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

Black Luster Soldier / Black Luster Ritual
Ultra Rare / Super Rare

See reviews for card texts.

Card Number - SYE-024,025

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

Date Reviewed - 3.09.04

ExMinion OfDarkness Tuesday:
Black Luster Soldier
Warrior/Ritual Monster
Earth/8/3000/2500
This monster can only be Ritual Summoned with the Ritual Spell Card, "Black Luster Ritual". You must also offer monsters whose total Level Stars equal 8 or more as a Tribute from the field or your hand.
SYE-024
Ultra Rare

Black Luster Ritual
Ritual Spell
This card is used to Ritual Summon "Black Luster Soldier". You must also offer monsters whose total Level Stars equal 8 or more as a Tribute from the field or your hand.
SYE-025
Super Rare

Okay. I am going to flip out on this card, and for good reasons.

There are two types of plays in this game that promote bad hand management: Rituals and Fusions (that involve Polymerization or Fusion Gate).

Rituals require at least three cards: The Ritual Magic, the Ritual Monster, and the sacrifice for the Ritual Magic.

Fusions require 3 cards: Polymerization or Fusion Gate, and the two monsters being Fused.

There ARE cards that are worthy of being Ritual or Fusion summoned: Dark Paladin comes to mind, as he can create a near-total lockdown when he is in play...Dark Master Zorc is a GREAT Ritual monster because he has a 5/6 chance of destroying at least ONE monster.

Effectless Rituals had best have a VERY high Attack score in order to warrant them being summoned. The Masked Beast is better than this card.

This card gets a 1/5 for not only being bad hand management but also inferior to a currently existing card.


Note: The Evo Deck Black Luster Soldier is an Ultra. The Black Luster Soldier you want for your Decks is also an Ultra. The BLS in the Evo decks have a pretty, shiny Ritual Magic to go with them. Newbies like shiny cards. Get the picture? 
dawnyoshi Black Luster Soldier and his ritual.

The Black Luster Soldier has finally made its way to U.S shores, just about one week short of its "chaos" version being released in Invasion of Chaos. Personally, I like this guy for a ritual card. It might be a few hundred attack points less than Shinato or the Masked Beast, but warriors have a load of support. Theming the Black Luster Soldier ritual into a warrior deck, with the help of a few manjus of the ten thousand hands, can be a fun and effective deck.

One of those great ways in returning Black Luster Soldier to you, if you had no chance to ritual summon it before it was knocked out of your hand, would be to use The Warrior Returning Alive from LOD. It has attack support with the A. forces, not to mention a good warrior backup line-up to help support the soldier...then there's always the Envoy of the Beginning, if you happen to run a few light warriors.

Constructed: 3/5

Limited: 3.5/5

Good power card for limited play, especially since tribute summons are a little harder to set up in limited, and there's not going to be too much removal in limited as well. 
infinitekhaos Can anyone say casual deck? The ritual Black Luster doesn't even compare to it's chaos counterpart. First of all, it's a ritual, sure you can use Senju or 10,000 hands, but let's look at the soldier himself. No effect, just a 3000 beatstick. Beatsticks can be good, but This is just plain, and attractive because, one, Yugi uses it, and two, the artwork is friggin awesome. If you need to play a ritual, you have a lot of other options.

First, The Masked Beast, 200 ATK points is 200 ATK points. In every duel, EVERY life point counts. I know that from experience. So if you use Masked Beast, you get in slightly more damage, for the same ritual cost. Plus, its dark, which means you can use it with Contract with the Abyss....and this monster...

Relinquished. You can play Masked Beast and Relinquished in the same deck. Relinquished is a much more powerful monster in terms of effect. It's also easier to summon, as you can toss Sinister Serpent as a tribute from your hand. Being able to "suck" your opponents monsters is a much more valuable effect. Relinquished or Masked Beast don't even come close to...

Dark Master Zorc. Mass Destruction, and my favorite ritual, while not the strongest, the most lethal. Now onto the last ritual.

Shinato, King of a Higher Plane, let's set aside his effect for now, just look at his ATK. 3300. Hes already stronger than Masked Beast and Black Luster. The effect is just a bonus.

The point I'm trying to get across is, THIS CARD SUCKS.

