I haven’t reviewed anything for a good long time.  I’ll warn you right now: I review because I enjoy it.  I just dabble with Yu-Gi-Oh.  If you just want to read something, then my CotD is for you.  I’ll look at the card and try my best to find a use for it, preferably more than one.  As I don’t play in tournaments and only occasionally against my friends, I will doubtlessly miss things… obvious things I am sure the rest of the reviewers will bring to your attention.

 

Today we look at the Field Spell, Black Garden.  I have always been fond of Field Spells, and disappointed with the lack of creativity often shown in designing them and their related cards, as well as the utter disregard Yu-Gi-Oh has towards properly balancing removal cards.  There have been over 40 field Spells released, and only a handful have seen competitive play.  The ones that have been ignored focus on simple bonuses and penalties for Monsters of a specific Attribute or Type.  The one’s that have been used may or may not improve the ATK or DEF of a specific Attribute, Type or other group of Monsters, but they will include some useful effect(s).

 

Black Garden, I am delighted to say, may fall into the group of “used” Field Spells.  When a player Normal or Special Summons a Monster, that Monster’s ATK score is halved.  This affect applies to both players, which means… you Summon something, then drop this card.  Not a huge issue.  There is a second effect: again, when either player Normal or Special Summons a Monster, you get a “Rose Token” Special Summoned to the Field in ATK Position.  The token is Level 2 with 800 ATK and DEF Points.  And there is even one more effect: you can willing destroy this card (and all Plant Type Monsters on the Field) and then Special Summon a Monster from your Graveyard whose ATK is equal to the total ATK of the destroyed Monsters.

 

The way this is worded, I assume you can Set a Monster and then manually Flip Summon it to avoid the effect.  Likewise, you should be able to use a card effect (or simply allow your opponent to attack) to flip your Monsters, again bypassing the effect, assuming you want to:  there are many cards that have effects triggered by damaging your opponent in battle, or destroying their Monsters.  Rose Garden can help them a lot.  Yes, once it’s out, your own Monsters suffer a loss in ATK power as well, but perhaps we want that?  There are many cards that reward a lower ATK score.  Off the top of my head, Messenger of Peace and Inferno Reckless Summon spring instantly to mind.  The Tokens can be helpful as Tribute Fodder (assuming you still have a Normal Summon available or it’s the odd “Tribute Special Summon”), Syncrho Summons, or for several effects, and your opponent’s will just be nice, safe attack targets.

 

The final effect will be tricky to use, owing to the ATK having to exactly match the destroyed Monsters.  It won’t be impossible, though: after all, 2400 is a common ATK score and that just requires three Rose Tokens.  That means your opponent Summons something on their turn, then you just need one Special and one Normal Summon, and you can trade the Garden in for something.  If you are really crazy, you might even try building a deck around this effect: if you can actually get a diverse range of ATK scores into your Graveyard, DNA Surgery turns this into a field clearing card.

 

So this card seems fairly versatile.  Unfortunately, it is also very vulnerable as a Field Spell.  Other Field Spells and all the Spell/Trap removal that exists in this game means that it must be the deck’s focus if you want to keep it in play.  You could conceivably add it to a deck, especially if it has a Monster that combos well with it (like King Tiger Wanghu) to be used solely as a “pressure card”.  Your opponent has to nuke it or watch all their Monsters get stuck permanently shrunk.  Well, that is how I read the card: it is a triggered effect (as opposed to a Continuous Effect like the alterations most Field Spells give) and it doesn’t have a clause like “until the end of the turn” or “until this card is destroyed”.

 

Ratings

 

Traditional: 1/5 – It’s seen even longer since I played anything in the Traditional Format.  Unless there’s been a huge shake-up, I can’t imagine a Field Spell doing much against FTK decks where it won’t hit the field or against your standard power decks that are packing all the normal S/T removal plus cards like Harpie’s Feather Duster.

 

Advanced: 3/5 – This card has three different, interesting effects, and I can’t imagine that none of them will be useful at least somewhere.  At the same time, I am not seeing some obvious killer deck that will sweep the tournament scene.  So I say if you have it, give it a few tries and see if you can make it into something great.  Worst case scenario… it looks like it should be something fun.

 

-Otaku