Today’s card, “Upstart Golden Ninja”, is a key card in the new Ninja decks. The ability to special summon Ninja’s from your deck to swarm the field, is key to the Ninja strategy. With Upstart Golden Ninja, all you need is 3 traps in your hand and two more Golden Ninja’s in your deck to have OTK possibilities. Clear the field of your opponent’s monsters, summon Upstart, ditch a trap to summon another one and do it again to get your third Upstart, then do it once again to get another Ninja. If your opponent has four trap cards down, summoned Masked Ninja Ebisu to bounce them to your opponent’s hand. Then special summon two Blade Armor Ninja’s, use their effects, and attack for 8800 damage.

Last week, I talked about how you can use Upstart Golden Ninja in a more controlled way by summing it, using it’s effect to special summon Ninja Grandmaster Hanzo and using Hanzo’s effect to get another Upstart to the hand to do it all again next turn. Sense you are probably running a number of Ninjitsu Art cards, you probably will have the traps to discard for Upstart Golden’s effect. Getting Upstart Golden Ninja to the hand or field is not that hard with cards like Sangan, Shining Angel, and Reinforcement of the Army to help you out.

Traditional: 2/5
Advanced: 3/5

Our second review for our 2 for 1 day here on Ninja week PT. 2 is Upstart Golden Ninja. Upstart is a level 4 Light/Warrior with 500 ATK and 1800 DEF. Upstart's effect: Once per turn, you can send 1 trap card from your hand to the graveyard to 1 level 4 or lower Ninja monster from your deck in either face up or face down defense. This card is a must in any type of Ninja deck. Getting a ninja from your deck for the price of a trap card? Yes please. This makes Xyz summoning even faster, or an extra monster to build up your defenses. Upstart Golden Ninja grants the Ninja archtype even more speed.

Traditional: 2
Advanced: 3.5
Tomorrow: DinoDragonSerpent No Jutsu!

Upstart Golden Ninja

The second best Ninja monster, minus Hanzo. The Ninja deck uses multiple continuous-trap cards, so getting this effect off is rather easy. You may not want to summon this guy the second that you draw a cont. trap cardm but you want to wait until you draw a multiple of something. It is so sweet to summon Hanzo off this and go straight to pound town. I see no reason to not use 3 copies of this card

Trad: 2/5
Adv: 3/5

Tuesday:

Golden Upstart Ninja
Lv 4/LIGHT/Warrior/500A/1800D
"Once per turn: You can send 1 Trap Card from your hand to the Graveyard; Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower "Ninja" monster from your Deck in face-up Defense Position or face-down Defense Position."

This guy can create some rather interesting tricks by setting a Crimson Ninja or Special Summoning a Ninja Grandmaster Hanzo for use later on. This creates some useful tricks, but I'd still like to have a flip effect ninja capable of destroying any monster, rather than a DEF mode monster by using White Ninja. This card has some potential, but needs more cards that can make serious use his ability. I'd run 1 or 2 in a ninja deck.

Traditional: 1.75
Advanced: 2.5