This is an outrage!
The last time we were writing about new cards here on Metagame.com, they made me reveal two of them to you unworthy slackers in a single article! It was two too many! No one deserves to see two new cards in one day: it’s practically cheating at life! So I filed a complaint here with management, explaining why our readership doesn’t deserve such preferential treatment. If it were up to me, you’d go into that Sneak Preview weekend blind as a bat!
Now they’re making me reveal two ultra rares in the very first Force of the Breaker preview!? What kind of wretchedly sadistic joke IS this? It’s a travesty—a mockery of justice and a crime against civil courtesy and patience!
Sadly though, I’ve grown rather attached to the concept of receiving my paycheck, so I must do as I have been instructed. However, let it never be said that this was voluntary! I am previewing these two amazing cards under duress! Much to my chagrin, my frilly cravats don’t pay for themselves . . .
Eyes to the front! First, cast your gaze to the board to observe the following:
Crystal Beast Sapphire Pegasus Beast / Effect WIND 4 1800 1200
When this card is Summoned, you can put 1 "Crystal Beast" monster from your hand, Deck, or Graveyard face-up in your Spell & Trap Card Zone as a Continuous Spell Card. If this card is destroyed while it is a monster, instead of sending it to the Graveyard you can move it to your Spell & Trap Card Zone face up as a Continuous Spell Card.
Sapphire Pegasus is just one of the Crystal Beast monsters wielded by Duel Academy’s newest arrival, Jesse Anderson. Contrary to what you may have heard, he is not, in fact, “Jaden Yuki with a Southern accent and blue hair.” In reality, he possesses a vastly superior intellect and infinitely more dueling skill than that Slifer has-been. Also, his cards are excellent! Let us investigate.
Crystal Beast Sapphire Pegasus is the centerpiece: the glorious keystone of Jesse’s Crystal Beast theme. Those of you who studied adequately will know that all Crystal Beasts have a line of text that allows you to send them to your spell and trap zone when they are destroyed. From there, you can use spell-form Crystal Beasts to interact with other effects, or they can fulfill requirements for other specialized cards. Here is one of the latter . . .
Rare Value Normal Spell
Activate only when there are 2 or more "Crystal Beast" cards in your Spell & Trap Card Zone. Your opponent chooses 1 of them and it is sent to the Graveyard. Then, draw 2 cards.
Does that particular effect seem familiar? Why yes, that is Pot of Greed you see before you, and in a form that can be played in Advanced format tournaments no less! To say that the specialized Crystal Beast support cards are “good” would be an understatement of utterly massive proportions. Several of them are updated versions of Forbidden cards that aren’t available to any other deck theme, and the ones that aren’t are even better. The effects a duelist can use once a pair of Crystal Beasts have been crystallized border on the unbelievable, and such a duelist has a massive advantage over an opponent once he or she establishes that condition. Rare Value is impressive, but it’s only one of several devastating effects—all of which you will be spoiled with over the next two weeks.
Therein lies the rub. Crystal Beast decks are in no way poor before attaining the two-crystal threshold, but in order to justify your dedication, you’ll want your deck to be performing at its maximum potential. As such, getting two Crystal Beasts into your back row as quickly as possible is paramount to success, and that is why Crystal Beast Sapphire Pegasus is so good. If you were to go first, and were to summon a Crystal Beast each turn, you might see both of them destroyed and crystallized in time for you to activate Rare Value (or another similarly-powerful effect) by turn 3. However, with Pegasus you can have your first spell-form Crystal Beast on your very first turn, without losing monster presence! In addition, Pegasus has 1800 ATK: higher than any other Crystal Beast. That alone makes it worthy of three spots in any Crystal Beast deck.
In fact, that high ATK is even better than it first appears. Because of the amount of damage Pegasus can deal through direct attacks, and its ability to take down almost any commonly-played monster in battle, it is a strong candidate for your opponent’s monster removal. Destroying a threat with Smashing Ground or Sakuretsu Armor is par for the course nowadays. However, while any other 1800 ATK troublemaker would require little to no consideration to destroy with a card-for-card exchange, Crystal Beast Pegasus will give your opponent a terrifying moment of pause. Destroying it with something like Smashing Ground after its effect has resolved puts the Crystal Beast duelist at that deadly two-crystal threshold, not to mention that in the strictest mathematical sense, it represents a concession to the dreaded “two for one” trade. Your opponent loses a piece of monster removal, and you don’t really lose anything. Quite a pickle. Many duelists will avoid dealing with Pegasus until they can do so through battle, and that buys you more time to draw into cards like Rare Value.
It also means that you can play with a certain degree of reckless abandon. Aggression is the friend of many Crystal Beast builds, simply because Crystal Beasts can afford to be aggressive. The downside of over-extension (that’s committing more cards to the field than your opponent in a bid to control the duel, for those of you who slept through Tempo 101) is usually failure through loss of options. However, a destroyed Crystal Beast actually enables a new set of options that are arguably more powerful anyway, so you can certainly afford to take risks. Your opponent is forced to either play into your long-term strategy by helping you achieve your thresholds, or let you wreak havoc with unbridled attacking. That is the kind of power Crystal Beast Sapphire Pegasus commands.
Some finer points on Pegasus’s effect: since it can bring out Crystal Beasts from your hand and graveyard in addition to your deck, you may reuse fallen Beasts that you only run one copy of. That gives your deck flexibility in its monster skew. Being able to pluck them out of the graveyard also keeps Pegasus relevant in the late game, when most or all of your Crystal Beasts have already been stripped from your deck. Unlike other monsters that search a card from your deck, Pegasus does not suffer from diminishing utility as the duel progresses. Even the ability to drop a Beast from your hand is a clever little bonus that will occasionally come in handy should you draw a Crystal Beast you don’t wish to play to the field. You’ll see just such a card next week, in fact.
As for Rare Value, it piles more cards and more options onto a deck that already maintains a multitude of options, and puts together dominating plays faster than most others. There just isn’t much to say about it—Rare Value is the renewed version of arguably the best card ever to see print, and if it alone was the star of the Crystal Beast pantheon, it would make Jesse’s signature monsters competition-worthy. However, as you’ll see over the coming weeks, that isn’t the case. Free draws are only the beginning.
Both of these cards will be a must-play in threes for virtually any Crystal Beast strategy. Whether you opt to play a fast beatdown build or attempt to create a more synergy-focused combo version, Pegasus gets you the raw fuel your cards require and Rare Value gives you utterly incredible draw power. If you aspire to play Crystal Beasts, then get your hands on these cards as quickly as possible on the weekend of May 5th—they’re only going to become more sought-after once the Sneak Preview weekend has come and gone.
—The Righteously Indignant Professor Crellian Vowler, PhD