Light Barrier – #SGX4-ENB12
Once per turn, during your Standby Phase: Toss a coin. If the result is Tails, the following effects are negated until your next Standby Phase.
● When you Summon an “Arcana Force” monster, choose which effect to apply without tossing a coin.
● If your “Arcana Force” monster destroys an opponent’s monster by battle: You gain LP equal to the destroyed monster’s original ATK.
Date Reviewed: February 27th, 2025
Rating: 2.75
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,
Light Barrier is the cornerstone of the Arcana Force archetype and the Throwback Thursday choice.
Toss a coin in the Standby Phase and if it’s Tails your effects of this card get turned off for the turn. If the worst for you doesn’t happen, Light Barrier allows you to choose the Arcana Force effect you want. Also, while it may not be applicable because of the FTK/OTK nature of Arcana Force, you do get to gain LP every time an Arcana Force monster destroys an opponent’s monster by battle by the ATK of the destroyed monster. With the archetypes vulnerabilities not addressed entirely by the new support (once per turn negation on a high-level monster or a Continuous Spell/Trap), LP gain may not be the worst thing, especially if you aren’t able to OTK the opponent that turn. If you summon to your opponent’s side of the field an Arcana monster this can backfire on you, so make sure whatever you give them will not be a detriment.
Being able to call the effect you want off all your Arcana Monsters is everything, and I mean EVERYTHING. Your goal is to start or have something to get you to Light Barrier. The Fiend can be discarded to fetch it, Light Force can discard a card to get to an Arcana monster and The Fiend so you can discard Fiend to search it, you still have a Terraforming you can run to search, and Arcana Reading can search it. Yes, Arcana Reading and Light Force are not guaranteed without Light Barrier, but they are still ways to get to it and Light Force happens in your Standby Phase so the first time you play it it will be guaranteed.
Light Barrier is the cog that makes the archetype go. You have to start with it or have a way to get to it or the whole strategy is down to luck with those coin flips. The LP gain likely won’t matter as you are an OTK strategy with this archetype, but it doesn’t hurt. Would’ve liked a new version of Light Barrier where you could have a tribute for negation ability instead of the LP gain.
Advanced- 2/5 (but 5/5 in the archetype)
Art- 3/5
Until Next Time,
KingofLullaby
Crunch$G
Throwback Thursday this week gives us the Field Spell that’s literally the crutch to help Arcana Force make their plays: Light Barrier.
Light Barrier is a Field Spell where once per turn, during your Standby Phase, you must toss a coin and the effects of this card are negated until your next Standby Phase if you land on tails, which unlike how this does for all your Arcana Force cards, this sadly doesn’t have a way to keep guaranteeing you land on heads to keep the effects live. The first effect when you summon an Arcana Force monster lets you choose the effect to apply without tossing the coin, which is perfect for the Deck to ensure you get the good effects and bypass the bad ones. The other effect lets you gain LP equal to the original ATK of a monster your Arcana Force monsters destroy in battle, which is a bonus, but a good one to create a LP gap between you and the opponent. Light Barrier isn’t amazing, but it’s mandatory for the Deck so you can avoid hitting tails on your effects and you get the ones that make your plays, just hope this can avoid landing on tails itself.
Advanced Rating: 3/5
Art: 4/5 ZA WORLD!
Mighty
Vee
No prizes for guessing this week’s Throwback Thursday card– it’s Light Barrier, a Continuous Spell associated with Arcana Force and one of the first band-aid cards. You can directly search it with Arcana Force XV – The Fiend, but since it has a coin flip effect, you can also search it with Arcana Force XIX – The Sun and Arcana Reading, albeit with a layer of RNG. Much like how Light Force copied it, Light Barrier has a quasi-maintenance cost, triggering during your Standby Phase to flip a coin and negate its own effects until your next Standby Phase if it’s tails. Once again, since it only happens during your Standby Phase, it won’t be relevant immediately, so for the first turn at least you won’t have to deal with failing a coin flip. Light Barrier comes with two effects– the first will let you choose the coin flip result when you summon an Arcana Force monster. This wasn’t particularly revolutionary when Light Barrier was first released since most of the Arcana Force monsters had incredibly mediocre effects. However, with Sun and Arcana Force V – The Hierophant, it’s now essential to control your own flips so that you can actually combo in peace without worrying about a 50% chance of failure. Obviously you’ll choose Sun’s effect to Set a coin-flipping Spell; Hierophant can grab Arcana Force VII – Chariot as usual. Alternatively, in the turn skip combo line, you can pick the tails effect on purpose to access Arcana Force XXI – The World by summoning it to your opponent’s field, using it as Fusion fodder then reviving it with Arcana Spread. Light Barrier’s other effect is considerably less useful in comparison, recovering your Life Points by the original attack of monsters destroyed by your Arcana Force monsters by battle. It’s not completely useless since the high-level Arcana Force monsters are surprisingly competent in combat, but it doesn’t help all that much when you’re probably in a winning position anyway at that point. Despite now being more important than ever, Light Barrier’s obvious issue is that it does absolutely nothing by itself, so without Light Force, many of your combos are going to require 2 or more cards to minimize RNG. Such is life! Many lists I’ve seen play 2 copies and max out on Fiend since you’d much rather start with Light Force, which makes sense. Light Barrier isn’t awful, but it is emblematic of the trend of undertuned and experimental decks that require keystone cards to function at a basic level. Never let this happen again! (It will happen again.)
+Guarantees your Arcana Force combos can proceed without RNG
+Fairly easy to access as long as you can get to Arcana Force XV – The Fiend
-Absolutely 0 combo applications by itself
-Life Point gain is largely unhelpful
Advanced: 3.25/5
Art: 3/5 Old anime art! The World would be a lot more menacing if it were drawn today.
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