Monday
 
Starlight Road opens our week.  In my humble opinion, this is a broken Trap.  You know how it works, when a card or effect is activated that destroys two or more cards you control, you're able to negate the effect of said card and destroy it.  Plus, afterward, you're able to Special Summon a Stardust Dragon from your Extra Deck.  This card is simply amazing.  Not only are you protecting your cards from destruction, AND destroying a card/Monster, you also get to replace this Trap with Stardust Dragon.  You'd almost thing this is a Counter Trap as it has to be activated in response to something, and it'd be that much more powerful if it were.  
 
Ratings:

Traditional:  5/5  It's actually better here as it's easier to set off. 
Advanced:  4/5  Less to set it off, but still easy. 
Art:  5/5 

This week, we will be revisiting some of the cards that have made a great impact on the game. First up is Starlight Road. It is important that everyone understands that the wording on Starlight Road has changed with the release of Gold series #5. This card use to negate the effect of a card, and now it can negate the activation or the effect of a card.
 
This is significant because when you negate the activations of cards, it takes them off the chain. It used to be that you could play Heavy Storm and sense the last thing to resolve is Heavy Storm, the special summoned Stardust Dragon could not be Torrential Tributed or Bottomlessed. Now, sense the last thing to resolve in the chain is Starlight Road, you can respond to the summon of Stardust Dragon.
 
Starlight Road is not as important to the Meta game as it once was, so its playability has dropped off considerably. In the formats where Gladiator Beasts, Lightswarm, Blackwings, and Synchro summing with Black Rose Dragon were all the rage, Starlight Road was seeing main deck space. In today’s Meta, decks like Wind-Ups, Dino-Rabbits, Inzektor, and Dragons concentrate on controlling the field instead of mass distruction.
 
While down, Starlight Road is not out as long as cards like Torrential Tribute (at 2 per deck), Dark Hole and Heavy Storm are legal. Decks that rely on a back row or loading the field with monsters can still make good use of Starlight Road. Stall/Burn, T.G., and Stun decks while not top tier, love playing Starlight Road to protect their back row.
 
The top tier decks swarm the field so teching one or two Starlight Roads is not our of the realm of possibilities as long as you can find the space. Unfortunately, Starlight Road can clog the hand and interfere with the themes of these decks. Add that to the fact that you want to get your set up on the first two turns and push for game as quickly as possible, and Starlight Road’s playability drops off to one or none.
 
Starlight Road is a really good card, but has been regulated to the side deck in most cases and in many cases does not even see the side deck any more. The Gold series cards are really nice looking so snatch some of them up and keep them in your binder for future use.
 
Traditional: 3/5
Advanced: 3/5

Grab your pick axes and helmet lights, we're mining the newest Gold Series set, The Haunted Mine. First off is Starlight Road. This card seems to be in and out of decks, depending on the status of Heavy Storm. A normal Trap Card, it goes off when an effect that destroys two or more cards that you control. Negate the activation, and if you do, special summon one Stardust Dragon from your deck. Sounds good? Yes, really good...a free Stardust Dragon for negating the activation of something like Heavy Storm of Dark Hole? There are drawbacks, however. First, since Stardust Dragon was not synchro summoned properly, you still can get his negation effect, but he will not be special summoned back by from your graveyard by its own, or any other card effect. Also, in this format, it's a bit tricky to get around the 3 Mystical Space Typhoon format that we are in, so don't be surprised if it gets picked off before you can use it. But you can use it in your favor, such as negating your own Heavy Storm or Dark Hole to get out Stardust Dragon. It's a versatile card, a tiny bit situational, but you can get this off more times than you think.
 
Traditional: 3 Block that Raigeki, Harpie's Feather Duster....
Advanced: 4
Tomorrow: Dragon, Ice Barrier? Never heard of him.

All the cards from this week are Gold Rares out of the new set Haunted Mine. A single pack has 25 cards, three of them being Gold Rares. Since all the cards out of the Gold Series are merely reprints (Haunted Mine features 55 cards), I don't really see the point of Pojo reviewing them. I've only been on the team three months though, so I might as well... The upcoming cards for the rest of 2012 look like the birth of very interesting archetypes and additions to previous themes. Not the new support cards for Dark Scorpions that I would've wanted, but eh.

If you remember two months back in April, we covered The Huge Revolution is Over and I cited Starlight Road numerous times. You can go back to my review of it and many of the things I talk about for Revolution will also apply for Starlight. Starlight Road has nowhere near the flexibility of Revolution, but the compensation in the summoning of a 2500-ATK monster that can act as a shield again is enormous.

Usually you will use this card to serve as monster protection, against the likes of Mirror Force, Dark Hole, and Torrential Tribute. The real importance of it, however, is protection against the single copy of the opponent's Heavy Storm. In any format where Heavy Storm is not banned, people will become very hesitant to set every single Trap in their hand, in fear of having all their resources to be literally blown away. Should you draw SLR, however, you can set your entire hand with impunity, as the threat of Heavy is neutered to a great degree. Indeed, if you have a full backrow with no monsters, a wary opponent might not even WANT to use Heavy Storm in full fear of SRL and just attack anyway with the full risk of Dimensional Prison. SRL places a psychological spin on the game this way, regardless of whether or not it is actually set on the field.

This card is also an immediate staple for any Stardust Deck (e.g. Shooting Star, Assault Mode, or if anyone is crazy enough to try Majestic Star).

Some people prefer Revolution for its flexibility, especially Starlight's vulnerability to Solemn Warning. That's really fine by me, but for what it's worth I rate Starlight higher primarily for the free Dragon (unless the specific deck that I'm running it in has no reliable method to Synchro for Stardust Dragon, then definitely run Revolution). Actually, I personally would use neither card, but that's only because I'm too lazy to work with the activation requirements.

Traditional: 4.5/5 (in all honesty, it doesn't stop a handful of FTK's)
Advanced: 3.9/5
Aesthetics: 4/5 It sorta looks like a crucifix. But anyway, I think the other Signer Dragons really deserve better support. It's sorta depressing to see how Scrap Dragon is more functional than them.

Philosophy Corner: I first started following Pojo in 2005. Starting about late 2010, I had asked Dark Paladin and General Zorpa if they could get me a position on the review team. They said they'd bring it to Pojo's, our founding father's, attention. That was the last I heard of them. So about three months ago, I emailed the Pojo site inquiring about some ruling errors the reviewers had done, and it was Pojo-san himself that answered me. I brought up my past situation, got the job, and here we are now. I rank each card by its aesthetics following the tradition of CotD reviewer Otaku, who prefers to review Pokemon cards far lot more than he does Yu-Gi-Oh (as far as I know, he doesn't even get notified of the YGO CotD lineup each week, except around the month of his birthday, in which we usually do his favourite card, "Just Desserts"). As for my philosophy section, up until near the end of 2010, I owned a journal that I recorded my theories of life in. Anyway, I lost that journal, and doing the CotD five times a week is a good way to keep a syndicated record of those theories.

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