Salamangreat Heatleo
Generation 6: VRAINS
User: Takeru Homura (a.k.a Soulburner)
Original Artwork:
Latest Artwork:
Soulburner is a young man with a tragic past who also managed to find an Ignis AI that makes him a god level duelist. The best way to describe Soulburner is by quoting
UtterlyPerplexed 's thoughts on the matter, because he said it best:
Now let's set up a second season where we give everyone besides Yusaku an extra special kicking. People complain about Yusaku/Playmaker having plot armour stronger than Vibranium, thereby sidelining everyone else? Don't worry, the writers are on the case. Let's have a second Yusaku! That's right! Let's introduce the Johan/Crow of the show with Soulburner, another character with an Ignis, an uninspiring backstory and judging by the current opening and ending, some kind of forced bromance with the hero. To Soulburner's credit, he at least feels like a Yusaku with some personality. The two friendly AIs of the show so far have wonderful chemistry with each other. Yusaku still has the personality of a frowning block of lead though.
Soulburner plays with Cyberse-Type animals cooking themselves known as "Salamangreats", among which his favorite card is a LINK-3, FIRE, Cyberse-Type Link monster, "Salamangreat Heatleo"
Heatleo's original artwork just reeks of an anime only card that was designed by an intern to appear in a one off episode and never be seen again, the pose is generic, almost a t-pose really, the design is extremely hard to follow and the background is uninspired "oh it has fire coming out of his body so let's put even more fire in the background...but like...DARK fire". There's no contest that the newer TCG artwork is milles better, now I can understand what is going on, the pose is more fierce and menacing and the background has energy.
Heatleo enters the field and shuffles a card from your opponent's backrow into the deck. Also since links can be used as either 1 individual monster or count as a number of monsters up to their arrow number for a Link summon, Heatleo decides to abuse this feature and add an effect which allows you to to set the ATK of an opponent's monster to be equal to a monster in your graveyard, but only if this Heatleo was summoned by using another a Heatleo as it's Link Material.
Salamangreat is a Tier 1 deck that is currently fighting for dominance in the meta, the season 2 of the show when they magically remembered that other types of summon exist gave Soul Burner an amazing fusion and his own "Super Polymerization" Equivalent to take down the fiercest decks the TCG has to offer, it's Xyz monster isn't any pushover either.
Salamangreats can swarm the field, use Fusion of Fire to fuse your Links into their fusion and use their Xyz to special summon more resources. a Tier 1 deck right there that shows how well the old mechanics can work with link now.
Altergeist Hexstia
Generation 6: VRAINS
User: Emma Bessho (a.k.a Ghostgirl)
Artwork:
For all the shit I give VRAINS for it's pathetic treatment of it's main female character, I can at least appreciate that she's not the only female character. While lesser in screentime, the sexy cyberspy Emma Bessho, better known for her virtual avatar "Ghostgirl" makes the bare minimum effort to salvage the dignity of female characters in VRAINS.
Emma
Ghostgirl:
Emma usually aids Yusaku and their crew as an "Oracle"-like guide, but she mostly does it to gather information for her own agenda and investigations, when it's time to duel though, she holds no barrels with her spellcaster deck "Altergeist" with the LINK-2, FIRE, Spellcaster-Type Link monster "Hexstia" at the front. Emma eventually takes "Blue Angel" under her wing to try and teach her how to be as cool as she is, thus creating "Blue Girl", it is clear at this point that she has failed miserably on that regard.
Like all Altergeist's, Hextia is a really creepy cybernetic looking chimera of a card, it looks like a robot, a doll, the human centipede and an alien all merged together, and I´m fine with it, I really dislike how girls in the franchise get to use only cutesy fairies, so Ghostgirl can now join Aki as one notable exception,a female duelist with an actually threatening looking deck.
Altergeist are an exremely effective Tier 1 deck with the ability to lock the opponent out or negate their effects, Hextia does just that, whenever your opponent activates a Spell or Trap card, Hextia can tribute another Altergeist monster and negate the activation, if she ever gets destroyed, you get to search for a new Altergeist monster and add it to your hand. Simple and effective. Altergeist as a deck is known to lock out the opponent out of their spells by using "
Secret Village of the Spellcasters"
Much like the other characters, following the backlash against Link rules, she suddenly remembered she could Synchro Summon all along.
Providing yet another examples of old mechanics working really great with Link monsters as Hextia can tribute this card for a negation, and Dragvirion will simply revive itself on a different zone, opening up Hexstias arrows for a new summon.
I left these 2 VRAINS characters for last because their decks show how far Links have come as a mechanic since their initial disgustingly awful launch.
THIS IS IT!
Our little tour through all Generations of YuGiOh! has finished it's first run. 50 000 people have seen me rant about children's trading cards and many more of you have engaged and joined me through a really harsh week. This little breather of taking a couple minutes from my work to write a paragraph for the next review and continue with my work helped me immensely. And I can only hope you had as much fun as I did.
Thank you for letting me share with you all something I love and am passionate about.
While I´m not abandoning this thread or the little reviews, I will most definately not be as consistent as I was this week, I will continue adding a popular card or two when I find the time. Right now it's time for me to go back to my friends and GF for a while, I´ve been stuck at home working on this college project for a whole week!
But not before I review one more card, as I promised, round 2 of reviews starts with Gen 1 again...and next up is
OSIRIS THE SKY DRAGON GOD!
*Phone Rings*
Wait what? Honor the executive producer? you did WHAT?...oh my god....
*ahem*
SLIFER THE SKY DRAGON!
