In the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX manga, Chazz Princeton’s most powerful monster isn’t one of his Armed Dragons or anything involving Ojamas. In this world, Chazz’s ultimate monster is the powerful Light and Darkness Dragon. In the beginning, Chazz chose to bury this card in a secret place, thinking that he needed to prove his strength without it. Eventually he came to realize that it meant too much to him and he couldn’t turn his back on his prized Dragon any longer. Powerful or not, he would no longer duel without it.

Chazz does some strange things.

Chazz’s Dragon

For quick reference, here is the text for Light and Darkness Dragon:

“This card cannot be Special Summoned. While this card is face-up on the field its Attribute is also treated as DARK. When a Spell or Trap Card is activated, or the effect of an Effect Monster is activated, that activation is negated and this card loses 500 ATK and DEF. When this card is destroyed and sent to the Graveyard, select 1 monster in your Graveyard. Then destroy all cards you control, and Special Summon that monster.”

Light and Darkness Dragon has three separate effects that combine together to make one fearsome Dragon. We are going to split them up and dissect them individually, beginning with the first effect. While Light and Darkness Dragon is face up on the field, it has both the Light and Dark attribute. Usually the Dragon only has the Light attribute printed on the card, and whenever it is in your hand, deck, or graveyard, this will be the only attribute that matters. This is the simplest of the Dragon’s effects and isn’t really the reason it is so well received . . . or feared.

The second effect of Light and Darkness Dragon changes the pace of the duel. Whenever a spell, trap, or effect of a monster card is activated, the Dragon activates its own effect in a chain to negate the card’s activation. When this occurs, the Dragon shaves off 500 ATK and DEF from its total stats. The effect itself is simple, but it has some complications that have led to a heavy number of important rulings. The first of these is particularly noteworthy.

Light and Darkness Dragon’s negation effect will only activate once per chain. This usually means that the Dragon will attempt to negate the very first spell, trap, or monster card effect that activates. Anything that is chained to the effect of the Dragon will be safe from its effect, because the Dragon won’t be allowed to stop it. This bypass allows a player to use card effects to remove the Dragon from the field, flip it face down, or use any card effect he or she had been saving because that player just didn’t want to see it negated. By flipping Light and Darkness Dragon face down or destroying it, its effect disappears and the activation of whatever effect it was planning on negating will resolve unhindered.

Only activating once in the chain may not seem fair, but you have to consider what would happen if it didn’t. If Light and Darkness Dragon’s effect could activate multiple times in the same chain, it would essentially negate its own effect. Even if it couldn’t, having two copies of Light and Darkness Dragon face up at the same time would have resulted in a never-ending chain of Dragon vs. Dragon madness. Anything we can do to prevent infinite loops is a good thing.

Light and Darkness Dragon must be able to reduce its own ATK and DEF by 500 points for it to successfully negate the activation of the spell, trap, or monster card effect. If either of these is too low, the negation will not be applied. With an original ATK of 2800 and an original DEF of 2400, this means that the Dragon can use its effect four times before its DEF is too low and the effect won’t work properly anymore. You can prolong this by using card effects to increase the Dragon’s ATK and DEF . . . but the Dragon is fond of negating them, so it can be a bit tricky.

These decreases are ongoing and get reapplied whenever the ATK or DEF of Light and Darkness Dragon is altered. For example, if your opponent uses Shrink on your Light and Darkness Dragon and the Dragon has used its effect once before, you will halve the Dragon’s original ATK from 2800 to a new current ATK of 1400, and then you will reapply the reduction of 500 ATK, leaving it with a total of 900 ATK. Since Shrink doesn’t do anything to the Dragon’s DEF, it will simply be reduced by 500 to a total of 1900 DEF.

When Light and Darkness Dragon’s ATK and DEF drop below 500, you might think that it would give up on the whole negation thing, but technically the Dragon just doesn’t know when to quit. It will still activate its effect to attempt to negate the activation of spell, trap, and monster card effects, but its effect will fail when it realizes that it cannot drop its ATK and DEF by 500. Yes, this can be a bit confusing and may seem pointless, but it means you have a nice way of bolstering those higher chain-link cards like Chain Strike and Accumulated Fortune.

Go Down Fighting

Light and Darkness Dragon’s final effect activates any time it is destroyed and sent to the graveyard. It doesn’t even matter where the Dragon is at the time it gets destroyed. Usually this effect will activate when the Dragon is destroyed on the field, but it can also be destroyed in your hand by Crush Card Virus and still activate its effect. When the effect is resolved, every card on your side of the field is destroyed and then one monster is special summoned from your graveyard.

Just when you think you’ve finally dealt with the Light and Darkness Dragon, it finds someone else to take its place. This effect does begin a chain, so it is possible to respond with a card effect like the new Light-Imprisoning Mirror or our old friend Divine Wrath. The effect of destroying every card you control is very aggressive, and it will often destroy everything even when you know you won’t be able to special summon a monster.

Next week, we will go into further evaluation of Light and Darkness Dragon’s second effect. Until then, send all comments and questions to Curtis@Metagame.com!