Card Review: Book of Moon

I said I would talk about Book of Moon in my last article, so I will!

Book of Moon used to be a huge card back when it was at three. People where running 3’s in just about every deck you could think of and nobody really thought otherwise. Then, seemingly out of the blue Konami decided to limit it to one. While it seems pretty fair to me now, many people didn’t really understand why then, and still don’t know considering they don’t run it in most decks nowadays.

It makes sense in a lot of the really slim decks being run now like Mermails that only really have room for a few tech choices, and one of the last things on their minds is defense, since that’s mostly the style of card Book of Moon is. Similar things can be said about most hyper offensive decks. Decks like Chaos Dragons rarely look towards cards like Book of Moon let alone some more standard staple defensive cards like Solemn Warning. Strangely to me though, not even the defensive decks like Dino Rabbit seem to be running Book of Moon despite the cards raw power and versatility.

So what makes the card so good? First off, it’s one of an extremely small class of cards: Quick-Play Spell cards. And on top of being a Quick-Play Spell, it actually provides very valuable effects. (Other Quick-Plays like Enemy Controller have very situational effectiveness) Quick-Play Spells are so powerful because of how they work. They can be activated out of your hand on your turn, they can be chained while face-down like a trap card and they’re a Spell Card so they’re almost impossible to respond effectively to. This alone gives the card an edge, but its effect is also very powerful.

Why I feel Book of Moon’s ability to flip monsters face-down is so powerful right now is because there’s really a lack of strong trigger effect monsters in normal play. What I mean is monsters that have an effect that activates upon their summoning. Strong cards from the past that make good examples of these types of trigger effects are Caius the Shadow Monarch, Junk Synchron, Debris Dragon, Blackrose Dragon, Gadgets, among other things. There are a couple trigger effect monsters out there right now, but most have fairly underwhelming abilities or could be prevented from being summoned with Book of Moon before hand. (ex. Tiger King) The only monster I can think of that really is a good trigger effect upon summoning is Abyssmegalo when he adds Sphere to hand, which isn’t the craziest effect so I might classify it in the “underwhelming” category anyways.

So what’s that mean? That means you can shut down a monsters effect and practically its entire summon by just flipping a monster face-down in the current format. This is due of course to the lack of priority on Ignition effects, one of the reasons Book of Moon was limited in the first place. Let’s name some powerful monsters with powerful effects that are common sites right now: Brotherhood of the Fire Fist Bear and Gorilla, Rescue Rabbit, Black Luster Soldier, Chaos Sorcerer, Dark Armed Dragon, Big Eye, Wind-Up Rat, MX-Saber Invoker, the list goes on. What do these all have in common, they’re all completely halted by Book of Moon. So many of the big strong cards we fear are stopped in their tracks in an almost similar fashion to Solemn Warning by the card Book of Moon. (Of course I assume you have within your capability the resources to remove that mosnter from the field later) That means you have a pseudo 2nd copy of Solemn in your deck if you’re running Book of Moon, and I really want that!

Not to mention the card has loads of other applications that I’m sure you’ve heard of. You can use it to dodge the opponent’s effects; things like Booking a Caius when it gets Veiler’d so its effect resolves or Booking your BLS when the opponent play Mirror Force so it will survive. It also resets Flip effects for cards like Ryko or Gravekeeper’s Spy. (On a side note I’ve always considered Book of Moon to the Gemini Spark of sorts for GKs) It also allows you to re-use Ignition effects like back in Goat Control; you have a Diamond Dude from last turn, you use his effect, Book him, Flip Summon him, then use his effect again. It also is one of the best cards for beating a Shock Master since it bluffs as a Trap and it’s a nearly undetectable card since it always looks like something else face-down, and no-one really runs it so they don’t take it into consideration when predicting back row.

There’s more I could probably say, but I’ll just keep it short. See y’all next week.