Ancient Warriors – Masterful Sun Mou – Yu-Gi-Oh! Review

Crunch$G

Time to look at some Ancient Warriors, which is kind of like a modernized version of Fire Fists. We start with one of the more important Level 4s, Ancient Warriors – Masterful Sun Mou.

Sun Mou is a Level 4 WATER Beast-Warrior with 1800 ATK and 1500 DEF. Good stats on Level 4, Beast-Warrior means Tenki, but WATER is odd even if I get the Attributes separating the tribes. While you control another Ancient Warriors monster, your opponent cannot target this card for attacks. This can be pretty good if your other Ancient Warriors monsters are stronger than this, which is saying something since 1800 is a little respectable for a Normal Summon. We got several monsters with 2000+ ATK, which get harder to get over. Secondly, this card has two hard once per turn effects. The first lets you send a card from your hand or field to the graveyard to search for any Ancient Warriors monster. This can be good to get rid of some bricks while searching more monsters, especially if you got more Normal Summons or the monster can be Special Summoned. It synergizes with the Ancient Warriors Spells and it helps get rid of a useless Tenki or a dead hand trap. The second effect if another Ancient Warriors monster activates its effect (bar Damage Step), you can target a monster the opponent controls and return it to the hand. Another solid effect, this one for removal. Bouncing big monsters to the hand makes the opponent waste resources to get it back out, same goes for an Extra Deck Monster. You got ways to trigger your Ancient Warriors effects on your turn and the opponent’s turn, so it shouldn’t be hard to make use of this. Sun Mou is a fairly good card with 3 good effects, 2 of which are great. It’s a 3-of in Ancient Warriors easy.

Advanced Rating: 4.25/5

Art: 4.5/5 Love how each one stands out and resembles their Attribute.

Solember
YouTube

Ancient Warriors – Masterful Sun Mou

https://youtu.be/UzpBGJcPZEQ

   Ancient Warriors – Masterful Sun Mou encapsulates the style of the Ancient Warriors archetype well. It has a search effect with a card cost, and it has an effect that activates when another Ancient Warriors Monster activates its effect. In addition, it can’t be targeted for attack while you control another Ancient Warriors Monster.

   1800 is a respectable attack for a level 4 Monster, so it isn’t a huge liability to just Normal Summon this card to get your play going. A lot of this card’s strength lies in the consistency and power of the archetype as a whole, and it definitely contributes by allowing you to search for whichever Monster you need next. It does present the ever present risk of being stopped by Ash Blossom, but that isn’t going to cripple the deck. I found that while playing this deck, I never really got slapped by Ash Blossom because even sending a card to the GY for cost can be beneficial.

   Returning the opponent’s Monster to the hand when an Ancient Warrior activates their effect was underwhelming for me at first, but I started to use it more and more aggressively as I played the deck. While the new support was delayed by Konami for good reason, I had to settle for Liu Xuan pairing well with this card both in creating repetetive locks and for activating this effect during my opponent’s turn. There are other cards coming out that make this effect streamlined, but I will stick to the TCG for now.

   The card has a HOPT on its ignition and trigger effects, which it definitely needs. I don’t think I need to elaborate the importance of a restriction like this to prevent loops.

   The design is well done. I like the watercolors and the absence of the glowing border. The card is based on Sun Quan (Zhongmou) from the Sangua Shidai (Sānguó shídài) or the Three Kingdoms Era. He was the founding ruler of Eastern Wu. I could spend all day writing about the lore behind that name, but I encourage you to research this if you are interested in war or Chinese history.

Versatility – 3
– This card can work with a few builds outside of its own archetype due to some powerful Beast Warrior generic support, but mostly it is locked into dedicated Ancient Warrior decks.
Rogue Plays – 3
– This is one of those scores I had to struggle with. When the delayed support comes out in the TCG, this will be a 5, but for now it is limited in options.
Art – 5
– This card is beautiful.
Balance – 5
– HOPT and a tame continuous effect make this card fair and balanced.
Uniqueness – 4
– You can find these effects elsewhere, but I do appreciate how they are utilized together.

I give this card a 4/5. Just a note, I know people question the Beast-Warrior typing of this archetype. The armor of each member is designed after a different animal, and Sun Mou’s seems to be stylized after a turtle.