"Equip only to a ‘Crystal Beast’ monster. It gains 800 ATK. When this card is sent from the field to the Graveyard, you can place 1 ‘Crystal Beast’ monster from your Deck in your Spell & Trap Card Zone, face-up, as a Continuous Spell Card."

An increase of 800 ATK is enough for Crystal Beast Topaz Tiger, Amber Mammoth, and Sapphire Pegasus to push back against the Cyber Dragon cards, Monarch cards, and other threats that tend to stand in their way. It also provides the option of placing a Crystal Beast from your deck into your spell and trap zone when Crystal Release is sent from the field to the graveyard, so you get to do something you would want to do anyway. Just don’t lose it at the wrong time.

The act of "crystallizing" the Crystal Beast and sending the card it was equipped with to the graveyard happens at the same time. If the Crystal Beast equipped with Crystal Release is destroyed in battle, or gets destroyed by a card like Hammer Shot or Smashing Ground, you can crystallize it and still activate the effect of Crystal Release when it hits the graveyard. Losing the Crystal Beast or Crystal Release when an effect resolves may cause Crystal Release to lose the chance to activate its effect, but usually this is because other effects resolved afterward and got in the way.

When the chain resolves, Torrential Tribute destroys the Amber Mammoth and Sapphire Pegasus. Jesse places them both into his spell and trap card zone and Crystal Release is sent to the graveyard. Crystal Release wants to activate its effect at this time, but it cannot because the chain is still resolving. Crystal Beast Sapphire Pegasus resolves next, placing a Crystal Beast monster into Jesse’s spell and trap card zone.

Now that the chain has finished resolving, Jesse can activate a new effect, but the time to activate Crystal Release has passed.

Crystal Release’s second effect doesn’t like Macro Cosmos much. Bypassing the graveyard prevents it from activating its effect, so be careful when you’re facing one of these tricky "remove from play" decks.

Grow Something Valuable

Crystal Tree works in tandem with the basic operation of a Crystal Beast deck, giving you another way to mass Crystal Beasts into your spell and trap card zone.

Whenever you or your opponent places a Crystal Beast monster into the spell and trap card zone, Crystal Tree’s effect activates and starts a new chain. If the Crystal Beast monster is placed into the spell and trap card zone during the resolution of the chain, Crystal Tree’s effect will still activate and start a new chain because its effect is mandatory. After you’ve accumulated some Crystal Counters, you can send Crystal Tree to your graveyard during your main phase to get Crystal Beast monsters from your deck and put them into your spell and trap card zone.

Crystal Tree doesn’t have a maximum limit for Crystal Counters, but you don’t want to amass too many. Crystal Tree requires an equal exchange of Crystal Beast monsters for Crystal Counters, and you only have room for five cards in your spell and trap card zone. When you get six Crystal Counters, Crystal Tree will just get in the way because you don’t have enough room for every Crystal Beast monster you would need to place into your spell and trap card zone, and would not be allowed to activate its effect. Even if you have only a few Crystal Counters, you’re going to need room for every Crystal Beast you’ll be adding to your spell and trap card zone. If you have three Crystal Counters on Crystal Tree and only one open spell and trap card zone space, you can’t activate Crystal Tree’s effect.

The Crystal Tree will get out of the way when you activate its effect, so you can think of the space it occupies as an open space when counting how many open spaces you have.

Found Treasure

To activate Crystal Counter, you need at least one other card in your spell and trap card zone and at least one Crystal Beast monster in your graveyard. Crystal Counter needs to have a spell or trap card it can send to the graveyard to pay its cost, because it can’t send itself. This means you will get, at most, four Crystal Beasts out of your graveyard and into your back row, but that’s all you need for Crystal Abundance or to draw a card with Ancient City - Rainbow Ruins. Speaking of the Ruins, you don’t send it to the graveyard to pay Crystal Counter’s cost because it is not in your spell and trap zone, so you don’t have to worry about losing it.

Like Emergency Provisions, it is possible to activate spell and trap cards you control and then send them to the graveyard for Crystal Counter after they are activated, allowing you to get their effect while also activating Crystal Counter. If you have Crystal Abundance, Ceasefire, and Legacy of Yata-Garasu, for example, you could activate Ceasefire and Legacy of Yata-Garasu and then chain Crystal Abundance, sending the first two cards to the graveyard. As long as the cards you send to the graveyard aren’t continuous or equip spell or trap cards, you will usually get their effect. Only a select few non-continuous/non-equip spell or trap cards need to remain on the field, like Swords of Revealing Light.

When the effect resolves, you search your graveyard for as many Crystal Beasts as the number of open spell and trap card zone spaces you have. When you’ve decided who they will be, you place them into your spell and trap card zone and the effect is done. During your end phase, Crystal Counter will destroy every face-up card you control with "Crystal Beast" in its card name, so you’ll want to make them count. It isn’t just the copies in the spell and trap card zone that will be destroyed.