One of the biggest flaws with many otherwise incredible decks is that they have a serious deficiency in at least one phase of the game that lets other decks break up the strategy. Usually, this phase is the battle phase. Either you’ve got the numbers to beat down whatever your opponent can throw at you but your monsters keep getting destroyed before they can do it, or you can do spectacular things during the main phases, but if your opponent puts out one big hitter, you don’t have a chance against it. The most successful decks will dominate both in and out of the battle phase, and thus force opponents to do something special to beat you. They don’t let you put the duel on cruise control because you know your opponent can’t do anything.
When I used to play my Counter Fairy deck, I’d cringe whenever my opponent put Cyber Dragon onto the table because, barring Mirror Force on my part, I was going to lose my Artemis. It was the same thing whenever Elemental Hero Stratos hit the table as well, and that was a huge issue since Stratos was everywhere. Harvest Angel of Wisdom was a shot in the arm, as was Herald of Creation for a while. I’ve since moved on from Herald, but despite the fact that I have some 1800 ATK monsters of my own with nasty effects that make them unappealing to beat down in battle, I still find myself wanting more. An Artemis in attack mode still gets whacked by stuff like Dark Grepher, Destiny Hero - Dasher, and worst of all, Jinzo, so what’s a guy to do? Head to the Sneak Preview Weekend and pick up a playset of today’s preview card, that’s what!
Honest
Level 4
ATK 1100/DEF 1900
In your main phase, you can return this card from the field to its owner’s hand. During the damage step of either player’s turn, when one of your face-up Light monsters battles, you may send this card from your hand to your graveyard to have your battling monster gain ATK equal to the ATK of the monster it is battling. This ATK bonus lasts until the end phase.
I’m not going to beat around the bush here. Honest is the best battle trick ever printed. Move over Shrink, and sit down Rush Recklessly. Sure, you can only use it in a deck dedicated to Light monsters, but if you could just toss down Honest to pump up any old monster, it would be downright unfair, unbalanced, and seen in threes in every single deck that intends to enter the battle phase. Think about it for a second. If your attack-mode monster is battling with an opposing attack-mode monster and you drop Honest, you win that battle. Do you win if you drop Shrink or Rush Recklessly? Not necessarily. Take Destiny Hero - Dasher, for example. I have Artemis on the field, and you summon Dasher and tribute a monster to pump it up to 3100 ATK. You swing on my Artemis. If I play Shrink, I still lose my guy because only your original ATK is halved. You get to keep that extra 1000 ATK and wind up with a 2050 ATK monster instead of 3100 ATK. If I use Rush Recklessly, I barely make it over your original ATK, let alone your boosted ATK. If I drop Honest, I smoke your dude and hit you for 1600 on your own battle phase. And I can do it on your turn, from my hand, without having to set anything to my spell and trap zone. Yeah, Honest is that good.
If I had to draw a parallel, I’d have to compare Honest to Riryoku. Riryoku halves an opposing monster’s ATK and adds it to one of your own, making it possible for that monster to beat the weakened one while forcing through damage equal to your monster’s pre-Riryoku ATK. The problems with Riryoku are many, though. First off, your opponent can easily see it coming and knows to act in response to your attack. Second, Riryoku only works when you’re on the offensive. Honest can be dropped during either player’s damage step, past the point at which the opponent can respond with something like Mirror Force or even Book of Moon or Enemy Controller. As an added bonus, Honest has the potential to pump your monster over the DEF of a defense-position monster you just attacked, which you’ll find to be drastically important in the weeks ahead when dealing with Gladiator Beast Hoplomus. Finally, it’s very hard to negate Honest. More and more decks are starting to pack a full complement of Solemn Judgment cards, but from what I’ve seen, only Counter Fairy decks are packing Divine Wrath. Outside of Wrath, you aren’t going to stop Honest from ruining your entire battle phase if and when it’s played against you. Cards like Cold Wave can’t stop you from playing it either, and if Cold Wave is in effect, your opponent won’t be able to respond with anything even if he or she does see Honest coming.
The introduction of Honest forces your opponent to be paranoid about your every move. The amount of bluffing involved in the game is going to rise dramatically, and an increasing number of players will waste cards in an effort to circumvent something you may not even be holding. Better yet, if your opponent does know you’re holding it, that player will have to play a lot differently than if he or she only suspected you did. Reusing Honest is also a lot more economical than reusing Shrink or Rush Recklessly. As a level 4 monster, Honest is a valid target for Matt’s preview card from yesterday, DUCKER Mobile Cannon. You can also pull some fun tricks with Honest’s "return to hand" ability with tomorrow’s preview card, or just use it for a quick 1100 damage against an empty field while retaining (and likely using) the option to return it to your hand to use as a combat trick on the opposing turn.
As for the decks you’d be likely to run Honest in, the most likely is Counter Fairy! Giving a deck that already has a vice-like grip on the main phase the ability to dominate in battle is huge, and Honest can also help out Lightsworn and Batteryman builds. If you pull this card at the Light of Destruction Sneak Preview, it will make you win more games. Honest is just that good, and it richly deserves its place on the front of every pack of Light of Destruction you’ll be picking up over the weekend. You are going to the Sneak Preview, right? It’s not too late to change the answer from a "no" to a "yes" if it isn’t "yes" already. I’ll have a new deck for you next week, so until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!
—Jerome McHale