Destiny Hero - Dogma
DARK/Warrior/8 Stars
This card cannot be Normal Summoned or Set. This card cannot be Special Summoned except by Tributing 3 monsters, and 1 is a monster with "Destiny Hero" in its name. When this card is Special Summoned, halve your opponent's Life Points during their next Standby Phase.
ATK 3400/DEF 2400

When I look at this card, there’s only one word that immediately springs to mind: huge. Everything about it is huge. For a level 8 monster, its ATK is enormous, even outclassing cards like Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning. Its cost is also huge, since you must tribute three monsters (including at least one Destiny Hero) in order to summon it. Finally, if you do end up special summoning Dogma, your opponent’s life points will be cut in half during his or her next standby phase. That’s huge.

Halving a player’s life points used to be something that only he or she could do to him- or herself. Return from the Different Dimension helps win games all the time, and players are more than willing to pay half of their life points to use it. I’ve had a lot of experience with Solemn Judgment lately, and I know that there are many things worth negating for the price of half my life points.

The thing is that these are all usually controlled situations. In order to claim the effect of Dogma, you need only special summon it correctly and keep it alive until your opponent’s standby phase. So there isn’t much that your opponent can do to avoid taking the hit, other than destroy it before his or her next standby phase. The Dogma player doesn’t even need to attack, and chances are good that he or she doesn’t want to, which limits the effectiveness of cards like Mirror Force as answers.

Destiny Hero - Dogma is the centerpiece of a new burn deck strategy utilizing the other Destiny Heroes. Destiny Hero - Doom Lord keeps opposing monsters off the field, D - Shield and Destiny Hero - Captain Tenacious help you keep your Destiny Heroes on the field, and you can even use the new Destiny Hero - Double Dude and Destiny Hero - Fear Monger to help get the required tributes on the field. Alternatively, you could choose a single Destiny Hero that you want (probably Doom Lord) and play it with other standard burn monsters, like Stealth Bird or Des Koala.

The basic strategy involves setting up like a normal burn deck for the first few turns of the game, setting monsters, creating defenses, and forcing your opponent to panic. An ideal setup would involve playing Wave-Motion Cannon on your first turn, along with any monster and some form of stall card. Barring removal from your opponent, you should be able to play another monster next turn and another on the third. At this point, your Cannon could launch for 3000 damage. Now, you tribute your three monsters (one of which is a Destiny Hero) to summon Dogma.

All of a sudden, your opponent only has one turn left in which to find an answer. During his or her standby phase, his or her life points are halved from 8000 to 4000, and there’s going to be a 4000-point Cannon on the field if he or she can’t get rid of it right now. Alternatively, you could set some chainable burn cards like Just Desserts and Secret Barrel and activate them just as soon as Dogma finishes doing its thing. Ojama Trio can add to the fun and make the lock even harder to break through. It’s so much easier for a burn deck to do its job if it only needs to do 4000 points of damage instead of the full 8000. Dogma makes that happen.

The only real problem with the card is that it’s hard to incorporate into other Destiny Hero strategies. For example, I wouldn’t want to put Dogma into a deck based on using normal spells with Destiny Hero - Diamond Dude. I could potentially use it in a deck that tries to swarm the field by summoning Destiny Hero - Dreadmaster from its Clock Tower Prison, but that’s difficult and probably not worth it. Still, Dogma is an excellent card to build your deck around, and it combines huge ATK and DEF values with an extraordinary effect, something that the Destiny Heroes had yet to achieve.

Destiny Hero - Dogma is a super rare, so many players will likely see it in their sealed packs at the Sneak Preview. However, unlike last week’s card, Dogma is extremely playable in the Sealed Pack format. There are a couple of good, common Destiny Heroes out there, which makes Dogma an extremely viable win condition if you can pull it and play it. In fact, there isn’t a single monster in Power of the Duelist Sealed Pack that can take it down, not even Ultimate Tyranno (sorry, Julia). Combine that with the fact that it halves your opponent’s life points after it comes out, and you’ve got yourself a winning Sealed Pack strategy. Make sure you keep it in mind when you go to the Sneak Preview nearest you.

Speaking of the Sneak Preview, you’ll also get an awesome new promotional card just for signing up, and you’ll probably also be signed up to win all sorts of other neat prizes regardless of your record in the actual tournament. It’s totally worth it, so make sure you get to a Sneak Preview next weekend.

That’s all I have in the way of previews this time around, but be sure to keep coming back to Metagame.com, since we have another full week of exclusive previews still to come. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu