Hello, Pojo'ers.  We all took a vote and after Thanksgiving we're going to no longer mandate that reviewers provide a rating for Traditional Format, and therefore Traditional Format ratings will no longer be calculated into an average.  Reviewers are still free to rate them in Traditional if they want to or when relevant.  I credit Electric Soldier for sparking this debate by saying what we were all thinking when he rated Dark Rebellion XYZ Dragon a "whocares/5" in Traditional.

And now, Herald of Ultimateness.

Realizing how significant Special Summoning has become, Konami released an updated version of "Herald of Perfection".  The original Herald of Perfection was strong enough to head a whole deck of plussing with fairy floaters and then constantly negating.  This newer version is harder to summon with 12 levels required.  Oracle of the Herald (the ritual for Ultimateness) isn't very good because it doesn't help replenish the cost, unlike Dawn of the Herald (for Perfection) which actually does.  Also, Ultimateness' level is too high Preparation of Rites (a +1 for Rituals).  Your only safe bet is to use Advanced Ritual Art to summon this card, which comes with the potential corollary of clogging your hand with normal monsters.  Murphy's law.

Truth be told, it's easier to just use Herald of Perfection (which itself has been power creeped out a bit) and run Vanity's Emptiness or something.  I guess this is another one of those cards which was hyped to be really broken until people realized its flaws.  It's powerful but not consistent enough.  Maybe it will get some support in the future which will kick it up a notch, but for now, ehh...

Advanced - 1.75/5

Herald of Ultimateness

This card needs to be compared to Herald of Perfection, and so I shall.

Firstly I’ll start off with what is good with this card, by discarding a Fairy-type monster from your hand you can Negate the Special Summon of an opponents monster or the activation of a Spell or Trap card, and as many times as you are able, just as long as you have a Fairy monster in your hand… Or just as long as your opponent doesn’t use a Counter Trap against you because that would be bad!

It also has a quite hefty defence of 3000 and a reasonable enough attack of 2000, although you would normally only be keeping this in defence position unless you were going for the win.

So to compare, Herald of Ultimateness has 200 ATK and DEF more than Herald of Perfection and can Negate the Special Summoning of an opponents monster and then destroy it, of which Herald of Perfection also cannot do.

Here however ends the advantages that it has over Herald of Perfection, because it all goes down hill from here.

Firstly, there are NO Level 12 Fairy-type monsters, this means that if you are using Advanced Ritual Art to Summon Herald of Ultimateness that either you’ll have to use 2 Level 6’s, although Gyakutennu Megami  is the only Level 6 Fairy, and as such this would lead to issues of it’s own, or instead use the next ideal Level which will be to use 3 Level 4 Normal Fairy-type monsters, however this will add inconsistency to the Deck, although as an advantage it would allow you to use Rescue Rabbit in the Deck. And although I can only speculate here I would expect that you would be running 6 Level 4 Normal Fairy’s in this Deck. Being able to use Rescue Rabbit though is of course not a bad thing.

However, Herald of Perfection Decks use only just Gyakutennu Megami which is a Level 6 Normal monster and does not generally contribute to potential dead draws or less than favourable opening hands, simply because less Normal monsters are required to effectively use Advanced Ritual Art.

Secondly, and most crucially, a Herald of Ultimateness Deck is unable to use Preparation of Rites, and being unable to do so severely hampers the Deck as you are unable to add just the Ritual Monster or both a Ritual Monster and a Ritual Spell card to your hand… This limits the effectiveness of a Herald of Ultimateness Deck simply because you are unable to easily search out and then Summon Herald of Ultimateness to begin with or replace one that was otherwise unable to be successfully Summoned.

And while Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands is of course one of the cards that you will be using, it’s much easier for an opponent to Negate the effect of a monster cards effect than it is for them to Negate the effect of a Spell card.

Certainly, Herald of Perfection does use Preparation of Rites!!!

As a Level 12, a Deck using this misses out on a crucial support card in Preparation of Rites and is required to run several Normal monsters in order to be able to use Advanced Ritual Art.

Both factors contribute to inconsistencies in the Deck, and this is something that no lower Tier Deck can afford.

Compared to Herald of Perfection it is inferior, yet card effect wise Herald of Ultimateness is better.

Traditional: 1. You would NEVER use this here.

Note: This is the last week in which us Card of the Day reviewers will be required to give a Traditional format rating for any card, as such this will mean that it’s entirely possible that no more Traditional scores will be given ever again by some reviewers.

However, and since I’m nice, and because I know that there are people out there who do like Traditional ratings, I shall provide one from time to time but only if I find it to be relevant to give a Traditional rating.

Advanced: 1.75. Being unable to use crucial cards is what hurts this cards score… It’s abilities are fantastic, but Ritual Decks need all the help that they can get, and sadly this card cannot access the best help available to many other Ritual cards. Although maybe being able to fit in and effectively use Herald of the Arc Light could help to rectify this issue just a little?

Truly though, what was someone thinking when they decided to make this a Level 12 monster???