The lone wolf relies on his own strength and determination to achieve victory. In The Lost Millennium, Chu-ske the Mouse Fighter, Monk Fighter, and Master Monk were given the Lone Wolf trap card, which allows them to follow this principle. With the power of Lone Wolf, the fighter is given strength that few monsters have ever obtained. This week, we’ll examine the power of Lone Wolf.

Strength from Within

Let’s begin by looking at the text of Lone Wolf.

“You can only activate this card if there is only 1 monster on your side of the field, and it is “Chu-Ske the Mouse Fighter”, “Monk Fighter”, or “Master Monk”. That monster is not destroyed as a result of battle, and is unaffected by any of your opponent’s monster effects.”

In order to activate Lone Wolf, you may only have one monster on your side of the field and it must be Chu-Ske the Mouse Fighter, Monk Fighter, or Master Monk. Even having two of these monsters on your side of the field at the same time will prevent you from activating Lone Wolf, so be sure to plan carefully.

Lone Wolf recognizes the lone monster as the monster that will receive its protection, which we’re going to call the “protected monster.” If you activate Lone Wolf with Monk Fighter as your protected monster, and then you tribute Monk Fighter to special summon Master Monk, Lone Wolf will not recognize this new monster and will not protect it.

However, Lone Wolf does allow for some flexibility. After it has resolved and applied its effect to the protected monster, you are allowed to summon more monsters. Any other monsters you summon will not be protected, though, so don’t count on Lone Wolf to do anything for them.

Enduring Power

The protected monster is granted two useful powers—it cannot be destroyed in battle and it’s unaffected by monster effects that your opponent controls. How many times have you worked hard to summon your most powerful monster, just to see it immediately destroyed by Tribe-Infecting Virus? It’s certainly happened to me, and no doubt you’ve seen this happen to your friends as well. This is exactly the kind of thing that Lone Wolf will simply not allow.

The monster protected by Lone Wolf won’t care if the opponent tries to use Tribe-Infecting Virus’s effect. The protected monster is unaffected and will not be destroyed. It was a good effort, Virus, but not good enough! Exiled Force? That isn’t paid enough to do the job. Penguin Soldier? The protected monster isn’t going anywhere. D. D. Warrior Lady? It can remove itself from play, but the protected monster will remain. Makes things more interesting when you don’t have to worry about the opponent’s monster effects, doesn’t it? With that kind of protection in place, you can concentrate on stopping your opponent’s spell and trap cards, which are normally easier to handle.

You need to keep in mind that Lone Wolf will protect against monster effects that your opponent controls. This means any monster effect that your opponent activates will not affect the monster that’s protected by Lone Wolf. If your opponent uses Monster Reborn to special summon your Exiled Force from your graveyard, he or she will not be able to use its effect to destroy your protected monster, because your opponent controls the effect of Exiled Force. It does not matter who owns the monster—it only matters which player controls the monster’s effect.

Now, don’t think that Lone Wolf will stop everything in its tracks. If the protected monster encounters an opponent’s monster with an effect that doesn’t attempt to do anything to the protected monster, the effect will go off without a hitch.

Suppose the opponent flip summons Slate Warrior. This activates its flip effect, increasing Slate Warrior’s ATK to 2400. When Slate Warrior attacks the protected monster, the ATK increase will remain. The ATK increase only affects Slate Warrior, so Lone Wolf will have no impact.

But what if Slate Warrior is knocked into defense position and the protected monster, Master Monk, destroys it in battle? At that time, Slate Warrior’s “destroyed in battle” effect activates and attempts to reduce Master Monk’s ATK and DEF by 500 points. Because of the effect of Lone Wolf, Master Monk will be unaffected and its ATK and DEF will not be reduced.

Now that we’ve finished with the basics, let’s examine two difficult monsters.

Cyber Jar is well-known for destroying every monster on the field. It then does some five-card pick-up and tries to replace the destroyed monsters with monsters among the picked-up cards. With every monster on the field having been destroyed and cleared out of the way, this is normally not an issue. But what happens when a monster that’s protected by Lone Wolf is still on the field?

When you have a monster protected by Lone Wolf and your opponent controls Cyber Jar, then activates the Jar’s effect, it will not affect the protected monster because the effect is controlled by your opponent. Every other monster on the field is destroyed and sent to the graveyard. You then pick up five cards and special summon the level 4 or lower monsters that are among the five picked-up cards. Not much trouble thus far.

However, you will run into trouble when all five of the picked-up cards are monsters that are level 4 or lower. In this case, you’ll have five monsters to special summon, but you will only have room for four of them on the field. Due to this, you’ll need to decide which four monsters you will special summon. The fifth monster will be destroyed and sent to the graveyard without ever touching the field.

Fiber Jar, another of the legendary jars, poses its own problem. Fiber Jar causes more trouble than Cyber Jar, because it actually removes the Lone Wolf trap card from the field. Because Lone Wolf is removed from the field, its protection goes with it. With the protection gone, the protected monster is defenseless and is also removed from the field.

When using a deck that’s based around Lone Wolf, remember that Lone Wolf will protect its chosen monster from the effects of the opponent’s monsters, but it will not protect them from anything else. You will need to take care of that yourself. This makes me wonder . . . does Cybernetic Revolution have any cards that can do the job? There’s only one way to find out—be sure to check out your nearest Sneak Preview event this weekend!

Send all comments to Curtis@metagame.com