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Card Review: U.A. Crossed Souls

New U.A. in Crossed Souls are here! What to do?

In the upcoming Crossed Souls we’ll be getting yet more U.A. support, 4 cards to be exact. Finally, and really it seems like forever, the Ultra Athlete archetypes seems to be getting the support they actually need. All 4 of the cards being released are fantastic additions to the deck, and I dare say they might even put the deck on the competitive map, but I suppose only time will tell for that. I for one am excited and will definitely be using them on the regional circuit in the future. With that intro, today I’ll be discussing the effects of each card and the basic applications intended for them and how I plan to utilize them.

U.A. Dreadnought Dunker

EARTH / Level 7 / Warrior

2500 ATK / 1800 DEF

You can Special Summon this card (from your hand) by returning 1 “U.A.” monster you control to the hand, except “U.A. Dreadnought Dunker”. You can only Special Summon “U.A. Dreadnought Dunker” once per turn this way. If this card attacks a Defense Position monster, inflict piercing battle damage to your opponent. When this card inflicts battle damage to your opponent: You can target 1 card on the field; destroy it.

Starting from the first and going down in that order we have U.A. Dreadnought Dunker. He’s level 7, which isn’t all that desirable. Seven allows for some more interesting extra monsters like Mecha Phantom Beast Dracossack and Number 11: Big Eye. Both are strong control cards, and Dracossack specifically can provide some nice tribute fodder with the Mecha Phantom Beast Tokens. That isn’t all that much of a plus though considering being Level 7 means if you open with this card your chances of Jerry-rigging the deck to get back on track with it are almost 0% because it requires 2 tributes to summon. Because of that downside it’s most logical to only run 1 copy of the card. If you where a madman you could run 3 of Dunker and 3 U.A. Blockbacker and Sacred Sword of Seven Stars because they’re both 7’s, but I’m pretty sure that would be more inconsistent than if you didn’t run them.

The upside to this card is quite phenomenal though. With the boost from U.A. Stadium, which is practically a given in regards to this deck, puts Dunker at 3000 ATK, giving you a pretty high attacking threshold. This is really good against Qliphorts whose basic threshold is 2800. Dunker also has a destruction effect, which is huge because the deck had no removal options at all up to this point, only control options. Unlike before, your only option for pesky continuous cards was to draw into MST, but now you can toolbox answers to problem cards, which is really important. As an added bonus, Dunker also has piercing. Perhaps you can get really janky game swings using Dunker and U.A. Powered Jersey. With Jersey, Dunker is generally going to be at 4000 ATK and has piercing and inflicts double battle damage and attacks 2 monsters a turn. That’s a lot of damage. Also, if it attacks twice and does battle damage both times you destroy 2 cards giving credence to his name. “I attack over your Qliphort Towers for 1000 damage and destroy your Scout, then I attack again directly for 4000 and destroy your Monolith.”

U.A. Rival Rebounder

EARTH / Level 6 / Warrior

2200 ATK / 2300 DEF

You can Special Summon this card (from your hand) by returning 1 “U.A.” monster you control to the hand, except “U.A. Rival Rebounder”. You can only Special Summon “U.A. Rival Rebounder” once per turn this way. If this card is Special Summoned during your opponent’s turn, or Normal Summoned: You can Special Summon 1 “U.A.” monster from your hand or Graveyard, except “U.A. Rival Rebounder”. You can only use this effect of “U.A. Rival Rebounder” once per turn.

U.A. Rival Rebounder is absolutely amazing and possibly my favorite of the new support.  When normal summoned (and special summoned during the opponent’s turn, which is less likely) he gives you a U.A. from your graveyard or hand. This is really simple, but incredibly powerful. Before this most recent support, getting to 2 U.A. on the field was a luxury, but once you did you would do wild combos and ludicrous amounts of battle damage very quickly or have crazy impenetrable defenses. Rebounder basically makes getting 2 U.A. not only easy but also reliable.

One of the most important facets of Rebounder is that it’s a U.A. with an effect when normal summoned. Unlike all the other 1 tribute U.A. monsters, he’s actually ideal for being tribute summoned. Previously, you would only tribute summon U.A.s as a kind of last ditch effort to kick start U.A. Stadium. Rebounder actually prefers being summoned like this, and can literally recoup the tribute fodder by reviving the same monster you tributed. For example you can have a random U.A. on the field, for example U.A. Perfect Ace, and during your next turn you can tribute it to summon Rebounder and Rebounder will revive Ace and then you can also search with Stadium. This gives you a lot more options rather than just using U.A. Midfielder. This is really good because it removes a lot of the deck’s setup brunt away from Midfielder so that you can open more frequently with usable hands. In my opinion this probably makes The Monarchs Stormforth a staple for this deck.

Rebounder’s effect also gives heavy wombo combo and comeback potential. Like I previously mentioned, Rebounder makes getting 2 U.A. on the board pretty easy. This makes it so you can make a bunch of the combination plays using U.A. Midfielder much easier and also lets you setup double defense walls with variations of Perfect Ace, Blockbacker, Goalkeeper and Midfielder. Not to mention that if you have both Rebounder and Midfielder you can bounce another U.A. during the opponent’s End Phase with Midfielder to summon a Rebounder from your hand and activate his effect to swarm the field pretty quickly.

