spyrals

To the SPYRAL Secret Base!

All the new SPYRAL cards from INOV have been revealed!

I was originally going to do a regional report for my article this week, but I drove up to rainy downtown Seattle on Saturday, and perhaps regionals did happen, but I checked all the buildings regionals is typically at and they where all closed. I assumed it’s due to the terrible weather on the horizon (it was originally going to be a record storm for Washington, but it’s been lowered to a “big storm”), but I went, I slogged through a bunch of rain and puddles found no Yugilites and then drove home. That all means I gotta write sumtin else. All I’ve really got is this!

So SPYRALs, I’m not really sold on this archetype yet, it sure is neat, good art, all that jazz. Unlike past TCG exclusive archetypes in this slot, I don’t really like the direction it’s going. Originally, it looked to be an interesting archetype, potentially splashable, but now with these new cards we’ve gained absolutely no splashable utility to the deck and instead the deck has been honed into itself, now more self-concentric, which always makes me sad.

That’s not to say I’m not interested here, I actually think the deck seems quite interesting simply because it plays in such a backwards way compared to a typical deck. The deck has elements of stall, my favorite, and slow control. It has weird manipulation of the opponent’s deck, which is good, but certainly bizarre. All this aside, I don’t have much time to complete this article, so I’ll just get into the meat’n’potatoes quick-like. We’ve got new cards, I’ve got basic analysis. 4 new cards, lezgo:

Charming Resort Staff

Fairy / LIGHT / Level 3

300 ATK / 200 DEF

When an attack is declared involving a “SPYRAL Super Agent” you control and an opponent’s face-up monster: You can change the ATK of the opponent’s monster to 0. If this card is destroyed by battle or card effect: You can Special Summon 1 “SPYRAL Super Agent” from your Deck. If a “SPYRAL Super Agent” you control is destroyed by battle or sent to the Graveyard while this card is in your Graveyard: You can banish this card from your Graveyard; return 1 “SPYRAL Super Agent” from your Graveyard to your hand.

This card has a lot of problems, but it vaguely fits with the deck’s playstyle. First, this card doesn’t have SPYRAL in the name so it doesn’t work with anything, which makes this card pretty bad. Cannot revive it with SPYRAL GEAR – Big Red or search it off of SPYRAL Resort, and worst of all, when this card does special summon Super Agent from the deck, the Super Agent cannot use it’s effect to destroy a spell or trap because it wasn’t summoned by a “SPYRAL effect”. On top of that, battle searches are just not good anymore, so I suppose best case scenario you’re going to have to destroy Resort Staff yourself. If I were to think of something to utilize that effect I would say to use it with Metalfoes, or possibly with the new Cryston monsters, though I would prefer not to make a deck with either of those.

The main effect I think that matters is the ATK manipulation effect. It gives you a way to beat any deck by attacking over any monster, which I guess is neat. The idea is that the opponent is pressured to destroy Resort Staff because they can’t attack the SPYRAL Super Agent, the problem is all you get off of that is another Super Agent, which is not very helpful, since in most instances that you want to have a Resort Staff on the board you’ll probably want to already have a Super Agent on board.

Overall, I would say this is a bad card and I can’t think of much that would make it stronger for future sets. For now it might be a 1 or 2 of at best because the archetype still lacks support, but I probably wouldn’t want to run it if I didn’t have to.

SPYRAL Master Plan

Spellcaster / DARK / Level 7

1200 ATK / 2800 DEF

Once per turn: You can add 1 “SPYRAL MISSION” card from your Deck to your hand. If this card is sent from the field to the Graveyard: You can add 1 “SPYRAL Resort” and 1 “SPYRAL” monster from your Deck to your hand, except “SPYRAL Master Plan”. You can only use this effect of “SPYRAL Master Plan” once per turn.

Another really mediocre card, but it certainly adds a small bit of depth to an otherwise lacking deck. We currently have only the 1 “SPYRAL MISSION” card from this same set, making this card’s use very limited. It’s also a level 7, typically one of the worst levels for a monster to be in terms of accessibility, but there’s some easy workarounds.

Ideally, Konami keeps making additional SPYRAL MISSION cards making this card more viable, because as is searching SPYRAL MISSION cards isn’t all that helpful, especially considering the one we got in this set isn’t really all that great to begin with. Either way, the free plusses and the giant floater are always welcomed, and I hope for this cards potential in the future.

