Metagame.com - Take Your Game to the Next Level

It’s that time again—that amazing time when the entire dueling world scours the Internet for any and all information about the contents of the new Yu-Gi-Oh! set. That’s right, it’s preview time once again at Metagame.com. This time around, we’ll be looking at new cards from The Lost Millennium booster set, so make sure you stay tuned for—wait, what’s that? Cut the theatrics and show you the preview card? Well, if you insist . . .

TLM-EN046
Rare
Equip Spell

Text: You can only equip this card to a monster on your opponent's side of the field. When a monster destroys the equipped monster and sends it to the graveyard as a result of battle, inflict damage to your opponent’s life points equal to the ATK of the equipped monster.

Interesting, don’t you think? The usual purpose of an equip spell is to attach it to one of your monsters to give it some kind of bonus. But EN046 joins the elite ranks of Snatch Steal and Mask of the Accursed, because it’s an equip spell that you put on an opposing monster to do nasty things to an opponent. What nasty things can it do? How does burning your opponent for a good chunk of life points sound?

“Ace! Give Me Some of that Nitro-9 You Aren’t Carrying!”*

How much damage can the ATK of an opposing monster do? It’s the amount of damage you take from a single direct attack. It’s how much damage each player takes when a monster is blown up by Ring of Destruction. It’s the number subtracted from an opponent’s life points when you play Magic Cylinder. In short, it’s huge. Pulling off EN046’s effect is just like hitting an opponent with Magic Cylinder, a one-sided Ring of Destruction, or an extra direct attack. The card turns any monster on your opponent’s side of the field into a walking time bomb that’s waiting to explode.

How do you set it off? It’s easy to walk up to a weak monster, say, “Here, hold this for a second,” and then attack that monster to make it explode. It’s a lot more difficult to pull off the same stunt with Jinzo. Fortunately, I’m full of ideas about how you can do just that. My first suggestion is that you switch an opponent’s monster to defense mode with Enemy Controller or a similar card and then beat that monster up. You can also use a combat effect like Rush Recklessly in the damage step to boost your monster’s ATK. That’ll catch your opponent off-guard, because once you’re in the damage step, he or she can’t use Mirror Force or Magic Cylinder to save the defending monster. Another tactic for using EN046 is to stick the card on an opponent’s monster, take control of that monster, and then ram it into a bigger monster.

“Blown Up, Sir!”

The first chance you’ll have to play with EN046 will be in a Sealed Pack tournament at a local Sneak Preview event. Sadly, it isn’t likely that you’ll want to include this card in your deck. When building a sealed deck, the most important thing to take care of is making sure that you pack a good number of powerful monsters. The next priority is to fill out the rest of the deck with removal cards and combat tricks if you have them. After that, you can worry about burn effects. In general, you’ll want to run EN046 as your nineteenth or twentieth card in Sealed.

Constructed play is an entirely different story, however. While you might think this card belongs in a Burn deck, the right place for it is in an aggressive deck. Aggressive decks usually pack Enemy Controller, which I’ve already highlighted as a good way to get this card to work. They also run the high-ATK monsters that are necessary to destroy whatever monster you equip EN046 to. You can even add a couple of copies of Mirror Wall or Rush Recklessly to help the spell do its dirty work. You could also run Creature Swap or Snatch Steal, but doing that would require a lot more setup and in-game planning—two things that are in short supply in the current environment.

EN046 is probably best suited to act as a finishing blow much like Ring of Destruction. A common move near the end of a game is to play a nasty monster like Reflect Bounder or Blade Knight to scare an opponent away from attacking. Normally, monsters like these can stall out the game for an extra turn or two regardless of whether you end up destroying them. Those extra turns may be all your opponent needs to topdeck Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning and steal the game from you. With EN046, the advantage from one or two extra turns is minimized, as the extra damage inflicted is almost always enough to finish off a struggling opponent.

Well, that’s enough excitement for one day. Come back to Metagame.com tomorrow for yet another preview of a card from The Lost Millennium. Also, make sure that you go to the Sneak Preview event nearest you so you can get the new cards before they’re available in stores. The Lost Millennium is coming, so make sure you’re ready for it!

Jerome McHale
jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

* If you know where this is from, you have good taste in television.