A revolutionary new card is entering the arena to make our lives just a tad easier in the dueling world. It’s difficult these days to compete with the overwhelming power and speed of the top decks. Power and speed in today’s metagame can be roughly defined by the ability to special summon monsters and make extra draws as often as possible with the highest level of impunity. Big swing turns and spurts of drawing are not uncommon and have caused players to build decks that are drastically skewed toward stopping simple but overwhelmingly powerful engines. I don’t think it’s ever been this difficult to deal with the dominant archetypes of a metagame, and the current breed of decks has created a very large barrier. The combined force of these decks is like owning a castle with a very large moat around it. The drawbridge is up and the "anti" deck technology comes up short more often than not. It’s getting increasingly difficult to breach the castle defenses.
But finally . . . it’s here! A solution! The ingenious invention we needed to gain entry into the fortress of the mighty! Let’s discuss the possibilities and the implications of a card like today’s preview subject, and look at its immediate impact when it debuts at the
Light of Destruction Sneak Previews.
Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo
Rock / Earth
Level 4
1200/1300
Neither player can special summon a monster. When Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo is flipped face-up, destroy all special summoned monsters on the field.
By merely glancing at this card, it’s obvious that Fossil Dyna is a Jowgen the Spiritualist of sorts. They both have the same continuous effect, but they have starkly different secondary effects. Originally, Jowgen was the main weapon of the infamous Last Turn strategy. Everybody hated playing against it and it took some effort to defeat the deck at the time. Jowgen’s "discard one random card to destroy all special summoned monsters on the field" would be much more desirable if you were able to choose the card you lost. Had Jowgen been designed with a more reliable cost for his secondary effect, we probably would have had an epidemic of Tribe-Infecting Virus and Jowgen in virtually every deck.
The reason behind my enthusiasm for the Fossil is that it’s a more portable solution to our special summoning woes. Dark Armed Dragon decks and strategies that can accomplish similar feats with monster summons are just too fast and too hard-hitting for many competing strategies to handle. Pachycephalo brings with it a new hope for another legitimate control deck besides Gladiator Beasts. This little guy can be put to good use against 99% of the top decks we see today, and its secondary effect triggers even when it’s attacked. That’s awesome! You can stop an entire flood of attacks with just one card! In most matchups it’s going to be almost like having Dark Hole built into a monster.
A simple scenario you can set up is a face-down Pachycephalo and Ceasefire against your opponent’s newly filled field—Return from the Different Dimension, Dimension Fusion—whatever’s to blame, this scenario will trump it unless Jinzo’s in the mix. Even if Dark Armed Dragon is present, its effect will be wasted on both targets (Ceasefire or Fossil) and trigger an anti-special summon bomb. Fossil’s tricks aren’t confined to cards like Ceasefire or The Spell Absorbing Life. Why not use Book of Moon to pull off some battle phase tricks?
Think about it for a second: your opponent attacks with his or her Return-fueled army against your attack-position Pachycephalo. You respond with Book of Moon to flip Fossil Dyna face down. When the attack plays out, Fossil Dyna will be flipped and its effect will wipe the field. It’s superb against Gladiator Beasts by simply staying on the field. They can’t special summon anything! If you put a few copies of Fossil into a deck that can protect it (such as Gadgets), Gladiator Beasts will crumble against your anti-special summon strategy. Try it out and you’ll see.
Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo gains some utility by being easily searchable via Giant Rat or Sangan, too. It gets even more credit for replacing the need for Royal Oppression. I like Oppression, so don’t get me wrong . . . but why use an inferior version of the same effect? Why don’t we use Jowgen nowadays? One possibility is that he is not versatile enough due to his size, effect cost, or the need to protect him from battle. Another possibility is that nobody has thought to use him as he was intended to be used. I think the former scenario is more likely (though I think some of you may disagree, and Fossil Dyna compensates for these problems by simply being better than Jowgen in every way). It’s searchable, more flexible, and doesn’t require a discard cost. It’s better than Oppression because it’s less vulnerable and more easily protected. It has a high enough ATK to be somewhat useful as an attacker, too: it can at least combo with Shrink when you need to defend it. If you lock up your opponents’ special summons, then you have a high likelihood of getting some free shots on their life points. It’s been a very popular card in Japan, and standard Gadget builds there usually run three.
Can Gadgets rise to the top with the introduction of Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo? My answer to that is: "Gadgets get more leverage so . . . yes." The only issue left to deal with is the drawing engines. It’s brutal against Gladiator Beasts, since the whole deck is special summons to an extreme degree. You can slow that strategy down to a crawl: not good news for the Gladiator player. This new monster grants you the ability to fight off the likes of the Six Samurai and Zombies, and it even stops the combo insanity of decks like Diamond Dude Turbo, Magical Explosion, and Shadow Priestess OTK by disrupting key components of each.
Conclusions
Naturally, I’m excited about this awesome monster. The presence of Dark Armed Return decks is not a comforting thought to many duelists. The Fossil is your fulcrum, if you will, to gain the additional leverage you need to topple the mighty towering giants of today’s environment. Be wary and expect this card to be played. It’s simply too enticing, especially for the Gadget duelists. I personally dislike having to work hard just to counter simple draw engines and special summon capabilities. The introduction of Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo at the Light of Destruction Sneak Previews is going to make our dueling lives that much easier.
—Bryan Camareno