Just some of my thoughts on the 3 new Kaiju cards coming out in Breakers of Shadows.
The Breakers of Shadows(BOSH) pre-release just happened over the weekend, so we’ll be injecting some liquid overpoweredness into the meta anytime now. Naturally, I figured since I had been taking a look at all the previous Kaiju support up to now that I should do the same with BOSH. First off, the Kaijus, as far as I have been able to test out, aren’t good enough to compete with the overwhelming metagame that is upcoming. Aside from that, I think they’re still very good and the new cards from BOSH are actually quite powerful, unfortunately as a whole the cards don’t address any of the problems the deck was facing at all. As for the article, I’ll just go over each of the 3 new cards and give you my thoughts and ideas for each.
I’ll start with what I think is clearly the worst of the 3:
Gadarla, the Mystery Dust Kaiju
Level 8 / Insect / WIND
2700 ATK / 1600 DEF
You can Special Summon this card (from your hand) to your opponent’s side of the field in Attack Position, by Tributing 1 monster they control. If your opponent controls a “Kaiju” monster, you can Special Summon this card (from your hand) in Attack Position. You can only control 1 “Kaiju” monster. Once per turn, during either player’s turn: You can remove 3 Kaiju Counters from anywhere on the field; the ATK and DEF of all other monsters on the field become halved.
Same Kaiju summoning conditions that all the Kaiju monsters have, a respectable ATK stat but compared to other Kaijus that already exist, and another one in this pack for that matter, very lacking. The effect of Gadarla allows it to basically attack over anything with 5300 ATK or less, which is basically everything that exists within reason (Deskbots in the future maybe), but attacking over monsters was never really an issue for Kaijus, since more often than not you would just tribute a large or oppressive monster your opponent controls for a Kaiju, making its ATK and DEF manipulation effect rather unimpressive. On top of that it has a whopping cost of 3 Kaiju counters. Logically, you’ll get at the very least 1 of the Kaiju counters back onto Kyoutou by attacking over a monster, and ideally a 2nd counter by attacking with just about any other generic monster over your opponent’s halved field. I’d be more welcome to this card if there was another card that gained Kaiju counters fairly easily in this set, but there is not, so maybe next set?
What are some plusses here? Well, it’s a level 8 monster, that brings to mind Trade-In as a viable card. If anything, you could now run a full 3-3-3 line of Level 8 Kaijus as a viable engine with Trade-In and Malefic Stardust Dragon making for Rank 8 XYZ plays. You could’ve already done that viably with just the two previous level 8’s but whatever, I like to keep ideas open in my mind for later if anything else unknown becomes revealed to me. In this fabled Rank 8 deck scenario, Gadarla provides one of the more usable effects for a Kaiju in between XYZ summoning. For example, you don’t want to summon a Gameciel because it has no effect to use before you XYZ with it and you’d rather maintain it on the board. Dogoran does have an effect, but using it will prevent you from summoning another Kaiju after you XYZ summon. Gadarla on the other hand will halve the ATK of the Kaiju you give the opponent and then you can XYZ and then summon another Kaiju, most preferably Gameciel, and even Gameciel should be able to make an ATK because all the opponent’s monsters will have halved stats. Then you can have your sick field of Gameciel and Divine Dragon Knight Felgrand and have some fun with that.
Other notable things, Gadarla is an Insect, making Insect the most plentiful Kaiju type, meaning you could fairly reliably run an Insect Kaiju variant using some card like Doom Dozer or Aztekipede, the Worm Warrior. This “engine” could also use Resonance Insect, which searches any Level 5 or higher Insect when sent to the graveyard, and provides an effect when banished that helps utilize Doom Dozer and Aztekipede.
Insect-type monsters also brings to mind Ninjitsu Art of Super-Transformation. You can use Ninja Grandmaster Hanzo to search it obviously, and tribute Hanzo and opponent’s monsters to summon Kumongous or Gadarla from the deck. I’ve always liked Ninjas so that’s pretty cool, but it’s slightly redundant with Kaijus wanting to tribute the opponent’s monsters in addition to Super-Transformation tributing the opponent’s monsters.
