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Pojo's Yu-Gi-Oh Card of the Day

Hallowed Life Barrier
Super Rare

Discard 1 card from your hand. During this turn, any damage you take from your opponent becomes 0.

Type - Normal Trap
Card Number
- SOD-EN060

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale 1 being 
the worst.  3 ... average.  5 is the highest rating

Date Reviewed - 10.11.04

Tranorix Hallowed Life Barrier

Yes, we're finally reviewing Soul of the Duelist cards! Our first one is Hallowed Life Barrier, a nice little Trap that's causing a lot of unnecessary controversy.

Hallowed Life Barrier has a chainable effect, which is good; it requires a discard from your hand to activate. So waiting to chain it to your opponent's M/T removal might ease the hurt of the discard (of course, Night Assailant/Sinister Serpent would also help there). The effect, contrary to what seems to be possible belief, DOES NOT protect your monsters.

Hallowed Life Barrier protects your Life Points and your Life Points only, but unlike Waboku, it will also protect you from effect damage. What does that mean? If your opponent uses Magic Cylinder, you can activate HLB and you won’t take any damage. If your opponent blows up Chaos Emperor Dragon, you can activate HLB and you won't take any damage. It's quite a useful card, but the fact that it won't protect your monsters does decrease its playability a little.

In Advanced Format, where Burners are a bit more prevalent, HLB gains a lot of use, since the effect will help you more often. But in Traditional Format, it's an awesome counter to Chaos Emperor Dragon, so it has playability there too. At the very least, you should consider side-decking Hallowed Life Barrier. You never know when you'll face that Burner...

Traditional – CCCC: 3/5
Traditional – anti-CCCC: 3.5/5
Advanced – anti-Burn: 4/5 
Coin Flip Hallowed Life Barrier... My first Ultimate Rare, and one of the better cards this set. A lot of people played this card immediately upon release, but before you go opening up a slot in your deck, you should think about Waboku over this...

Stats/Cost: It is a Spell Speed 2 trap. No activation requirement, so that earns it brownie points... Can't activate it on your turn, but it's free to chain in case they use an MST on it... The cost of discarding a card from your hand is pretty heavy. Personally, I wouldn't run this in traditional since Waboku does the same thing (well, I'll get to that) but with no cost. Post-ban, the focus is on field control, but I'll get to that, too...

Usability/Effect: Well, some people are going to think that this is a souped up Waboku. I would like to correct them. This is a souped up Kuribo on steroids with a freaky picture. The current English ruling is that HLB does NOT protect your monsters from battle damage, only you. I believe the ruling is otherwise for the Japanese printing of the card, but you never know. So, post-ban, this wins you no field advantage and lose hand advantage, and pre-ban, this loses you hand advantage. Not too usable.

Combos: Like Waboku, Kuribo, and so many others, this stands completely alone.

Score: 3/5 Traditional, 3.5/5 Championship. Add on a half a point or a point if the ruling for this thing ever gets changed, and it does protect your monsters. 
ExMinion OfDarkness Hallowed Life Barrier

Welcome to (the slightly late) Soul of the Duelist week! What will follow are reviews of cards that will either be heavily overplayed or heavily underrated, as nothing in the set is totally broken.

Hallowed Life Barrier is being revered as the "Super Waboku". Is it really? Let's take a closer look.

In order to use this card, you have to discard a card from your hand. Bad in Traditional, where hand size is low, but good in Advanced Format, where multiple cards in hand isn't a rare sight.

It blocks all damage to you for one turn. The pro over Waboku is that it saves you from Effect damage as well, such as Chaos Emperor Dragon's explosion, Ring of Destruction, or any other Burn card. The con is that it does not save your monsters like Waboku does. One of the more attractive uses of Waboku is that you could save a monster you wanted to Tribute next turn (and Tributing is bigger in Advanced format, so this is more important there.) Hallowed Life Barrier can't do this.

This card is chainable. It's important in both formats -- it surprises an opponent who thought he'd win the game with Chaos Emperor Dragon or Ring in Traditional, and Advanced format leaves the person who waited five turns on Wave Motion cannon to do absolutely nothing.


My conclusions:
Traditional -- It affects two commonly played cards, CED and Ring. Harpie's, MST, Heavy Storm, and now Dust Tornados are all still out there to get this, so just play Waboku instead and keep yourself even on card advantage. 2/5

Advanced -- Burn is more of a problem here. It has more uses, and the hand discard can actually help some decks instead of hampering its use. At least side-deck two if you have the room. 3.75/5 
Snapper Hallowed Life Barrier

Welcome to the long awaited SOD week! (After last week’s, er- ‘wonderful’ card choices, I’ve decided to pretend that this is my first week reviewing cards here at Pojo, and that last week never happened.) My name is Snapper. For those of you who don’t recognize my name, I’m not surprised! Now, on to the review!

