Tournament-viable cards pulled from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX over the past couple of years have been some of the best monsters, spells, and traps ever printed. Cyber Dragon, Elemental Hero Stratos, Destiny Hero - Plasma, Light and Darkness Dragon, and others like them have shaped the metagames we know today. But when new GX cards are released into the real-life card pool it can be difficult to tell which are competitive and which are more fan-oriented, so we’re starting off our Phantom Darkness preview weeks with a look at all three versions of Jaden’s Season 3 nemesis, Yubel. Don’t let the huge text box fool you—as much as we’re used to simple GX monsters being the most playable, Yubel has some serious potential for tournament play. Let me show you why.

First up, take a look at the basic version of Yubel. It all starts with this card—Yubel’s most basic form. From there, it can turn into bigger monsters the same way Armed Dragon or Silent Swordsman can . . . except Yubel is way better.

Yubel 

Fiend / Effect

Dark / Level 10                 

0 ATK / 0 DEF

This card can’t be destroyed in battle. You don’t take battle damage from battles involving Yubel. When this face-up attack mode card is attacked by your opponent's monster, before damage calculation, deal damage to the opponent equal to that monster's ATK. During your end phase, tribute a monster or destroy this card. When Yubel is destroyed by anything but its own effect, you can special summon a “Yubel - Terror Incarnate” from your hand, deck, or graveyard.

Whoa, that’s a lot of text! Let’s break it down. Yubel requires two tributes to normal summon, but can be special summoned in virtually any way. Battling it is useless: attacking Yubel won’t destroy it or cause any battle damage, and the damage actually deflects back on the controller of the attacking monster. That makes Yubel an awesome wall, but a costly defender. You’ll need to tribute a monster each turn during your end phase to keep Yubel around, and if you don’t have anything other than Yubel (or simply choose not to tribute), you’ll have to either destroy or tribute Yubel itself.

Yubel basically sits there, waiting to be destroyed. Should that happen, you can special summon the next version of Yubel, which is where things get interesting. However, if Yubel is removed from play, spun to the top of your deck, tributed, or removed from the field in any way other than outright destruction, you won’t get anything. Once Yubel hits the field, you’re basically racing your opponent: you want to destroy it, while he or she wants to do anything to get it off the field without destroying it.

That means cards like Raiza the Storm Monarch and Phoenix Wing Wind Blast are your enemies, while anything that lets you destroy Yubel becomes a powerful tool. Torrential Tribute is certainly the first card that comes to mind, but Generation Shift and Dark Dust Spirit can provide you with useful effects while destroying Yubel in the process.

If you really want to go the distance though, you’ll want to build your deck around a reliable strategy that can blow Yubel away as early as possible. A few inventive players in Japan came up with a stellar method of getting Yubel destroyed, and the trick lies in an underplayed Gemini monster from Tactical Evolution: Doom Shaman.

Doom Shaman is like Il Blud for Fiends, which happens to be Yubel’s monster type. You can use its Gemini effect to special summon Yubel from your hand or graveyard, and when the Shaman is removed from the field, Yubel will be destroyed. Since Yubel demands the tribute of one of your monsters at the end of each turn, it’s no sweat to tribute the Shaman in the end phase, destroy Yubel, and trigger the exact series of events you’re looking for.

This strategy is very consistent thanks to two groups of cards: Foolish Burial and some of the stuff in Phantom Darkness can punt Yubel and Doom Shaman into the graveyard, and from there you can special summon the Shaman with Premature Burial, Call of the Haunted, or Swing of Memories. When Doom Shaman goes down, it will destroy Yubel, triggering Yubel’s final effect and special summoning its next form. Then the fun starts! Check out Yubel’s second version:

Yubel - Terror Incarnate         

Fiend / Effect

Dark / Level 11                 

0 ATK / 0 DEF

This card can’t be normal summoned or set. It can’t be special summoned except by the effect of “Yubel”. This card can’t be destroyed by battle. You take no battle damage from battles with this card. When this face-up attack mode card is attacked by your opponent's monster, before entering damage calculation, deal damage to your opponent equal to that monster's ATK. During your end phase, destroy all other monsters on the field. When this face-up card is removed from the field, you can special summon a “Yubel - The Ultimate Nightmare” from your hand, deck, or graveyard.

This card is the real workhorse of the Yubel strategy. Just like ordinary Yubel, there’s no point in attacking Terror Incarnate, and since it’ll clear the field every turn with its Dark Hole effect, your opponent probably won’t want to play any monsters. If he or she doesn’t, then that leaves you free to play your own monster each turn for a direct attack.

Granted, Yubel will destroy your monsters too, but a few shots can leave your opponent reeling. You don’t necessarily have to lose monsters to deal damage while Yubel’s out. An equip spell like Mage Power gives Yubel the ability to do its own dirty work, so you won’t have to play another monster. You can try using Asura Priest too. It’ll kick out 1700 damage each turn, and since you decide the order of how your effects activate in the end phase, you can bounce the Priest to your hand before Yubel’s effect would destroy it.

If your opponent does commit monsters to the field to try and shield him- or herself, just don’t play a monster on the following turn and let Yubel - Terror Incarnate do its thing in the end phase. Whether your opponent loses life points or cards, he or she is taking a beating, and it shouldn’t be long before you declare victory.

Yubel - Terror Incarnate doesn’t have the vulnerability that its first form had either: while Yubel had to be destroyed and was thus weak to Raiza or Wind Blast, Yubel - Terror Incarnate will make its final evolutionary leap regardless of how it’s removed from the field. Raiza and Wind Blast won’t do anything but unleash Yubel’s last incarnation . . .

Yubel - The Ultimate Nightmare     

Fiend / Effect

Dark / Level 12                 

0 ATK / 0 DEF

This card can’t be normal summoned or set. It can’t be special summoned except with the effect of “Yubel - Terror Incarnate”. This card can’t be destroyed by battle. You take no battle damage from battles with this card. If this face-up attack mode card battles an opponent’s monster, deal damage to your opponent equal to that monster’s ATK and destroy that monster at the end of the damage step.

Now we’re talking! In essence, Yubel - The Ultimate Nightmare wins any battle it fights. If the opponent’s monster can’t be destroyed by battle, Yubel will destroy it anyway. If the monster it’s attacking is enormous, even better: Yubel’s effect will deal more damage! While Yubel - Terror Incarnate will do most of the work in a Yubel deck, Yubel - The Ultimate Nightmare is the threat that looms over anyone who would try to take down Terror Incarnate. This creates a unique situation: the average opponent won’t deal with Terror Incarnate until he or she is ready to take on The Ultimate Nightmare as well, and since that’s a pretty tall order, you’ll usually have several turns to wreak havoc with Yubel’s second form.

Once the opponent manages to get rid of The Ultimate Nightmare, you can just start the entire process again. If you’ve decided to play the Doom Shaman version of the deck, doing so is as easy as playing another Swing of Memories and using the Shaman to bring back the original Yubel you last used. Yubel monsters can pull their next form from the deck, hand, or graveyard, so that means you don’t need to dedicate a ton of deck space to extra copies of the later versions.

It’s been a while since we saw a combo deck that was geared for control instead of a one-turn KO, but that’s exactly what we have here in Yubel. A good deck built around the Yubel monsters can assume control of the game as early as turn 1, and since the combo is so easy to pull off multiple times, it rarely relinquishes its death grip. If you head out to a Phantom Darkness Sneak Preview, do yourself a favor—snap up any copies of this card that you can find. I’m sure it’ll be underestimated for the first few weeks, and I’m sure it’ll outperform expectations.

—Jason Grabher-Meyer