Cybernetic Magician is our card to review for this Thanksgiving, and we are thankful for it.  While I don’t think it’s an especially good card, neither is it especially bad.  Besides, compared to the amount of broken/near broken cards, we probably should be thankful for these kinds of monsters.

 

Cyber Magician is a Level 6 Light Spellcaster/Effect, which would have been quite handy if any real Chaos monsters were still legal.  As is, it is still big enough that it can match Monarch monsters in Battle.  What he lacks is their “instant advantage” effect.  Yes, I say advantage.  It’s already been shown that most players are competent enough to find something advantageous to Tribute for their Monarch Monsters.  Think about it: you can Brain Control something of theirs, trading a Spell for a Monster.  You can run something useful for defense and tribute fodder (like Treeborn Frog and Twin-Headed Behemoth) and then there are assorted “big” monsters that have drawbacks and either you don’t want to attack too many times with them (Zombyra) or they only survived the last turn because you used Sakuretsu Armor to keep them from being run over on your turn (Goblin Attack Force style big beatsticks).  You can also protect a spent effect Monster and then use it too.  In those latter cases, you’re may still be losing a Monster, but its value at that point is almost solely as Tribute fodder, so its okay.  And of course, you then get those effects: you gave up a Monster of your choice on your turn when you can still take actions if something goes wrong to protect yourself (e.g. setting S/Ts) while you destroy an opponent’s Monster of your choice that they didn’t want dead (and is usually worth more than what you used as Tribute).  Two Spell/Traps are worth more than a really weak Monster, again due in part to when they are being destroyed.  Well all know how important card in hand are.

 

Whew, okay, so I was just using that mini-rant there to set up what, in my opinion, is a large reason why Cybernetic Magician doesn’t score so hot.  Its actual effect is pretty cool: you discard a card from hand (there are ways to minimize the pain of that) and you can either make something small into a beefy 2000 ATK Monster or make something really beefy into only a 2000 ATK Monster, small enough for Cybernetic Magician to run over.  This brings us to the second reason Cybernetic Magician doesn’t do so well: Cyber Dragon.  Your Cyber Dragon would be too high to benefit from the effect; theirs would be so low that shrinking it by 100 ATK would be pointless.  Still, at least for once this is a card Cyber Dragon benefits a little more than others (Tribute fodder if need be, promotes the “Cyber” theme).  Oh, and as a side note, the effect can be used to blow up sensitive monsters like Spirit Reaper.

 

In its own deck, you could make sure almost every discard is helpful: the timing may be wrong for Dark World Monsters, but you can discard things like Skull-Mark Ladybug.  1000 LP gain may not be much, but it’s the combination of effects that matter: it’s an attack boost/drop for something as well as LP gain.  And of course, Skull-Mark Ladybug isn’t totally worthless on its own: you can Set it to soak an attack and still get the LP gain, which is just shy of actually being useful.

 

…

 

Okay, so there isn’t much more than that: I suppose you have standard dump and revive tricks and maybe a Fusion set up or two.  Still, it’s Yu-Gi-Oh, and who knows what future Sets will bring (I had to have a reason for leaving this in: it’s a CotD after all and I would have just deleted it if it were 100% pointless).

 

So I guess the best place to use this would be in that weird Cyber themed deck we’ve been loosely discussing.  I don’t see a once-per-turn limit on the effect, so as long as there are Monsters who aren’t at 2000 ATK, you can use it to eliminate cards from hand to trigger the effects of the other Monsters we’ve discussed this week.  You can do crazy finishers like, when your opponent has nothing problematic in play, activate a Set Scapegoat in their End Phase, dump your hand to make the Sheep Tokens 2000 ATK beatsticks, and push for the win that very turn.  Indeed, this could lead to useful burn tactics as well if you can work in a Catapult Turtle, pushing for a big burn finish (of course, that means you can’t have four Sheep Tokens, so you can’t use the exact same combo).  Either of those will require a big hand to basically waste, though, and as such really are just for “the big finish”.  Ring of Destruction on some small Monster or Token you pumped up, though, is perfectly legitimate.  There is also the appeal of turning things like Sheep Tokens into disposable 2000 ATK beatsticks, ones you want destroyed by the end of the turn.  Remember how I pointed out you might as well include cards with Cyber Archfiend that can destroy it for your own gain before its effect does itself in?  Well, if you have something like Mystik Wok at the ready, if your opponent doesn’t use Sakuretsu Armor to blow up the attacking Token, you can eat it yourself for some LP gain.  Cybernetic Cyclopean can use this for an ATK boost if its own effect isn’t triggering, and of course if you empty your hand, then its effect will Trigger.  I don’t know if resolution will allow it to go 1400 ATK=> 2000 ATK +1000 ATK = 3000 ATK or if it will be 1400 ATK + 1000 ATK = 2400 ATK => 2000 ATK, but either way its bigger than 1400 ATK after all that, and by your opponent’s turn, its at 2400 ATK.

 

So, yeah, this card has potential, though I doubt it can meet it with our current card pool, really needing some more support and/or some of the current top dogs to go away.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Ratings

 

Traditional: 1/5

 

Advanced: 2.75/5