You probably guessed it!
Galaxy-Eyes Cipher Dragon
Generation 5: ARC-V
User: Kaito Tenjo
Artwork:
When Yuya reaches the ravaged Xyz Dimension, he finds a city brought to it's knees by the ruthless Arc-V version of Aster Phoenix, who commands the Obelisk Force to turn all it's inhabitants into cards, and besides the normal mooks of the obekisk force, the powerful high ranking Tyler Sisters,
Gloria and Grace, are also under Aster's command. Standing in front of this powerful forces, remains a single man. While Shun and Yuto where transported to the Standard Dimension, Arc-V's take on
Kaito Tenjo, was left to fight alone against the forces of Duel Academy.
And much to my eternal rage, while all the cameo characters got hilarious boosts to their original decks with brand new cards...for some goddamn reason, they decided to completely change Kaito's deck from his classic "Photon/Galaxy" (They even took away his Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon!) to some garbage called "Ciphers"...Look at these majestic and memorable creatures.
Yeah, Ciphers completely suck compared to Galaxy or Photon cards from both a design and a gameplay perspective. While Galaxy+Photon focus on an agressive strategy with high ATK monsters, Ciphers focus on....getting cards with the same name on the field?. Kaito's ace for Arc-V was replaced by a Rank 8, LIGHT, Dragon Type Xyz Monster, "Galaxy-Eyes Cipher Dragon" which happens to be the single good "Cipher" card among a sea of absolute garbage.
There's a thing with Cipher Dragon's card foil that makes the artwork hard to make out,
so here. Cipher Dragon is just Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon with a different armor and a really really cool looking new set of wings, I actually dig these butterfly looking wings and think the rainbow coloring looks nice. My problem with this card's pose is that even without the foiling making it harder, it's too hard to make out it's face, the wide open jaw doesn't have enough shadows for the colors on it to not mesh with the ones in it's body. I also feel like the edgier, spikier armor on Cipher Dragon is just trying to hard when Photon Dragon already had quite a bit of armor. I would've simply changed the wings and call it day. Far from my least favorite Galaxy-Eyes Dragon but not exactly the best one. The wings are freaking cool though.
When I say that Cipher Dragon is the one good Cipher card, it's mostly because having "Galaxy-Eyes" in it's name gives it the ability to use "Galaxy" and "Galaxy-Eyes" support cards. And also it's effect is actually real good against many decks, by simply using 2 level 8 monsters you'll get a card with the exact same stats as "Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon" but with the ability to steal a monster from your opponent and change it's name to "Galaxy-Eyes Cipher Dragon" and it's ATK into 3000. If you do that, only Cipher Dragon will be able to attack directly this turn, which is fair. Turning an opponent's nasty monster into an extra beater for your team can never go wrong, specially if you use that monster for aTribute/ Link Summon later, making sure your opponent doesn't get it back.
Like it's Photon counterpart there's a "Neo" version of Cipher Dragon, "Neo Galaxy-Eyes Cipher Dragon"
And hey they addresed my criticism of Neo Photon having faces on it's fucking wings....by placing the faces on it's fucking shoulders. And while I actually love this card's artwork despite that....It's trash. It's a Rank 9 that requires 3 level 9 monsters, which means the only real way too summon it is through a Rank-Up, and the only "Rank-Up-Magic" that can bring out this beast "
Cipher Ascension" works only with "Cipher" Xyz monsters...and there's only 1 other Cipher Xyz monster to rank up! Why not allow any Rank 8 Galaxy-Eyes?...The Spell to summon it is not searchable and will work with only 1 of your Xyz monsters. LMAO. It can take control of a lot of your opponent's monsters and has 4500 ATK, and it's still not worth it.
Thankfully the TCG realized how shit Neo was, because they released an exclusive upgrade for Cipher, that can be summoned by placing it on top of any Rank 8 "Galaxy-Eyes" Xyz monster, just like I suggested!
Cipher Blade Dragon just goes 200 ATK above it's base form, and it probably might be a huge downgrade in ATK if you summon it with any other "Galaxy-Eyes" Xyz, but it's ability to destroy any card becomes really useful if you combine with the also card destroying "
Galaxy-Eyes Full Armor Photon Dragon". Since it's second effect let's you revive it's base form when Blade gets destroyed, you can summon Cipher Dragon, Steal a monster, put Full armor on top of Cipher. destroy a card, put Cipher Blade on top of Full Armor, destroy a second card and leave a 3200 ATK beater that will revive OG Cipher Dragon if it gets destroyed. Neat trick that can get you out of sticky situations.
Cipher have received ZERO support, as any decent support was given to the actually good Galaxy/Photon cards instead in the expansion "Legendary Duelists: White Dragon Abyss"
TRIVIA TIME!
The really old card "
Kinetic Soldier" was actually called "Cipher Soldier" in the OCG, and since this card SHOULD work with Cipher monsters, many of them where originally printed with text saying they would work with "Cipher Monsters or Kinetic Soldier", at some point, they decided to just
reprint the card with it's japanese name and be done with it
Next Up!!