Today we are reviewing one of the new archetype monsters; Artifact Beagalltach. There are many ways to play Artifact monsters. You can play them in almost any deck as they give you some amazing plusses and allow you to use two powerful cards; Artifact Ignition and Artifact Sanctum. With Ignition, you effectively have 6 MST’s. With Sanctum, you can summon just about any Artifact you need to stop just about any play your opponent can make while giving you field presence. All you need is three or four Artifacts in you deck to play them. In return, you make your opponent have second thoughts about destroying any of your spell or traps or playing those evil Fire and Ice Hands that are rampant today.

In a deck with Artifacts splashed in, you may only want to run one Artifact Beagalltach, as you will not have many Artifacts set at any one time. In a deck that is a dedicated Artifact theme, you will want to run at least two Beagalltachs. What often happens when playing dedicated Artifacts, you end up with a lot of monsters that you cannot destroy in your spell and trap zone while your opponent just beets you down. You will need a number of cards that can destroy those Artifacts on your opponent’s turn. Cards like Artifact Ignition, MST, Double Cyclone, Absorbing Jar, and Malevolent Catastrophe will do the trick, but you have two other cards you will want to take full advantage of. Call of the Haunted and Artifact Sanctum can special summon Beagalltach from the grave or your deck when you have one or two Artifacts set. If you wish, you could even run Nova Summoner to help you special summon Beagalltach with its 1200 attack.

What the Artifact theme gives you is a tool box of effects that can disrupt your opponent’s strategy while allowing you to swarm the field. Unfortunately, they are extremely one dimensional and reliant on spell and trap destruction and special summoning. Cards like Stardust Dragon, Evilswarm Ophion, Light-Imprisoning Mirror, Vanity’s Fiend, Soul Drain, Debunk, and Macro Cosmos will completely shut them down. The vulnerability and consistency of the Artifacts and the fact that pure Artifact Decks have yet to prove themselves is what brings my rating of Artifact Beagalltach down.

Traditional: 1/5
Advanced: 2/5

Artifact Beagalltach

More Artifacts to start off this week and we start with Artifact Beagalltach. Statwise it is a LIGHT/Fairy like all Artifacts and is a good combination with 1400 ATK; bad for a level 5 and 2100 DEF which is solid but not great.
Effectwise it has the standard Artifact effects, with its own effect being that when it is Special Summoned during your opponent's turn who have to destroy up to 2 set cards you control, but you have to destroy at least 1. This effect and this card is designed with only 1 real purpose; to get more Artifacts on to the field and get their effects. This is a great effect even it is a mandatory effect and cane result in numerous combos. Also it just has to be Special Summoned during the opponent’s turn it doesn’t matter how; making this can even more versatile.

Overall, a must for Artifact decks, not much cop anywhere else.

Traditional: 3.5/5
Advanced: 3.75/5

Hello Pojo Fans,

This week is going to be full of the new “Artifact” monsters, so lets get it started with Artifact Caduceus. Caduceus has the standard Special Summon effects that all “Artifact” monsters inherit. Its unique effect after those is when every time an “Artifact” monster is Special Summoned during your opponents turn, you draw one card. Drawing a card is good, and Artifacts are intended to Special Summon themselves during their opponents turn to gain their effects. The downside to this effect is that Caduceus has to be face-up to resolve this effect while other effect monsters gain their unique effect when they are Special Summoned during the opponents turn. Caduceus has lower attack but higher defense, so bringing it out in defense may be preferred. To gain the most positive off Caduceus, make sure its effect is last if it and other “Artifact” monsters are Special Summoning themselves in a chain. Caduceus will hit the field, then other Artifacts will hit the field and you will draw off of Caduceus. Caduceus is handy to replenish your hand (as you will be setting a lot of your monsters rather than summoning them), but it won't be improving your field advantage.

Traditional-1/5
Advanced-2.5/5
Art-2.5/5

Artifact Beagalltach

Any room for a nice pun?

Aside from Moralltach, Beagal is the most used Artifact monster.  Most competitive players don't use three but they do use one or two depending on their preference. 