At the very least, Gadarla has one of my favorite card arts of all the Kaiju monsters.
Jizukiru, the Star Destroying Kaiju
Level 10 / Machine / LIGHT
3300 ATK / 2600 DEF
You can Special Summon this card (from your hand) to your opponent’s side of the field in Attack Position, by Tributing 1 monster they control. If your opponent controls a “Kaiju” monster, you can Special Summon this card (from your hand) in Attack Position. You can only control 1 “Kaiju” monster. During either player’s turn, when a card or effect is activated that targets exactly 1 card (and no other cards): You can remove 3 Kaiju Counters from anywhere on the field; negate that effect, and if you do, you can destroy 1 card on the field.
Once again, the same summoning conditions, so nothing to see there at the very least. Jizukiru though is the highest Level and highest ATK Kaiju monster they have released, being Level 10 with 3300 ATK, which is quite something. 3300 ATK allows it to attack over any other Kaiju monster bar Gadarla when you have 3 Kaiju counters on the board (which is probably purposefully apart of the design of Gadarla), but why would you give your opponent a Gadarla anyway? You could never attack over it and logically the opponent would just keep burning you Kaiju counters with it so that you couldn’t use them yourself. Back to Jizukiru though, it also boast quite the respectable defense, so even if you flip it face-down with Kaiju Capture Mission it’s still relatively safe.
Jizukiru also has potentially the best effect of all the Kaiju monsters in combination with its stats. On top of being a huge monster on both spectrums, which inherently protects itself from battle, it also has a strong protection effect provided you have Kaiju counters. If any card targets anything, and it could be activated by either player, you can negate that effect by removing 3 Kaijus from the board and then destroy any one card on the board. Naturally, the second half of the effect that destroys a card does not target, making it all the better. Unlike Gameciel, Jizukiru’s effect works much more in tandem with the Kaiju cards. Because Gameciel banishes cards it negates, it tends to slowly lose you any Kaiju counters you have. Jizukiru’s effect is twofold in its ability to maintain counters. Yes, it cost more, costing 3 counters, but you almost always immediately get the 1 counter back by destroying a card, so you could theoretically say it only costs two. In the case of a monster effect being negated you don’t necessarily have to destroy the monster you’re negating, you can destroy another card, get a counter and then attack over the opponent’s monster for another counter.
Jizukiru also has some natural synergy with Kaiju Capture Mission. During either player’s turn Kaiju Capture Mission can target a Kaiju then flip it face-down and gain a Kaiju counter. Since Jizukiru doesn’t destroy, you can target Jizukiru with Capture Mission and negate it with Jizukiru during the opponent’s turn, and still keep you Capture Mission and gain some pseudo spot removal during the opponent’s turn. Then during each of your turns you can use Kaiju Capture Mission to flip Jizukiru face-down and immediately re-flip-summon him to have a constant flow of Kaiju counters. Capture Mission can also be used to dodge cards like Fiendish Chain or Breakthrough Skill the opponent might use to negate Jizukiru’s effect.
Much like Gadarla, I’ll mention that Jizukiru’s type and level have some outra-Kaiju viability. Being a machine-type, I firstly thought of Jizukiru working with Machinas. Since Jizukiru is level 10, you can discard Jizukiru to bring back a Machina Fortress from the graveyard. Also, since Jizukiru is level 10, you can pair it with Malefic Cyber End Dragon for Rank 10 XYZ summons and general “beatstickery”.
Interrupted Kaiju Slumber
Normal Spell
Destroy as many monsters on the field as possible, then Special Summon in Attack Position, 2 “Kaiju” monsters with different names from your Deck (1 on each side), but they cannot change their battle positions, and must attack, if able. During your Main Phase, except the turn this card was sent to the Graveyard: You can banish this card from your Graveyard; add 1 “Kaiju” monster from your Deck to your hand. You can only activate 1 “Interrupted Kaiju Slumber” per turn.
Dark Hole, then summon 2 Kaijus from the deck, then next turn Reinforcement of the Army. Clearly very good, but at the same time, it doesn’t really provide Kaijus with anything they needed.
