Scrap Chimera is our card for Wednesday and it should really liven up the often boring middle of the week.  This is a Level 4 monster and that makes it a nice, painless drop.  It is an Earth attributed monster, like its kin: while not the greatest attribute in terms of powerful support, it has some solid options.  Being a Beast has some advantages, and I’ll touch a little more on that later.  1700 ATK makes it an adequate beatstick though 500 DEF will leave it vulnerable to position shifting cards.

 

This is a very solid foundation that could carry a minor effect.  It didn’t get a minor effect.  Once you strip away the restrictive clauses, the effect is actually fairly simple: when this card is Normal Summoned, select a Scrap Tuner from your Graveyard and Special Summon it.  Too keep this from being utterly broken, Scarp Chimera itself can only be used as Synchro Material for a Scrap Synchro monster and the other Synchro Material Monsters also have to be Scrap monsters.  If you’re wondering, the one ruling I saw for this card states that this is one of those “non-effect” text clauses, meaning something like Skill Drain won’t shut it off.  So no instant general Level 5-9 Synchro monsters, but you can still bust out the two Scrap Synchro monsters we have and the one we should get soon pretty easily.  After all, there is a Level 3 Scrap Tuner (Scrap Goblin), a Level 4 Scrap Tuner (Scrap Beast) and upcoming Level 5 Scrap Tuner, perfectly corresponding to the Level requirements for Scrap Archfiend, Scrap Dragon, and Scrap Twin Dragon.  With Scrap decks being even more adept at sending monsters to the Graveyard and recycling/reviving them than the average deck type/attribute, Scrap Chimera becomes the go-to card of the deck as long as you have a Tuner waiting to be revived.

 

I feel it important to also note that we are seeing the groundwork for a potential “sub-archetype”.  Scrap Chimera and the appropriately named Scrap Beast are both Beast-type monsters.  Scrap Goblin is a Beast-Warrior, a type whose support overlaps with Beast monsters.  Future releases will add another closely related monster type, the Winged-Beast, in the form of Scrap Searcher.  I haven’t been able to test this, but one could probably cobble a Scrap Beast/Beast-Warrior/Winged Beast already.  A few more cards to flesh it out and it could be a serious deck.  As is, I still believe at least some Beast decks should be splashing in Scrap Chimera and Scrap Beast.  Scrapyard will let you get Scrap Beast out and getting it from hand or field to Graveyard is easy.  After that, barring a piece being removed from play, each Scrap Chimera can become a Scrap Dragon.  The secondary pieces can still access Beast Type support, as well.  This leads to a seeming contradictory score from me.  I rated Scrapstorm so high largely due to this card and how it combos with the Scrap Tuner monsters, yet I am scoring it seemingly lower.  That is because this card is a 5/5 for Scrap decks, but versatile enough to be worth running in hybrid decks, even if you’re really just running a few of this and one or two Scrap Tuners for it to revive.  So below is its impressive, more general score.  It isn’t Elemental Hero Stratos: it is more vital to its theme and less flexible outside of it.  It is still impressive.

 

Due of the hit and miss nature of Yu-Gi-Oh names, this is at least as appropriate as rating the artwork.  This isn’t about the technical merits of a card’s name.  Things like being part of a theme are part of the card’s actual score.  I am so tired of good cards getting bad names, bad cards getting good names, and random cards getting random names that I must draw attention to it.  In this case, I am complimenting Konami on a good name choice.  It does deviate slightly from the classical appearance of a chimera; they weren’t winged and should have a goats head in the middle of their spine.  Seems like an improvement to me.

 

 

Ratings (In Scrap utilizing decks)

 

Traditional: 2/5 

Advanced: 4.5/5 

Art: 4/5 

Name: 4/5

 

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. ;)