Butterfly Dagger – Elma

Seriously, just errata this bad card, Konami. I don’t know if I’m just defending the righteousness of the banned list, but I don’t like Elma’s presence, solely because I know it’s a terrible card, except for the fact it can be used in conjunction with other cards for OTK’s. I won’t lie to you. Once upon a time, many years ago, I partook in Elma decks. I used it on unsuspecting fools, dropping Gearfried and Spell Absorption and then claiming to have “infinite lifepoints.” It was fun… and it was dumb.

It really is fascinating for such a mediocre card to stay in the public conscious for so long simply because of its relation to another mediocre card. By themselves, Gearfried and Elma are dreadful and new players would never be able to tell you what they are or what they do, but because of what they do together, they remain infamous. Like Romeo and Juliet, but written and directed by Kevin Smith. So let’s just all end the dream. Or not. Whatever.

Advanced: 1/5

Future Potential: 0/5

And we conclude Classic Week with a notorious card that saw more abuse in rogue play than use in meta play.   

History: This card was released in Dark Crisis for Guardians.  Except, the monster Elma was bad and Guardians were bad in general, so thankfully, this card was a generic equip.  For regular beatdown decks, it wasn't quite a staple.  To be fair, there were lots of more broken Spell Cards that were legal at the time (like Pot of Greed, Painful Choice and such), so this card often took a back seat since a 300 point boost wasn't seen as substantial.  However, after the initial ban list, if this card were allowed to survive (without broken loops), this card would've gotten more attention in the slower GX era which would've seen a small but repeating attack bonus as a plus.  Warrior decks were using the Phoenix Blade card which was inferior to this. 

Why It Got Banned: You can use this card an unlimited amount of times per turn, if you found a way to constantly destroy it without costing you resources.  This resulted in combos with Gearfried the Iron Knight, Woodland Sprite and such.  With the banned cards they errata'd, I'm surprised that Konami didn't just give this one a hard "Once Per Turn" clause and let it free.  They could have done that 10 years ago even. 

Current: I'm not sure how it would fare today.  Without a hard OPT clause, it would still be degenerate.  But with one, could it be a practical choice for many decks?  Since it must be equipped, its infiniteness can't be used as bluff bait nor discard fodder.  It would be a straight up equip card that would give you a 300 ATK buff for the rest of the game, except that now we have more ways than ever to eliminate threats without destroying them per se.  But this bonus, while residual, is way too slow to justify a card early game.  The best era for this would've been the mid 2000's, but it missed that boat.

So let's get this out of the way. Butterfly Dagger - Elma is not a poorly designed Equip Spell Card. 300 Atk boost for any monster is nothing. The problem is that if it is destroyed by anything while equipped to a monster, it returns to the Hand for reuse. All this card would need is to have a limit of twice per turn and then it would be over. The third time it's destroyed, it would go to the grave and never be seen again. Oh well. Instead this component of OTK loops is banned and will stay banned. "If only I had 300 more Atk on my monsters, I'd win all the time" said no one. 
 
Score: Banned/5
Art: 4/5
 
Stay Safe Out There!
-WarlockBlitz

Our last card this week isn’t as impressive as the other four to be honest.
 
Butterfly Dagger – Elma is an Equip Spell Card that gives the equipped monster 300 ATK. That’s actually pretty pitiful. What broke this card, however, was its second effect; if it’s destroyed and sent to the Graveyard while equipped, it could be returned to the owner’s hand.
 
This created a loop with Gearfried the Iron Knight and either Royal Magical Library or Fire Princess and Spell Absorption. If used with the former, you could constantly equip Butterfly Dagger – Elma to Gearfried (who would continuously destroy it with his own effect, thus returning it to your hand) and gain an infinite number of Spell Counters on Library, allowing you to draw out your entire Deck and win with Exodia. If used with Flame Princess, you would instead burn your opponent for game.
 
With that being said, both of these loops would be outright terrible in today’s game; ignoring the fact that Royal Magical Library is arguably banworthy anyway, this loop is a 3 card combo that requires you to have 2 monsters that are only easily put into play by being Normal Summoned. It’s too slow to ever be truly effective.
 
The only way I could see this card being abused is in Inzektor, since they generate advantage off of popping their own cards with Hornet. But they already have their own ways of generating advantage with Giga-Mantis and Zektkalibur.
 
This card is bad, and of the five cards we’ve reviewed this week, it’s the only one that I would have absolutely no issue with being unbanned.
 
Rating: 1/5