8:00 a.m.: Basics of Gladiator Combat (60 minutes)
9:00 a.m.: Know Your Weapons (45 minutes)
9:45 a.m.: Break (15 minutes)
10:00 a.m.: Lions—How Do We Avoid Them? (60 minutes)
11:00 a.m.: Lunch (60 minutes)
12:00 p.m.: Coping with Stress (60 minutes)
1:00 p.m.: Workout Regimens and Healthy Eating (60 minutes)
2:00 p.m.: Break (15 minutes)
2:15 p.m.: Finding Your Replacement (60 minutes)
3:15 p.m.: The Emperor is Always Right (45 minutes)

The Gladiator Beasts create an interesting deck theme that chooses to intentionally return a monster to the deck in order to “tag in” another monster with a desired special ability or a larger dose of muscle. Gladiator Beasts are tested in combat, but while the LV Monsters like Armed Dragon LV5 required success in combat to grow into more powerful forms, the Gladiator Beasts need only to survive . . . and then find some other unfortunate sap to take their place.

With such a high turnover rate, you’re going to need a good training program.

Welcome to Gladiator Orientation

Most of the Gladiator Beasts in Gladiator’s Assault have the following effect:

“At the end of the Battle Phase, if this card attacked or was attacked, you can return it to the Deck to Special Summon . . .”

This effect can be activated during either player’s turn, so long as your Gladiator Beast engaged in battle during that battle phase and was able to survive the encounter. When you decide to activate the effect, the Gladiator Beast is shuffled back into its owner’s deck to pay the activation cost. This effect is only available while the Gladiator Beast monster is face up on the field. If it is flipped face down or removed from the field, it cannot activate this effect.

The Gladiator Beasts have a rule that prevents them from special summoning themselves or another copy of themselves back onto the field. When a Gladiator Beast looks for a replacement, it needs to be somebody else. Since activating this effect is optional, you aren’t forced to continually cycle through Gladiator Beasts. When you want to keep someone on the field, you are free to do so.

As the duel wears on, multiple Gladiator Beasts may battle during the same battle phase. Each of these Gladiator Beasts has the option to activate their effect at the end of the battle phase, but how is this performed? Fortunately, every Gladiator Beast has the opportunity to use its effect. You don’t have to use their effects in any specific order, but you must handle each Gladiator Beast’s effect separately. These effects are spell speed 1, and since you don’t activate them simultaneously you don’t combine them onto one chain.

Example: 3 Gladiators in the Arena
Gabriel has Gladiator Beast Dimacari, Gladiator Beast Hoplomus, and a Gladiator Beast Alexander in face-up attack position. Gladiator Beast Alexander was tribute summoned during his first main phase—the only copy of the card in his deck. Gabriel attacked his opponent Paige with all three Gladiator Beasts in the battle phase, and now the battle phase is ending.

Gabriel can activate the effect of all three Gladiator Beasts and he needn’t follow any particular order. It all depends on what makes sense at the time. Gabriel would like to use Dimacari to special summon an Alexander, but right now his only copy of Alexander is standing proudly on his side of the field. Is there some way that Gabriel can activate Alexander’s effect?

By properly ordering the effects of his Gladiator Beasts, Gabriel can indeed use Dimacari to fetch Alexander, but doing so requires getting Alexander into his deck. Gabriel will need to activate Alexander’s effect first, returning it to his deck. When the effect is resolved, he can special summon a different Gladiator Beast (say Gladiator Beast Bestiari). Now that Alexander is back in his deck, Gabriel can return Dimacari to his deck and special summon Alexander. Hoplomus can be used to get another Gladiator Beast, like Gladiator Beast Secutor or Gladiator Beast Octavius.

It is possible for your opponent to negate this effect, though the options for doing so are quite limited. Cards like Skill Drain and Destiny Hero - Plasma have no way to stop this effect because they can only negate the effects of face-up monsters on the field, and the Gladiator Beasts remove themselves from the field when they activate their “tag in” effect. Their main options are Divine Wrath and Light and Darkness Dragon, which can be chained to the “tag in” effect and will negate the effect’s activation. The Gladiator Beast itself will not be destroyed by Divine Wrath though, because the Gladiator Beast has found its way into the deck, and Light and Darkness Dragon wasn’t really planning on destroying them anyway.

Weapons—The Gladiator’s Best Friend

Normally when a monster is removed from the field, any equip cards equipped to the monster are destroyed and sent to the graveyard. This is a common occurrence for Gladiator Beasts, so don’t expect any equip cards they use to hang around for long. With this weakness in mind, the weapons intended for Gladiatorial combat receive a special ability that allows them to return to their owner’s hand when the equipped Gladiator Beast on their side of the field is returned to the deck.

Each of the three equip cards has a specific purpose. Gladiator Beast’s Battle Manica prevents the equipped monster from being destroyed in battle, Gladiator Beast’s Battle Halberd can destroy spell or trap cards, and Gladiator Beast’s Battle Gladius gives the equipped monster an ATK boost. Since the equipped monster can return to the deck without wasting its equip cards, these boosts can come in handy. Due to the text phrasing, it is also possible to combine this effect with the use of other cards.

The “tag in” effect isn’t the only way to satisfy the Gladiator weapons. Any card effect that returns your equipped Gladiator Beast to the deck will activate the effect of the Gladiator Beast equip card. Phoenix Wing Wind Blast is the most likely offender you will encounter. It can return your Gladiator Beast to the top of your deck, but the Gladiator Beast equip card equipped to it will still return to your hand. If you decide to play Grave Protector to keep your Gladiator Beasts flowing back into your deck when they are destroyed in battle, the Gladiator equip card will return to your hand.

Next week, we will continue our Gladiator training with the Gladiators themselves and some of their support cards. Until next time, send all comments and questions to Curtis@metagame.com.