Its not used to get an immediate +1 on summon like some of the other Artifacts but instead it is used as speed to fuel the engine and improve the consistency, which is why Artifacts are using it to begin with.  While it doesn't hurt your opponent directly, you can destroy your other Artifacts and trigger off effects that do. 

Granted, I exaggerated a little when I rated Sycthe a 4.  I, like probably 80% of YGO players, overestimated the strength of the Artifact archetype.  What we thought would rule the tournament scene in and of itself is just an engine (very much like Frogs in Monarchs).  But this card is, empirically, the second best Artifact.

Traditional – 1.75

Advanced – 3.75

Ladies, gentlemen, welcome. Welcome to another week of glorious enlightenment. Today we look at Artifact Bageltech... uh, I'm being told it's "Beagalltach". I liked my mental image of it being a mechanical bagel better...

This card is the companion piece to last week's Artifact Moralltach. Essentially, all I said last week about Moralltach applies to this, except it has 2100 DEF and 1400 ATK, so it can't serve as a beater, but can be a decent enough meat shield (for one, they can't use Number 101 on it since it'd be in DEF) and instead of blowing up a face-up card, this blows up TWO face-down cards (monster, spell/trap, doesn't really matter). "But Terrorking, why would I want to blow up my own cards?" is what you may be asking. Well, my dears, read your cards. Artifacts want you to blow them up to get their effects off, so that's the niche this fills in your deck. As things currently stand, Moralltach is more powerful, but this is still nothing to sneeze at since both fill very different roles, boys and girls, and is a crucial part of the Artifact engine.

As with Moralltach, you know this leads to Rank 5s and all the other benefits being LIGHT Attribute grants it, so no need to bring that up.

Advanced: 4/5
Traditional: 2/5
Art: 1/5. I don't see this sword being able to cut anything.

Artifact Beagalltach

I don't see Snoopy anywhere in this so I wonder where they get their names from. Jokes aside, Beagalltach is the number 2 card in the Artifact lineup behind Morraltach. With a reasonable 2100 defense and a weak 1400 atk, the only point of this existing is as a blocker or using it in the end phase to set up an Xyz play on your turn. The strongest aspect of the Artifact lineup is the access to rank 5 Xyz's which right now only Cyber Dragon's and Wind-Ups can do..and which of the 3 listed themes are actually competitive right now?..well...Artifacts alone aren't..but you get my point. You pop this with the double cyclone and destroy an existing card, like the Morraltach and set up a Rank 5 play on the following turn or even just use the Ignition to destroy it, set the Morraltach, trigger the Beagal and again we've turned 2 spells into 2 monsters and both thinned the deck by 1 and likely destroyed something the opponent controls.

Traditional 1.5/5 - Doesnt really do anything to counter any of the common plays in traditional.

Advanced 2.5/5 - Necessary for the engine to function, but a HUGE step down from how good Morraltach is by itself and even a few baby steps down from Scythe.

Artifat Beagalltach is our card to open the week.  He's a tricky card, but more on that in a little bit.  As you should be familiar with by now, if only because we've reviewed a handful of them recently, these guys like to Set themselves in your Magic/Trap card zone, as opposed to being Tributed for.  Which is good, cause this guy ONLY has 1400 attack, but the 2100 defense...still isn't great.  If I'm sacrificing attack for a Level 5 or higher Monster, I'm not settling for less than 2800.  But I digress...it's a Light/Fairy Monster, so it does have something going for it.  Ironically, it has maybe the best effect of any of the cards in the Deck, despite the menial attack.  Attack isn't everything, but these guys aren't strong as it is, so the 1400 here is kinda quite the kick in the ass.  Anyway, the effect IS good...all the standard, if it's destroyed during your opponent's Turn you get to Special Summon, and in this instance, you destroy two Set cards you control.  Obviously that works incredibly well for the Deck.  This Deck just strikes me as a whole as something that has a lot of potential, but even if you reach it all, you still only have something just really average, overall.  Maybe we're just waiting for it to be broken open.  Time will tell
 
Ratings:
 
Traditional:  1.25/5
 
Advanced:  I hate to give such a gap in ratings between the Formats.  Especially when the card is good, yet bad, so we'll say 3.25/5
 
Art:  4/5