Blue Eyes Splash

Blue Eyes Support – Deck Testing

This new stuff is fun. I was very inclined to put together a Blue Eyes deck after having so much fun with the Dark Magician support that released a while ago. The main difference is that this new Blue Eyes support drops 3000 attack monsters everywhere, like an unrelenting tide of dragons trying to drown the opponent. Mix in my own brand of entertainment, and shenanigans ensued.

Ancient White Stone

Ancient White Stone

Ancient White Stone

During the end phase it gets sent to the graveyard (in any way), it special summons a Blue Eyes monster from the deck. I usually like to grab White Spirit Dragon first. I like to have it accessible early on for graveyard recovery cards. Ancient Stone can pull out the Normal Blue Eyes, Blue Eyes Alternative White Dragon , and White Spirit Dragon.

Ancient White Stone’s second effect banishes itself from the graveyard to add a Blue Eyes monster from your graveyard to your hand. This is most important for Blue Eyes Alternative Dragon because of it’s inherent special summon condition of revealing a Blue Eyes. So either you grab Alternative B or Vanilla B, depending on what you need.

White Spirit Dragon

White Spirit Dragon

White Spirit Dragon

Probably the second most fun card of the new support, and the most interesting. White Spirit Dragon is an effect monster that is treated as a normal monster in the graveyard and is always treated as a “Blue Eyes” monster. It can be brought out with normal monster support. This is important because it’s effect banishes a spell or trap card when it’s normal or special summoned. This effect is great for hitting active pendulum monsters.

Sad thing is, this effect is a”When/You Can” effect. So if it is summoned as chain link 2 or higher, it won’t get it’s effect.

It’s secondary effect tributes itself to special summon the vanilla Blue Eyes White Dragon from your hand. While not spectacular, it does help deter the opponent from using effects that target it. This effect also helps to maintain field presence. There’s no real reason why you’d want a real Blue Eyes on the field, since so many of these other cards are treated as Blue Eyes, but this effect adds to the feeling of an unrelenting Blue-Eyes assault.

Blue Eyes Alternative Dragon

Blue Eyes Alternative White Dragon

Blue-Eyes Alternative White Dragon

If this card had been made at any other time, it would have been so good. It’s inherently special summoned by revealing a Blue Eyes White Dragon, and once per turn, you can destroy a monster, but it can’t attack. It’s like a psuedo-Dark Armed Dragon. Because it’s kind of a fast card, it flows into Rank 8s and Synchroing really well. Its speed helps to ignore it not being able to attack.

Blue Eyes Spirit Dragon

Blue Eyes Spirit Dragon

Blue-Eyes Spirit Dragon

This level 9 Synchro Monster requires 1 Tuner and 1+ non-tuner Blue Eyes monster. It’s fairly easy to summon and has some pretty decent effects. The first is that neither player can Special Summon 2+ monsters at the same time. So basically, no heavy pendulum summoning. With only 2500 attack, this Spirit Dragon isn’t very threatening, so it’s not going to be attacking over and “locking away” pendulum monsters behind its own effect. It’s going to sit on its 3000 booty and try not to let anything get to you.

It’s second effect can go off during either player’s turn and lets you negate the activation of an effect that activates in the graveyard – pretty ok.

There is some fun business to be done with it’s third effect. During either turn, you can tribute it to special summon 1 Light Dragon-type synchro monster from the Extra Deck in Defense (except itself), but destroy it during the End Phase of that turn.

There are 3 monsters directly summonable by this effect: Azure-Eyes Silver Dragon, Stardust Spark Dragon, who both protect themselves from Spirit Dragon’s destruction effect, and Michael, the Arch-Lightsworn.

One monster, Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon, can be summoned with Michael and Maiden with Eyes of Blue.

It’s pretty good for what it does, except it’s attack is rather low. It seems too geared towards being a floater monster. On

Ignoring the Blue Eyed Keepers

With this new blue-eyes support comes 4 new with Eyes of Blue monster cards: a Priest, a Priestess, a Guard, and a Sage. They all “target an effect monster you control//send it to the graveyard to:” do something involving a Blue Eyes monster.

