CXYZ Simon the Greal Moral Leader fits along well with yesterdays card, here being a Rank 7, Light attributed, Spellcaster XYZ Monster, who has an excellent 3000 attack and 2500 defense.  Simon is XYZ Summoned with three Level 7 Monsters.  Not Spellcasters, but you might wonder why.  It lets him be playable outside of Spellcasters, but gains an additional effect if using yesterdays card as XYZ Material.  More on that later.  Regardless of how you XYZ Summon, this card is uneffected by other Monster effects.  With 3000 attack, your opponent is likely to just attack, forcing them to destroy it with a Magic or Trap card.  But if you use yesterdays card, it can discard an XYZ Material to change a Monsters Battle Position, and negate said Monsters effects until the end of the current turn.  The tricky part is yesterdays card was Rank 6 for starters, but you can work around that, but in this instance, you're obviously running Spellcasters anyway.  Even without the added ability, it's a good card.

Ratings:

4.25/5 both Formats, maybe even better in Traditional because there's more effects it's immune to

Art:  5/5    

Today we are looking at: CXyz Simon the Great Moral Leader

“3 Level 7 monsters

This card is unaffected by other monster effects. If this card has "Norito the Moral Leader" as an Xyz Material, it gains this effect.

● Once per turn, during either player's turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card, then target 1 monster your opponent controls; change its battle position, and if you do, negate its effects until the end of this turn.”

Being unaffected by monster effects is cool, but outside of that we still have spells and traps to worry about.  I don’t really think he is worth it for the first effect alone, despite his sizable stats. His second effect? Probably never going to see much play. The only way to even get it is to use rank-up magic on it; yuck. If you need a good XYZ there are many, many, better choices.

Advanced: 1/5
Traditional: 1/5

Yesterday, we covered Norito the Moral Leader and his ability to negate Spells/Traps while packing a solid 2700 ATK. Now, if you were to give Norito the power of Rank-Up-Magic Barian's Force, you get to upgrade and bring out the Rank 7 Chaos Xyz Monster: CXyz Simon the Great Moral Leader.
 
Norito covers and deals with Spells and Trap cards. Unfortunately, Norito can't defend itself from monster effects so if you feel you need that power even more, Simon the Great Moral Leader is the perfect weapon for the cause. He packs a strong 3000 ATK and a solid 2500 DEF, capable of dealing with any monster commonly seen in battle. Secondly, he is unaffected to monster effects, which is incredible. You don't have to fear any monster outside of whether or not it is powerful enough to defeat it in battle ATK-wise with Simon on the field.
 
But his Rank-Up-Magic ability is quite the nice touch if you ever finds a monster Simon can't beat normally. Basically, by detaching an Xyz Material once per turn, you can negate an monster's effect and change its battle position. Defending with a Marshmallon? Not for much longer as it will be forced into ATK position and with its effects negated, it won't survive Simon's onslaught. A Blue-Eyes White Dragon is going to trade blows with you? Switch it to DEF Position and watch it beg for mercy once you counter attack and since Simon can have as many as 4 Xyz Material on him, there will be a lot of pain to give for everyone.
 
But the most interesting aspect this card has is for the Dragon Ruler mirror match. Since this card has the ATK necessary to deal with any monster a Dragon Ruler player can drop against you and being unaffected by monster effects means you don't have to fear Number 11, Dracossack, Blaster's destruction effect, and many others, it does make for an interesting tech choice for Dragon Rulers esp. since you can easily get 3 Level 7 monsters on the field with little or no costs to bring it out. It can easily win games but it costs quite a bit so you need to make sure it is worth dropping. After all, the current version of Dragon Rulers shows that the deck runs a lot of monsters, few spells (none of which destroys), and almost no traps so Simon, if successfully resolved, tends to stick around for a while.
 
Overall, this card has a Rank 7 niche for competitive decks while offering an interesting boost to any decks that can bring out Norito and is willing to use Barian's Force. I dare say it is worth picking one up just in case.
 
Traditional Format: 1/5 (Like Norito, it doesn't have a spot there. There is better, faster, and more lethal options than this available.)

Advanced Format: 2/5 (It's not bad but it is best as a niche option for Dragon Ruler mirror matches and not much else. It's a decent boost for those running Barian's Force with Gagaga, for example, if you want to go that far.)

CXyz Simon the Great Moral Leader
LIGHT/Spellcaster/Xyz/Effect/Rank7/3000/2500
3 Level 7 monsters
This card is unaffected by other monster effects. If this card has "Norito the Moral Leader" as a Xyz Material, it gains this effect.
● Once per turn, during either player's turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card, then target 1 monster your opponent controls; change its battle position, and if you do, negate its effects until the end of this turn.

After yesterday’s Norito the Moral Leader we now look at its Chaos Xyz form, CXyz Simon the Great Moral Leader. Given that Norito the Moral Leader was over all a good card, how does its CXyz version hold up? Well normally it requires 3 level 7 monsters, and you get a monster with 3000 ATK and it is unaffected but other monster effects. Solid but a bit pricey, however being a CXyz monster is gets a bonus effect if you have its regular version attached.
To be honest, it’s not the greatest, it’s another monster effect negation effect, seriously is that all Konami and NAS think of these days. Granted it does have the bonus of changing the battle position which could be handy to get rid of an annoying defender but why give a monster a different version of an effect it already has. After all, this card can’t be affected by other monster effects already so unless the opponent has a really annoying effect there doesn’t seem to be much point.