The card has a very overwhelming amount of effects and all of them are good. When all’s said and done, in most instances this card will clear all the monsters off the board and provide you with a Jizukiru. Next turn you can search again, which is nice, but more often than not it’s redundant with Kyoutou Waterfront and even conflicts with Interrupted Kaiju Slumber itself. The main problem with this card is that it asks you to be running A LOT of Kaiju monsters in your deck, but as it stands the previous support allowed successful use of minimal Kaiju monsters, which is ideal because it doesn’t clog the deck as much.
With Kyoutou Waterfront, you could constantly gain advantage by adding a Kaiju from deck to hand every turn, getting you a nice plus 1 every turn and allowing you to run, from what I saw mostly, 6 Kaijus and still be successful. Interrupted Kaiju SLumber kind of throws a wrench in that philosophy because in 1 card you basically exhaust 3 Kaijus. You summon 2 from the deck and then search one later. With a 6 Kaiju engine you’ve probably already drawn 1 Kaiju before even activating Slumber, meaning after the graveyard search effect you’ll have 2 Kaijus left, and if you draw 1 or search 1 or the two in deck are simply the same named Kaiju monster, you cannot activate any more Interrupted Kaiju Slumber for the rest of the game. This then begs the use of more Kaijus and the use of multiple names rather than just the best ones, which then gives way to more inconsistent hands and less than ideal Kaijus being used. Because of all that in the end I’m not sure what to think of this card or how to best use it as of yet.
Yet, my rambling will continue. Slumber has some interesting stuff going for it. If you have Kyoutou and Slumber, then Slumber will provide 3 counters to Kyoutou immediately, allowing a search and the use of the effect of whichever Kaiju you summon. 1 counter from the Dark Hole effect, 1 counter when Slumber itself goes to the graveyard, and then 1 counter when you attack over the opponent’s Kaiju. In combination with previously mentioned combos from articles past, you can do some pretty sick wombos. Like this one for example using Kyoutou + Slumber + Glow-Up Bulb/Lonefire Blossom summon Bulb:
- Activate Kyoutou Waterfront.
- Activate Interrupted Kaiju Slumber: monster destroyed. Waterfront: 1 Counter.
- Special summon 2 Kaiju, your opponent Radian and you Kumongous.
- Slumber goes to the graveyard. Waterfront: 2 Counters.
- Normal summon Glow-Up Bulb.
- Synchro with Bulb and Kumongous for a Level 8 Synchro of choice.
- Bulb and Kumongous go to the graveyard. Waterfront: 3 Counters.
From this point there are a lot of options:
- You could simply have made a Stardust Dragon and then searched a Jizukiru from the deck and Special Summoned it and attacked over the opponent’s Radian, leaving you with a respectable Stardust + Jizukiru combo with a future play with Glow-Up Bulb in the graveyard.
- You could make a Scrap Dragon and the search a Radian of your own and summon it, then use Scrap Dragon to pop Kyoutou and the opponent’s Radian and use Kyoutou’s effect to save itself. Then, use Radian’s effect to get a 2800 token and attack for game with 2800 + 2800 + 2800 = 8400.
- You could make make a second Scrap Dragon with this play to pick off the opponent’s back row by using the Radian and the Glow-Up Bulb, giving Waterfront 1 more counter due to Synchro Summoning.
- If for whatever reason, let’s say the opponent has a Damage Juggler, you don’t get the OTK, instead of summoning a 2nd Scrap Dragon, you can not Synchro before the battle phase and then after the battle phase you could make a PSY-Framelor Omega and take one of the opponent’s card from hand.
- Etc. Etc.
The combos of course can get more elaborate as you have more pieces in hand. Logically, you’d want to pair all this stuff with Twin Twisters from the new set, because not only does it destroy opponent’s cards to help your OTKs and prevent Pendulum shenanigans, but it also puts 3 Kaiju counters on Kyoutou Waterfront every time it resolves, 1 for destroying cards and 1 for itself going to the graveyard. you can also discard Interrupted Kaiju Slumber with Twin Twisters and get the search effect from the graveyard, mitigating the discard cost.
I hope that was all interesting, feel free to comment below with anything at all other than spam of course.
Written by: Kyle Oliver