Monday
 
Welcome to week one of our two week (and last Friday) event of Hieratic Dragons. Hieratics can be very fun to play, and reasonably competitive too.  Hieratic Dragon of Nuit opens the week, a Light attributed Dragon Monster (with all the support both of those entail) who is Level 4 with 1700 attack and 900 defense.  Once a turn, during either player's turn, if this card is targeted by a Magic, Trap, or card effect, you can Special Summon a Normal Dragon-type Monster from your Hand, Deck, or Graveyard, and make its attack and defense 0.  That's the text (for those unfamiliar with Hieratics) you'll see a LOT over the next two weeks.  As discussed last week, that effect is obviously made specifically to XYZ Summon high Rank XYZ Monsters (obviously who require two or more high level Monsters) or even say Synchro Summon.  Hence making the 0 attack and defense all but irrelevant.  My problem here is that while about anything will set the effect off, if it happens during your opponent's turn you have a 0 attack (or defense) Monster sitting on your Field.  If its your turn, you're likely wasting a card just to get this effect, which may not be a terrible thing. 
 
Ratings:
 
Traditional:  1.5/5
Advanced:  2.5/5 
Art:  4/5

For the next two weeks, we will be looking at cards that make up the new Hieratic deck theme. We have already reviewed one of the best monsters for Hieratic’s in Hieratic Dragon of Su. Today we are looking at Hieratic Dragon of Nuit. Like the other Hieratic monsters, Nuit has the ability to summon a normal monster from the deck, hand, or graveyard and make its attack and defense zero. Unlike the other Hieratic monsters, it gets this effect when targeted, not by being tributed.
 
Before we delve into the Hieratic cards, I would first like to add some flavor. Thousands of years ago, the ancient city of Heliopolis was guarded by nine ancient Dragons – the Hieratic Dragons!  Together, these Hieratic Dragons – Nuit, Gebeb, Eset, Nebthet, Tefnuit, Su, Asar, Sutekh, and Atum – defended civilization against threats you cannot even imagine. Wielding the power of their mysterious Hieratic Seals, none could challenge the power of the Hieratic Dragons. Especially when they called down the ultimate power of the sun itself, by summoning the Hieratic Sun Dragon Overlord of Heliopolis!
 
Hieratic Dragon of Nuit has several good qualities. First, it is a mandatory quick effect so it works on ether player’s turn and even in the damage step. Second, ether player can trigger its effect.  This means that you can activate Forbidden Chalice on it to raise its attack to 2100 and get to special summon a normal monster as Chalice would not have resolved yet. You could also use a card called Lightwave Tuning to make Nuit a tuner and summon a level 4 or 6 normal monster to special summon a Stardust Dragon or Trident Dragion.
 
Hieratic Dragon of Nuit is a pretty nice monster, but it is not a monster of choice for most Hieratic decks because it does not activate when tributed. Because it is not a main stay for Hieratic’s and cannot be splashed into other decks, my rating will reflect that.
 
Traditional: 1/5
Advanced: 2/5

It's the rest of the Hieratic Dragons week, starting with Nuit. Once per turn, during either player's turn, when this face up card is targeted by a Spell/Trap/Monster card effect, special summon 1 normal Dragon-Type monster from your hand, deck, or graveyard. First off, this effect is mandatory, so it goes off as soon Nuit is targeted for something. What would really get Nuit going is using cards that can mess with, or take advantage of Nuit's level, such as Resonance Device and Star Bright Dragon. Nuit is a good way to get the Xyz ball rolling for the Hieratics, it just needs a bit of setting up. 
 
Traditional: 2
Advanced: 3
Tomorrow: More Hieratics!

Heratic Dragon of Nuit
Lv 4/LIGHT/Dragon/1700A/900D
"Once per turn, during either player´s turn, when this face-up card on the field is targeted by a Spell Card, Trap Card, or card effect: Special Summon 1 Dragon-Type Normal Monster from your hand, Deck, or Graveyard, and make its ATK and DEF 0."

Heratic Dragons use tributing to trigger their effects as well as to Special Summon a Normal Dragon-type monster from anywhere except the Banished area, so long as you're okay with getting a Normal Dragon with 0 A & D. Because of this, it's possible to fill the field if you can pull off the right sequence of effects and summons, allowing for XYZ summoning. Mixing them with Normal Dragons is almost a given with this deck as you can quickly get out XYZs or Synchros (yes, people still use Synchros) with almost rediculous ease. You can also use Hieratic Seal of the Dragon King as he counts as a Normal Dragon-type monster in the deck and Graveyard thanks to his Gemini effect...

As for Nuit, your opponent will be leary of trying to use an effect to deal with him as he'll just add another monster to the field, despite that monster having 0 A & D, so that can be useful as a potential stall effect under the right circumstances. His ATK stat is high enough to making attacking him with lower level monsters tricky. A good choice against opponents who like using lots of traps and targeting effects.

Traditional: 3.75
Advanced: 4

So you have the Hieratic Dragon of Tefnuit, and your Hieratic Dragon of Nuit. Ok.

Nuit is definitely one of the more lacklustre Hieratics, and I have never seen it used. It's not that it's a bad effect or that it's super-hard to activate, really, but it usually isn't worth the time to summon this monster and wait for it to be able to occur. The scores of 1700 and 900 don't really help its cause, either.

One thing that that's really sad is that Nuit won't work for costs; if you Tribute Nuit to activate Su's effect, you only get Nuit's second "Hieratic standard" effect and not its first "unique effect." I suppose the usual way this will happen is with Delta Flyer or Bright Star Dragon. I've never seen the former used in Hieratics and I've never seen the latter used at all, though. I guess ways your opponent would target your Nuit is perhaps something like Brionac or Dimensional Prison, but if I'm your opponent, I would be reluctant to target Nuit, and granted Nuit isn't powerful enough by itself to benefit off this pseudo-protection. The most likely way I see this happening is if Black Luster Soldier is too afraid of Mirror Force to attack head-on.

Traditional: 1.5/5 (target your own Nuit with RoD?)
Advanced: 2/5 (if you can make it work yourself by targeting Nuit with beneficial effects, but I personally wouldn't bother)
Aesthetics: 3.1/5 Kinda looks like a Power Ranger. Nut is the Ehyptian Goddess of the Sky. I dunno why they changed it to Nuit, but it might be either due to English romanization of foreign words or because America was scared of insulting Egyptian culture (lol, yeah right).

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