo that comes to mind is dumping a ton of Machines with Future Fusion, and then using Overload Fusion to remove them from the game and summon a huge Chimeratech Overdragon. From there, you can use Return from the Different Dimension or Dimension Fusion to bring back even more monsters and swing for game. But there’s a lot more to Future Fusion’s “side effects” than that. How about stripping your deck of all its cards except for five pieces of Exodia? How about dumping tons of fodder to your graveyard for Chaos Sorcerer or Freed the Brave Wanderer while getting a big purple beatstick two turns later? You can even activate Future Fusion, select Cyber End Dragon or Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, and while you’re waiting for your fusion monster to arrive, special summon Cyber Dragon or Blue-Eyes White Dragon with Symbol of Heritage.

The possibilities are endless, and that’s really what this card is about: it opens doors for a lot of old favorites and makes a handful of new monsters really powerful. Future Fusion lets you skip right over the primary drawback to running a fusion strategy, and that’s good news for Elemental Hero fans, Dragon duelists, and anyone who likes seeing more variety at their local tournament tables. No serious duelist is going to want to be without three copies of this card, so watch for it to be a hot pull at your local Sneak Preview this weekend.