Stardust Dragon
Generation 3:
5D's
User: Yusei Fudo
Original Artwork:
Latest Artwork:
Here it is, the true face of Yu-Gi-Oh!'s 3rd generation.
Where the original YGO dealed with ancient egyptian magic, 5D's treated us to a technological dystopia where the leader of the 1% is obsessed with harnessing the power of ancient Mayan and Inca magic. The Crimson Dragon, a powerful spirit believed to be a manifestation of
Quetzalcoatl, senses the dangers looming and chooses five duelist to bestow it's power on so that they can fight the upcoming threats, each dueslits is branded with a mark on their bodies and is destined to find a powerful dragon card in their life. Dragons which represents one of The Crimson Dragon's servants.
Stardust Dragon is the first of these five dragons, 5D's if you will!...I´ll show myself out.
Yusei received his "Stardust Dragon" from his father before being abandoned in the junk town of Satellite, during his childhood he befriended Jack Atlas, a kid who also had found a powerful dragon card and who was born with a weird mark on his right arm. Once they reach their 20's Yusei, Jack and other friends are all part of a gang of duelists all of them dreaming to escape into the city and win status by winning dueling tournaments. Yusei, being a genius mechanic, builds his own "D-Wheel" , a motorcycle-like duel disk that pro duelist use to give the audience more of a spectacle in their duels, which he intends to use to escape into the city. However, after a fallout in their friendship, Jack steals both Yusei's "Stardust Dragon" and the D-Wheel, making his way into the city and quickly becoming the dueling champion and getting the life of luxury and privilege he always wanted.
"Stardust Dragon" becomes the driving force of 5D's as Yusei starts dumpster diving once more to try and build a new bike, escape into the city, and get his card back.
If there's one thing to say about Stardust Dragon's design it's...
Stardust's enormous head with a really small face that happens to have weird blue lips,shark teeth and that long nose look very weird. But damn if the design doesn't work somehow, The design feels alien, but it makes sense that a creature that just spends it's time flying through space would look different than your average generic dragon. I particularly like the long, bright white wings that take over the sides of the card, while it's purple muscles look like some kind of armor, really awesome!.
The background once again is filled with that 5D's brand energy with a dark space looking background filled with what I think is stardust particles coming from a big Stardust cluster in the bottom. Then Stardust Dragon itself appears to be coming out of the cluster. The pose makes it look like it just flapped it's wings to come out and that it's just casually getting ready to fuck shit up. The Alternate Artwork is just Stardust coming out of the Synchro Summon in it's anime pose, it's not bad looking at all. But I´m more fond of the original art.
As for the game, Stardust Dragon is a level 8, WIND, Dragon-Type Synchro monster...And the single, most impactful card in the way YGO is played since the last decade. Yes, even more so than "Cyber Dragon".
The reason for this is that up to that point players just destroyed whatever the opponent had that was in the way, Opponent has strong monsters? Take a
Dark Hole, opponent has good traps? Here's a
Heavy Storm. Stardust just took all that and went "That's gonna be a NO from me dawg" as it negates any effect that can destroy cards on the field with by tributing itself....Only to revive at the end of the turn. Old time players where extremely frustrated with a card that made "Just Destroy lol" no longer an option, earning it the nickname of "Bastardust Dragon" among some purist circles. More seasoned players took this as an opportunity to start experimenting with other forms of card removals, bouncing cards back to the hand, return them to the deck, switching control, removing them from play, sending them to the grave, anything but destruction became the norm. Stardust forced players to think beyond just mindlessly destroying stuff and made players better for it. There's going to be several "Impactful" cards on this thread, but Stardust is one of the few with a real, positive,impact.
Stardust displayed the ability to be synchronized even further on new, extremely powerful forms, eventually reaching it's strongest form "Shooting Quasar Dragon" a card that laughs in the face of your (Egyptian) God.
Modern support for Stardust exist
But reality is that Link-era rules limiting extra deck summons made it considerably more difficult to amass the number of Synchro monsters in your field needed to summon it's stronger forms, and as for it's effect, there's far better options to protect your cards now. Still players constntly find new and creative ways to summon it and Shooting Quasar Dragon because it's just that much of a beloved card. One that truly feels like an Ace.
Trivia Time! Stardust Dragon cannot negate the old time classic "
Time Wizard"´s destruction effect. Stardust Dragon states that it can negate the activation of an effect that would destroy cards on the field, but at the time of activation "Time Wizard" needs to flip a coin before resolving the effect, since the effect may not destroy cards, Stardust Dragon can´t negate it's activation as there's no certainty that it would destroy any cards.
