Monday

Continuing to look at Cosmo Blazer, we open the week with Heraldic Beast Twin-Headed Eagle. We have a Level 4, Wind attributed, Winged-Beast, which is good, Icarus attack can come into play. 1200 attack and 1400 defense aren't going to win you many contests though, and are rather paltry for a Level 4. So, what can he do? Well, his effect is dependent on him being in the Graveyard, and with low stats, that shouldn't be a problem. You can remove him from play while in the Graveyard to target a face-up XYZ Monster you control with no XYZ Material, and two Heraldic Beast Monsters in your Graveyard. You add the two selected Monsters to the chosen XYZ Monster as new XYZ Material. It's a useful enough effect, I'd certainly use one in a Heraldic Deck. The only thing that stops me from using more than one is that this Monster has little use as an attacker or defender.

Ratings (for Heraldics)

Traditional: 2/5
Advanced: 3/5
Art: 4/5

Don't you hate it when your Xyz monster runs out of Xyz materials. I know I do. But never fear, because Heraldic Beast Twin Headed Eagle is here to make sure that never happens again, sort of. When Eagle is in your grave, you can banish it to target one face up Xyz monster you control with no Xyz materials, and 2 Heraldic Beast monsters in your graveyard. Attach those 2 monsters to the Xyz monster as materials. You can only do this once per turn. Right away, Xyz Gift comes to mind as a way to try to use with Eagle. Its stats aren't the best at 1200/1400 but WIND is supported well and being a Winged-Beast makes it a fine target for Icarus Attack as a good way to get it to your graveyard. This card is situational and makes for a bad top deck or even early on in the duel, but if you can pull it off, you could catch your opponent off-guard and win the game.

Traditional: 1.5
Advanced: 2.5

Today we are looking at: Heraldic Beast Twin-Headed Eagle

"You can banish this card from your Graveyard to target 1 face-up Xyz Monster you control with no Xyz Materials and 2 "Heraldic Beast" monsters in your Graveyard; attach those monsters from the Graveyard to that face-up Xyz Monster, as Xyz Materials. You can only use the effect of "Heraldic Beast Twin-Headed Eagle" once per turn. "

I have a very love/hate relationship with heraldic beast cards. They have a very interesting, sometimes overpowered set of support cards, and the monsters all have horrible stats. (for the most part) They could have easily put the baseline attack to 1900 and made a playable deck, but as it stands they remain more of a curiosity. /End rant.

Twin eagle has a cool effect, he can recharge all sorts of XYZ monsters (like Shock master, or even Lagia in a heraldic rabbit deck), but is far overshadowed by the support spells that need those same 2 targets to resolve. It's nice to have the option, but I would have rather had the heraldic name, a bad effect, and better stats.
For now (at least to me) he remains something I will probably never find a use for; aside from being a heraldic target.

Advanced: 2/5 (Only in heraldic, because they lack many other targets.) Traditional: 1/5

Today's Card of the Day Review, we will be looking at Heraldic Beast Twin-Headed Eagle, a card that came out of the Cosmo Blazer booster set.

It is a 1200 ATK, 1400 DEF Winged-Beast WIND monster with a somewhat usable effect. Let take a look, shall we?

"You can banish this card from your Graveyard to target 1 face-up Xyz Monster you control with no Xyz Materials and 2 "Heraldic Beast" monsters in your Graveyard; attach those monsters from the Graveyard to that face-up Xyz Monster, as Xyz Materials. You can only use the effect of "Heraldic Beast Twin-Headed Eagle" once per turn."

This effect is pretty simple and straight-forward. Now, at first glance, you would think this card would be a staple for the Heraldic Beast deck but unfortunately it is hardly the case.

First of all, its stats is pretty low. After all, this is Harpie Lady-based stats from back in MRD days and, outside of Elegant Egotist, you didn't play Harpie Lady in anything competitive-based even back then and that is over a decade ago.

Secondly, while its effect looks good on paper, it is a pain to make use of in application. First of all, you need to banish this card from your Graveyard. While that isn't much of a cost, it does take 1 Heraldic Beast out of your Graveyard and away from your Advanced Heraldry Art Spell Cards, which is your one-card Rank 4 Xyz Summoning card and your win condition. Next, you need to target a Xyz Monster you control with no Xyz Material. That is pretty difficult to do in this game at this speed as most Xyz will be removed from the field before they can use all of their Xyz Material. Lastly, you have to target and equip 2 Heraldic Beasts from your Graveyard to said Xyz Monster. Once again, takes away from your Heraldic Reborn and Advanced Heraldry Art spells, which is your more reliable win conditions. Not to mention Number 8 doesn't even need Xyz Material to use its effect so Twin-Headed Eagle means nothing to it.

Now, you could just Xyz Summon Number 39: Utopia, then Xyz Summon Number C39: Utopia Ray, use your 3 Xyz Material, activate Twin-Headed Eagle, equip 2 more to Utopia Ray, and use its effect 2 more times for one very beefy Utopia Ray but, outside of that, there isn't a lot of viable use for this card's effect

However, there is one good news concerning this card and it is the reason why I would consider teching one if I can afford the room. It is a WIND Attribute. Why is that important? Well, Lightning Chidori can be Xyz Summoned with Advanced Heraldry Ary with a combination of this and Aberconway, which is also a WIND monster as well. Unfortunately, Aberconway has 1800 ATK making it more generally useful in the long run so you most likely won't need this but if you do need another WIND Heraldic Beast past your 3 Aberconway, you do have this available.

In summary: This is a pretty crappy card that has a workable gimmick if you are the thinking type. While I won't completely ignore this card, I doubt it will make a huge splash for the archetype in general.

Traditional Format: 1/5 (It's pretty bad. You don't need it there. You could dump it into the Graveyard ASAP but, outside of that, I doubt it will do you much good.)
Advanced Format: 2/5 (It's, at best, a big fat gimmick. It's just so happens to also be a fun gimmick. Just keep that in mind.)

Heraldic Beast Twin-Headed Eagle
Wind/Winged Beast/Effect/Level4/1200/1400
You can banish this card from your Graveyard to target 1 face-up Xyz Monster you control with no Xyz Materials and 2 "Heraldic Beast" monsters in your Graveyard; attach those monsters from the Graveyard to that face-up Xyz Monster, as Xyz Materials. You can only use the effect of "Heraldic Beast Twin-Headed Eagle" once per turn.

First up this week is Heraldic Beast Twin-Headed Eagle, one of Tron’s cards from the ZeXal anime. Heraldic Beast Twin-Headed Eagle stats wise isn’t great for a level 4 monster, a Feral Imp could defeat it, for example. Of course if its stats aren’t great then it must have a great effect right?
Well actually it does, Heraldic Beast Twin-Headed Eagle has an effect that most people want these days, if a Xyz Monster more materials. Granted the Xyz monster can have no materials on it and you do need 2 "Heraldic Beast" monsters in your Graveyard but the ability to give your Xyz Monster its effect back is really good. Of course this isn’t really any good unless you are playing a Heraldic Beast deck or you play a lot of Heraldic Beasts.

Overall a really good effect, if a bit limiting in terms of use.

Traditional: 3/5
Advanced: 3.5/5