Stats                : Infernal Flame Emperor is a big Level 9 Monster.  That still only requires 2 Tributes to normal summon… but high level Monsters are pretty difficult to summon that way.  More over, peeking ahead to the first line of text on the effect… we see that Special Summoning this Monster is prohibited.  So you will have to offer two Tributes, barring Flame Ruler use, discussed later on.  Fire Monsters now have some solid support, much of which is included in the Structure deck this card comes with, though I don’t think there is much of anything for Pyro Monsters.  Moving on, we see a 2700 ATK and 1600 DEF.  These aren’t stellar for a Monster so hard to get into play, but they are solid.  It will come down to the Effect to make or break this card.

 

Effect(s)       : The first effect, as mentioned above, is very restrictive.  Usually, you’ll be Special Summoning most Monsters that require a double Tribute.  It isn’t an automatic death sentence, but it sure does hurt.  So the second effect had better be great.  Unfortunately, it isn’t.  It is a decent effect: remove up to 5 Fire Monsters from your Graveyard when this card is successfully Tribute Summoned to destroy that many Spells and/or Traps on the field.  Not bad, but not great either.  Most commonly played Traps are restricted or chainable (or both), so this mostly hurts decks that rely on Field Spells or Continuous Spell/Traps.  Removing Monsters from your discard isn’t too bad… except it is per S/T you want to destroy, and there are some decent “remove a Fire Monster to Special Summon this Monster” Monsters for Fire.  So in the end, this comes across to me as the effect of Mobius the Frost Monarch, but so many restrictions to offset maybe being able to hit 5 S/Ts.  How often does an opponent have that many Spells and Traps in play?  Even if you have some of your own to hit, Mobius seems a better choice.  Yes, even for Fire decks.  Outside of Fire decks, this effect is even less useful: the only generally seen Fire Monster I can think of is Command Knight.

 

Uses and

Combinations  : There is a Fire Monster that counts as two tributes for Fire Monsters: Flame Rule.  Flame Ruler is at 1500 ATK, making it small enough to be searched via Sangan or UFO Turtle.  Its 1600 DEF isn’t too bad either.  As such, it would make summoning Infernal Flame Emperor much easier.  Backfire can add some extra burn damage.  So can Ultimate Baseball Kid and Solar Flare Dragon.  Together, you can score some good burn damage while sending other Fire Monsters to the Graveyard.  When the opponent’s LP is low enough, summon Infernal Flame Emperor and clear the field of restrictive Spells and Traps, and hit them for game (by then you should have plenty of fodder).  Still, I recommend running this only if you have to (e.g. if all you’ve got is the Structure Deck).  Also, you might be able to take advantage of the removing of Monsters from play with Return from the Different Dimension or Dimension Fusion.  I would actually go with the former in this case: you will usually want to use this trick later in the game, and after summoning your Monsters (Infernal Flame Emperor should have cleared the field when he was summoned) an Ultimate Baseball Kid could then Tribute the Monsters for his second effect to inflict some excellent burn damage using Monsters that will be dead anyway, and you don’t have to worry about them getting their D.D. Warrior Lady back like with Dimension Fusion.  Just remember you’ll need to plan ahead.

 

Ratings

 

Traditional       : 1.25/5-I just can’t see Infernal Flame Emperor being a huge asset.  You would be better off adding another burn card to most Fire decks.

 

Advanced        : 1.75/5-A little better here, since there is less widespread S/T removal, and a mono-Fire or mostly Fire deck works better.

 

Limited            : 3.5/5-Pretty good assuming you get this in a “Starter Deck” based Limited event… does Yu-Gi-Oh have that?  In other games, it’s a variant where you get a Starter deck and two to three boosters to customize it.

 

Summary

Well, it definitely doesn’t seem broken.  It is a good example of overcompensating for a potentially devastating effect: mass S/T removal limited to a specific deck type (Fire) is fine… I wouldn’t want it to be general mass S/T removal, but given that it’s an effect that triggers via a Tribute Summon only, making it also only capable of being Normal Summoned seems like too much: you can’t even dump and revive it for an good beatstick.