Welcome to the final card of this week! I apologize for my unstable posts this week; exams have been quite difficult. Anyways, let us take a look at the last card for this week; Number 88: Gimmick Puppet Destiny Leo!

Number 88: Destiny Leo
Rank 8/ Dark/ Machine

3 Level 8 monsters
Once per turn, if you have no cards in your Spell & Trap Card Zone: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card, and if you do, place 1 Destiny Counter on this card. You cannot conduct your Battle Phase the turn you activate this effect. When 3 Destiny Counters are on this card, you win the Duel.

3200/2300

So we have our first alternative win XYZ monster! And… it’s pretty bad. Instant win cards generally have to be hard to get out to prevent OTKs and other tactics. However, Destiny Leo is pretty difficult to do.

1st is the summoning condition; which is a triple material rank 8. This isn’t too hard in some decks like Hieratics, Gimmick Puppets, or some weird Blue-Eyes White Dragon defusion deck (if you Really want to…). Generally, you have to compare this to Neo-Galaxy Eyes. Is it worth going for the alternative win? Or would it be better to summon a 4500 beater that can destroy any xyz based deck? This simply comes down to whatever the situation has.

Next we have the actual effect. Basically, each turn you detach a material to give him a counter. Have him obtain 3 of these counters and you win the game. Let me first ask you…. Against most of the meta today, is a card without any self-protection going to survive 3 turns before someone deals lethal? Heck, 3 direct hits from this guy can kill someone in the same amount of time.

To make things worse; to even activate this card’s effect; you have to control spell or trap cards; and you can’t enter your battle phase. So protection becomes even harder as you can’t use a spell or trap to protect it, and you can’ attempt to attack to break up your opponent’s defenses.

Competitively speaking…. This card is terrible. However, you can make a fun deck around it if you really want! The best way I could think about doing it would be combining this guy with Arcana Force the World to skip your opponent’s turn. Of course this is extremely situational (it requires a coin flip), but this is for a non-competitive deck of course.

Oh yes. If this card gets Veilered, Fiendish Chained, Breakthrough Skill’ed, or Skill Drain is activated; then you have effectively wasted your time; unless you run Overlay Regen.

Furthermore, if your opponent Mind Controls it while it has 2 counters on it… well; it will give some mighty good laughs!

Advanced: 1.5

No protection, no combat, hard to summon, and there are more effective ways of winning? Not a very good card at all. It gets some points as Gimmick Puppets can use it as a revivalable 3200 attacker.

Traditional: 1.0

No…. just not.

Art: 3.0

The gimmick puppet art is good! In a creepy, weird, Scary-movie horror, sort of good.

Today we are looking at the other big puppet card we have in the TCG: Number 88: Gimmick Puppet of Leo

“3 Level 8 monsters

Once per turn, if you have no cards in your Spell & Trap Card Zone: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card, and if you do, place 1 Destiny Counter on this card. You cannot conduct your Battle Phase the turn you activate this effect. When 3 Destiny Counters are on this card, you win the Duel.”

This guy is better, and worse, than the card we looked at yesterday. On the one hand we have an even harder to summon monster (3 level 8’s? Ouch.), on the other hand IF you get this guy’s effect to resolve 3 times you win the duel. (That is the whole point of YuGiOh, to achieve a win condition before your opponent.) Clearly you’re not just going to go around splashing him into any old deck, but any card that has a built in win condition is worth a second look. At some point the TCG is probably going to get some more puppet support (Please?), and if that happens this may very well go from being something you may run into at a casual play level to a solid tier 2 deck. (Maybe)

All that being said we just don’t have the support to play him on a serious level yet. So for right now you can play him in a puppet deck if you want, but don’t expect to win YCS with him. (Locals may even be a stretch depending how many Meta decks are running around.)

Advanced: 3/5 (an extra point over what I would give him based on the fact that he is a win condition, playable or not)
Traditional: 2/5 (See above)

Today's Card of the Day Review happens to be Number 88: Gimmick Puppet of Leo, the next card in line of showing us how many different ways we can actually win in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game. This card is next in line to be released as part of the Shonen Jump Alpha subscription for anyone who is current subscribed or is thinking about doing so.

Before we go any further, here's the card effects:

3200 ATK/3200 DEF/Rank 8/DARK/Machine/Xyz/Effect
"3 Level 8 monsters
Once per turn, if you have no cards in your Spell & Trap Card Zone: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card, and if you do, place 1 Destiny Counter on this card. You cannot conduct your Battle Phase the turn you activate this effect. When 3 Destiny Counters are on this card, you win the Duel."

This card has a very high summoning cost: 3 Level 8 monsters. The only other monster that asks for such an investment is Neo-Galaxy Eyes Photon Dragon and that card can literally end a game on the spot if resolve so this card can do the same, right? Unfortunately, while it can end a game, it will take a few turns to do so.

It does have 3200 ATK and 3200 DEF making it very difficult to destroy in battle. It also gives you a different way to win the game but it comes with some very annoying restrictions.

First of all, you need to activate this effect 3 times to get the win since you need 3 Destiny Counters to get the victory. That is a span of 6 turns. In this game environment, 6 turns is an eternity. Secondly, you can't activate the effect unless you have no backrow which means Number 88 will have no outside support other than Quick-Play Spells and chainable Traps. Third, while it is a minor issue since you are not summoning this card to attack, you can't enter the Battle Phase so if there is any monsters that may be an issue later on, you can't solve it in direct combat. You need to find another way.

Also, the last big issue with this card is the simple fact that it has no built-in protection. Nothing. A Soul Taker can own this card. Compulsory Evacuation Device will make it cry for weeks. An Effect Veiler activation will ruin this card since you need all 3 activations to go through without interruption. Even a Tour Guide --> Temtempo play will ruin this card. Since you can't have backrow to protect it, it is very vulnerable to a lot of often-played cards.

Lastly, considering the cost that you gave up to summon it? You don't need that minor crap to ruin such an investment, now do you?

Outside of one deck, you really don't want to summon this unless you are playing for fun.

Advanced Format: 1.5/5 (The only saving grace this card has is that it can win a duel faster than Final Countdown can. If you REALLY hate that deck and you can drop LV8 monsters like it's no one's business, keep in card in mind. Otherwise, use it as trade bait.)
Traditional Format: 1/5 (This card is as bad as Destiny Board. Really. Play Exodia, people, if you really want a suitable alternate win deck.)

Advanced: 1/5