Friday

We haven't talked Mecha Phantom Beast in a while. This is O-Lion (ie, Orbital Lion), cute, no? This little guys is a Level 2 Machine, Wind attribute, (a bit strange for a Machine) with 600 attack and 1000 defense. So you can remove this card from play, and immediately when that effect resolves, NORMAL Summon a Mecha Phantom Beast from your Hand. Strange it can only come from the Hand, and even more strange it has to be a Normal Summon. Also the standard while you control a Token, this card can't be destroyed by Battle or card effects, which is a plus. If this card is sent to the Graveyard (no specification as to how or from where) you can Special Summon a Mecha Phantom Beast Token. Always great, as Tokens are the heart and soul of this Deck.

Ratings:

Traditional: 2.25/5
Advanced: 3.25/5
Art: 4/5

Mecha Phantom Beast O-Lion

Wrapping up this week we have a new Mecha Phantom Beast; Mecha Phantom Beast O-Lion. Statwise it is a WIND/Machine like all Mecha Phantom Beasts and it is a Level 2 Tuner, which is good. It has 600 ATK and 1000 DEF, but are quite average for a level 2 but since this is a Tuner they don’t really matter.

Effectwise, it has 3 effects which is quite impressive for a level 2 monster. First, it can be banished allowing you to immediately Normal Summon a Mecha Phantom Beast from your hand, a really nice effect especially as gives you another normal summon/ It has the usual Mecha Phantom Beast protection effect, which is always good to see and when this is sent to the Graveyard and it doesn’t matter from where or how, you special summon a Token. A great Token generating effect and while you can only use this effect once per turn, it does nicely set up for its first effect. Strangely it doesn’t have a level increase effect like other Mecha Phantom Beasts, but it still has three great effects and none of them have any massive costs or terrible conditions.

Overall, 3 great effects and it is a Tuner and its two unique effects benefit from that. If you use Synchros with your Mecha Phantom Beasts or even if you don’t, this card will be very useful.

Traditional: 3/5
Advanced: 3.5/5

Mecha Phantom Beast Olion

MPB's lack the consistency to be top-tier decks and this card may not change that, but its still very good support for the deck nonetheless.  What it lacks in brokenness, it makes up for in combo potential. 

Being a tuner, especially for a deck that can use tokens incrementally, you have a greater degree of freedom to summon which XYZ monsters you want.  Being protected whilst having tokens and replacing itself with the token itself helps.  In addition, the ability to use an additional Normal Summon on an MPB monster really helps the deck. 

Much of the time, the MPB monsters want to combo (for example: one will produce a token and the other will use the token) but can't because you can only Normal Summon once per turn.  Also, since the card does not specify how it is sent to the graveyard, both the extra Normal Summon and the token production effect will work on a mill or discard.

Usually a card needs to be amazingly good or busted to make an archetype play-worthy again.  This won't be a 180 degree change for the deck but if you use MPB's you should definitely still pick up 2 copies of this card anyway. 

Traditional – 2

Advanced – 3.75

To the point.

Today we look at Mecha Phantom Beast (MPB) O-Lion. Good for its theme, first of all. Its effect allows you to normal summon another MPB monster from the hand by banishing it from the Graveyard. Not being able to capitalize on the tokens created by the monsters due to the monsters being so slow is one of failings of this deck. This solves that MPB deck's problem somewhat. Secondly, when this is sent to the Graveyard (from ANYWHERE), you get to summon a MPB token, which can help pay the costs of some of your MPB monsters' effects, provide walls or be used for Synchro summons. This card being level 2 makes it hard to Xyz summon with it, but it's a Tuner so that means you can use it for a Synchro Summon (and you get a token due to its effect).

Sadly, this card is emblematic of the haphazard design of the Mecha Phantom Beast archetype. Not much thought was put into them, so every set they did something different, and this card exists to try to tie the theme together (so many "t"s) after the fact. It isn't enough.

Advanced: 2/5
Traditional: 1/5

Today we’re looking at some new support for an underplayed archetype, Mecha Phantom Beast O-Lion. O-Lion is a level 2 tuner with a couple of interesting effects that can really help Mecha Phantom Beasts set up their plays.

Firstly, it’s important to note that O-Lion does not gain levels by having Mecha Phantom Beast tokens on the field like the other Mecha Phantom Beasts. This is actually very helpful as it would have prevented easy Synchro Summons. Unfortunately, level 6 and 9 would likely be the most common levels if you tune O-Lion to another Mecha Phantom Beast monster and sadly there just aren’t many good options at those levels. However, if tuned to a Mecha Phantom Beast token O-Lion can make level 5 Synchros which are very useful. You also have a few more options once you add Scapegoat tokens to the mix, but it is important to mention the limited Extra deck space as you need room for multiple Ranks of XYZs as well as Synchros. This will likely limit your options further.

Secondly, O-Lion wants to be put into the graveyard in order to activate its effects and thanks to card text saying “if” instead of “when” it does not miss timing when you do actually Synchro Summon with this card. So by using O-Lion as a Synchro material monster you can actually generate a free token when it is sent to the graveyard.

Once O-Lion is in the graveyard, you can banish O-Lion in order to immediately Normal Summon a Mecha Phantom Beast monster from your hand. This is extremely important as speed is definitely the biggest problem with Mecha Phantom Beast as a deck. O-Lion allows the deck to set up combos that would have forced you to wait while sitting on a monster for a turn. Needless, to say that is considerably safer than just hoping for the best.

I could actually see Mecha Phantom Beast decks using Foolish Burial merely to enable turn one set ups that the deck so sorely is lacking in at the moment.

In the end, O-Lion is very solid support for an archetype that definitely needed a bit of a boost. Chances are the pace of the deck is probably still a little slow for competitive play, but if you do manage to get Mecha Phantom Beasts up and running they can be incredibly hard to deal with.

Traditional: 1/5 (It would be suicide to run a slow stun deck like MPB in Traditional)
Advanced: 3.25/5 (It is the support that MPB needs, but even with O-Lion don’t expect MPB to do very much)