So they all target Maiden to set of her effect, thereby special summoning 2 Blue Eyes from various locations. But what happens if you can’t target maiden? You have to target another effect monster you control and send it to the graveyard. Rather than deal with that complexity, I just went straight for the blue-eyes monsters themselves. There’s just a wealth of support for them already.

Dragon Draw

Blue Eyes has some of the best draw support in the game, but I didn’t feel like it meshed well with the new support, or my play-style. Now with 2 Dragon-Tuners, Cards of Consonance becomes ever more viable. With so many new Level 8 Blue Eyes monsters, Trade-In seems like a great inclusion.

But what do these draw cards add, more Blue Eyes cards?

Trade-in provides a way to discard all of the heavy blue-eyes monsters and sets them up for graveyard recovery cards like call of the haunted and Silver’s Cry. But Cards of Consonance moves around tuners that you never want in you hand. I’m not convinced that the right direction to go for blue-eyes involves banking on drawing Ancient White Stone and White Stone of Legend to discard them.

Matchups

I didn’t get a lot of duels in to to really understand match ups. I played against Burning Abyss, Kozmos, and Machinas.

The Burning Abyss Match up is ok if Azure-Eyes got onto the field so that it can protect dragon monsters from targeting and destruction effects.

It was not super good against Kozmos. One thing I found interesting was with the fusion, Blue-Eyes Twin Burst Dragon. It’s a fusion of 2 Blue Eyes White Dragons, which can be done the traditional way (Polymerization) or inherently by tributing 2 BEWDs. It can attack twice if it attacks monsters, and it cannot be destroyed by battle. It also banishes monsters that aren’t destroyed by its attack. This 3000 attack double attacker helped wade through the Kozmo fleet of monsters.

My duels against Machinas didn’t provide much useful information, other than solidifying my strategy of focusing on Azure Eyes for protection and ramping-up offensively.

Final Thoughts

There is so much more to Blue-Eyes, I barely scratched the surface. I mean, I haven’t even touched Queen Dragun Djinn, Galaxy-Eyes Dark Matter Dragon, Heretic support, and the Blue Eyed Keepers. Overall, I think the strength of these 3000 attack monsters, the floatiness of Whtie Spirit Dragon, and the synergy dragons have in general, makes the Blue Eyes archetype a fun one. It’s hard to want more with so much support to play with.

Blue Eyes Deck of Testing

Blue-Eyes Testing

Blue-Eyes Testing

Monsters (18)
3 Blue-Eyes White Dragon
3 Blue-Eyes Alternative White Dragon
3 White Spirit Dragon
1 Elemental Hero Prisma
3 Ancient White Stone
2 White Stone of Legend
3 Maiden with Eyes of Blue

Spells (15)
1 One for One
1 Raigeki
1 Reinforcement of the Army
3 Trade-In
2 Dragon Shrine
2 Claw of Hermos
2 Mystical Space Typhoon
3 Silver’s Cry

Traps (7)
1 Mirror Force
1 Compulsory Evacuation Device
1 Birthright
3 Call of the Haunted
1 Solemn Warning

Extra Deck (15)
1 Blue-Eyes Twin Burst Dragon
2 Red-Eyes Black Dragon Sword
1 Time Magic Hammer
2 Azure Eyes Silver Dragon
2 Blue-Eyes Spirit Dragon
1 Cloudcastle
1 Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon
1 Michael, the Arch-Lightsworn
1 Number 38: Hope Harbinger Dragon Titanic Galaxy
1 Divine Dragon Knight Felgrand
1 Alsei, the Sylvan High Protector
1 Number 23: Ghost Knight of the Underworld

Duels Video:
Here’s a test drive of the deck against Dinomists, ironically.

Have you tried out any of the Blue Eyes support? What did you do differently, what have you liked about them so far? I’d love to hear from anyone who’s been playing with the new support, especially if you’ve liked the keepers. You can also reach out to me on twitter @mattcarterwa.