Monday

Continuing with Dragons of Legend we have a simple enough card today in Fire Hand. One of three Monsters with similar effects working well enough together I suppose. A Level 4, Pyro type, Fire attributed Monster, with 1600 attack and 1000 defense. When this card in your possession is destroyed by your opponent's card, via Battle or Effect, you can Special Summon an Ice Hand from your Deck. Assuming this card ends up in the Graveyard, that is, and you're allowed to target and destroy a Monster your opponent controls. If that works out, it's a +1 for you, as long as the Ice Hand isn't destroyed too.

Ratings:

Traditional: 1.5/5
Advanced: 2.5/5
Art: 4/5

We are continuing with some more cards from Dragons of Legend this week. Fire Hand is one of four new “Hand” cards. They are designed to work together to form a theme. We will be reviewing the three best “Hand” cards this week, starting off with Fire Hand. Its effect is pretty straight forward. If your opponent destroys it and sends it to the grave, you get to destroy one of their monsters and then summon an Ice Hand monster from your deck. That is what we call plussing your opponent.

All kinds of ideas of what one can do with Fire and Ice Hand cards are filling my head. First, one can make a deck centered on these monsters. Attack your opponent’s bigger monster with Fire Hand and use its effect to destroy one of their monsters, then summon Ice Hand and attack another bigger monster, destroy a spell or trap then summon another Fire monster to destroy their bigger monster and summon another Ice monster. If they still have another monster and back row card, attack again to destroy the back row card and bring out Fire Hand. Then special summon Frost and Flame Dragon by using your destroyed monsters and the use its effect to destroy that other monster. What you end up with is a four card advantage and control of the field.

To make a deck around the “Hand” cards, all you need to do is add more Fire and Water monsters like Prominence Hand, Deep Sea Diva, Atlanteans, Penguin Soldier, Mobius, and Thestalos. You can also mix the Fire and Ice monsters into other themed decks like Mermail, Volcanic, and Frog Monarch decks. Then you can use Royal Firestorm Guards to recycle your Fire Hand monsters with the added advantage of drawing two cards.

Fire Hand can also be used in just about any deck or side deck by itself or with Ice Hand. You do not even need to use it in multiples. Just one Fire Hand will still destroy your opponent’s monster. By playing two of each monster in a deck, you can still use the Fire and Ice synergy to give you plusses and deal with problem cards your opponent controls. We haven’t even mentioned what Fire and Ice Hand monsters can do for Stun decks, Pendulum, and Artifacts.

Traditional: 1/5
Advanced: 3/5

Fire Hand
FIRE/Pyro/Effect/Level 4/1600/1000
When this card in your possession is destroyed by your opponent's card (either by battle, or by card effect) and sent to your Graveyard: You can target 1 monster they control; destroy that target, then you can Special Summon 1 "Ice Hand" from your Deck.

More Dragons of Legends card for most of this week, not sure why the last one is put in when there are still plenty of cards in the set.; but that’s a card for Friday. Today we are looking at Fire hand, one of the Hand cards used by Gilag in Yu-Gi-Oh! ZeXal.

Statwise, Fire hand is a FIRE/Pyro which is good with 1600 ATK and 1000 DEF both are pretty meh for a level 4. Its effects though more than make up for the meh stats.

If this card is destroyed, doesn’t matter how you can target and destroy 1 of your opponent’s monsters and if you do, you get an “Ice Hand “from your deck. So not only do you destroy one of your opponent’s monsters and there are no conditions on what monster you can destroy, but you can Special Summon a Monster that can destroy spell/traps and special summon another 1 of these. A really good effect, not perfect, you have to destroy a monster first in order to special summon and the monster can only be special summoned from the deck, but it does help balance this out.

Overall, a great effect, the monster itself is okay.

Traditional: 3/5
Advanced: 3.5/5

Fire Hand is hands down one of the best cards, along with Ice Hand which we will be reviewing tomorrow, to debut from the recent Dragons of Legend Booster Set. Fire Hand is a level 4 Fire attribute Pyro type monster with a decent 1600 attack and a low 1000 defense. Whatever this card lacks in pure strength it more than makes up for with its outstanding effects. 

When this card is destroyed by your opponents card effects or by battle, and sent to the graveyard, you can target and destroy one monster your opponent controls, then you can special summon one Ice Hand from your deck. So not only will this monster destroy a monster and -1 your opponents resources, it will actually special summon an Ice Hand directly from your deck (in either attack or defense position) preventing you from losing any resource advantage. Since Ice Hand has a similar effect (which we will cover more in detail tomorrow) which allows it to special summon a Fire Hand from the deck when it is destroyed by your opponents cards, the Fire and Ice Hands actually create a special summoning loop which is insanely hard to overcome without the opponent giving up most or all of their resources to be rid of all copies of these monsters.

Additionally, there are even more reasons why Fire Hand's effect make it an exceptional monster. When the opponent attacks or is attacked by Fire Hand, Fire Hand's effect will activate during the damage step, therefore preventing your opponent from chaining cards to the destruction of their monster or to the summoning of Ice Hand from the deck. That means your opponent won't be able to activate cards like Safe Zone to save their targeted monster from being destroyed, or activate torrential tribute when Fire or Ice Hand is special summoned from the deck via effect. Because of this, it is consistently easy to keep the summoning loop of hands continuing through all of their copies safely without much worry. They also thin the deck with each direct from deck special summon they produce, creating an Upstart Goblin esque effect, without giving your opponent life points. This allows you to draw other more vital cards to your hand sooner. Fire Hand and Ice Hand are completely compatible with a wide variety of decks, and their effects are so crippling and resource draining that not using them could put you at a large disadvantage against decks that are. Even when you control the final copy of your Fire Hand and have no more Ice Hands left in the deck to special summon, if Fire Hand is destroyed, you will still get to target and destroy a monster by it's effect when it hits the graveyard because the destruction effects of these hand monsters activate first before the summoning effect. 

Since the effects of these hand monsters must activate in the graveyard, they are susceptible to anti in-grave effect cards, such as Soul Drain, Dimensional Fissure, Macro Cosmos, and Abyss Dweller. However, this fact is actually a blessing in disguise more often than not because this means they are insusceptible to the much more commonly used effect negating cards such as Fiendish Chain, Effect Veiler, and Skill Drain. Overall, these hands are a major game changer at this point in time within the meta, as more and more competitive duelists are starting to include Fire and Ice Hands (always use both together) in their decks, and rightfully so.

Ratings:

3.5/5 Traditional 
4.5/5 Advanced
Mechanic Design: 4.0/5 (Unique effect unlike any other cards in print. Fire Hand is incredibly powerful even to an alarming point. Great generic card that helps to withstand some of the new faster paced archetypes.)
4/5 Art (Very detailed and really weird. Weird can be good!)