For a few years now, many powerful decks have been born as a result of specific cards being unlimited in tournament play. These decks existed because of the ability to use three copies of their most powerful cards. Goat Control, Merchant Pot Turbo, and Chaos Return are just three great examples.

Then the Forbidden list changed and the power of each deck was checked. Chaos Sorcerer, Thousand-Eyes Restrict, and Tsukuyomi have been Forbidden outright, while Pot of Avarice, Scapegoat, and Magician of Faith have been Limited to one copy per deck. As such, the effects of Magical Merchant and Return from the Different Dimension have been neutralized to a point where they no longer pose as much of a threat. Since these cards don’t look to become un-Limited any time soon, players will have to find alternate means to make these decks workable. Which brings us to today’s preview card. Introducing The Transmigration Prophecy:

The Transmigration Prophecy

Trap Card

Select 2 cards from the Graveyard(s) and shuffle them in to the owners’ deck(s).

The first thing you’ve probably noticed is that using this card doesn’t yield any immediate results on the field. Two cards are shuffled into your deck, meaning you can’t guarantee you’ll see them anytime soon. While this still doesn’t appear to give you much leverage, you can put back searchable cards that can be found very quickly (Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys comes to mind). Assuming you run a relatively conventional build of this deck, The Transmigration Prophecy can allow you to constantly utilize your power cards. Mystic Tomato and Apprentice Magician have some obvious synergies with The Transmigration Prophecy. Monsters like Sangan, Spirit Reaper, and Magician of Faith are unfortunately Limited to one. Before today, that meant players would have to draw Pot of Avarice in order to use their effects more than once. Now, though, if your Tomato-into-Reaper combo fails the first time, it only takes another Tomato and The Transmigration Prophecy to make it work again: Spirit Reaper can be returned to your deck and then searched out once more.

How wonderful does Apprentice Magician become when it can search multiple times for Magician of Faith? Since The Transmigration Prophecy puts two cards back into your deck, it’s possible to throw both the Apprentice Magician and Magician of Faith back into the mix. This increases your chance of drawing or searching out that Magician of Faith again, especially if you’ve still got Sangan (and Mystic Tomato to find it), Apprentice Magician, or Last Will to get any of those monsters.

You should be seeing how the deck works: reusing its field by stabilizing monsters over and over again. However, what really breaks the deck open is the ability to constantly bring out a Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys. It’s possible to play three copies of Hand of Nephthys because it’s not Limited to one. There had never been a reason to do so, because it meant you’d have at least one useless Hand of Nephthys once the Phoenix was destroyed (at least until Pot of Avarice returned it to your deck). Given that you can now put Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys back into your deck over and over again, the possibility of putting each Hand of Nephthys to use is very real. Since most decks can’t deal with Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys over and over, your opponents are going to be hard-pressed to beat you. Just make sure there’s no Bottomless Trap Hole in your future.

Gadgets will also find a purpose for The Transmigration Prophecy. Whether you’re running six or nine Gadgets, there always comes a time when the final Gadget is in the graveyard. The two biggest challenges of the deck are its inability to reduce an opponent’s life points to zero with just the Gadgets and the uselessness of extra Gadgets in your hand. The Transmigration Prophecy offers a solution to both problems. The extra Gadgets obviously now have search targets, which means they’ll still be replacing themselves and continuing the devastating loop. Plus, more Gadgets means more damage, and the ability to keep the Gadget flow coming—even for just two extra turns—can lead to enough damage to destroy the opponent with only the Gadget monsters. For the creative deckbuilder, this means that very few extra monsters will be required, leaving more room for monster removal and tech cards.

It’s no surprise that a specialized card like The Transmigration Prophecy can sometimes appear at an inopportune time. Luckily for us, Snipe Hunter can make use of it when you draw it at the wrong time (and happens to fit perfectly in both decks I’ve mentioned so far). Gadget decks always have some cards they won’t mind donating to Snipe Hunter’s cause. Mystic Tomato in the Phoenix deck works nicely (since it can search the Hunter out), and when you’ll be using Magician of Faith multiple times per duel (hopefully in conjunction with Pot of Avarice), you’ll find Snipe Hunter always has some discard fodder at the ready.

The Transmigration Prophecy also provides card cycling and chainability. Baiting opponents into using their Heavy Storm, Mystical Space Typhoon, or Mobius the Frost Monarch on it will allow your defensive cards to shine. For the Phoenix deck, the chainability may come in handy when the opponent tries to D.D. Crow your Phoenix out of the game. If your Phoenix is in the graveyard and the opponent tries to remove it with Crow, you can chain Prophecy to return Phoenix to the deck before Crow’s effect resolves. Similarly, against Book of Life, The Transmigration Prophecy can save your best monsters from being removed.

You can also put cards from the opponent’s graveyard back into his or her deck. This will be useful against big Monarch builds, where Treeborn Frog won’t be so hot stuck on the bottom of the opponent’s deck. In addition, opposing Vampire Lord or Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys threats are neutralized and returned to the deck as well. Targeting the opponent’s graveyard can be very useful, as we learned last week with D.D. Crow. You can even use the same trick we discussed last week to shut down big Dark World monsters like Goldd, Wu-Lord of Dark World and Sillva, Warlord of Dark World. The Transmigration Prophecy can provide an instant counter to many graveyard-activated effects: you’ll usually want to use it on your own cards, but the options are still there just in case.

Remember that you can put any kind of card back into your deck. With careful planning, The Transmigration Prophecy has the potential to break open a lot of OTK combo decks. Magical Merchant or Reasoning and The Transmigration Prophecy can work very nicely together, especially if you’ve got an extremely high number of monsters or spell and trap cards in your deck.