Many months ago, the rivals of the Elemental Heroes made their appearance in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game’s Enemy of Justice booster set. These Warriors were known as the Destiny Heroes. At their release, I already considered the Destiny Heroes better than almost every Elemental Hero (with the possible exception of Elemental Hero Wildheart*). However, the new Destiny Heroes were missing something that would truly make them tournament viable. They had some nifty cards, with Destiny Hero - Diamond Dude and Destiny Hero - Doom Lord standing out as potentially solid options, but it wasn’t enough.

A few months later, Power of the Duelist was released and some new Destiny Heroes came along with it. New powerhouses like Destiny Hero - Dasher were printed, but it still wasn’t enough to turn Destiny Heroes into a solid tournament theme. This changed with the release of Duelist Pack—Aster Phoenix, which contained two of the best support cards the Destiny Heroes could have asked for. One of those cards is Destiny Draw, a powerful form of card cycling that gives a Destiny Hero deck some consistency in finding cards it needs.

The other card, and the one that stands out as perhaps the best Destiny Hero yet printed, is Destiny Hero - Malicious. It’s a level 6 monster with absolutely abysmal stats. That 800 ATK and DEF is a good hint that you should skip right to his effect. It can be triggered during your main phase when he’s in the graveyard, and allows you to remove that dead Malicious from play in order to special summon another Destiny Hero - Malicious from your deck onto the field in any position you choose. Thankfully, the effect doesn’t require a tribute summon, so that means Malicious’s level can be ignored as well (for the most part).

Veteran players should know by now how powerful breaking the typical rules of a trading card game can be in a duel. By “breaking the rules,” I mean being able to do things outside the usual limits of the game. This includes drawing extra cards outside of your draw phase, and being able to achieve special summons. They both play an important role in slowly gaining an advantage over your opponent, either by providing more options or by accelerating your field. Destiny Hero - Malicious provides both by offering a little card presence as well as some very important field presence.

But what makes Destiny Hero - Malicious such a powerful monster is his ability to give you an extra special summon without costing you card presence. Since Malicious is level 6, you can’t set him on the field in order to let him be destroyed the old fashioned way (via battle), so you’ll have to find ways to discard him in order to access his effect. This is fine, since there are plenty of incredible cards that require a discard from your hand. Destiny Hero - Malicious will not only mitigate the disadvantage of a discard cost, he will also reward you with free field acceleration by providing you with tribute fodder.

Malicious combos extremely well with Destiny Draw, which was an obvious combination since both cards were released in the same Duelist Pack. This synergy allows you to cycle through your deck a little bit, while also getting a free special summon that happens to thin your deck of another monster you won’t want to draw. These cards go hand-in-hand in creating a very powerful deck-cycling engine, and they are both major reasons for Diamond Dude Turbo (or DDT)’s speed.

However, Destiny Hero - Malicious also combos well with plenty of other powerful cards that require a discard. One such spell is Lightning Vortex, which is also frequently played in DDT (often in three copies for its ability to clear a field in order to buy more time to go off with Dimension Fusion). Lightning Vortex also makes good use of Malicious by getting the Warrior into the graveyard, allowing you to follow up the mass removal spell with a free special summon (and potentially a powerful tribute summon as well).

I could go on about how incredible cards with discard costs are with Destiny Hero - Malicious, but I’d be better off simply listing the DDT deck Kris Perovic played at Shonen Jump Championship Houston. There are plenty of cards that can put Malicious in the graveyard, including other powerful spells like Magical Stone Excavation. However, you won’t necessarily be gaining an edge if you don’t do anything with your Destiny Hero - Malicious. Using his effect to get an 800 ATK monster onto the field isn’t exactly impressive unless you can use the little guy beneficially. This is why DDT has cards like Monster Gate. DDT not only wants to blow through the deck to get useful spells that can be brought back from the graveyard, it also wants to get more monsters onto the field so that the player can use their effects. Destiny Hero - Malicious is a great monster to tribute off to Monster Gate or any other card effect that requires tribute, since it essentially turns your 800 ATK weakling into a potentially huge Dark Magician of Chaos. You’re also depositing Destiny Hero - Malicious back into the graveyard, so you can remove him and get your third Malicious onto the field!

While DDT is easily the best use of Destiny Hero - Malicious, that does not mean it is the only deck that can use it efficiently. Monarchs like Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch typically like seeing play via a tribute summon, and Malicious is a fast and easy way to gain field presence in order to fuel the need for tribute summons in a Monarch control deck. This not only gives Monarch control the option to run Destiny Draw as a cycling option, it also makes Lightning Vortex a valuable asset. With Shrink now mass-released in Strike of Neos Special Edition and Gadgets loving that quick-play spell more than any other deck, being able to clear an opponent’s field of face-up monsters will be important for a Monarch deck. With Destiny Hero - Malicious as an option, a Monarch player can go from no cards on the field to a tribute-summoned Monarch attacking directly. These synergies also make Mobius the Frost Monarch especially valuable, since you can wipe away the monsters on an opponent’s field with the Lightning Vortex/Malicious combo while Mobius takes care of the spells and traps the opponent set to protect him- or herself. Destructive plays like that can almost instantly win you the duel, since you’ll gain such incredible control that your opponent will need to follow up your turn with something like a Cyber Dragon, a normal summon, and a Snatch Steal in order to mount a comeback. Of course, that sequence of plays ignores the fact that you can protect yourself with a timely quick-play spell or trap card of your own.

Destiny Hero - Malicious is one of my new favorite cards. His effect is among the most powerful tribute enablers to be released, and there are multiple ways to get the little Warrior into your graveyard. Using Malicious also enables you to run Elemental Hero Stratos, who, even while Limited, remains one of the most efficient level 4 monsters in print. DDT isn’t the only deck that can use and abuse Malicious though. I’m sure many players have been experimenting with this little guy in various other decks. There’s a good chance you’ve seen him in some of the SJC Columbus coverage, and that you will see Malicious at SJC Anaheim as well. Destiny Hero - Malicious has truly made Destiny Heroes a force on the tournament scene.

*I do not count Elemental Hero Stratos since he plays as a representative of both themes. I really wish I could call this guy a Destiny Hero.