Card Review: Abyss Dweller

PhotobucketSome pre-YCS Seattle insight about a card that I think will be making a huge difference in the new meta: Abyss Dweller. It just came out as a TCG Exclusive in Abyss Rising with what seems like no fanfare, well let’s try to change that.

Abyss Dweller is a Rank 4 requiring any two level 4’s, but preferably at least one water monster for its effect. It has 1700 ATK and 1400 DEF, much like it’s other TCG Exclusive counterpart The Dragon Dwelling in the Deep. He’s a WATER Sea Serpent. His effect is as follows:

While this card has an Xyz Material attached that was originally WATER, all WATER monsters you control gain 500 ATK. Once per turn, during either player’s turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; any card effects that activate in your opponent’s Graveyard cannot be activated this turn.

His first effect puts him up to a nice 2200, which isn’t amazing, but it’s not going to die to Thunder King, which is a thing. Some prime level 4 WATER monsters to put underneath him include Mermail Abysspike, Atlantean Dragoons, Wind-Up Shark, Elemental HERO Bubbleman and some other weird things like maybe Lemuria + Ronintoadin, but that’s another story. So, we’re mainly looking at HEROs, Atlanteans and Wind-Up decks for this guys first effect. Which is a continuous effect that boosts all other WATER monster, which is a nice bonus for Atlanteans making Marksman’s and Spikes a bit bigger at 1900 and 2000 ATK respectively. It’ll also put Zenmaity and Shark up to a respectable 2000 as well.

But let’s move on to the important effect of this monster. His second effect is a quick effect, meaning you can chain it in response to things or activate it whenever you have priority as a chain link 1 (so at the end of each of your opponent’s phases, there’s a couple examples where this matters), which is great since it can respond to a lot of new and a couple older cards and essentially negate them. On that though, this card can’t actually negate card’s since the card reads “cannot activate this turn” rather than specifically negating, this gives it what some people might call Safe Zone syndrome. In the case of Safe Zone, if the opponent activates say Dimensional Prison, you can’t chain Safe Zone to protect your monster because Safe Zone only prevents targeting rather than negating it, and since D-Prison already targeted Safe Zone can’t stop it. In the same way, Abyss Dweller only prevents card from being activated in the graveyard. If you chain Abyss Dweller’s effect to something activating in the graveyard it will not negate that effect because it has already activated. So in that sense you’ve got to be a little preemptive or at least know the places to use his effect best.

After re-reading the card and realizing that’s how it worked I initially thought that this was no good, I wanted to chain his effect to negate Sangan activating or something similar, but that’s not the cards that Abyss Dweller is out to get. The two main decks this card will work against are Atlanteans and Darkworlds.

Both the Atlanteans and Darkworld monster activate their effects in similar ways. When sent/discarded they wait for the current chain to resolve and then activate in a new separate chain. As an example for each archetype: I summon Genex Undine and send Atlantean Dragoons to the graveyard as a cost, this is chain link 1. The chain resolves and I add Genex Controller to my hand. Now a new chain starts with Dragoons activating as chain link 1. Similarly, say I play Dark World Dealings as chain link 1. It resolves and I discard Grapha, then once the chain resolves a new chain starts and Grapha’s effect activates in the new chain as chain link 1. (all of this in the most simple circumstances) Why does this matter? This matter’s because you can chain Dweller’s effect to the first card before the card that activates in the graveyard even gets a chance to activate. While the Dark World player could try to pull a fast one and not discard a Dark World monster, they’ll just be discarding some other good card instead and Abyss Dweller still negates any Dark World monster effect that may activate for the rest of the turn since his effect last until to End Phase. Back on track though, Dweller can chain to Undine or Dark World dealings before the effect you want to negate happens and in the case of Atlanteans, you even get to see the effect they may want to use before they use it.

Why is this relevant? This is hugely important going into the new meta and will give players who run this card a huge edge if they know what they’re doing. Going into Seattle the deck a lot of people are keeping their eyes on is Mermail Atlanteans and this card is an easy counter to it. Just about every deck in the game has the ability to summon Rank 4’s and quite easily at that, and this card can easily fit into the extra deck of all places, not even upsetting a decks consistency. Wind-Ups, Geargia, Gadgets, Chaos Dragons, HEROs, Darkworlds and even Atlanteans themselves have the potential to summon this card and with only the investment of 1 extra deck slot they can edge out the new “big deck” as well as get that nice step up on Dark Worlds that everyone has always wanted.

The deck I think is most affected by this card positively is probably Wind-Ups. Although the deck has a very tight extra deck, they’ll probably be wanting to add this card in pronto. Some of the deck’s basic combos can go into this in a breeze and some can make him even with his water boosting effect. If you run Wind-Up Warrior (ya, it may be a stretch, but I could make a pretty good case for it) you can turn Tour Guide + Shark into a Zenmaity, Utopia (or nay other rank 4) and an Abyss Dweller with his WATER boosting effect, which is a pretty daunting field for any Dark World or Atlantean deck.

It’s also pretty darn simple in Bubble Beat to bring out this guy effectively as well which will help them against one of there former nemesis’ Dark Worlds and maybe eve give them a nice boost back into the meta game, who knows?

 

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