Vorse Raider
is a Level 4 Dark/Beast-Warrior with no effect.
To make up for that, it has… a 1900 ATK! Okay,
this annoys me, and I’ll touch upon why later.
For now, though, I’ll explain why there is an
ever-so-slight chance this beatstick might not
get ignored.
First, since it is Dark, it does make decent
Chaos Food. However, there are other Dark
beatsticks that can match or surpass this. Many
have complicated draw backs, but a few don’t.
Making it less likely you’ll see this in a well
developed Chaos deck is the fact that we
already have two other Normal Level 4 1900 ATK
beatsticks that are Dark: Archfiend Soldier
and Mad Dog of Darkness, who each have a
slightly better DEF score.
Fortunately, there are a few things that keep
this from being a totally useless tin promo.
First and probably most obvious is that, as a
Beast-Warrior it (in addition to Mad
Dog) gain Trample from Enraged Battle Ox.
Until Scapegoat get restricted (oh please
let it be restricted), this might be a decent
Trample option for Chaos decks that can find
room to run Enraged Battle Ox as well.
Or one can use Friday’s card instead.
So the real uses are for a Chaos-compliant
Beastdown (not very practical), or for a very
obscure deck a friend of mine like’s to run: a
Dark “Normal” Beatdown deck. It is very easy to
underestimate, but I have found that brute
strength is brute strength. This now gives him
access to a total of 9 Level 4/1900 ATK Dark
beasticks, or roughly one-fourth of his deck.
Of course, he runs almost all “Normal Monster”
support, and it has worked quite well for him.
I don’t expect to see it run at any major
tournaments, but if it were, it’d probably be a
bit of a “spoiler”, in the sense that when you
haven’t seen it before, it just sort of beats
you up before you know what hit you. Again, not
likely to affect the true tournament scene, but
it is a fun deck to play and to play against;
something this game needs more of.
Now for the real reason I am reviewing this
card. This card illustrates, like so many
others, one of the big problems for this game:
inflation. Specifically, stat inflation.
Remember when the original Starter decks came
out? La Jinn The Mystical Genie of the Lamp
reigned supreme as a Level 4 beatstick. Then
came Dark Elf, and Jirai Gumo, who
were very solid Monsters. Together they formed
the heart of Suicide Beatdown (also called
“Velocity”) decks, just edging out the opponents
Monsters then going for a quick kill with a few
direct attacks. Once Megamorph was
added, the deck became quite solid indeed.
Then, unfortunately, the stat inflation really
kicked in. Mechanical Chaser was finally
becoming a little more common a site… and that
50 ATK point difference really mattered to the
bigger but balanced Monsters. Then came things
like Goblin Attack Force. The ability to
drop a single Monster and take out any other
Level 4 Monster for essentially no cost (Trample
was almost unheard of then, and everyone
expected a Monster to die before their next
turn) really hurt such a deck. It also hurt
Tributes, since they too must keep “growing” or
become even less useful. All because the
“average” ATK score keeps rising a few points.
Right now, Berserk Gorilla, despite
limiting effects, is the beatstick du jour.
No, it isn’t played in every deck, but it is the
standard to which others are compared. It has
negligible drawbacks for the most part. If I
had time, I’d explain this better at length.
Just know that the more common Normal Level 4
1900 beatsticks are, the worse it will be for
the game.
Ratings
Traditional:
1.25/5-It fits into Chaos, but there are
better choices.
Advanced:
3/5-Here it can also work in Chaos, and
there are still better choices, but it will get
blown up less. Hey, it is able to survive an
attack from Tsukuyomi, and it does help
some really obscure decks (Dark Beastdown, Dark
“Normal” Beatdown).
Limited:
N/A-It is from the latest tins, after all.
At least we got another “long lost” card out of
the way: we’ve seen this for so long in the
video games…
