Welcome to the third day of Tin Week on Metagame.com! On Monday, Julia introduced you to Exarion Universe, and on Tuesday, Jae Kim showcased all the uses for Dark Magician Girl. Today I’ll shift the focus over to everyone’s favorite tough-talking duelist, Joey Wheeler. In honor of the start of the Grand Championship on the TV show, I think we should go for a quick breakdown of how this year’s tin cards relate with the show. Out of the six tin cards released this year, one card has never seen play in the TV series, one was played by Kaiba, one was played by Yugi, and the other three were all played by Joey at one time or another. Today I’ll be looking at Rocket Warrior, which is one of Joey’s relatively newer cards.

Normally when we see Joey duel in the TV show, he ends up getting lucky and winning with Time Wizard or his mythical Hermos dragon, or winning with some other card that doesn’t exist in real life.* This is usually what he’s remembered for, but what most people don’t remember is that Joey has all sorts of solid strategies to back up his luck. For example, Joey was the first duelist to play Scapegoat, showing that he clearly understands the concept of card advantage.** Joey also plays Jinzo, which shows that he understands why a high power-to-cost ratio, combined with a trap-negation ability, is too good to pass up.*** Rocket Warrior follows in the fine tradition of these two cards.

The time at which Joey obtained Rocket Warrior is currently somewhat of a mystery. He didn’t have it during Duelist Kingdom, which leads me to suspect that he got it from one of his packs in his Sealed Pack duel against Duke Devlin.**** Even if that is the case, we still don’t see the card until Joey’s Battle City duel with Mako Tsunami. However, its introduction is rather lackluster, as it’s simply summoned in defense position in order to prevent a severe beating.

The first time we see Rocket Warrior’s effect in action is during Joey’s forced duel with Yugi while Joey is under Marik’s mind control. Joey uses Rocket Warrior’s “invincible mode” to attack Red Eyes B. Dragon, lowering its ATK strength and weakening Marik’s control over his mind. Since then, Joey has used Rocket Warrior in many of his duels to help his other monsters overcome otherwise insurmountable differences in strength—and to generally annoy his opponent. Personally, I think his opponents would be more annoyed by his New York accent rather than by anything that Rocket Warrior could do to them, but that’s just my opinion.

Moving on, we come to the translation of the card from the manga series into the real world. The manga version of the card reduced the ATK points of any monster it attacked by the full amount of Rocket Warrior’s ATK, in addition to protecting itself from battle damage. This is pretty ridiculous, and by the time the Yugi vs. Joey Anchor duel came up in the TV show, the duration of the effect was reduced to “until end of turn.” Of course, they came up with another spell to make sure that Rocket Warrior’s attack had the same effect on the game as it did in the manga version of the duel.

The first time we actually see the effect of Rocket Warrior as it exists in the TCG is during Joey’s shadow duel against Marik in the BattleCity semifinals. He uses it to attack Helpoemer and reduces its ATK to a level that would let it be defeated by Panther Warrior, which is, incidentally, another tin card. That effect looks like this:

“This effect is only active during the Battle Phase of your turn. Battle Damage to this card and this card’s controller that they take from a battle involving this card becomes 0. After damage calculation, decrease the ATK of the monster that was attacked by this card by 500 points until the end of this turn.”

As you can see, Rocket Warrior still goes into “invincible mode” whenever you attack with it, and it still gets destroyed whenever your opponent attacks it with something larger.

The question then becomes, “Why should I care about this card?” There are a few good reasons why you should care. First, this card has both the Light attribute and the Warrior type. This allows it to be searched out by Shining Angel or Reinforcement of the Army. Chances are good that it will be most effective in a Warrior deck in which you can play a single copy and then fetch it at any time without the need to have your monster destroyed in battle.

For all you serious tournament players out there who are wondering what Rocket Warrior can do for you, I suggest that you compare the monsters in your deck to the monsters in the Top 8 decks from any Shonen Jump Championship since April 1. Notice that most, if not all, of the monsters are exactly the same. That means that the potential for battles between monsters with the same ATK value is very high. Rocket Warrior can help you to break these ties, forcing through extra damage and potentially scoring some card advantage, especially if those dueling monsters are Airknight Parshaths.

Rocket Warrior’s ATK is a solid 1500, making it stronger than most tech monsters while still allowing it to be searched out with Sangan. Its DEF of 1300 allows it to survive an attack by Tsukuyomi, and even though Santa seriously considers canceling Christmas every time he hears me say it, that Light attribute lets you remove Rocket Warrior from the graveyard for Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning.

Despite all this, the main purpose of Rocket Warrior continues to be its ability to allow your weaker monsters to defeat stronger monsters. This makes it extremely powerful in combination with a deck full of weaker level 4 monsters with interesting effects. For example, Rocket Warrior could help you lower the ATK of Tribe-Infecting Virus or an unboosted Blade Knight down to the point where your Don Zaloog could defeat it and force the opponent to discard a card. It’s also important to note that Rocket Warrior’s ATK-reduction effect applies every time it attacks during a turn, so if you can get it to attack more than once, perhaps by using Twin Swords of Flashing Light – Tryce, you can lower the ATK of one monster more than once or even drop the ATK of two different monsters in the same turn. This paves the way for a strategy that involves all monsters of level 4 or lower to be able to compete with and defeat higher-level monsters without using a removal card.

The release of Rocket Warrior also brings us closer to being able to make a true Joey character deck, and it also removes Rocket Warrior from the “want list” that gets posted on internet forums every time a new set of promos is announced.***** Finally, I’d just like to point out that the art on Rocket Warrior is fantastic, and it’s almost worth buying the tin just so you can own that awesome picture. Overall, Rocket Warrior is a great card for both casual and serious players, and if you only get one tin this year, I highly recommend that you pick up this one.

Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

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NEXT WEEK: More fun with Rocket Warrior, as it unites an elite team of level 4 monsters for ultimate swarming victory!

*Don’t take it to mean that Time Wizard doesn’t exist. It does—I’m just saying that stuff like Hermos and all the Landstar support seen in the show doesn’t exist.

**It clearly does not mean that Joey just hides behind Scapegoat until he draws something good. It also doesn’t mean that the entire strategy behind using Scapegoat is to hide until you draw something good.

***It clearly does not mean that Joey’s playing with Jinzo just because he happens to own it. It also doesn’t mean that people randomly throw Jinzo into any deck, just because they can.

****I find it cool that Sealed Pack existed in the show before it existed in real life.

*****If you’ve ever seen the “Tin Prediction” threads or anything similar, you know what I’m talking about.