One the most important things, in my opinion, about Rebounder allowing you to more easily get 2 U.A.s on the field is that this finally let’s us use U.A. Turnover Tactics. Turnover Tactics, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned in a previous article, is a ludicrous card. The main problem with it though was that it was really hard to setup, so you could rarely pull it off. Turnover Tactics requires you to have 2 U.A. monsters on the field, but if you do you have an incredibly versatile card at your disposal. On top of U.A.s already having massive control when they get 2 monsters on board, this card really just tips the game into their favor, and when taking into account the existence of the next new card U.A.s got, Turnover Tactics became way better.

U.A. Signing Deal

Normal Spell

Special Summon 1 “U.A.” monster from your Deck, but its effects are negated, also it cannot be used as Synchro or Xyz Material for a Summon. Then you lose LP equal to the Level of the monster you Special Summoned by this effect x 300. You can only activate 1 “U.A. Signing Deal” per turn.

If you thought U.A. had problems getting monsters on the board to bounce then look no further, because U.A. Signing Deal solves one of the decks biggest shortcomings. Not only does it easily provide you with the start-up “bounce fodder” that the deck needs to get started, but it does it without Normal Summoning and can be used under any conditions. That means that this card is good at every point in the game except 1, which is when you have too low of lifepoints (which if you notice, the new card text has lifepoints abbreviated as “LP”, which I thought was interesting).

There isn’t a whole lot to explain about this card; you special summon a U.A. monster you need with Signing Deal and then you can either bounce it to get one from your hand or additionally bounce to re-summon the one you got with Signing Deal so its effect is not negated. Here’s some basic plays that can be applied with this card:

  • With Stadium in hand Signing Deal for Midfielder, bounce Midfielder to hand for any U.A. then normal summon Midfielder to search for any U.A. with Stadium.
  • A similar play with Stadium would be to instead of Midfielder get a Rebounder, the bounce it for any U.A. and then tribute summon Rebounder on top of that U.A.. Rebounder revives what was tributed and then you can search for any U.A. with Stadium.

As I mentioned when talking about Turnover Tactics, getting 2 U.A. on the board is easier than ever. Now if you open this card and any U.A. monster you can get 2 U.A. onto the field in order to meet Turnover Tactic’s activation requirements.

One of the most amazing things that this card allows is the use of Denko Sekka in U.A. decks. In previously iterations, Denko Sekka was very strong because you never had set cards and you didn’t want your opponent to activate any of theirs either. On top of that you could use Stadium to boost Denko Sekka’s ATK to in a way protect it. The obvious downside was that more often than not you would want to be normal summoning a Midfielder every turn, making it difficult to find the time to summon Denko, effectively relegating it to discard fodder for Perfect Ace most games. Now, you can normal Denko and then activate Signing Deal and make incredibly aggressive plays with no response from the opponent, and if you have Stadium, Signing Deal makes it very easy to instantly boost Denko’s ATK at the very least to 2200.

U.A. Penalty Box

Continuous Trap Card

At the start of the Damage Step, if your “U.A.” monsterbattles an opponent’s monster: You can banish that opponent’s monster until your opponent’s 2nd End Phase. You can only use this effect of “U.A. Penalty Box” once per turn. You can banish this card from your Graveyard; add 1 “U.A.” Spell Card from your Deck to your hand.

But the fun didn’t stop there because U.A. where granted their first Trap card: U.A. Penalty Box. At first glance I wasn’t all too impressed, but this card is just absurd. First off, the second effect to search for any U.A. Spell card alone is amazing, and with even just that effect I would have run this card. This makes it the perfect discard fodder for Perfect Ace, and literally all of the U.A. Spell cards are amazing so searching them even in that lame a manner is worth it. This effect also massively deters the opponent from destroying the card, despite it having an amazing effect on field, because it will allow you to plus off of its destruction by getting another amazing card. Then, to top things off, it has a totally unfair on field effect!

At first I thought it would activate after the battle banishing the opponents monsters the potentially having you monster being destroyed by battle, but it activates at the start of the damage step, meaning the battle has not occurred yet. This means you can attack or be attacked by a higher attack monster, then use Penalty Box to banish that monster, you’ll take no damage and your monster will survive! If you attacked during your turn and activated Penalty Box, then that monster will be gone for 2 more of your turns, which is forever with the current speed of the meta.

Here’s a couple more savory tidbits: Penalty Box can be activate during the damage step, meaning if the opponent attacks you can activate it at a time when the opponent cannot respond with MST. Also, this card does not target meaning it breaks just about any silly lock you can think of. (*cough* *cough* Djinn lock) This gives U.A.s 3 super aggressive control cards that can salvage any situation: Penalty Box, Turnover Tactics and The Monarchs Stormforth.

This card has a couple other random combos I’ll mention: you can destroy any cards on the field with Dreadnought Dunker’s effect, so you can set this card and destroy it you can search if need be. You could also combo this card with Magical Hats, the obligatory option for Spells and Traps you want in the graveyard. You could potentially also turn this card into a draw engine using Magic Planter, but then you’d need to find some other good Continuous Trap cards to run with the deck. My best though was Volcanic U.A.s because there are quite a few synergy points between the two decks.

 

QOTW? Question of the Week:

How was your sneak peak, pull anything sweet?

Written by: Kyle Oliver

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