Stats                : Tyrant Dragon is a Fire/8/2900/2500/Dragon/Effect.  This is an interesting combination, in how it affects this Monster’s use.  While there are a few prominent Fire Monsters, the ones that actually can act as the foundation for a Fire deck are of the Stall/Burn variety.  So while Tyrant Dragon misses out on Chaos bandwagon, this means that it has the opportunity to make another Attribute.

 

As a level 8 Monster, Tyrant Dragon is a bit tricky to get into play.  Since it pertains directly to Special Summoning this Monster, let me jump ahead a bit and address one of its three “effects”: when Special Summoned you must Tribute a Dragon-Type Monster from your side of the field.  As the quotes indicate, it isn’t considered an effect for pretty much any purpose of the game, but rather a cost.  So even if you use an obscure loophole to negate Tyrant Dragon’s effect while in the Graveyard, you still have to Tribute one of your Dragons to Special Summon it from the Graveyard.  This is not a built in form of recursion, either: you don’t Tribute a Dragon to activate this effect, but rather when you use another card to revive Tyrant Dragon you must have another Dragon available to use as Tribute to pay for the effect or it fizzles when it goes to resolve (you can still select Tyrant Dragon as a target: the Tribute wouldn’t be required until revival card goes to resolve).  So one way or another, it takes two cards to get Tyrant Dragon into play.  As such, it will need a great ATK/DEF and remaining effects.  Still, this is good, as it prevents it from being used in just any deck.

 

Thankfully, Tyrant Dragon is a Dragon-Type.  One grows annoyed with the seemingly misnamed cards.  Dragons are a reasonably well developed type: they don’t have the success of Warrior- and Zombie-Type Monsters, with their near obscene amount of support, and but aren’t too much worse off than Spellcasters.  Stamping Destruction alone makes Dragons a formidable Type to focus a deck around.  Sadly, other Fire/Dragons are rare: the Horus series (probably not good to wed with Tyrant Dragon), Masked Dragon (a great Monster for Dragon decks), Manga Ryu-Ran (even if it was good no since it’s a Toon), Yamato Dragon (A Level 7 Spirit and again a conflicting theme) and some vanilla-Fire Dragons with horrid stats.  So a Dragon deck but probably not a Fire or Fire/Dragon deck for Tyrant Dragon.  This is a blow to its potential, given the current state of the metagame.

 

2900 ATK is wonderful: just 100 less than the infamous Blue-Eyes White Dragon.  Of course, Blue-Eyes White Dragon is almost never played in a competitive deck, and it has extra support just for itself, so perhaps I should compare it to the most heavily played high level Monster I can think of: Dark Magician of Chaos.  Tyrant Dragon is bigger than it.  Tyrant Dragon also has a huge 2500 DEF, meaning shift it to DEF mode won’t make it especially vulnerable to death in battle.  Both are very good scores, even for a Level 8 Monster.

 

Effects              : Tyrant Dragon has three effects: two useful and one restrictive, the latter of which I already covered since it acts as a Summoning restriction.  The first allows a second attack provided the opponent has a Monster in play after your first, and you make your second attack with Tyrant Dragon immediately after the first.  When not running into a card like Spirit Reaper, this is a very good effect.  It is useful, given the ATK score of Tyrant Dragon, since you should cost your opponent two Monsters and hopefully a decent hunk of LP.

 

The second effect is a very useful protective aspect: not only do you negate the effect of a Trap that targets Tyrant Dragon, but you destroy that Trap as well.  This is useful since it combos with Call of the Haunted: use Call of the Haunted on Tyrant Dragon, offer another Dragon as Tribute as the effect requires, then Call of the Haunted is negated after Tyrant Dragon is already safely in play and destroyed by Tyrant Dragon’s own effect.  Still, Sakuretsu Armor targets and is still commonly played, making it safe to take advantage of the double attack effect.

 

Uses and

Combinations  : Tyrant Dragon is clearly meant to carry its own Dragon deck.  Probably some Luster Dragon and/or Spear Dragon to act as beatsticks, Masked Dragon, Twin-Headed Behemoth, and Element Dragon to maintain field presence, Tyrant Dragon itself, Stamping Destruction, a few other decent Dragon supporting Spells and Traps… and then staples going into any remaining slots.  Nothing brilliant, but it should be functional.

 

Ratings

 

Traditional       : 1/5 – As usual, this is the land of CCCC and FTK decks that really work well.

 

Advanced        : 3.5/5 – It has some chops, but I don’t think it can handle Insects, let alone the prominent decks we see here.

 

Summary

It’s a step in the right direction, but falters mostly because we could use some more, competent Fire and Dragon support (and especially Fire/Dragon Support).  As for me, I favor Wind/Dragon decks since we have three Level 4 Dragons with 1900 or better ATK scores, a single Tribute Dragon with a good destruction effect that matches the Monarchs, and still some crazy powerful big Dragons for raw power finishes.