Elemental Hero Wildheart

Level 4

EARTH/Warrior/Effect

This card is unaffected by the effects of Trap Cards.

ATK 1500/DEF 1600

Hear that, Monday? You’ve just been owned.

Elemental Hero Wildheart is proof that in order to be good, a card doesn’t need to have seven lines of text written in 3-point font with effects that don’t even appear on most versions of the card**. Other examples of this phenomenon are Pot of Greed and Raigeki.

Imagine, for instance, that you’re playing a Cyber Dragon/Warrior Beatdown deck and you only need to score one more hit with any of your monsters to win the game. Unfortunately, your opponent has three face-down cards, two of which are most likely the Sakuretsu Armor and Torrential Tribute that you saw him pick up from his Cyber Jar last turn. You’ve already used up Heavy Storm, and nearly all of the rest of your trap removal is gone as well. What you do have is Reinforcement of the Army, and if you’ve got Elemental Hero Wildheart in your deck, that’s all you’ll need to win this game. Now imagine that you’re playing an Elemental Hero deck and you’re in the same situation, or a Soul Control deck, or a Warrior Swarm deck, or any other deck that plays some Warriors and has access to Reinforcement of the Army. Any deck that fits that description can make good use of Elemental Hero Wildheart.

As an Elemental Hero, Wildheart was obviously designed to go into an Elemental Hero deck. Sure, we may find a single copy of it in every Warrior-based deck under the sun sometime down the line, but I feel that it’s important to go over the perks of playing it in the deck for which it was made. First, Wildheart is one of the fusion material monsters that’s needed to create my preview card from last week, Elemental Hero Angryman. You can also fetch it from your deck with the hero-specific Hero Signal, along with any other Elemental Hero that you might need. Wildheart also has great synergy with the field spell Skyscraper. Wildheart can’t be stopped by traps, and with 1500 ATK to begin with, Wildheart can take out any commonly played tribute monster, when attacking, with the effect of Skyscraper. This includes Jinzo, Vampire Lord, Ryu Kokki, Cyber Dragon, and all the Monarchs. Take that, established deck types!

I think it would be wise at this point to clarify exactly what Elemental Hero Wildheart’s effect means. Wildheart’s protection from traps is essentially the same as Horus the Black Flame Dragon LV6’s protection from spells. The only difference in the actual text of said effect (aside from one saying Traps and the other saying Spells) is that Horus LV6 includes the text, “as long as this card remains face-up on your side of the field,” as a reminder that the effect isn’t active while the card is face down. While this restriction isn’t specifically spelled out on the text of Wildheart, it’s a fair assumption that Wildheart’s effect isn’t active while it’s face-down, either.

Of course, just because Wildheart itself isn’t affected by traps doesn’t mean that the rest of your cards share the same protection. If you summon Wildheart and your opponent activates Torrential Tribute, Wildheart will remain safe, but the rest of your monsters will be destroyed. The same will happen if you were to pick up and summon Wildheart and some other monsters, due to the effect of a flip summoned Cyber Jar. Your opponent could activate Bottomless Trap Hole, but only your other face up monsters with an ATK of 1500 or greater would be removed from the game.

Finally, while it’s impossible for a trap card to interact directly with a face-up Wildheart, it’s possible for a trap card to indirectly cause Wildheart any grief. This means that if you have a face-up Wildheart equipped with Premature Burial and your opponent destroys it with Dust Tornado, Wildheart will still be destroyed by the effect of Premature Burial.*** Dust Tornado can also be a pain in the neck if you declare an attack with Wildheart (intending to use the effect of your Skyscraper) and your opponent activates a Dust Tornado to take out that Skyscraper. Of course, this situation is very rare, as most of the time your opponent will probably want to reserve his or her Dust Tornados for any face-down cards that you might have.

Finally, let’s talk about the Elemental Energy Sneak Preview event that you should be attending this coming weekend. Whether you sign up for the open dueling or a flight, you’ll receive five packs of the new Elemental Energy set with which to build a deck from. Your deck must contain a minimum of 20 cards, and the rule that says you can only play three of a given card does not apply. Once you create your deck, all the cards that you aren’t using become your side deck—however, it’s important to note that you may not trade any of the cards you opened until after you finish playing in your event. Other than that, the duels are played in exactly the same way as usual.

If you happen to open up an Elemental Hero Wildheart in one of your Sealed Pack events, I would strongly suggest playing it. Traps may be harder to find in Sealed Pack formats, but they’re still quite dangerous. For instance, look at Dimension Wall from Cybernetic Revolution. Dimension Wall is even dangerous in Constructed play. The point remains: if you can avoid walking into a trap, you should do so, and Wildheart can help. Play it if you get it, and afterwards, hold on to it—because Elemental Hero Wildheart is here to stay. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale AT andrew DOT cmu DOT edu

NEXT WEEK: Elemental Energy is here! For the next two weeks, I’ll be showing you some of the nifty decks that are possible with the cards from the new set.

*Has anybody ever said to you, “It sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays”?

**That’s right. PSV-084, Thousand-Eyes Restrict, you’re on notice.