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We end this week with
Ally of
Justice Cyclone Creator.
It is a Level 3 Dark/Machine monster, a
fairly potent combination and one pretty commonly
seen on the
Ally of Justice monsters.
Unlike many of its kin, this monster is a
Tuner, giving it some extra purpose in the deck.
It has 1400 ATK and 1200 DEF, which aren’t
too bad given that it is just a Level 3 Tuner and
those stats keep it low enough for cards like
Sangan and
Mystic Tomato
to fetch it while still being big enough your
opponent can’t just shrug it off.
It does have an effect, and it’s a fairly
solid one: once per turn you may discard a card from
your hand to bounce a number of Spell/Traps equal to
the number of face-up Tuner monsters you control.
Thankfully it counts itself, so you should
always be able to bounce at least one card.
Let’s bust out some rulings.
Since it doesn’t say otherwise, I assume the
discarding is a cost and not part of the effect,
like it is with almost all cards that require a
discard.
The effect doesn’t target: select and return all
cards being bounced at the effect’s resolution.
You can use this to your advantage as your
opponent has to anticipate what you’re targeting;
sometimes that will mean chaining a set S/T because
it is better to activate it in less than optimal
situations than to risk it going to the hand and
being inaccessible for the rest of the turn.
A good example would be
Torrential
Tribute: when you normal Summon
Ally of
Justice Cyclone Creator you’ll have priority to
activate the effect, same as always.
If your opponent has more than one S/T in
play and you can only bounce one, do they blow up
this single mechanical bird or do they wait and risk
you bouncing it before you swarm the field?
Now I am not seeing any other rulings in English,
but I am seeing one more listed for the OCG: I
thought they should be the same?
In case they are, this one is pretty
important: the card requires you bounce as many S/Ts
as there are Tuners.
The wording is “equal to the number of
Tuners” so if there are less S/Ts than Tuners the
effect fizzles and nothing is returned to hand.
That brings us to the other aspect of the card: how
many Tuners do you really want in play and how many
should you really expect?
Unless you use a card like
Variety Comes
Out I wouldn’t expect to have more than one or
two Tuners in play, nor would I really want much
more. As
long as you have one non-Tuner monster and the
monster Levels are extraordinarily low you could
theoretically Tune and re-Tune until you got one
really good monster.
If the other monsters are all low, it just
works out:
Ally of Justice Cyclone Creator is Level 3 and
realistically, you’ll probably be aiming for a Level
7 or 8 “end” monster (as high Level monsters often
have summoning restrictions that get in the way of
this) and that means four or five Levels spread
amongst another four cards.
Maybe you have other ways of using the
Tuners, but if not most aren’t going to be the kind
of monsters that will survive your opponent’s next
turn.
One should also take into account the other
Ally of
Justice Tuners.
There are technically two:
Ally Mind
and Ally of Justice Cycle Reader.
The former is a vanilla Level 5 with
forgettable stats who doesn’t even have the full
Ally of
Justice name, costing it access to support
cards.
The latter is a Duel Terminal card.
There is also
Flamvell
Magician, who gets an ATK boost from
Ally of
Justice monsters, who honestly has less going
against him than
Ally
Mind.
All in all, none are especially compelling.
So if you want a massive amount of bounce from the
card, you’ll have to add this into a general Synchro
Summon deck.
The thing is, you don’t need massive bounce:
strategic use should do you just as much if not more
good.
You can keep a
Royal Oppression on the field until you need to
pull off your own Synchro Summon, re-Set it and
activate it during your opponent’s Stand-By Phase to
maintain the denial.
You can recycle
Swords of Revealing Light turn after turn to protect the often small
Ally of
Justice monsters in battle.
There are often useful cards to pitch from
your hand, like
Dandylion
to generate Tokens.
All these combined with messing up your
opponent’s S/T set-up, even if it is by a single
card that is merely being sent back to the hand;
make this a fairly handy card in the right decks.
Ratings
Traditional:
3/5 – Going out on a limb here: this is a Dark
Machine that can fill your Graveyard… making it
Chaos and
Chimeratech compliant.
The bounce just becomes the icing on the cake.
Advanced:
2.5/5 – Remember, this is a general rating, not deck
specific: when used in its theme it is much more
useful.
Art:
3.75/5 – I really like robots, and due to an obscure
Marvel Comics character and Transformers, I also am
fond of robotic birds.
Wish the Yu-Gi-Oh system was set up to
recognize them as a sub-group.
Name:
3/5 – A bit of a mouthful, but unavoidable given its
family.
I am still selling my former collectables 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. Just a reminder, Pojo is in no way
responsible for any transactions and was merely kind
enough to let me mention the auctions here. ;)
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