Card Review: Salvage Warrior

When this card came out, I really didn’t hear anybody talk about. Nobody even thought about this card and they still don’t. Well basically, I’m saying that this card should be thought about because it’s really good. It’s in the realm of all those other “1 card Synchro” cards like Junk Synchron and Debris Dragon except it has extreme versatility that is to be reckoned with. Today’s card is Salvage Warrior…

When this card is Tribute Summoned, you can Special Summon 1 Tuner Monster from your hand or Graveyard.

A very simple and straight forward effect. So much so it’s a surprise to me that no one uses this card. A few other things to point out are that it’s level 5 so it will be requiring a Tribute Summon and also that it has a fairly significant attack stat at 1900, which just ends up really being an added bonus on its versatility.

It’s pretty simple what you’re going to be doing with this card. First, you tribute a monster to summon it. Next, bring back a tuner monster of choice and Synchro for a synchro monster of choice. The card text states it must be tribute summoned to get its effect, so that throws out any kind of level modulating cards or cards like Mausoleum of the Emperor, and also means it should work well along side some good “tribute fodder”. This basically means monster’s who’s purpose is usually to be tributed by something else.  In this case some good cards to use are Treeborn Frog and Level Eater. There’s plenty of other ways to tribute summon it in a helpful manner, but I’ll just stick with these since they’re the most simple.

Level Eater in particular is very helpful with Salvage Warrior for two reasons: one, Salvage Warrior is level 5 so you can level-eat Salvage Warrior after you tribute summon it. Two, since most of the time you’ll be using Salvage Warrior to Synchro summon, Level Eater gives you an array of versatility in terms of level number combinations you can make. With Level Eater in the mix, even what would seem like a really simple, one result play, can actually result in a multitude of things. As an example, you tribute summon Salvage Warrior and revive a monster, such as Junk Synchron. Without Level Eater, the only option you really have is to Synchro for a level 8 Synchro, but with Level Eater you can get a lot more. You can level eat Salvage Warrior and either Synchro for 8, 7 or 4. (also, in this case summoning Junk Destroyer would be better than before, now that you have more synchro materials) Also, if you have another monster to use Level Eater on you gain even more options, especially if the tuner you revive with Salvage Warrior is level 5 or higher.

Speaking of which, there’s two tuner monsters that have particularly good synergy with Salvage Warrior and they are Svartalf of the Nordic Alfar and Quickdraw Synchron. This Synergy comes from these monsters being level five giving a huge amount of options as well as both tag incredibly well with Level Eater.

The most cool thing these cards can do with Salvage Warrior is but a rare feat; they can do a 1 card rank 5 XYZ summon! It seems like a waster at first to use a Quickdraw Synchron in such a way, but it expends usually 1 or 2 cards to do so and results in a big 2600 beater like Adreus, Keeper of the Armageddon who gets to destroy your opponent’s card or his counterpart Tiras, Keeper of the Genesis, who’s a real jerk to take out once he gets going. You can also XYZ summon for a rank 4 if you really want by Level Eating both the Level 5 tuner and Salvage Warrior, not that I recommend this though, but hey, it’s nice to know you have the option.

But back to Synchroing; with a level 5 Tuner you’re given a huge amount of versatility once you bring it when you have a Level Eater in the graveyard as I said before, and especially with these two tuners in particular since they access some very good monsters utilizing Salvage Warrior.

First, I’ll talk about Svartalf. The most obvious thing to note with Svartalf is that it is the tuner that you use to summon Loki, Lord of the Aesir, an incredibly powerful card. Loki requires a Alfar Tuner and 2 or more non tuners adding up to 10. Salvage Warrior is level 5, Svartalf is 5 so that makes ten, but you need another non tuner, which can be Level Eater since you can just level-eat Salvage Warrior and synchro for Loki with almost no disadvantage. Svartalf is also highly “tutorable” and as well as being very easy to get from the deck to the grave (being a dark monster) meaning you have easy access to it for Salvage Warrior. On a side note, Svartalf also can work without Salvage Warrior and just a Level Eater since you can tribute the Level Eater to summon it from hand (and even use its effect to recur another copy of itself) and the level -eat at to Synchro for 5, or level-eat another monster and Synchro for 6. (On a double side note, this is one of the only ways in the game to effectively Synchro for Underground Arachnid, who requires a Dark tuner and an Insect non-tuner, go figure)

Quickdraw, while also making the XYZ plays has synergy in a separate way, in particular with Drill Warrior. Drill Warrior, Level Eater, Salvage Warrior and Quickdraw Synchron all have an amazing Synergy with one another that allow for a lot of powerful recursion. First, Drill Warrior can be summoned using a combination of Level Eater and Quickdraw in some way. An once you have a Drill Warrior on the field, it essentially can act as infinite levels to nom nom on for Level Eater since through Drill Warriors effect he’ll leave the field and return with his levels reset. Also, his effect makes you consistently have a monster to level-eat on the field. So with this you can have a Drill Warrior and a Level Eater every turn. Since you always have a Level Eater it makes it really easy to tribute for Salvage Warrior and then Synchro and on top of that you can recur the Salvage Warrior each turn, making a Synchroing loop of sorts. Pretty sweet huh?

The last thing about Salvage Warrior that I really have to say is that he gets access to a fairly overlooked Synchro monster due to its summoning conditions, and that monster is Grungnir Dragon of the Ice Barrier. Grungnir requires a Water non-tuner which really doesn’t happen, except in the case of Salvage Warrior of course. and with just one card you can summon this behemoth to the field and start laying waste to you opponent’s cards. These two cards both make some nice Synergy with The Fabled Cerburrel. Since you need a level 2 tuner to synchro for Grungnir with Salvage Warrior Cerburrel fits that bill as well as being the perfect discard fodder for Grungnir’s effect.

Over the next few weeks I’ll probably be testing these things out in a frog deck as a sort of Psuedo replacement for most of the Monarchs. We’ll see how it turns out. Hope you have some fun with Salvage Warrior too!

Just something random, please excuse the fact that every time I say “Salvage Warrior” it has a link to the card “Salvage”, which is completely unrelated… or is it?