Beastly Mage

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N-1249 Zabuza Momochi [Demon of the Mist]
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Random super rare is random... I'm not sure why Bandai is still printing Super Rare Zabuza cards, but I can't really complain. The first thing I noticed about this card is how he now has a politically correct effect name: [Demon of The Mist]. No more Cloud Village for Zabz, for better or worse.
 
Zabuza has been beefed up stat-wise from his previous versions, which is nice considering we're getting ninjas with 5/6 combat on turns 2 and 3 now. This way, Zabuza will provide better combat late game and be a tad bit more relevant. His effect is a rather interesting one since it is an activated effect rather than a triggered one, for whatever reason. I don't know why you would need to activate the effect... It could have been worded to something like "When this Ninja is sent to attack and wins any Victory..." but Bandai decided to make it an activated one for whatever reason. Random musings aside, I actually like this card's effect a lot. It will make your opponent second guess chump blocking you; if they chump block, you can take out when of their more powerful ninjas standing by, so they may make Zabuza go unopposed.

Zabuza surprisingly fits very well in Wind when you combine him with Hiruko [Impatient] and the 3rd Kazekage. With Hiruko, You can easily mess around with how your opponent chooses to oppose you; the Third Kazekage is pretty obvious... Win a victory and turn a ninja into a Battle Reward. Of course, there really isn't any Water/Wind builds that see play, but throwing in a Hiruko in a Water deck is viable if you want to try it out.

The only major downside with Zabuza is that he is a T5 ninja which is usually reserved for Sasuke, but you can easily make room for this Zabuza if you want to play him. There are so many playable Sasuke's for T4 that you could use instead of [Eyes of The Serpent], so you can make room for Zabuza. It all depends on what you want to run.

Limited: 3.5/5
Unlimited: 4/5 Fun with Haku (Childhood)
Block: 4/5

N-1249
Zabuza Momochi
[Demon of the Mist]
 
Hey look, his effect title is finally from the correct village! It only took 22 sets...Anyway, I really like this Zabuza. I'm not too sure if he should have been a super rare, but he is decent. He's got updated combat stats from previous versions and has that nifty ambush ability. But that's not the key here. His key is that effect to snipe your opponents standby ninja. It's a free effect during your turn, so there is no reason not to use it. The weird thing about it though, is that you have to actually activate that effect during the exchange of jutsu. It's not automatic. His validity is a plus though, along with pretty decent injured stats. Unfortunately, the effect only works on your turn, so if you win a victory on the block nothing happens. I do like him, but he's competing with Sasuke and Kisame for that 5 drop spot in water. (Maybe just Kisame if you use OV Sasuke.) What would be nice though is if we can find a way to drop him into play early to disrupt your opponent and lock them down. I think that would make this guy pretty insane. However, like Obito from Wednesday, he's pretty good at taking out squads and reinforcements.
 
Limited: 4/5
Unlimited: 2/5 Water has so many other turn 5 ninja as is.
Block 3/5 Not bad, just a matter of preference on which 5 drop to run.