Effect: Hallowed Life Barrier has a lot of potential. By simply discarding a card from your hand, you receive 0 damage from your opponent for the remainder of the turn. This means you don’t get any damage from burn cards, damage from attacks, or anything your opponent can do to damage your Life Points. Your opponent can use Ceasefire and you lose 0 Life Points. They can use Chaos Emperor Dragon, and you lose 0 Life Points. They can even attack you directly with Yata-Garau; you lose 0 Life points and you get to draw during your next turn. And at what cost? A single card from your hand will suffice to protect yourself for one whole turn. Please note that Hallowed Life Barrier says all damage from your OPPONENT, meaning you still lose Life Points is you activate cards like Ring of Destruction. Now, many people seem to think that Hallowed Life Barrier works in the same way as Waboku, which would allow it to save your monsters from attack. This is not true. Hallowed Life Barrier WILL NOT prevent the destruction of your monsters in any way, shape, or form. A monster with a higher ATK than the ATK or DEF of your monster will still defeat it in battle, causing your monster to go the Graveyard. With all that said, it’s obvious Hallowed Life Barrier can be a Life saver. Effect – Very Good.

Combos: Hallowed Life Barrier can really only be ‘comboed’ with cards you would want to discard. Cards that fit this classification include Sinister Serpent, Night Assailant, or a card you’ll want to remove from the Graveyard to Special Summon a monster like Dark Necrofear or Chaos Emperor Dragon.

Usability: Hallowed Life Barrier works well in all decks. It’s as simple as that.

Hallowed Life Barrier is a great card with an endless amount of uses. The only real question is does it/should it replace Waboku. The answer is no. While Hallowed Life Barrier is a good card, it will never be able to replace Waboku. The wisest decision would be to put one or two Hallowed Life Barriers in your Side Deck, giving you the chance to use it if need be.

Advanced Format: 4.5/5. Burn decks will be a common sight in Advanced Format, making Hallowed Life Barrier a VERY helpful card.
Traditional Format: 4.5/5. Hallowed Life Barrier will save you from the single most devastating card in the game; C.E.D. That is reason enough to use Hallowed Life Barrier.
Art: 4/5. I imagine that this is what Waboku would look like if you zoomed out a little… 
Tony Finally we get to review the new cards from this set!

Regionals in Southern California is in 2 weeks and I hope most of my reviews will help people. Otherwise....well it's educational anyways! dxP

First card up this week is Hallowed Life Barrier. This is exactly like another Magic the Gathering card that just came out, Ethereal Haze. Soo this is probably good against Chaos Emperor Dragon, Ring of Destruction, how about the first turn kill magical scientist deck? Actually, this card is probably good against Burner decks too...*Shrugs*

Now I'm infamous for either bashing Waboku or end up playing 1-2 in some of my decks. Personally, I hate Waboku...it does NOT do anything. "It prevents damage!" "You can chain to MST!" "It's good against Fiber Jar!" NO! It does NOT do anything! haha...I'd get into it more but I'm not ready to type 2 paragraphs worth of Waboku information today ^^

Soo about this card Hallowed Life Barrier...

Is it better than Waboku? I mean it's ALL damage. There IS a reason why this card is a Super Rare right? *shrugs* Remember Raigeki Break? That's not the best card in the world and it destroys any card on the field. This to me is another waboku. Better waboku? I don't think so. I believe that those people who likes to play 2-3 Wabokus could sideboard this card against Burner, Chaos, and Magical Scientist decks.

eh, one of those holos that might never see play...

Ratings:
Constructed: 3/5
Draft: 0/10 (( Never EVER draft this card..hahaha )) 
JAELOVE

Monday: Hallowed Life Barrier

Rated For: Any Deck

And hallowed be thy name…. Hallowed Life Barrier. It’s a new week (with last week’s lot behind us….. shudder), and we have a special treat in store today. We’ll be reviewing cards from the new set, Soul of Duelist!

The first card is one of the more recognizable ones from the set, Hallowed Life Barrier. Yep, looks like those Waboku emissaries are pulling double duty, protecting from battle and now protecting from all damage.

Will its discard cost prevent it from ever seeing play? Stay tuned, for another episode of… A BAD System Review.

Advantage F/H: I’m not a fan of Hallowed Life Barrier, because it costs a card to play. Sure, this is fine if you’re running some stud such as Sinister Serpent or Night Assailant, but in most cases that card will be important in some way, shape, or form. Two cards to save anywhere from 1500 to 4000 damage doesn’t seem very prudent to me.         2.5/10.

Best Draw for the Situation: This card functions, in many a sense, like its related-artwork cousin Waboku. It won’t change the tide of the duel; at best, it “saves” you for a turn. Even if you top-deck this card while being dominated, it still won’t save you for more than a turn. I feel it belongs in the side-deck, saved for burners.           2.5/10.

Attributes/Effect: I must admit, it’s effect is rather unique and can benefit you in many ways. It’s the only card of its kind, and can definitely save you versus the right type of deck. Unfortunately, the cost is a tad bit high.            5/10.

Dependability: You’ll almost always be able to use it, as long as you’re willing to dump a card from hand. So in the most technical sense, it does depend upon having another dumpable card in hand, otherwise you’re hurting yourself by using it.            6/10.

The Bottom Line:       Strictly side-deck fodder, if even that.

A BAD Score:            16/40=                                     40/100.

Cards it functions well with: Night Assailant, Sinister Serpent.

 

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