Monday

Welcome to a new week, albeit a short one, as we have Thursday and Friday off in observance of the 4th of July. We open this week with Evilswarm Kerkeion. We have a Level 4, Dark attributed Spellcaster Monster, with 1600 attack and 1550 defense. This Monster has a variety of tricks, but are any of them any good? If sent to the Graveyard this turn, and in the Graveyard this turn, you can Normal Summon an "lswarm" Monster for one less Tribute, so this would include Steelswarm I guess if you were playing a hybrid or the latter instead. You can banish an "lswarm" Monster from your Graveyard to add an "lswarm" Monster from your Graveyard to your Hand. Then this turn, you can Normal Summon an "lswarm" Monster from your Hand. Honestly, this card isn't awful, there are just better ways to go about doing these things.

Ratings:

Traditional: 1.25/5
Advanced: 2.25/5
Art: 4/5

Evilswarm Kerykeion is an important piece to the Evilswarm theme. It can single handedly special summon a rank 4 Xyz monster. With an Evilswarm Caster in the hand or grave, an Evilswarm in the hand, and two in the grave, you can even special summon Shock Master to stop those nasty Spellbooks and E-Dragons. Just summon Kerykeion and use its effect to banish an Evilswarm monster and bring Caster to your hand. Then normal summon Caster with Kerykeion’s effect and normal summon your other Evilswarm with Caster’s effect and wham! bam! thank you Ma’am! – Shock Master or Evilswarm Ouroboros. With just Kerykeion and two Evilswarm in the grave, we are summoning the all powerful Ophion to shut down meta decks or Bahamut to take our opponent’s monster.

Even though Evilswarm decks have not cracked the top tier, they are still very powerful against the meta. I have been testing a banish variant with Macro Cosmos and Dimensional Fissure with great success. Believe it or not, the banishment portion of the deck is not hindering Kerykeion. The thousand dollar decks are completely shut down when they cannot special summon level 5 or higher monsters (High Priestess and E-Dragons) and they can not build a graveyard due to your banishment cards. Evilswarm decks are not that expensive to make and can really control the field. Evilswarm Kerykeion is a key card and should be played in threes.

Traditional: 2.5/5
Advanced: 3.5/5

Today we are looking at: Evilswarm Kerykeion

“You can only use each effect of "Evilswarm Kerykeion" once per turn. While this card is in the Graveyard, if it was sent there this turn, you can Normal Summon 1 "lswarm" monster for 1 less Tribute.

You can banish 1 "lswarm" monster from your Graveyard, then target 1 "lswarm" monster in your Graveyard; add that target to your hand, also, this card gains the following effect.

● This turn: You can activate this effect; Normal Summon 1 "lswarm" monster.”

This card is one of the main ways Evilswarms are still a semi-viable deck. The one less tribute is nice, but the real meat and potatoes of his effect is in his ability to remove one Evilswarm from the grave to add another one back to your hand; and then, as the coup d’état it lets you normal summon it. This progression of effects acts as a catalytic backbone to the deck. If you play Evilswarms play this card.

Advanced: 5/5
Traditional: 5/5