Norito the Moral Leader has a better effect and it is a shame that its upgrade doesn’t actually expand on that effect.

Overall, not much of an upgrade to be honest, there are loads of cards with monster effect negation abilities already and the base version of this card was better.

Traditional: 1.5/5
Advanced: 2/5

A Light Spellcaster triple Rank 7 Xyz? It sounds very much similar to a certain Number monster *coughluckystraightcough* As I said in my review of Master of Blades, he and two other Rank 7 monsters (Mecha Phantom Beast Dracossack and Number 11: Big Eye) are the top three Rank 7’s because not only are they very good at what they do, they are very easy to summon (a double Rank 7 is pretty simple if you have the resources, but triple Rank 7 is pushing it). Of course, why would you ever want to Xyz Summon Simon? He won’t even get his effect that way!
 
Of course, you would want to summon this by Ranking-Up any Rank 6 Spellcaster (preferably Norito) with Rank-Up Magic Barian’s Force. Even though this consumes a lot of resources, granted, it’s still arguably easier than trying to assemble three Level 7 monsters. In my review yesterday, I already stated how complicated it is to summon the Dorito. What makes it worse is that Nobita requires Spellcasters to be summoned, meaning you can’t simply throw Simon in a Deck based on other CXyzs to try to maximise the potential of your Rank-Up Magic. You would have to do the reverse, by simply splashing some of the easier CXyzs in a Spellcaster/Moral Leader Deck, and even then it would be a bit of a stretch. You will not be summoning this monster outside a Deck strongly dedicated to him or at least packs a lot of Level 6 Spellcasters. Simon can boast an offensive presence, but instead of Ranking-Up Norito, I can set a Forbidden Chalice. Also, instead of Xyz Summoning Norito, I can go into either Photon Strike Bounzer or Force Focus, both Rank 6 effect-negators with extremely high ATK.
 
Now, keep in mind, I wrote everything I just said before I realised Simon is immune to all monster effects in the first place, and monster effects are probably the most important thing in the game now. This means after you use Barian’s Force, you negate all other faceup cards, and then you have out Simon, immune to all monster effects and able to negate any other monsters if necessary (also to put them into a likely weaker position if they have a chance of beating out Simon, such as perhaps Grapha or Judgment Dragon). Other than a monster that can trump the 3000 ATK, Simon can also be easily defeated by Spells and Traps (namely Book of Fate, Bottomless Trap Hole, Compulsory Evacuation Device, Mind Control, anything that could lower his ATK). At least he won’t have to fear Solemn Judgment or Warning, because these must be used against the actual Barian’s Force card, and then you get to keep Norito. To counter Spells and Traps, I suggest Dark Bribe, Forbidden Lance, and especially Spellbook of Wisdom. Since you’ll be using Barian’s Force anyway, to make it less likely of a dead draw you might as well splash some other Xyzs that can be Ranked-Up, such as Number 39: Utopia, Number 105: Battlin’ Boxer Star Cestus, Battlecruiser Dianthus, and Mechquipped Angineer.
 
Trad: 1.5/5 (I can’t see Rank-Up cards being useful at all…although it would be fun to run over the numerous Flip monsters here, although as difficult as he is to defeat that won’t always be a problem)
Adv: 2.75/5 (a major problem is that most of the Decks that can actually summon him usually have easier ways to win anyway, but if you actually summon Simon, you have a high chance to win too)
Aesthetics: 3.25/5 The CXyzs are a family of monsters that are upgraded versions of original Xyzs. Also joining them are Number C, which are the same as CXyz except for Numbers. All of them require the Spell Card Rank-Up Magic Barian’s Force to be summoned (except for Number C39: Utopia Ray and Number C32: Shark Drake Veiss – the first two Number C cards that we’ve already reviewed – which you can summon by just putting them over the original card), and as a result, they all have streaks of red on them (except for Utopia Ray and Veiss). All of them are one Rank higher than the original, and (except for Utopia Ray and Veiss) must use their original form in order to gain their effects; also, if you were going to Xyz Summon them “the old-fashioned way,” you need one more Xyz Material than the original. Their new effect is different yet slightly resembles their old effect, and except for Ray, Veiss, and for some reason Giant Red Hand, they have an additional effect that does not require Xyz Material. In Simon’s case, his effect to negate monsters is similar to Norito’s effect to negate Spells/Traps, and Simon has a Continuous Effect to shield him from monsters at all times. I like some aspects of Simon’s design, such as his white robes and all his Shinto stuff, but I think it just looks like a lot of random stuff piled on; he looks like a Hoodie Ninja.
 
Philosophy Corner: In my review of Forbidden Dress, I suggested using it in Traditional in tandem with Chaos Emperor Dragon. Someone came up to me and said that won’t work since Chaos Emperor Dragon does not technically destroy anything. In that case, it’s only really useful against Cyber Jar and Tribe-Infecting Virus, so Lance would be preferable.
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