Archnemeses Protos – #RA03-EN023
Cannot be Normal Summoned/Set. Must first be Special Summoned (from your hand) by banishing 3 monsters with different Attributes from your GY and/or face-up field. Cannot be destroyed by card effects. You can declare 1 monster Attribute on the field; destroy all monsters on the field with that Attribute, also until the end of the next turn, neither player can Special Summon monsters with that Attribute. You can only use this effect of “Archnemeses Protos” once per turn.
Date Reviewed: January 23rd, 2025
Rating: 4.37
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is awful. 3 is average. 5 is excellent.
Reviews Below:
King of
Lullaby
Hello Pojo Fans,
Archnemeses Protos holds its own on its own better than the Ryu-Ge monsters we have looked at this week and is our Throwback Thursday choice.
A beater and boss monster in any strategy that can play three or more Attributes, Protos was banned for a reason and remains Limited for a reason: it’s VERY good. Special Summon if you can banish three monsters with different Attributes from your grave or face-up on the field is easy to come by considering hand traps and the potential variety of Attributes in the Extra Deck. Once on the field, Protos cannot be destroyed by card effects. With 2600ATK it isn’t overpowering on the field and it can still be bounced or banished, lending one to think that it protecting itself from destruction is somehwat balanced, despite its next effect. Protos can destroy one Attribute you declare and then prevent Special Summons of that Attribute until the end of the next turn. Most archetypes are based around an Attribute. When that happens, Protos clears the field and halts the plays of that strategy for the turn. You can play monsters from the hand like hand traps and Normal Summon, but you can’t Special Summon: no extenders, no Extra Deck, no boss monsters. Players under this Protos lock can still play their strategy and get advantage through monsters that can be Normal Summoned, but strategies usually end with bigger monsters that need Special Summoning, and that isn’t happening if that Attribute matches Protos locking it out.
Archnemesess Protos is a beast of a monster that enables archetypes and strategies that play multiple Attributes to be more competitive. It being off the ban list pushed Ritual Beasts into Tier 1 status and it could be played in other strategies like Tenyi/Swordsoul, Yang Zing (both to match the Attribute theme and Wyrm Type), or even Six Samurai. It is a splashable boss-level monster that can lock an entire strategy down, especially in games two and three when you know what you’re facing.
Advanced- 4.5/5 Art- 4.5/5
Until Next Time,
KingofLullaby
Crunch$G
Throwback Thursday this week brings us a previously banned card in the TCG only that is now once again legal, and is great for Decks with different Attributes: Archnemeses Protos.
Protos is a Level 11 DARK Wyrm with 2500 ATK and 3000 DEF. 3000 DEF is nice to sit on, DARK is always great, and Wyrm makes this useful for Wyrm Winds if you would use its other effect. This cannot be Normal Summoned or Set and must first be Special Summoned from the hand by banishing 3 monsters with different Attributes from your face-up field and/or graveyard. Simple enough summoning condition if it can be met. Ryu-Ge monsters all have different Attributes along with Types, and this has been commonplace in Swordsoul Tenyi for all the Attributes it has, along with Ritual Beasts and what monsters it can go through during their combo. It cannot be destroyed by card effects, solid protection all around. Finally, you can declare 1 Attribute on the field to destroy all monsters on the field with that Attribute and then until the end of the next turn, neither player can Special Summon any monster with that Attribute. Pretty strong when you consider you can just call DARK with this since it is a DARK monster itself, it won’t be destroyed due to its own protection, then you lock both players from Special Summoning any DARK monsters for two turns, which should turn off good generic Extra Deck monsters and make Decks like Maliss unable to play. It’s good in other matchups where you have knowledge on what the opponent is playing if you can also get a monster on the field with the right Attribute to declare and turn off the opponent’s entire Deck, or at least some of their best enablers. There’s a reason this was banned while something like Archnemeses Eschatos remained legal. With 6 Attributes in the game vs over 20 Types being in the game (not counting stuff like DIVINE, Divine-Beasts, and Creator Gods of course) Protos was more likely to cut off a bigger portion of cards and more Decks use the same Attribute more than they do the same Type, or at least it feels like it, so Protos was more efficient in locking the opponent out. Swordsoul losing Baronne is likely why we have this back now, which honestly might have been fine to give it to them either way, but overall it’s been a decent card since returning, but it never felt overwhelming to be against. If your Deck can accompany something like this, and the whole Nemeses package for that matter, then play the lone copy you’re allowed to play, though I don’t know if you’d ever run more even if allowed thanks to its searchability in Decks that’d use it.
Advanced Rating: 4.5/5
Art: 4/5 Does look like a threatening monster.
Mighty
Vee
A card with a rocky history, but a relevant one! Fittingly, Archnemeses Protos is this week’s Throwback Thursday card, a level 11 DARK Wyrm monster from the Nemeses archetype– a very odd combination, but being a Wyrm will be the only relevant part here. The main way to search it is Nemeses Flag (and, by proxy, Infernal Flame Banshee), and it’s also searchable through Swordsoul Emergence and, of course, Ryu-Ge War Zone. It comes with decently beefy stats at 2500 attack and 3000 defense; just the way I like them! During Swordsoul’s heyday, Protos was Forbidden for reasons that will soon be clear, though it was brought back in a recent banlist to the chagrin of many as it revived some card design discourse that, funnily enough, has already been drowned out because of the advent of aggressive hyper-efficient midrange decks.
Protos is a Nomi monster, so you’ll have to Special Summon by its own condition– you can Special Summon it from your hand by banishing 3 monsters from your field or Graveyard. Nemeses, ironically, isn’t very good at doing this, but Swordsoul and Ritual Beast are! Any deck that can fill the Graveyard pretty quickly can field Protos, the problem is just searching it in the first place. Protos itself comes with built-in destruction protection from effects. It seems a little random at first glance, but it’s meant to combo with its effect, plus having a little extra survivability never hurt. Protos’s solitary hard once per turn effect is the real killer, letting you declare any monster Attribute and destroy all monsters on the field of that Attribute (helpfully, Protos will protect itself!), then neither player can Special Summon monsters of that Attribute until the end of the next turn. It’s not hard to see why this was a grueling effect to deal with; as long as you knew the matchup, you can disable your opponent’s playmakers and, in rare cases, their entire deck if they only use one Attribute. Even if you didn’t know the matchup, it wasn’t uncommon for Swordsoul to search it with Emergence and blindly call DARK anyway just for an instant win against Branded or to throw a monkey wrench into decks that used Borreload Savage Dragon. Unsurprisingly, as Swordsoul was too new to directly hit, Protos was chosen as the scapegoat ban. Protos and Thunder Dragon Colossus recently returned and caused a minor stir about the role of floodgates in modern Yugioh, a fear that was slightly boosted by Ritual Beast playing both of them! However, in true Yugioh community fashion, the boogeyman has moved on from floodgates to hyper efficient midrange decks like Ryzeal and formerly Snake-Eye. I’m not a fan of Protos myself, and decks that play it only run 1 copy anyway, but I imagine it’ll slowly come back to 3 unless another crazy deck comes out that can weaponize it. For the record, Ryu-Ge is not among them…
+Devastating floodgate that can shut down entire combos with deck knowledge
+Easy to search and summon in the right decks
-Needs adequate setup and the ability to be searched
-Might backfire if you aren’t careful
Advanced: 4/5
Art: 3.75/5 While I don’t like the vomit yellow skin, the monster itself looks rad. It reminds me of Dragoon from Beyblade.
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