In general, I found in testing you only really need a single copy of Master Plan in SPYRALS because you can access it pretty easily and it’s also not really a card you want to draw that much. The typical mode of operations would be to add it using the new Field Spell, which I’ll get to in a bit, and then discard it for an in grave SPYRAL Quik-Fix. Then, when Quik-Fix is special summon it can search Big Red and Big Red can be used to revive your Master Plan. Otherwise, you’ll be needing to summon Master Plan using the graveyard effect of SPYRAL MISSION – Assault, which is also mediocre at best. Once again, we benefit from milling but the deck doesn’t have any exceptional ways to do so.

As a side note, being a DARK, Level 7 Spellcaster means Master Plan is accessible through a whole slew of cards, both Dark Magician and Prophecy cards have a focus on high level DARK Spellcasters, so there’s always potential there, but like I said previously, this deck doesn’t splash all too well. Again, this card has a lot of synergy with Metalfoes, being that it has a good effect when destroyed and it also is within their pendulum range, meaning the potential for SPYRAL-foes is there.

SPYRAL MISSION – Assault

Continuous Spell

Destroy this card during your 3rd End Phase after activation. Once per turn, if a “SPYRAL” monster you control destroys a monster by battle, or if you destroy a card(s) on the field with a “SPYRAL” monster’s effect you control: You can draw 1 card. You can banish this card from your Graveyard; Special Summon 1 “SPYRAL” monster from your hand.

Search this off of Master Plan of course, it’s the only one we’ve got so far. Drawing cards is always neat, but this card is a combo draw card, so you have to perform combos in order to set it off, which is typically a bad sign for its legitimacy. Look for example at Supply Squad, probably a similarly good card, but a card that sees almost no play because it requires combos to work. When you manually draw this card for turn, it starts as an inherent neg 1, meaning you have to resolve its draw effect twice to receive any value, meaning it has to be on field for at least 2 turns, which is a long wait in the current metagame.

This card is saved by the fact that it’s first searchable, meaning the draw power is technically free if you searched this card rather than drew it, and second, it has the backup special summon effect, which gives it additional utility. Because this card has SPYRAL in the name it sets off Super Agent, very relevant. It’s also the second most reliable way to summon a Master Plan, but unfortunately, you want to search Assault with Master Plan, meaning if you do summon Master Plan with Assault you had a bad hand. Unless the next SPYRAL MISSION to come out is bookoo-crazy I wouldn’t expect anyone to run more than 1 copy of this card, and potentially I wouldn’t run any at all in the future.

Like a lot of this deck’s cards though, it can viably be discarded to revive Quik-Fix, meaning we really want to mill yet again. This deck still lacks efficient ways to get Quik-Fix into the graveyard though.

SPYRAL Resort

 

Field Spell

Your opponent cannot target other “SPYRAL” cards you control with card effects. Once per turn: You can add 1 “SPYRAL” monster from your Deck to your hand. Once per turn, during your End Phase, shuffle 1 monster from your Graveyard into the Deck or destroy this card.

Honestly, this is the only card of the SPYRAL support that makes a substantial difference. Once per turn search a SPYRAL monster with a debatably good and bad recycling effect.

This card allows the deck to effectively employ probably their best strategy which is to just continuously loop SPYRAL GEAR – Drone while boosting a Super Agent. Every turn you can look at the top 3 card of the opponent’s deck rearrange them and be capable of always playing around the opponent’s cards. You can just keep shuffling back the same Drone you search every turn, boosting and and attacking with one Super Agent until it’s over. Your opponent also cannot for whatever reason target your Super Agent because of Resort’s continuous effect, making this silly soft lock harder to break.

Either way, a continuous stream of advantage is massively powerful, especially considering you can even search this card with Terraforming, meaning the deck now has what could be considered 6 copies of ROTA, that work every turn.

A fun little thing I was testing out with this deck was running 3 copies of Instant Fusion and Ice Hand and Fire Hand. What’s most relevant is that you can use SPYRAL Resort to shuffle back any monster from your graveyard to your deck, meaning it can recycle for any deck any monster that otherwise was unrecyclable. For example Elder Entity Norden. This gives you nearly unlimited access to Norden when you normally would have the card be limited to one, making Instant Fusion later become dead. Second I ran Fire and Ice Hand because you can keep shuffling them back every turn making an endless stream of them from your deck. Also, as an added bonus, you can use Norden to revive Ice Hand in order to make Bahamut Shark and summon some Toadally Awesomes.

That’s all for my quik-review. See ya next week!

Written by: Kyle Oliver

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