Constructed - 1.0/5

Limited - 3.0/5

Artwork - 5.0/5 on he ritual 3.0/5 on the monster

Closing Line - ILL TOSS MY WHOLE HAND TO SUMMON BLACK LUSTER SOLDIER!.....WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CALL INJECTION?! 
Tony hRmmm...Ritual Monsters huh..

*sigh* I'm going to explain my theory on Ritual Monster first and then the Black Luster Soldier and Black Luster Ritual...soo stay patient through my review.

I personally do not like Ritual Monster because too many cards are needed to Ritual Summon a monster. But if you really wanted to run it because of it's obvious power, then I suggest you try to use these cards:

Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands: When this is Flip or Normal Summoned, you can put 1 Ritual Monster or 1 Ritual Spell card to your hand. This is also a 4 star, 1400 attack monster, which is average. This will speed up your ritual monster deck. Back then where Sonic Bird and Senju was the only way to get Ritual Monsters and Spells made it impossible to pull off the Ritual Monster combo. Now with this card, it can speed up the process.

Also, in the last 2 sets, there have been cards that either summons a Dark Ritual Monster or Earth Ritual Monster instead of the specific ritual spell card. That speeds up the decks a lot. Now instead of running only 1 ritual monster because you were restricted to only 1 ritual spell card is changed because 1 ritual spell card takes care of multiple ritual monsters. Sorry I can't think of the name for the ritual spell cards. >_<

Now the Pros and Cons of Ritual Monsters

Pros
+ Either great effects or very high attack stats
+ It's a special summon so you can normal summon afterwards too
+ You do NOT have to tribute monster on your field only; you can discard cards from your hand too. Long as the # of stars match to the card you are ritual summoning, you have no problem.
+ It's fun

Cons
- Since Yu Gi Oh ends in top decking modes, you most likely do not want these cards
- Very heavy combo related cards
- I rather keep my Tribe Infecting Virus and/or Witch of the Black Forest in my hand, etc...
- It's not THAT fun...haha

Soo now back to the ACTUAL Card Black Luster Soldier and Black Luster Ritual. Remember that it's an Earth Type Monster, which means you can remove this card from your Graveyard to special summon Gigantes or Rock Spirit. Most of the times, you rather have the ritual monster in your graveyard because you can't pull of the combo 100% of the time. You can make a solid Earth beatdown deck with this card.

But this card in general does NOT have constructed deck potential. First of all, it has NO effects at all; It's just another 3000 attack monster. But honestly, wouldn't you rather have Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning and/or Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End? Those have better effects and most of the times easier to special summon than the ritual summon process

I say if you really like this card, put this card in an Earth Beatdown with Giant Rats, DD Crazy Beast, Injection Fairy Lily, Exiled Force, Gigantes, Berserk Gorilla, etc...I think it will be a fun deck.

Ratings:
Constructed - 3.5/10 (It's another Ritual monster but not good as Zorc or Relinquished)
Limited - 9/10 (assuming you open the whole starter deck)

Best Situation:
Your opponent has no cards on his field and you have Yata-Garasu, Black Luster Soldier, Black Luster Ritual, 2 4 Star Monsters in your hand. You special summon Black Luster Soldier and then use Yata-Garasu to "lock" your opponent. 
Otaku

Stats: Ritual Spell and a Ritual Monster.  The Black Luster Ritual can’t be too different… though I suppose that could change.  For now, we’ll just accept it.  As for Black Luster Soldier himself, he doesn’t seem so hot.  It’s a 3000/2500 Lv8 Earth/Warrior.  So it’s like a ritual BEWD in a sense; Warriors are a little better than Dragons, though not by that much.  There are bigger Ritual Monsters (Masked Beast), and bigger warriors (Gate Guardian), and just as big of a monster in terms of raw stats (BEWD).  I myself have no problem with Ritual Monsters in general-it sounds like a good idea, but only when the difficulty of summoning is properly compensated for. 

Card Text (Effects): The effect is just the normal rules about summoning it. 

Uses/Combinations: One of the bigger rituals, though I would only use it if I wanted a really big warrior, since it is easier to run than Gate Guardian. ;)  Not much else I can think of. 

Ratings 

Casual: 4/5-Excellent for a Warrior/Ritual deck. 

Constructed: 3/5-Same as above, but such a deck is much weaker here. 

Limited: 3.5/5-Less apt to be negated in this format, and a big monster is much, much more useful here. 

Summary

I need sleep so take this all with a huge grain of salt. ;)

 

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