We continue with the new cards from the Saga of Blue-Eyes White Dragon with Rider of the Storm Winds. All you need is this monster on the field or in the graveyard to be able to attach it to one of your normal monsters and get its life saving and piercing effect. When combined with a high attack monster like Blue-Eyes White Dragon, Rider of the Storm Winds can cause a lot of damage while protecting Blue-Eyes from destruction.

Getting Rider of the Storm Winds to the field is the easy part. Cards like One-For-One, Shining Angel, and Masked Dragon can get them from the deck while cards like Debris Dragon and Call of the Haunted can summon it from the grave. Getting Rider to the hand is pretty easily as well with Dread Dragon or by using the effect of Tempest, Dragon Ruler of Storms from the hand, or by removing it from the grave with say the card from the other day, Castle of Dragon Souls. Personally, I would only play one or two Riders because of the ease at getting it to the field or grave.

Now let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of Rider of the Storm Winds. It is susceptible to MST and other spell/trap destruction cards. It is also of little use if you monster is bounced or sent to the graveyard. Big Eye and Creature Swap can ruin your day as well. Rider is a level one Tuner that works well with Blue-Eyes White Dragon to summon Azure-Eyes Silver Dragon. It is also a Light monster so Honest tends to come in handy to protect it or to run over opposing monsters.

Rider of the Storm Winds can obviously be used in any deck playing dragons as it is a level one tuner, but having big normal monsters to protect is what they were created for. I am not sold on this type of deck becoming top tier as decks based on normal monsters never do, but it can certainly be fun playing a Blue-Eyes deck.

Traditional: 2/5
Advanced: 2.5/5

Rider of the Storm Winds
LIGHT/Dragon/Tuner/Level 1/500/200
You can target 1 Dragon-Type Normal Monster you control; equip this monster from your hand or your side of the field to that target. If a monster equipped with this card attacks a Defense Position monster, inflict piercing battle damage to your opponent. If a monster equipped with this card would be destroyed, destroy this card instead.

Today we look at another new monster in fact another new Tuner from Saga of Blue-Eyes White Dragon Structure deck; Rider of the Storm Winds. Statwise there isn’t much to say, in fact given it is a tuner and because of its effect chances are it will never stay as a monster on the field long enough for stats to be important.

Effectwise, Rider of the Storm Winds comes off as some kind of strange Union monster. Like a Union monster it can equip itself to a monster, in this a Dragon, and while equipped it gives the monster some protection against Destruction. However you can’t special summon this card back once equipped but you can equip it from your hand. Unusual but good.
Of course once this is equipped the equipped monster can do piercing damage. Piercing Damage isn’t a bad thing as long as the ATK is high enough to make good use of it. Of course with cards like Spear Dragon and Dragon’s Rage, it seems piercing was designed with Dragons in mind.
Overall, some solid effects and it is a Tuner which doesn’t hurt. It probably won’t see as much play as Maiden with Eyes of Blue, in terms of getting out Synchro monsters, but it might help protect them when they do come out.

Traditional: 3/5
Advanced: 3.5/5