Mystic Piper

Today's card is the newest new-secret rare card Konami thought we'd want. Like Duality except not broken, and without the loan from the bank. It's a somewhat-something-whatever draw engine that can sort of fit into decks that are already good, and sort of can't. You can hit that second draw if you run into things like Level Eater or Effect Veiler.

This would also work great with, say, Crystal Seer, which further speeds up the deck, but at the cost of your normal summons. One of the biggest combos is to constantly revive Mystic Piper by taking a single Spell Counter off of Magical Exemplar. That's pretty good, especially since CounterCasters already use quite a few Level 1 cards.

You probably won't be seeing this in higher rounds of tournaments, but it does a good job of speeding up fun decks.

3.8/5
Art: I don't like it.
Fun Fact: Nintendo is giving info about Project Cafe at E3.
Tomorrow: More of the Elemental Hero-type thing for 5D's.

Mystic Piper
LV1 0/0
You can Tribute this card to draw and reveal 1 card. If you reveal a Level 1 Monster Card this way, you can draw 1 more card. The effect of "Mystic Piper" can only be activated once per turn.
 
Ah Mystic Piper.  I had the honor of pulling this at a sneek peek and trading it for a ghost rare Shooting Star Dragon.  That being said, drawing cards is a precious thing in Yu-Gi-Oh.  Upstart Goblin has started seeing play in a variety of decks when it used to only be played in OTK or Exodia decks.  Mystic Piper allows you to essentially trade your Normal Summon for a draw, and possibly a second.  I want to give Konami a nice big high five for having the good sense to include a once-per-turn clause on the effect to prevent OTKs.  One thing that would make it a tad better is if you didn't have to reveal the drawn card to the opponent if you didn't draw a LV1 monster.  Giving the opponent knowledge of your hand is never good.  It's not a deal-breaker here, just a minor thing.
 
So what decks benefit from losing a Normal Summon and drawing a card?  Not too many honestly.  Dragon Draw Exodia can use it quite well, as you virtually never Normal Summon, and you probably run a decent number of LV1 monsters (Flamvell Guard, Exodia Limbs, other copies of Mystic Piper) so drawing a 2nd card can happen a fair amount of time.  If deck-space wasn't so tight in Plant decks, I could see a teched copt in there, as the deck LOVES drawing cards, can Special Summon without a Normal Summon (Chaos Sorcerer, DAD) and there are the LV1 Monsters to try to get the 2nd draw (Effect Veilers, Glow-Up Bulb, Spore).  But you won't get the 2nd draw consistently enough to justify the deck space.  Final Countdown decks can probably run this well, the deck doesn't normal summon outside of Zero Gardna and you have the LV1s (Battle Fader, Swift Scarecrow, other copies of itself, possibly Golden Ladybug)
 
All things considered, it's a decent card.  Don't be a bad player and throw it into a deck that it doesn't belong in just because it draws a card.  But if you can hit the 2nd draw fairly often and you can afford giving up your Normal Summon, try it out.  Also, since it speeds the deck and can help you get to a OTK, it gains a point in my Traditional rating.
 
Ratings:
 
Traditional 2 / 5
Advanced 3.75 / 5

Mystic Piper
 
A very curiously-designed card, Mystic Piper is a card that sort of wonders which deck it is supposed to belong in. Is it Spellcaster decks, for a bit of draw power? Or maybe decks that run many 1-star monsters, such as Frogs or Plants? It could actually be all of the above, if there was any room for tech cards in those decks to begin with (a debatable point at best).
 
Since Traditional format decks are already teeming with deck thinning cards and draw power, this seems superfluous here.
 
In the Advanced format is where Mystic Piper may be able to add a new wrinkle into things. As hinted earlier, Spellcaster decks now have a new trick to use with Magical Exemplar, essentially providing a free draw every single turn (assuming there is always at least 1 Spell in hand, which there usually is). Free +1’s are never to be overlooked, and in a deck that can use them over and over, that is always a good thing. Outside of Spellcasters, there are a few deck types that could put the Piper to use. Frog Monarchs and Plant variants both can run many 1-star monsters: Treeborn Frog, Fishborg Blaster, Glow Up Bulb, Effect Veiler, Spore, D.D. Sprite, etc. It could be reasonably expected to tech easily in such decks. The only downside is that Mystic Piper does not by itself improve matchups against other top-tier decks, making it mainly a fun-deck/locals-only sort of card, which isn’t always a bad thing.
 
Ratings –
Art: 3/5
Traditional: 1.5/5
Advanced: 3.5/5