Today we look at
Djinn
Cursenchanter of Rituals.
The
Djinn family of monsters is the
latest attempt at making Ritual
monsters playable, since Konami
still can’t accept the obvious (that
they should have always been part of
the Extra Deck like their cousins,
Fusions and Synchro Monsters).
Does the latest help?
Djinn Cursenchanter of Rituals
is at least a good effort.
He is Dark (always a great
Attribute), Level 4 (easy to drop
into play), Fiend (decent support
exists), and a respectable 1700 ATK
means he can act as a decent
beatstick.
The 1000 DEF is a bit
disappointed, but we can look past
that, and onto the effects!
First “When you Ritual Summon
a Ritual Monster, you can remove
from play this card from your
Graveyard as 1 of the monsters
required for the Ritual Summon.”
Clunky wording but a solid
effect: as a Level 4 this card could
fill the entire level needs for the
few tiny rituals, and at least half
the level requirements for anything
else.
You could then bring it back
to the field with
Return from the Different Dimension
or
Escape from the Dark Dimension
or back to the Graveyard with
Burial from the Different Dimension,
showing another struggling deck-type
hurt by the support for problem
cards taking the hit… instead of the
problem cards.
Oh, wait, there’s more to the card?
“While the monster Ritual
Summoned using this card is face-up
on the field, Synchro Monsters’
effects are negated.”
Oh, now this is delicious.
Synchro Monsters basically
replaced Fusion and Ritual monsters,
or rather surpassed them.
The same niche was filled…
only instead of being a tiny segment
of the decks, now almost every deck
wants to have access to the
Swiss-Army knife that is an Extra
Deck full of Synchro Monsters.
Djinn Cursenchanter of Rituals
takes revenge for Rituals by turning
Synchro monsters into vanilla
beatsticks.
Unlike
Skill Drain, there is no clause
restricting this to on the field, so
Colossal Fighter and
Stardust Dragon aren’t able to
bypass it like they would say
Skill Drain.
Glancing at the rulings, I see that
this effect should stack with other
Djinn monsters.
The ability to be removed
from the Graveyard can be combined
with other
Djinn in the Graveyard, or
monsters in hand or on the field.
If the Ritual benefiting from
the effect of
Djinn Cursenchanter of Rituals
is flipped facedown, it will lose
the effect it got from
Djinn Cursenchanter of Rituals
but it can’t be canceled out by
Skill Drain since the source of
the effect is the
Djinn used for the Ritual Cost
and not the actual Ritual monster in
play.
I’ll be honest, it can get a
bit confusing but as a whole it’s
pretty nice.
It took a cheesy OTK deck to make
people take Rituals seriously
because they are expensive in terms
of card investment: specific Spell
only good for Special Summoning them
and then however many levels worth
of monsters you needed.
Unless it had some built in
protection, the Ritual monster was
probably as good as dead on your
opponent’s turn, so it had to at
least break even on your own.
The
Djinn monsters can either be
sent directly to the Graveyard with
cards like
Armageddon Knight or be Normal
Summoned and used to lure out
monster removal during the opening
turns, but once they are in the
Graveyard, they take the sting out
of paying for Ritual Monsters, and
layer on additional effects as a
sweet bonus.
At the very least, it allows
what we know to work:
Demise, King of Armageddon can
finally, safely nuke
Stardust Dragon.
This is a must in Ritual
decks from now on.
Since it’s a must for its deck, I
will score it based on my estimate
of Ritual Decks performance
potential (otherwise it’d be a
meaningless 5/5).
Ratings
Traditional:
3/5 – They do have a OTK, after all.
Advanced:
3.75/5 – The OTK is gone, but you
might have a real deck on your
hands!
