Thunder Unicorn.

 

I ragged on the art and name yesterday, but this one lacks most of the egregious exaggeration of Lightning Tricorn.  It’s a unicorn with a striking blue body.  The mane, tail, and lightning bolt inspired pattern on its coat are a nice golden yellow.  In fact, the only thing I don’t like is the cartoon-y lightning bolt it has for a horn.  While at least it has effects to make it look almost like it is shining and energy… yeah a real horn crackling with electricity or even just a nice, less comical looking “energy horn” would have been great and really fit in with Yu-Gi-Oh’s “high fantasy” aesthetic.

 

Light may be the best type right now since you have to face an opponent with a clear backfield and hand to “safely” attack.  Bing a Level 5 Synchro is… okay, I guess.  It isn’t the most crowded slot but there is still a great card to run in it (Ally of Justice – Catastor).  Being a Beast-Type isn’t great, but they have some slick tricks so it is still good.  The 2200 ATK is disappointing.  Ignoring power creep, ignoring Synchro versus “Normal Summon”, you expect a Level 5 to have a little more ATK.  Like 2400.  The 1800 DEF is passable.  A good beatstick combined with position change will take it down, but at least it is safe from lesser monsters, like tutors or spent effect monsters lingering on the field.  I’ll also point out that it requires a Beast-Type Tuner.  There are plenty you can run, but without Rescue Cat I don’t know how many you should run.  Yesterday’s CotD combos with this card and doesn’t specify Tuner but does specify other material… and since they all combo together, you might as well treat them as if they both required Beast Tuners and Beast non-Tuner monsters.  Why?  Hey, I am down with fat decks but when I tried most people didn’t like the idea of “mock stacks”.  If you want a trim deck you only have so much room so you’ll want to run as many Beast and Beast Tuners as you can, even to the point of excluding non-Beast Types unless absolutely necessary.

 

The effect is where this card falls flat.  It isn’t a bad effect, but it isn’t good for what you go through to get it.  Once per turn, during your Main Phase, you can select 1 face-up monster your opponent controls and drop it’s ATK by 500 points for each monster you control.  Only Thunder Unicorn gets to attack this turn.  Even if you drop new monsters afterwards, only Thunder Unicorn may attack.  So unless your deck is some sort of weenie and/or token swarm that couldn’t shouldn’t attack anyway, you’re probably losing out.  Sure it is nice you can blow up a Spirit Reaper (this effect targets, so Reaper self-destructs) or take down something really big… but it is Light, remember?  Having an effect is probably better than not having an effect (since I don’t think the rest of this family of cards works well with Normal support), but this won’t often matter.  Looks like it can use the effect when it is the only monster in play, and that is probably when it works best: just drop the opposing monster’s ATK by 500.  Note it does nothing to DEF, another minor drawback that matters when the effect ultimately does so little.

 

You run this because you’re running Lightning Tricorn, and you run Lightning Tricorn because you’re running Voltic Bicorn.  Even then, I don’t know how many of this I would run.  If the deck works without it, skip it!  With what I am reading, though, you’ll probably need it just to keep Lightning Tricorn from whiffing.  I am not certain a Voltic Bicorn deck needs Lightning Tricorn, though.

 

Ratings

 

Traditional: 1/5

 

Advanced: 1.5/5

 

I am still selling quite a bit of my stuff on eBay.  I’ve had a lot of hobbies over the years, so at various times I’ll have comic books, manga, action figures, and video games on the auction block.  You can take a look at what’s up for bids here.  I usually add new stuff on Wednesdays and Saturdays.  Just a reminder, Pojo is in no way responsible for this and was merely kind enough to let me mention the auctions here. ;)