Stats                : Premature Burial is an Equip Spell.  Normally this is a kiss of death for a card, but Premature Burial is good despite being an Equip.  Largely, this is due to the potency of the effect, though as we will later see, being an Equip does have a few advantages for a card like this.  Mostly, though it means its great effect can be prevented by S/T removal used in response to Premature Burial being activated, and one later still is a problem.

 

Effect(s)            : Pay 800 LP to Special Summon a Monster from your Graveyard to the field and then equip it with Premature Burial.  Of, and if Premature Burial is destroyed, then so is the equipped Monster.  Essentially, this turns a Spell into a Monster, and that tends to be a very potent ability.

 

Uses and

Combinations  : As stated, Premature Burial tends to be a “variable Monster”: choose the best thing you have in your Graveyard and revive it!   Early game that can (but won’t always) be a small pool to choose from, but as the game progresses, Premature Burial just becomes better and better (unless one of you removes Monsters from your Graveyard).  Vulnerability to S/T removal can seem like a downside for a Monster… until you realize that it isn’t really a Monster, but a Spell.  For example: you Premature Burial a Cyber Dragon because if it can kill your opponent’s Set Monster, your remaining Monsters can go for the win, and end up crashing into Spirit Reaper.  Your opponent when uses something other than S/T removal to get rid of Cyber Dragon: you probably came out ahead.  Monsters are harder to kill (outside of battle) than S/Ts, so if they wasted Monster removal, especially something big (Torrential Tribute or Mirror Force or Zaborg since he requires a Tribute), that ends up being a waste for them, doesn’t it?  If they do use an S/T destroying card, usually it’s a one-and-done card, like Mystical Space Typhoon and hey, better Premature Burial than Mirror Force.

 

Then there are a handful of cards particularly useful to combo with Premature Burial, the most useful being Giant Trunade: aside from both cards normal benefits, since you didn’t actually destroy Premature Burial, the Monster it was attached to survives no problem and you can drop Premature Burial again.  Any card capable of bouncing a Spell can abuse this and I believe cards that “send” a Spell to the Graveyard can as well, but the only other really useful one is Abyss Solder, and then only in Water decks (Premature Burial Abyss Soldier, bounce Premature Burial and discard a fatty, revive fatty).

 

Ratings

 

Traditional       : 3.5/5 – Not a bad card, but we have much more removal and Monster Reborn for our reviving needs.

 

Advanced        : 4/5 – It can be somewhat finicky and very late game, when the picks may be the best from your deck and you also might not have the LP.  800 isn’t a lot when you start with 8000, but once you dip below 2000, you have to be careful.  Oh, and Ring of Destruction can be very, very annoying.  Run this card unless it dramatically clashes with your deck (Macrocosmos decks, for example).

 

Summary

Premature Burial is probably tied with Call of the Haunted as the second best Monster revival in the game.  While it lacks the flexibility of Call of the Haunted, it can be used immediately and thanks to Exiled Force being at two, that may become very important soon indeed.  Personally, I feel Premature Burial is just on the “broken” side of things: look at Autonomous Action Unit: a fine, balanced card.  Doesn’t see much play because it relies on what your opponent’s plays, and has a heftier LP cost (though still largely manageable).  For a card that revives something from your own Graveyard, the contents of which you can usually control fairly well, you’d think it’d cost more than Autonomous Action Unit.  Virtually anything from your Graveyard can often swing the game in your favor, from the lowly beatstick to a well timed effect Monster.