At the recent Regional here in my hometown, we had two players come upon a disagreement over a card I hadn’t seen much in our local metagame: Reversal Quiz. It’s one of those cards where you either know exactly how it works, or it has “what does that do again?” written all over it.
This week is dedicated to breaking apart the mysteries of Reversal Quiz.
One in Three
Reversal Quiz costs you every card you have in your hand and on your side of the field, but with the right strategy, the duel will be yours.
“Send all cards in your hand and on your side of the field to the Graveyard. Call the type of card (Spell, Trap, or Monster) on top of your Deck. If you call it right, exchange your current Life Points with your opponent’s current ones.”
Sending every card in your hand and on your side of the field to the graveyard is the activation cost you need to pay if you want to activate Reversal Quiz. This means that you must have least one card you can send to the graveyard if you want to activate Reversal Quiz. It doesn’t matter if the card is in your hand or on your side of the field, and the Reversal Quiz itself doesn’t count.
When your Reversal Quiz resolves, you will say what type of card you think is on top of your deck. After you have made your guess, the top card of your deck is revealed so that you and your opponent can confirm what type of card it is. If you guessed correctly, your life points are swapped with your opponent’s. If you guessed incorrectly, the life points remain as they are.
Example: Door Number Three
Lena has 500 life points. Her opponent Yulia has 8000 life points. Lena activates Reversal Quiz and sends Beautiful Headhuntress to her graveyard to pay its cost. Yulia has no response, so the chain is allowed to resolve.
Lena says that she thinks the top card of her deck is a monster card. She reveals the top card of her deck: the monster card Nanobreaker. Lena has guessed correctly, so her life points are swapped with Yulia’s. Lena now has 8000 life points and Yulia now has 500.
You Are a Winner!
Reversal Quiz isn’t known for winning duels entirely on its own because it only causes an exchange of life points. Normally, a player has to rely on other effects that activate as a result of Reversal Quiz’s effects. This knowledge fueled the creativity behind Reversal Quiz decks that used Black Pendant and Fuhma Shuriken as the means of victory. The trick is understanding how card effects can interact with the payment of Reversal Quiz’s cost. Cards with effects that activate when they are sent to the graveyard can be satisfied when they are used to pay for Reversal Quiz’s cost, but the context of the situation and the specific demands of the card’s effect can just as easily prevent this.
Black Pendant and Fuhma Shuriken have effects that activate when they are sent from the field to the graveyard. This effect will be satisfied even if they are sent to the graveyard to pay Reversal Quiz’s cost. When sent to the graveyard, the effects of Black Pendant and Fuhma Shuriken activate and want to go on the chain, but can’t yet. Their effects are spell speed 1, and it isn’t possible for those to be chained to another spell speed 1 effect (Reversal Quiz). Instead, their effects are placed on hold until the chain with Reversal Quiz has resolved.
The Reversal Quiz effect will resolve and both players’ life points will be exchanged if applicable. After this is completed, a new chain will begin with Black Pendant and/or Fuhma Shuriken placed at the beginning. If multiple copies were sent simultaneously, their effects will be ordered according to the whim of the player who controls them. With the proper setup, this sequence can result in victory for the Reversal Quiz player when the damage-inflicting effects resolve.
Example: Last Desperate Act
Nathan has Black Pendant and two copies of Fuhma Shuriken equipped to his Strike Ninja. He has 1800 life points and his opponent Alan has 2500.
Nathan activates Reversal Quiz, sending Black Pendant and both copies of Fuhma Shuriken to the graveyard. Their effects want to activate, but they cannot be placed on the chain just yet. Instead, the effects will wait until after Reversal Quiz has finished its job. Alan has no responses, so the chain is allowed to resolve. Nathan guesses that his top card is a spell card. The top card is revealed to be Upstart Goblin, a spell. Nathan and Alan’s life points are exchanged.
At this time, the effects of Black Pendant and the Fuhma Shuriken cards begin a new chain. Nathan is free to place the effects in any order he prefers, and when they resolve, they will inflict a total of 1900 damage to Alan’s life points. Now that Alan has inherited Nathan’s former life point total of 1800, the damage he receives will end the duel.
Mandatory trigger effects have no problem interacting with Reversal Quiz, but optional trigger effects on cards like Peten the Dark Clown just don’t like being used as a cost. Getting sent to the graveyard as a cost prohibits them from electing to activate their effects. It is also worth noting that Reversal Quiz doesn’t allow you much opportunity to chain because its field-and hand-clearing cost tends to remove any cards with which you could respond.
In some ways with respect to cost, Reversal Quiz is similar to Emergency Provisions. But Emergency Provisions has the luxury of being a quick-play spell card, which allows it to be activated after other spell and trap cards have placed their effects on the chain. Emergency Provisions could use these spell and trap cards to pay its cost without disrupting their effects in most cases. Reversal Quiz is a normal spell card and is thus forced to be at the beginning of the chain. When it pays its cost, the spell and trap cards are removed from the field and don’t get a chance to activate.
Until next time, send all comments and questions to Curtis@Metagame.com.