Brain Control – Yu-Gi-Oh! COTD – Throwback Thursday (2005)

King of
Lullaby

Hello Pojo Fans,

Brain Control has fallen off since the days when it saw tremendous play, and this is all due to its errata.

No longer able to target monsters that cannot be Normal Summoned/Set, the range of monsters this card can target shrinks. There’s still plenty of monsters that can be controlled, but with the exclusion of the Extra Deck and monsters like BLS, Brain Control fell off the cliff and never hit bottom. It could still be a good card too. Decks leave monsters on the field that aren’t part of the Extra Deck that can be controlled and used as materials for your own Extra Deck summons, players just don’t think this way or want to run the chance of having Brain Control in their hand and facing down a one-monster field that can’t be stolen by your Brain Control.

If the change had been “unable to attack with that monster” this card would still be used in the meta.

Advanced-2.5/5     Art-3/5

Until Next Time
KingofLullaby

WarlockBlitz

Oh Brain Control. I wish we could throw you back to before the errata. Brain Control is a Normal Spell Card that costs 800 Life Points to target an opponent’s face-up monster that could be Normal Summoned or Set for a good old fashioned side switch until the End Phase. Since you can’t target Extra Deck Monsters or a bunch of boss monsters, this card becomes mostly useless. You can run all three and use them in the same turn if you’re very luck. Otherwise, side deck city if at all.

Score: 2/5     Art:4/5

Crunch$G

Oh how erratas can be sad, this is a case of a card who will have a major decrease in play due to the errata compared to if it came back without it, Brain Control.

Before the errata, you could use Brain Control to pay 800 LP to take any face-up monster your opponent has until the End Phase. Well most of that remains with the errataed form, only now you must take a card that can be Normal Summoned or Set. Most to all decks play cards that they Normal Summon or Set, but most of the time they aren’t a problem, it is an Extra Deck monster that is a problem. Sure, this can have some niche uses now, but Mind Control is a better option over Brain Control now since you are less limited on what you can take and both cards are at three, so you don’t have an excuse for using copies of this over Mind Control now.

Advanced Rating: 2.25/5

Art: 3/5 Take that brain!

Alex
Searcy

Now this is a Throwback indeed, this is one of the earlier cards I reviewed (on its original release) back in 05 (link below, how I miss the old team).

https://www.pojo.com/yu-gi-oh/COTD/2005/2005June/17.shtml

So an errata later, and Brain Control went from a gem, to hot garbage.  And not the good kind of hot garbage, maybe just garbage in general.  No longer able to take Monsters that were Special Summoned hurts its playability, a lot.  And that might be the understatement of the week right there.  It can still work, after all, how many Decks don’t Normal Summon or Set?  But seeing a field with only Special Summoned Monsters isn’t uncommon, and that’s about all there is here folks.  

Rating:  2/5  It still does stuff, and there are worse cards than this, no question

Art:  4/5  The brain is cool looking, as are the hands coming toward you