In laying out our Gladiator’s Assault previews here at Metagame.com, we wanted to discuss as many TCG exclusive cards as possible. But a couple of them wound up being true surprises: they weren’t revealed until the actual Sneak Previews. One of my favorite cards from the set is amongst those thin ranks, so if you haven’t seen it yet, here’s one of the world-debut cards from Gladiator’s Assault: Royal Firestorm Guards.

Fire / Pyro

Level 4

ATK 1700/DEF 1200

When this card is Normal Summoned, select 4 Pyro monsters in your Graveyard. Return those cards to the Deck, then draw 2 cards.

When Il Blud and Zombie Master arrived in Tactical Evolution, they revived interest in the Zombie theme and made it more competitive than it’s ever been in the past. While Royal Firestorm Guards is a one-man show instead of a duo, I think it’s fair to say that this card could be a huge push for Pyro monsters. After all . . .

It’s Pot of Avarice on Legs!

That’s about what it boils down to: no fancy prose or in-depth “core game theory” needed. Pot of Avarice is a great card, and if you build your deck around it, Royal Firestorm Guards is even better. Whenever you summon the Guards from your hand, you basically get a superior effect that mirrors that of Pot of Avarice. Why is it better? There are several reasons.

First, while Pot of Avarice demands five monsters in your graveyard, Royal Firestorm Guards only requires four. That means you can use the effect earlier, easier, and more often in a single duel. Granted, the monsters have to be Pyros, so you need to dedicate your deck to that particular theme, but we’ll discuss that a little further along.

The other big difference between this card and Pot of Avarice is obvious: the Guards are a monster, while Avarice is a spell. That has two major impacts. First, the Guards will almost never be a dead draw: even if you can’t use their effect, their 1700 ATK is enough to take down the likes of Snipe Hunter, Breaker the Magical Warrior, or Banisher of the Radiance. That’s important because it means an early-game Firestorm Guards won’t have you groaning over your useless topdeck. If you’ve played Pot of Avarice for a while, you know how rough it can be to draw it early on. Royal Firestorm Guards has a far higher utility than Pot of Avarice, and that makes a big difference. It’s sort of the same situation that has made Mei-Kou, Master of Barriers so popular lately: even if you can’t use Mei-Kou’s effect, he’s still a beatstick. The same can be said for the Guards.

Of course, the other advantage to the Guards being a monster instead of a spell comes in the form of raw card presence. Activate Pot of Avarice and you’ll draw two cards, but you’ll lose one to the graveyard too—the Pot itself. That’s only a net gain of one card total, and while that one extra card can be very make-or-break, Firestorm Guards offers a net gain of two cards instead of just one: the Guards themselves will stay on the field, free to attack a monster or trade off against a piece of removal. In fact, since the Guards more than balance their own presence as soon as they hit play, even the most conservative duelist is going to have no problem with dropping this thing and swinging for the fences.

While Royal Firestorm Guards’ status as a monster means you have to spend a normal summon to get their effect, it also makes them harder to counter than Pot of Avarice in today’s environment. With Dark Bribe getting splashed into anything and everything, spells and traps are a little less secure than they once were. The Guards don’t have that problem, since the only thing that stops them is Skill Drain. Sure, hard negation like Solemn Judgment could negate the Guards’ summon, or D.D. Crow and The Transmigration Prophecy could steal one of their targets, but those could stop Avarice just as easily. Besides, in the case of Crow or Transmigration, you’re way better off: you still get to keep your beatstick on the field.

In addition, while you’re allowed to run two copies of the Semi-Limited Pot of Avarice, there’s no restriction on Royal Firestorm Guards. You can run three, and you’ll probably want to.

“Too Bad It Needs Pyro Monsters”

I think everybody had this thought when they first saw Royal Firestorm Guards. The reality is that very few Pyro monsters have ever been successful in visible premier events like Shonen Jump Championships. I polled a few duelists this afternoon and very few of them could even name five Pyros, let alone five that they’d actually like to play.

Luckily the situation isn’t as bleak as it may look, and there are actually enough competitive Pyro monsters that you can run Royal Firestorm Guards in a few different strategies. The Guards themselves are Pyro monsters to begin with, so that goes a long way towards getting things started. From there you can go in a few different directions.

First up, there are several good burn monsters that happen to be Pyros.  Solar Flare Dragon and King Pyron can both be pulled with UFO Turtle, and while the Turtle is sadly not a Pyro itself, both those burn monsters are. If you really want to go old school, you can even use Fire Princess, who shares the Pyro monster type.

There are a number of aggressive monsters that also happen to be Pyros, and you can build a competitive deck around them and their interaction with Royal Firestorm Guards. Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch, and Tenkabito Shien can eliminate the opponent’s options and deal some major hurt in the process. Gaia Soul the Combustible Collective would normally never see play, because sending Pyros to your graveyard for its effect is such a big hit to your card presence. With Firestorm Guards to cycle those monsters back into your deck and earn you more draws, you can actually afford to play it. Even The Thing in the Crater or Inferno are worth a second look, offering unique effects at a risk that the Guards can mitigate. Fox Fire ties everything together by adding a defensive twist.

Of course, the big card group you’ll want to run with Royal Firestorm Guards is also the most proven in recent tournaments. Miguel Albarran ran one of the current Advanced format’s most memorable decks, Volcanic Monarchs, at Shonen Jump Chicago just weeks ago. With three copies of Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch, three Volcanic Rocket cards, and three Volcanic Shell cards, Albarran’s original deck already plays nine monsters that work with Firestorm Guards’ effect. It would be pretty easy to slip a few Guards in there and take the strategy to a new level. Better yet, using Albarran’s deck as a template, one could drop the Apprentice engine, add in Guards and a few copies of Tenkabito Shien, and bump up the number of discard effects. The result would be a hyper-aggressive Pyro death machine that could be highly competitive. Taking things in a different direction, you could even just play a normal Volcanic deck, which I’m sure people are going to try: Volcanic Hammerer, Volcanic Scattershot, and all the rest are Pyro monsters.

The Guards work with Hino-Kagu-Tsuchi, too. I’m not really sure what that’s worth, but hey, we all like Hino-Kagu-Tsuchi, right?

It’s amazing to me how one card can completely turn around an entire monster type. First Zombies, now this. In addition, the stigma surrounding Pyro monsters will probably be enough to keep this card’s secondary market value somewhere around Abyssal Kingshark and Cranium Fish, instead of bumping it into Il Blud territory. For the duelists who are willing to buy in and give Pyros a try, the path won’t be all that difficult, and the rewards may prove to be amazing.

—Jason Grabher-Meyer