Stats                : Magical Blast is a Normal Spell.  Normally, I’d comment that this would be better off as something else, but one of its key uses does indeed depend upon it being a Normal Spell.

 

Effect(s)            : Magical Blast has two effects.  Its “main” effect is that it does 200 points of damage for each Spellcaster on your side of the field when it’s activated.  That’s 1000 points at most.  Not too stellar a maximum, especially when you consider you can “safely” use an old-fashioned Ookazi for a “safe” 800.  The second effect of Magical Blast is that you may forgo your normal draw during your Draw Phase in order to reclaim this card from your Graveyard.  The wording leads me to believe that this effect will constantly “retrigger”; that is if you don’t reclaim it immediately, you can do so during a later Draw Phase.  The burn effect is lackluster, but the reclamation effect is actually quite good: potent, but not broken.

 

Uses and

Combinations  : This card seemed intended for a Spellcaster/Burn deck.  Specifically, Rapid Fire Magician and Dark Eradicator Warlock possess effects that would increase the burn damage yield.  So the ridiculous, never-gonna-happen-combo involving them is three copies of Dark Eradicator Warlock with two copies of Rapid-Fire Magician and three copies of Dark Room of Nightmare.  All that together means one use of this card yields 10200 points of damage!

 

…

 

What, I didn’t say it was going to happen.  In fact, I said it wasn’t going to.  It might not be bad to have one copy in a burner deck that contains a few good Spellcasters; especially if you have Dark Room of Nightmare and Rapid-Fire Magician in the deck (using those two is actually feasible).  If you already have those in play, while the damage (from the Spell alone) would be paltry, you could guarantee that you got a decent bit of damage each turn if you wanted it (if not, just take your normal draw).

 

Now, there is another use for this card.  You see, as I keep emphasizing, the self-recursion aspect is nice.  Specifically, for decks involving re-usable effects that require a Spell discard.  What cards are those? 

 

1)       Different Dimension Master – Essentially, you guarantee you “draw” a Monster that can be Special Summoned that turn.

2)       Chiron the Mage – Basically guarantee you topdeck a Normal Spell version of Mystical Space Typhoon.

3)       Reshef the Dark Being – Whenever you need it, topdeck a Change of Heart.

 

Yes, all these combos require Monsters, and most will need a deck built around them.  They do generate significant advantage.  You give up a draw (-1) but in each of these examples, it’s for a (+1), possibly better, and that penalty from the draw might actually be good since the idea is you guarantee you “top-decked” the perfect card.  The least stable, Reshef of Destruction can generate fantastic short term advantage: lose your draw, swipe their Monster (their goes their Defense) and possibly get a good effect or beatstick Monster, Tribute Fodder, etc.

 

Ratings

 

Traditional       : 1/5-The combos are too delicate and often there are cards that can actually grant the same (or a better) effect inexpensively.

 

Advanced        : 3.75/5-This is for decks using Rapid-Fire Magician, Different Dimension Master, Chiron the Mage, or Reshef the Dark Being, and only for one, maybe two copies!  Sorry for all the underlining, but with such a pigeonholed score, it was necessary to draw attention.  This card is worthless outside of Spellcaster-oriented decks, and only marginally useful inside ones that don’t use cards listed above.

 

Limited            : N/A – It’d actually be good here, if it was legal: not too powerful, but reusable, and in a long, drawn out duel, a good way to avoid decking out.

 

Summary

I wonder if it was the secondary aspect of the card that was intended to impress or not.  The burn effect is underpowered, though is nicely deck specific: when I first saw a spoiler, I misread it and thought it provided burn based on the number of Spellcasters in the Graveyard (which would have been much better).  As is, we have a wonderful trick for two three specialty decks, and one that might be good for more general decks (Chiron the Mage isn’t too hard to work into most decks).