“How many points do we get for the green one?”—Harpie Lady Airo

Continuing from last week’s article, this week we dive right into the spell and trap cards from Rise of Destiny.

A Bit of Misdirection

Triangle Ecstasy Spark is a card intended purely for Constructed play. This card should find its way into any deck using the Harpie Lady Sisters. Its ATK change to 2700 will get the Sisters past most monsters in the game, and the lockdown this card applies to your opponents’ traps makes it worth using.

Necklace of Command serves two separate functions, each of which can be beneficial to its user. It can replace the fallen equipped monster with another card, or it can take an opponent’s card down with the ship. The obvious downside occurs when the equipped monster is destroyed by any way other than in battle, at which point you would lose Necklace of Command’s effect. In Booster Draft, you are more likely to lose monsters in battle and thus have good odds of pulling off this card’s effect.

A monster equipped with Ballista of Rampart Smashing will become a serious enemy of any facedown monster on the opponent’s side of the field. A 1500 ATK increase can be enough for many monsters to overcome most defenders in Rise of Destiny with little difficulty. This card becomes decidedly more dangerous in the hands of monsters like Airknight Parshath and Mefist the Infernal General, because the 1500 ATK increase mixes well with their “ATK greater than DEF” damage effects. It might be worth running Book of Moon if you plan on using this card.

Flint is a funny little equip card. When the monster it is equipped to is destroyed, Flint departs from its victim and goes in search of another. You can use Flint to slowly work its way through the ranks of your opponent’s face-up monsters, but once it finishes with them, it will come after yours. This may seem like a bad thing, because Flint is not nice to the monster it is equipped to . . . but it’s not bad if you use Gearfried the Iron Knight.

Back to Square One accomplishes two tasks. It removes an opponent’s monster from the field, and it manipulates their next draw. It’s a naughty little way to mess with your opponent for one more turn, but depending on what monster you returned to the top of their deck, you might just be delaying the inevitable.

Every monster deserves a second chance, and Monster Reincarnation is more than happy to provide it. This card is great for recovering monsters that have special summon requirements that were not fulfilled before the monster was sent to the graveyard, giving you a second chance to summon them. It also works well with monsters like The Creator and Dark Ruler Ha Des that cannot be special summoned from the graveyard.

Mokey Mokey Smackdown: How can a set with the Roc in it not have a smackdown? Mokey Mokey calls for vengeance when a Fairy-type monster on your side of the field is destroyed, making the ATK of all Mokey Mokey on your side of the field 3000 for the remainder of the turn. It doesn’t matter whose turn it is, so feel free to do this during your own battle phase by destroying one of your Fairy-type monsters so that you can cause a massive-attack swarm with your Mokey Mokey. Shining Angel will be more than willing to lend a hand in this.

Lighten the Load works against the old adage “you shouldn’t use high-level monsters because then you get stuck with them in your hand.” With Lighten the Load, if you get “stuck” with one of those monsters you can shuffle it back into your deck and draw a card to replace it. This will be a good assistant for decks that use high-level monsters like Dark Magician and Blue Eyes White Dragon and sometimes would rather prefer that monster be in their deck and not in their hand, or in decks that don’t use any low level monsters.

Call in the A-Team!

Mind Haxorz lets you pay 500 life points to see every card your opponent has on his or her side of the field and in hand. Complete knowledge of all of your opponent’s options has never been so cheap. Think your opponent drew Jinzo? Use this card during the standby phase and find out.

Thanks to Pikeru’s Circle of Protection, the damage from cards like Ring of Destruction, Tremendous Fire, and even Chaos Emperor Dragon – Envoy of the End will mean nothing to you for an entire turn. The best part is that you get this protection free of charge, making it a great side deck card against Burn decks.

Fuh-Rin-Ka-Zan represents the natural elements joined together under one flag. In Booster Draft, you can expect to see Wind, Fire, and sometimes Earth appear with consistency thanks to the monster selection in Rise of Destiny. WATER is the one wildcard that relies on Nightmare Penguin and Creeping Doom Manta, but if you are fortunate you can use Homunculus the Alchemic Being to turn itself into a Water monster and make up some of the slack. It will be more difficult to run this card in Constructed, where players have a tendency to gravitate more toward the Dark and Light monsters.

Covering Fire is a great defensive teamwork card to help your weaker monsters. If you can make your defending monster’s ATK high enough, you stand to not only destroy your opponent’s attacking monster but also deal some damage. If you are running Raging Flame Sprite, you will want this card to protect it during its initial weak stages. Also, monsters like KA-2 Des Scissors and Marauding Captain will surprise your opponent with Covering Fire.

Your opponent’s Tribe-Infecting Virus, Chaos Emperor Dragon – Envoy of the End, and Magical Scientist will fear Divine Wrath. This card both negates the monster’s effect and destroys it, causing a punishing double blow to your opponent’s strategy. You can expect this card to begin appearing in side decks everywhere very soon, when not main decked.

Curse of Darkness’s sibling, Chain Burst, punishes any player that activates a trap card. While it may be difficult to use well in Booster Draft, it can serve a good purpose in Constructed as a trap deterrent.

Next week . . . Rise of Destiny combinations.