By now, most Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG players are probably familiar with Elemental Hero Stratos. If you do not recognize this card, you have either just returned from a very long hiatus from the game, or you have been ignoring any and all tournament coverage that has taken place in the last four months. If you do not know what this card has done to the Advanced format, please review the Shonen Jump Championship coverage dating back to SJC St. Louis, where you’ll be able to see what it has accomplished in its brief time as part of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game.

In short, Elemental Hero Stratos is probably the most powerful card with “Elemental Hero” in its name to be printed so far. Not only is it a solid beatstick at 1800 ATK, but it also comes with two very good effects. All these factors contributed toward making Stratos one of the best cards printed in North America this year.

The second effect of Elemental Hero Stratos is the most recognizable to players. When you summon it in any way, you are allowed to search your deck for any monster with “Elemental Hero” or “Destiny Hero” in its name and add it to your hand. This effect was primarily responsible for putting Elemental Hero Stratos on the Limited list, though not necessarily because of possessing such a powerful search effect. The problem lies in the fact that you can search up an additional copy of Elemental Hero Stratos with the same monster’s effect. In other words, you could run three copies of Elemental Hero Stratos in any deck bent on winning via attacking, and there was hardly any downside since he gave you easy access to beatsticks that searched for more beatsticks!

With Elemental Hero Stratos now Limited, his ridiculousness in multiples is over. However, he’s still a very solid card simply because he can search for any Destiny Hero or Elemental Hero. It doesn’t matter what level the monster is: Elemental Hero Stratos can find it. This is important for fun decks like the Neo-Spacians, in which Stratos is a free beatstick that fetches Elemental Hero Neos, but it’s more important to the Destiny Hero monsters. In fact, one of the most common tournament plays right now is the summoning of Elemental Hero Stratos so that the player can add Destiny Hero - Malicious from the deck to his or her hand. Following this play up with Destiny Draw is considered one of the strongest opening starts that many decks can have, since you will essentially have a “free” 1800 ATK beater on the field while your Destiny Hero – Malicious stands ready to be used as tribute for a monster or effect whenever you see fit.

That play has actually been considered strong since the beginning of the new Advanced format. The difference is that turns can end once Malicious hits the graveyard, since the decks you’ll see now are more apt to use Malicious when they need his effect. This is usually when a player has drawn a Metamorphosis and feels it is time to drop a Fusion like Ryu Senshi onto the field, or if that player has drawn a Monarch to go with that copy of Malicious that the player will get onto the field. Since getting Malicious online is so important for the Destiny Hero beatdown and Destiny Hero Monarch decks, Elemental Hero Stratos plays a vital role in making sure that first copy of Malicious is in your hand where it belongs, waiting to be discarded to the first Destiny Draw or Snipe Hunter that the player sees. Even if Elemental Hero Stratos isn’t finding Malicious, then there is a good chance that Stratos will find a monster like Destiny Hero - Disk Commander in order to set up a powerful draw engine with Destiny Hero - Fear Monger or a Premature Burial.

However, the play of “summon Stratos, get Malicious, pitch Malicious to Destiny Draw” was just the start of a long sequence of plays at the beginning of the format. This was because Elemental Hero Stratos gave a new level of consistency to the very powerful Diamond Dude Turbo (DDT) combo deck. The aim of the DDT deck was to filter through cards as fast as possible until you could “go off” with a five-monster Dimension Fusion. In this deck, Elemental Hero Stratos was the most important cog for getting things moving, and players could even be seen running copies of E - Emergency Call on top of the two copies of Reinforcement of the Army in order to get Stratos out as fast as humanly possible!

The DDT deck also gave the first effect of Elemental Hero Stratos some serious relevance. Many players may forget that Stratos has two effects that you can choose when he is summoned. While the second is a powerful search effect, the first one destroys spells and traps, which can be very relevant in certain matchups. Cards like Gravity Bind, while not a common sight, can destroy you. Elemental Hero Stratos gives decks like Destiny Monarchs a way to overcome rogue strategies in a premier event, which may be one of the reasons why the Destiny Hero decks have seen so much popularity lately (they’re very resilient in the face of the unknown). The first effect of Stratos can also be very important against Royal Decree, which does see surges of play and can prove to be very frustrating when you have powerful traps like Mirror Force that you can’t activate. This effect is rather easy to set up, since Destiny Hero – Malicious already provides one Hero monster that counts towards Stratos’s effect.

DDT was the ultimate in abusing Stratos—not only with his search effect, but his first ability too. One of the defining ways that DDT could win off of a single Dimension Fusion card was through the first effect of Elemental Hero Stratos right after Dimension Fusion resolves. There is a good chance that at least two other Destiny Hero monsters come into play with Stratos, which will allow you to destroy two spell or trap cards on resolution with your 1800 ATK Warrior if your opponent does not have any way to disrupt your field (such as with a Torrential Tribute). Unless the opponent responds to this trigger with Torrential Tribute, then there is a good chance that he or she will lose the duel during that turn.

There is little to say about Elemental Hero Stratos that hasn’t already been said. This Warrior is one of the best targets for Reinforcement of the Army ever released, and has single-handedly justified the use of cards like E - Emergency Call. The monster is one of the primary reasons why the Destiny Hero decks work consistently enough to win Shonen Jump Championships too, since running one copy of Elemental Hero Stratos and two copies of Reinforcement of the Army means you have six cards in your deck that can put Malicious in your hand. The monster also makes fun decks that are based on Elemental Hero Fusion monsters more viable, since Stratos is a huge boon to any strategy based off of the Hero monsters. He is one of the most powerful search effects in the game, nearing levels of power only matched by cards such as Witch of the Black Forest! I cannot gush enough on how amazing this monster is for so many different purposes. The heroic Warrior is bound to be useful to you in some way at some point in the Advanced format, whether it’s now, later, or even next year. As long as Stratos is legal, and as long as new Destiny Hero or Elemental Hero monsters are printed, the Warrior is going to continue to be a very useful tool in making new Hero strategies consistent.