Friday

Shooting Star Dragon is the new trump card of Yusei, if you hadn't guessed, and is Synchro Summoned with Stardust Dragon and one Synchro Tuner monster, which is actually more difficult that the original monster and two Tuners of yesterday, in my opinion.

Anyway, Shooting Star Dragon has 3300 attack (at Level 10 (and still
Wind) to the 3500 of the Level 12 Red Nova Dragon) and 2500 defense.
Now, what can't Shooting Star Dragon do? Well let's have a look...you can activate each of these effects once per turn...

1) Reveal the top 5 cards of your Deck, then shuffle your Deck.
During this turn's Battle Phase, this card can attack once for each Tuner revealed in this way. Two would probably be average or a lot in five cards, but even one gives you an extra attack.

2) You can negate the activation of a Magic, Trap, or Effect of an effect monster that would destroy a card(s) on the Field, and destroy that card. That's fabulous, as at the very least, you force your opponent to waste something to play a second card to do the same thing.

3) Finally, like Red Nova Dragon, when your opponent declares an attack, you can remove Shooting Star Dragon from play to negate the attack. (Remember that they don't have to attack Shooting Star Dragon to activate this effect.) Then, you again can Special Summon this card during the End Phase.

Ratings:

Traditional: 3.85/5
Advanced: 5/5 If you get it on the Field, you're very likely to
win :)
Art: 5/5

Shooting Star Dragon

Here we have the counterpart to yesterdays Red Nova Dragon. Shooting Star Dragon is a level 10 WIND Dragon Synchro with 3300 ATK and 2500 DEF. It does need specific Tuners as well, requiring a Synchro Tuner and Stardust Dragon. Well, these stats are alright as far as a big boss monster goes. The non-generic Synchro stuff hurts, but there are plenty of ways to get out Stardust (Starlight Road) and Formula Synchron is not that hard to get out, so we can pretty much abuse that. Well, as always it is up to the effects to get things done.

The effects is 3 tiered, allowing you to activate each once per turn, even during your opponent's turn. The first one reveals the top 5 cards of your deck and then shuffles it. You get to attack with Shooting Star Dragon once for each Tuner revealed. This makes Shooting Star an Alpha Strike monster, as opposed to Red Nova which is a God monster that sits on the field and dominates. The second effect is that once per turn you can negate the effect of an opponent's acrd that destorys stuff on the field and negate it. Standard Stardust variant stuff there, but it's really useful. The third effect is the same as Red nova, allowing you to remove it from play to negate an attack.

As you can use these effects during either player's turn and the ease of getting out Stardust Dragon over Red Nova, I am going to have to say that Shooting Star is better, but not by much. Red Nova's indestructible option is far more attractive than a one per turn blanket negation. But the odds are you are going to be seeing more of Shooting Star Dragon in the weeks to come, as it is clearly a great monster and will win you the game most of the time it hits the field.

I am a little biased towards big scary dragons, but I have got to say, this is one of the first amazingly hard monsters to bring out that has actually been worth the effort in every single way.

Traditional-1/5
Advanced-5/5