Today’s card is a staple in most Extra Decks, especially those running Tour Guides. By summoning one Tour Guide and using its effect, you can turn a level 3 1000 attack monster into a 2500 attack beat stick. Not too shabby. And then, if it lasts a turn, you can pump Number 17: Leviathan Dragon up to 3000 attack. The only thing Leviathan Dragon can not do is attack directly when it has no material attached.
 
Number 17: Leviathan Dragon has another nice feature to it is that it is a Dragon, making it a perfect fit for a Dragon deck, as it can be banished to special summon Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon. With Tour Guide being splashable in almost any deck, Number 17: Leviathan Dragon is a must in most Extra Decks. One last thing I would like to point out is that if you need one of the materials on Leviathan in the graveyard. Leviathan Dragon will do that for you.
 
Traditional: 4/5
Advanced: 5/5

Today we stare at a card that is in pretty much every duelist's extra deck, Number 17: Leviathan Dragon. Shark's former ace card is a go to for Rank 3 Xyz summoning. A rank 3 Xyz with 2,000 ATK and 0 DEF, and needing 2 level 3 monsters. Once per turn, you can detach an Xyz material from this card to have it gain 500 ATK, permanently. If this card has no Xyz materials, this card cannot declare a direct attack. Leviathan Dragon can raise its attack to 3,000, that's not to bad, even at 2,500 ATK it can run over most monsters. But it has more cons than pros. When this card has no Xyz materials, it can't attack directly, also 0 def doesn't help either. Having a 3,000 ATK monster sounds good, but with very weak defense and it can't attack direct at full strength has Leviathan Dragon losing points. Also, there are better Xyz monsters out now, and more coming soon, making Leviathan Dragon all but just an afterthought.
 
Traditional: 1.5
Advanced: 2.5
Tomorrow: A really smart bug.

Number 17: Leviathan Dragon

Dragon/ Water/ Rank 3/ 2000 ATK/ 0 DEF

2 Level 3 monsters

“Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; this card gains 500 ATK. If this card has no Xyz Material, it cannot attack your opponent directly.”

Today we are reviewing one of the “Staple” XYZ monsters that are usually found in any extra deck of most decks. For simply detaching one of its materials you have a 2500 beat stick. This is a strong opening play for many decks, especially since the reprint of Tour Guide from the Underworld.

The BIG downside to playing this card is that it is very vulnerable to Effect Veiler, Skill Drain, Book of Moon, and Mind Control. Mind control easily steals it and forces it to become a 3000 attacker that cannot attack directly

Pros: Good boosting effect, good base attack, and easy to summon.

Cons: Horrid defense, not so great hindering effect, and its attack can be reset.

Advanced: 3/5
Cons: 3/5

Wednesday:

Number 17: Leviathan Dragon
Rk. 3/WATER/Dragon/2000A/0D
"2 Level 3 monsters
Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; this card gains 500 ATK. If this card has no Xyz Material, it cannot attack your opponent directly."

LD is an interesting beatstick monster. Easy to get out as Lv. 3 Monsters are rather easy to Special Summon, then he can pump himself all the way up to 3000A over the course of 2 turns, and for the record, the Boost is permanent, barring use of cards like Book of Moon or Skill Drain. The trade off is that once he's at 3000A, you can't attack directly with him anymore, which is the only downside other than his literally nonexistant DEF stat, which seems slightly odd. 1 Enemy Controller and he's a sitting duck, which I guess is the point, but not everyone uses EC, so that's what makes his 0D stat odd to me. I recommend having at least one of him in your Extra Deck if you use several Lv. 3 Monsters in your deck as he can be the muscle needed to get overtop of the stronger monsters out there. He's the better of the Rk. 3 beatsticks in the game and is well worth using.

Traditional: 4
Advanced: 4.25

For July 18th, we are looking at Number 17. You'd think being a Number would make an Xyz really powerful, but most are nothing special; the rest of the Numbers this week are some of the best Xyz monsters ever, though. Levi Dragon here is perhaps the easiest Xyz Monster to play in the entire game, which is why I'm surprised we haven't already looked at it.
 
Rank 3 is arguably the easiest Xyz Summon, and coming out swinging with 2500 ATK, Leviathan is the strongest of them all. It is very easily summoned (although usually with Tour Guide) and can rip through the opponnet's lower-level monsters with ease. If you have another method to eradicate the opponent's defenses, you can use Leviathan to smash through with a heavy Direct Attack; conversely, as insurance, you can sacrifice Leviathan's Direct-Attacking capability to boost it to 3000, making Leviathan Dragon your method of destroying monsters and allowing others to attack directly, making it effective even if your opponent wastes one of the materials with Mind Control. Only a few months ago, I had a deck based around Mental Seeker, Hushed Psychic Cleric, and Psi-Beast. I owned no Synchros and my only Xyz was a single Leviathan Dragon; the deck still worked decently.
 
Leviathan Dragon is really more of a muscle card than a real supporter, which is just as well, considering it's almost worthless to revive after it is destroyed. Effect negation cards, such as Evolzor Laggia, will destroy it immediately; Effect Veiler and Skill Drain will force it back down to 2000 no matter how many times it used its effect, forcing it to later decide to either have 2000 ATK forever or to have 2500 without direct attacks. In any aggressive deck, however, you will often not regret combining two Level 3 monsters into a 2500 generation force.
 
Trad: 3/5 (although not really an ideal strategy, 6000 LP and a Magical Scientist will create three Leviathan Dragons, and together they hit for 7800 damage, which will go over 8000 if you replace one of the Dragons with Number 20)
Adv: 3.9/5 (in the OCG, where Tour Guide cannot be used, it is more of 3.5)
Aesthetics: 1.05/5 This really deserved to be a Sea Serpent; it'd fit Reginald Kastle's theme a bit more, anyway. Being a Number, I hold high standards on grading the aesthetics. I studied a lot of things searching a meaning for the number 17, including Thomas Hobbes' book Leviathan. Although I do admit 17 is a very cool and underrated number, the closest correlation I can find it has with Levi is that Leviathan Dragon is the seventeenth card to have been made into a Ghost Rare. Otherwise, it is the atomic number of chlorine, which is used to clean swimming pools. I gave a .05 score because I like the scaly background of the card; it's pretty bland otherwise.
 
Philosophy Corner:
I'm Popeye the Sailor Man.
I live in a garbage can.
It's cramped and it's crude
But I get lots of food.
I'm Popeye the Sailor Man.
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