“Welcome back to Big Brother 8.5 – Yu-Gi-Oh All Stars Edition!  Which of the cards locked in the house will dominate the new metagame!  Ring of Destruction, or as many players call him “RoD” is in the confessional and ready to discuss his strategy.  Well RoD, what’s it like coming off the Ban List?  How did you do it?”

 

“Well, it was simple really.  A lot of players fear the alliance known as OTKilltown.  They’ve won a lot and most of the time, there isn’t a whole lot you can do to stop them.  Well, Stein is the heart of most OTKilltown strategies, and he’s good so long as he’s got his big buddies.  For that matter, they are good so long as they have him.  Separate, they can’t seem to get anything accomplished.  Anyway, Stein tends to “grease the wheels” if ya know what I am sayin’ with a massive LP payment.  Anyway, that leaves them vulnerable to me.  So I say “Hey, bring me back and I’ll do my thang and blow those fat Fusions to the Graveyard and wipe out their LP to boot, eliminating them from the competition!”

 

“Wow, it sounds like you’re confident you can take them out…”

 

*RoD clutches his sides and falls out of his chair laughing*

 

“Naaaah.  There’s only one of me and three of them and some of OTKilltown’s members are part of their crew just to mess with guys like me.  See, the real plan isn’t to counter OTKilltown… it’s to help them win!  If another card might mess up our plans, usually something obscure like Kuriboh, Threatening Roar, or Waboku, I can blow up our fatty to force a draw or sometimes even to score the win.  So for doing next to nothing I get to win the game!”

 

Yeah, that pretty much sums up what I think of Ring of Destruction returning to the game.  Some people think it will keep OTK decks in line, forgetting that the successful ones clear the field before attacking and go off relatively quickly… so you need to luck into drawing Ring of Destruction and your own Monster big enough to nuke with it to prevent Cyberstein from doing its thing… and hope the Cyberstein player lacks any decent healing cards (let alone anything that prevents your actions, like Royal Decree).

 

Ring of Destruction itself is a clearly broken card.  Why?  It’s a Trap that can kill any face up Monster.  Some would call this a one for one… or a two for two once you factor in the burn damage.  As is so often the case, this is a misstatement. First and foremost, one for one cards almost always give advantage to the person controlling it, for the simple fact that you activate it when the trade benefits you.  Second, you are trading a Trap for a Monster.  Monsters are much harder to maintain than Traps.  The burn aspect is misleading.  It both makes the card stronger, allowing it to end the game, but also makes it trickier to use (don’t want to wipe out your own LP).  Let’s compare Ring of Destruction to some other cards.  In many ways, it’s like a “super” Sakuretsu Armor: a Sakuretsu Armor that can hit a Monster whether it attacks or not, and hit your own!  It’s also like a Super Magic Cylinder: your Monster or mine, we take damage equal to its attack and I don’t even need you to declare an attack!  If you can’t follow why that is so fantastically good, I fear it is beyond me to explain it in any clearer form, or at least without turning this into a short novel

 

Ratings

 

Traditional: 4/5 – All the removal, which in fact it is a part of, makes it a bit harder to get off, or at least get off for a big hit.  Still great though.

 

Advanced: 4.5/5 – The sound your hear is a mix of everyone changing out their Snatch Steal for a Ring of Destruction and players who love big monsters weeping as they trade being punched in the face for being kicked in the crotch.  It was bad enough when one worked hard to summon something good… a real Monster, not a Stein short cut or the like, but now instead of the detestable Snatch and attack turn around against us it gets blown up to end the game as soon as it hits the field.