We reviewed this card not too terribly long ago, but many things have shifted in the format, so here’s an update of that review.

 

First, let me get this out of my way: I love this card.  Why?  Simple: because it looks like Predaking.  Who/what is a Predaking?  Travel with me back to the mid 1980’s.  One of the most popular toy lines is… Transformers.  One of the “gestalts”, that is group of Transformers who merge to form a larger Transformers is the Predacons.  Some of you are probably lost right now, because they re-used the name “Predacon” in a later Transformers series.  The original Predacons, consisted of red, black and yellow, blatantly robotic versions of a lion, an eagle, a wolf, a rhino, and a bull, and they merged to form Predaking.  Long story short I (and a few others) feel that the cartoon version (as was often the case, the cartoon versions of characters were better looking than the toy) looked a lot like this card.

 

So, what about actually dueling with the thing?

 

Light is good since it matches up to all the other V-Z bits.  You’d be surprised how useful a Luminous Spark can be: it screams “nuke me and ignore all the important Sets!” but if they leave it alone all the puny components get beefy.  Being a Machine is great: may be down to one Limiter Removal, but its there, and you can use Heavy Mech Support Platform to keep your huge, precious Fusion alive!  It has a huge ATK that is about as big as you see on anything playable… likewise with the DEF.  Plus it has two great effects.  First, when you attack something, you can change its battle position and at least in this case, that means a Set Monster is changed to Face-Up ATK position plus it won’t trigger flip effects.  The next effect is perhaps more breathtaking: once during your turn, you must remove 1 card from your opponent’s side of the field from play.  No discard required.  Note that both effects are Trigger Effects and can be chained to.

 

“Otaku, you fool, it’s a Fusion of two Fusions; do you know how hard that is to pull off?”

 

First, this is not really a “Fusion” in my book: the V-Z series basically demonstrate how the Fusion deck, irregardless of Fusions, was a brilliant idea for Yu-Gi-Oh (that should have been applied to Rituals as well but that’s a topic for another day).  When you’ve got two Monsters in play and are compatible, you remove them and bring in their Fusion.  About half way though the game, you activate Return from the Different Dimension.  Grab the pieces you need and then keep Fusing until you get to VWXYZ Dragon Catapult Cannon!

 

“But that will take too long!  And what if it gets killed after you bring it out?”

 

First, XYZ-Dragon Cannon is already a great Monster.  Sure it’s not as sick as it was when Night Assailant could give “infinite” destructive capabilities, but it’s still great.  Plus, you can always discard spare “pieces” then use a card like Overload Fusion to remove them from play (along with a Cyber Dragon) and get out Chimeratech Over Dragon… and if that fails, you still set up for that Return from the Different Dimension.  Chimeratech Over Dragon also sets up for getting all the pieces into your Graveyard to begin with, thanks to Future Fusion.  Also, this Fusion can actually be Special Summoned by revival cards if it was Fused via its effect!  And there’s still Heavy Mech Support Platform to make it hard to kill off in the first place.

 

Ratings

 

Traditional       : 1.5/5-Like my peers, I feel awkward rating a Fusion since at worst it takes up space… but here I am really rating how strong I feel a deck built around the V-Z series would be.  Anyway, way too fragile for this format.

 

Advanced        : 3.75/5-I feel a deck built around this could be pretty strong.