Friday

Closing the week is an interesting Quickplay Magic card, in Forbidden Dress. This card isn't bad, but it's not great either. You target a Monster on the Field who then loses 600 attack, but can't be targeted or destroyed by other card effects this turn. If it protected from Battle too for the turn, we'd have a gem of a card, but alas, it doesn't. I mean, I guess it's most useful on something strong that your opponent is planning to take down with an effect, but the Quickplay feature is nice for sure.

Ratings:

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

After Forbidden Chalice (negates monster effect) and Forbidden Lance (protection from Spell/Trap) were released, I was wondering if there could be a “Forbidden” card that could shield against effect destruction. Safe Zone was released in early 2011 and Forbidden Dress came in the summer of 2012.
 
First off, I need to tell you that it’s unreliable to use this card to shield against targeting effects, since targeting occurs at activation and NOT resolution. What do I mean? Let’s say I activate a targeting effect, for example Number 11: Big Eye, Mind Control, or Compulsory Evacuation Device. You can chain Dress to these effects, but the problem is that I’ve ALREADY targeted you. Big Eye and Mind Control will still kidnap you and CED will still bounce you. (In the case of Big Eye, you can activate Dress as soon as I summon it, but the 600 ATK drop will probably mean I can run you over. In the case of CED, you can activate Dress in anticipation of Traps, such as if you’re going for the final attack, but I can chain CED to Dress and CED will still resolve first.) The effect that protects against targeting is not reliable because there’s a lot of guessing involved, and even if you do it right, usually you won’t “waste” your opponent’s cards like Forbidden Lance can. I mean, say it’s your turn and you activate Forbidden Dress in anticipation of an enemy Effect Veiler that can stop you from winning. Your opponent will still have Veiler at the end of the turn, you need to make THAT turn count. This is assuming your opponent actually does have a Veiler and you somehow know that.
 
Of course, the most interesting thing about Dress is that it blocks all forms of destruction, including monster effects. This opens up many interesting combos. For example, earlier this week I was playing against a Deck focused around Summoner of Illusions, who can summon almost any Fusion Monster except it will get destroyed at the End Phase. If I put the Dress on the Fusion Monster, though, it’ll get protected from the destruction effect and will live to stay on the field. You can combine Dress this way to “cheat death” and potentially open up plays in ways in which they were never intended. You can also use it to stop your own Black Rose Dragon from destroying itself, Il Blud from destroying your other Zombies, Sorciere de Fleur to steal an opponent’s monster and save it from blowing itself up, etc.
 
One way Dress is different from Safe Zone is that Dress is meant as a quick shield while destroying Safe Zone will also destroy the monster. In the case of Forbidden Lance, it’s a multi-purpose tool to help your monsters win battles or to protect them from Spells/Traps. Dress also helps you in battle, just 200 points weaker. Dress can protect against monster effects, but Lance is stronger in its protection against Spells/Traps (one important thing is that Lance can also block beneficial effects on the opponent’s monster). Another big thing is that, even though Dress’ advantage is that it can protect opponent’s monster effects from destroying your monsters, usually that’s on their turn, and unless it’s Black Rose Dragon or a Flip Summoned Ryko, they can usually proceed to run you over after you Dress yourself. In conclusion, I think even though Dress is more “diverse,” Lance is more “powerful” and Dress is mostly a combo card, therefore making Lance more reliable. However, they have minute-yet-small differences, and if you feel it’s ok to hurt your opponent’s monsters by 600 instead of 800, and if you really need monster effect protection over protection from Mind Control and Compulsory Evacuation Device, Dress is not a bad fit to replace Lance. I probably would not use both in the same Deck.
 
BTW, monsters seem to be more important than Spells/Traps now, so I would say Forbidden Chalice as a card is more important than either of them.
 
“The major difference between Forbidden Lance and Forbidden Dress is nearly the same difference between Mystical Space Typhoon and Night Beam. One's better against only what's directly meta, but is really, really bad against anything that's not. While it's important to be able to defeat the most popular decks, you also don't want to auto-lose against Skill Drain (that trap is also the biggest individual factor that makes both MST and Lance better than both Night Beam and Dress).”
-former reviewer Mark Howard, http://www.pojo.biz/board/showthread.php?t=1089618
 
Trad: 2.3/5 (it helps against Ring of Destruction and Raigeki, not to mention your own Premature Burial, but in this format the only notable monsters Dress can protect against are Cyber Jar and Tribe-Infecting Virus while there are a whole slew of Spells/Traps it is ineffective against)
Adv: 3.3/5 (actually, Steelswarms and Spellcasters tend to prefer Dress a lot because they already have Infestation Pandemic and Spellbook of Wisdom, respectively)
Aesthetics: 4.5/5 There goes Eve, being naughty and all, wearing the Seamless Robe of Jesus. Next thing you know, she’ll be off going and eating forbidden fruit. Considering the background, she could also represent Pandora of Greece.
 
Riddle: What goes up but doesn't go down? Age (also acceptable: inflation)
abc_at_123.com@hotmail.com
 

Hey guys, today we're going to be doing Forbidden Dress. Now Dress, like all the other forbidden cards have some high lights and downfalls. The upsides of Dress are protection from all kinds of destruction (Monster, Spell, & trap) for taking away 600 attack. Also the card cannot be targeted after Dress resolves. The downsides of this deal are the monster targeted could still be removed from the field by other means (Cauis, Compulsory, etc) if the card has been targeted BEFORE the resolution of Dress whereas Lance doesn't really care (but then monster effects still can hurt them). Overall just another good card for the forbidden series.
 
Trad: 2.5/5 (It's okay)
Adv: 3.5/5 (Pretty good card here.)