Effect: This, as all but the newest of you know, is why Sangan gets played.  When Sangan is sent to the Graveyard (while on the field), you get to search your deck for a Monster with an ATK of 1500 or less from your deck and add it to your hand.  This is incredible for a game like Yu-Gi-Oh that lacks substantial draw power… well, for those of us who have been heavily influenced by the Pokémon TCG and similarly styled games.  Very potent.

 

Stats: This card, as stated, is used for its effect.  Still, it has decent stats.  It is a Dark/Fiend.  Dark feeds Chaos, and Fiend feeds… erm… Fiend decks in general, Dark Necrofear specifically.  Being a Level 3 Monster is nice: can be dropped into play without any hassle and it can slip under Gravity bind/Level Limit-Area B.  Its ATK is just 1000.  This isn’t so great for attacking (though at least it goes under Messenger of Peace), but fortunately I’ll mention the one or two combos that make use of it.  600 DEF is pretty pointless, though at least (for Traditional) it allows it to be searched out via Witch of the Black Forest.  Can’t think of why you’d need to do that, but you could.

 

Uses and

Combinations: Okay, this card lets you get all those nice, tiny, effect Monsters.  What do I mean?  Cyber Jar and Morphing Jar come readily to mind.  Injection Fairy Lily isn’t too far behind.  The bulk of Burners easily qualifies, as do stallers and specialists like Gear Golem with their low ATKs and DEF so high.  Certainly not the least, you can use Sangan to grab any Exodia piece!  Okay, enough of that: the first rhyme was accidental, the rest are painfully intentional.  Other important things to note about using Sangan is that it is small enough to search out via Mystic Tomato, which puts you two steps (or less) away from any of the above cards with a tenth of a full 40 card deck.  Finally, if we ever get the Crush Card Virus (sorry, can’t remember the Japanese name and I almost ran out of time for this article searching for it), it will be more or less a perfect offering to trigger that cards effect.

 

Ratings

 

Traditional: 4.25/5-Not as useful a Witch of the Black Forest here, but still a “staple” for pretty much any serious deck.  Yata-Garusa gets tacked onto the list above here.  Plus you can use it to get Witch of the Black Forest.  The two together let you get nearly any Monster you need from your deck within a span of two turns.

 

Advanced: 4.5/5-It’s possible you’re running a deck without any legal targets for this, or with only “filler” that qualifies.  I guess that is possible.  For the most part though, this should be in pretty much every deck.  It effectively doubles your odds of getting out Cyber Jar, Morphing Jar, etc.

 

Limited: 5/5-Unless you lack something to search for, take this.  Search is incredibly important here.

 

Summary

This card is a Monster Staple as far as I am concerned: the decks that wouldn’t benefit from running it don’t seem too serious to me.  This card should not have been returned to us: it is far too potent.  Hopefully I can find time to do my own Ban List article, so I can more properly express my concern over the current list.