Yes, another week where due to my own incompetence, I ran out of time and didn’t get a single CotD in, except of course this one, which is late, in an abridged format, and only the desire to rant succeeded in prioritizing in.

 

So, as for Reflect Bounder-Level 4 is good (no Tribute required), Light is good (good Attribute support, including Chaos), Machine is good (even with Limiter limited to one per deck, Machines still have some sweet support), 1700 ATK is good (about the lowest you get for a beatstick with a good effect), and 1000 DEF is bad (due to the effect, it just makes a bad thing worse).

 

At one time, this card was a staple: namely early Chaos where strong Light Monsters were lacking.  Now, this guy doesn’t see a lot of play.  Why is that exactly?  

 

I notice that everyone is “counting cards” anymore.  That is, once again everyone’s all about “+1 this” and “-1” that.  Well, card advantage does matter, of course: about the only thing you want low on cards is your deck when you need something specific.  Reflect Bounder gets ignored because so many people fail to assign values to many key components of the game.  For the longest time, fools focused exclusively on hand advantage.  Hand advantage is of course incredibly important, but unless your hand consists of the needed Exodia bits, stuff staying in your hand won’t win you the game.  Traps and Monsters need to get into play to do any good, and even many Spell cards, which I suspect is how this exaggeration came to be thought of as truth for a while.

 

So, a lot of people don’t like Reflect Bounder for the following reason: it blows itself up.  Of course, when it does this, unless specific counters are used, it just inflicted a minimum of 1700 points of damage, and reduced the damage of an opponent’s attack by up to 1700 points.  People tend to forget that, though, and just focus on the ways to get around or reduce the usefulness of the effect.  The most obvious example being Monster Removal effects, but those effects aren’t limitless, so that’s okay, and they apply to almost every Monster.  There are anti-Burn cards, but those aren’t often seen in main decks.

 

The last technique is allowing a small Monster to suicide into Reflect Bounder.  The main problem here comes from players treating the inherent strengths of other cards as the weakness of this one.  You ram a Scapegoat token into it.  Okay, that means your opponent was either stupid or in a bad position where they had to Summon Reflect Bounder knowing you had the tokens in play, or else the person with Scapegoat got kinda lucky.  After all, that’s a one-per-deck card.  It may give you four tokens, but you can’t Summon anything else the turn its Activated and those tokens don’t last too long without additional Support.  Yes, the “no Summons” clause matters: if you plan on using Scapegoat defensively or in most combos, it’s harder to get off.  You either must chain it to the end of your opponent’s turn or an attack.  That gives me time to destroy it when it can’t be activated.  Additionally, you’re giving up a Monster Token (not as valuable as a Monster, but still important) to destroy one of my Monsters (good) and inflict 1700 points of burn damage to yourself (that’s usually bad for you).  I can’t look at that, straight up, as any better than an even trade.  Of course, either player can add in cards to gain the edge, but that becomes an endless cycle of one-upmanship.  In other words, if I allow my opponent to have another Monster in play to capitalize upon just having taken out Reflect Bounder, it is only fair and logical to allow the player of Bounder to have another Monster, or a good set Trap, etc.

 

Then there is Spirit Reaper.  Allowed in threes and indestructible in battle, it is a natural enemy of Reflect Bounder.  But again, people forget that ramming it into Bounder means on the next turn, the opponent has a nice opening to hit your Life Points.  My turn I Summon Bounder and set an S/T.  Your turn you Summon Spirit Reaper and ram it into Bounder.  You got rid of my Monster, but so far it’s already cost you 1400 Life Points.  Now you set a Sakurestu Armor and End, at which point I activate my Dust Tornado.  Now I just need a Monster to capitalize on Spirit Reaper.  More over, in this particular example, it opens up a combination of Cyber Dragon and a friend to attack “through” Spirit Reaper.

 

Hold it, is that fair?  Didn’t I just say it was pointless to add cards to an example?  You’ll notice I am speaking terms of “fresh” actions.  I also evened up the amount being used on each side.  It is still speculation, but if you can champion Spirit Reaper for suiciding into Bounder, you need to remember what garbage can happen to it in response.  If we tweak the example, no Dust Tornado set and Sakuretsu remains, then on my turn I Summon and attack and my Monster dies… well that’s just as much luck as me having the needed Spell/Trap removal, or you having a Monster with Spirit Reaper to capitalize on the open field.  In the end, much like the Scapegoat example, you really only come out at best even with Spirit Reaper countering Reflect Bounder without adding cards to the pile.

 

Now, the most devastating counter to Reflect Bounder would be the assorted Monsters with searching abilities triggered by their deaths.  That’s really more to their advantages than Bounders inadequacies, just like those Monsters are much, much worse in performance against Dark Ruler Ha Des.  That’s a little more specific a counter than what we’ve been going through, so it doesn’t exactly balance out, and I’ve taken that into account.

 

Then comes playing style: I personally try to include at least one burn card in a deck.  Needless to say, late game Reflect Bounder becomes incredible cause the opponent may not be able to spare 1700 Life Points, or doing so makes all those counter-counters even more problematic.  Now, I don’t usually classify Reflect Bounder as my “burn card”, because I can’t intentionally trigger his effect in most decks.  This means my opponent usually has to contend with a Magic Cylinder or a Ceasefire or the like, which means they can never be sure how many Life Points they can afford to lose.

 

So getting back to the actual review of the card, Reflect Bounder is a fairly solid beatstick with a nice burn effect.  In order to avoid the burn, the opponent has to use up some of their Monster Removal options.  With the right cards and clever play, an opponent can minimize the loss they take from suiciding a smaller Monster into Reflect Bounder which (outside of tokens or things like Spirit Reaper) means you break even on Monsters but they lose out on 1700 Life points.  That sounds worth a card to me.  Of course, the abundant removal in Traditional means that Reflect Bounder scores as abysmally as most cards.  In Advanced, though, it’s nice for Burn, Light, Chaos, and Machine decks: nice, but not a staple.  Outside of those decks, it’s a solid choice, but there are probably a lot better cards to run instead of it.

 

Ratings

 

Traditional: 1.25/5 – A composite score of course as it’s a little better than this in Light, Machine, and burn decks.  No bonus due to Chaos-compatibility, since it tends to have the most removal options.

 

Advanced: 3.25/5 – Again, a composite score.  This is a solid card that will usually be helpful to any deck, but not necessarily more helpful than the next best option.  In general Burn, Chaos, Light, and Machine decks it’s much more useful, though still not a staple except perhaps in a hybrid of two or more of the listed decks.

 

Limited: 4/5-A very nice pull for Limited.  It is less likely your opponent can afford to run a small Monster into it, let alone do so and come out ahead in the deal.  Neither is Monster removal as readily available.  Perhaps most important of all… 1700 ATK is just much stronger in this format.