Branded Disciple – #BACH-EN053
When a monster effect activated by your opponent resolves, if that opponent’s monster has 0 ATK or DEF, and you control a Level 8 or higher Fiend Fusion Monster, you can negate that activated effect. At the end of the Damage Step, if monsters with 0 ATK battled each other: You can destroy your opponent’s battling monster. You can only use each effect of “Branded Disciple” once per turn.
Date Reviewed: May 18th, 2022
Rating: 1.96
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is awful. 3 is average. 5 is excellent.
Reviews Below:
King of
Lullaby
Hello Pojo Fans,
Branded Disciple switches our gears from Dogmatika but we’ll get another Ritual-related card tomorrow.
Branded Disciple is a Continuous Spell with a weird effect. If your opponent’s monster has 0ATK or 0DEF and tries to resolve an effect of theirs, Branded Disciple negates it. You need a Level 8 Fusion Fiend on the field to do this though. While there are 28 Fusion Fiend monsters in the game with the Level required for this, this works best with the Despia side of the Branded archetype, specifically Despian Quaeritis, who can change the ATK of all monsters except your Level 8 or higher Fusion Monsters to 0ATK for the turn.
The second effect is useless unless I’m missing something. If both monsters have 0ATK and battle one another they both will be destroyed unless an effect kicks in that prevents it. Outside of that, both monsters die and this effect is non-existent in the outcome.
I see them wanting to make this a combo piece with Despian Quaeritis, but you aren’t surprising anyone with this. You will already have Despian Quaeritis on the field with this so why would they walk into your response? At most you’ll get one monster reduced to 0ATK and an effect negated, then they could summon a different one and deal with your monsters then. Better off playing staple negation alongside a straight-forward approach.
Advanced-1/5 Art-3/5
Until Next Time
KingofLullaby
Crunch$G
From Dogmatika to Branded, which is currently one of the top strategies in the TCG, we got one of their Continuous Spells in Branded Disciple.
Branded Disciple is a Continuous Spell where when an opponent’s monster effect resolves and that monster has 0 ATK or DEF all while you control a Level 8 or higher Fiend Fusion Monster, you can negate the activated effect. Interesting negation, but very specific conditions. It basically works with Despian Quaeritis and that’s it, which isn’t enough to justify running this card. Also looking at the card image, looks like they messed up translating it when printing the card and corrected it in the database. Second effect triggers when two monsters with 0 ATK battled, destroying the opponent’s monster at the end of the Damage Step. Again, pretty specific since you’ll rarely see two monsters with 0 ATK battle that often. Each effect is once per turn, assuming the conditions even come up once a turn. This is overall way too specific of a card to run, even if you got a Fusion that works with it. There’s better cards you can run.
Advanced Rating: 1/5
Art: 5/5 Such sick artwork wasted on a card this bad.
Alex
Searcy
Hmm..midweek brings us another Magic card, a Continuous this time, in Branded Disciple. This, is not DIRECT Dogmatika support, but a fun card nonetheless. So in ‘short’ you can negate the Effect of an opponent’s Monster (AFTER resolution) so long as that Monster has 0 attack or defense. There are a fair enough amount of Monsters that people would/could/do use that fit that criteria. HOWEVER, you also have to control a Level 8 or higher Fusion/Fiend Monster. So, that’s by no means impossible, but that does mean this card can be a dead Draw and/or card in your Hand. That, I don’t like. Next, if Monsters with 0 attack battle, you can destroy your opponent’s Monster. I looked up rulings for this particular part, the way I read this is, it would destroy their Monster, but not yours. Which would be a good thing, I suppose. (I read it that way as Monsters with the same attack destroy each other when Battling, so if it states here, as it does, you can destroy THEIR Monster, I don’t see why it would destroy yours too). Each Effect here is Once per Turn. I wouldn’t say this is a bad card, but having to control a specific Type and Attribute of Monster, on top of it being a Fusion, just to negate a Monster Effect…it just doesn’t seem like enough for me. The Continuous part is good, as you may get it more than once (I’m thinking not) but also bad, because, well, Continuous.
Rating: 2.5/5 (IF I’m right about the 0 attack Effect thing…1.5/5 if not)
Art: 3.5/5 Busy…very busy
Mighty
Vee
Yet another Branded card for the books, Branded Disciple is a continuous spell and can be searched by a whole heap of cards, notably Aluber the Jester of Despia (he’s even on the card art!). Both of this card’s effects are a hard once per turn so there’s no use in fielding two at once. Funny thing about this card, the printed version translated it in a way that makes it almost useless, so for the sake of this review we’ll use the correct database translation. After your opponent resolves the effect of a monster with 0 attack or defense while you control a level 8 or higher fiend fusion monster, you can negate that effect (the printed wording is awkward in a way that implies you need a level 8 fiend fusion monster with 0 attack or defense, which is practically impossible in Despia). The effect is pretty obviously meant to be used with Despian Quaritis, which drops the attack of all monsters on the field to 0 except for level 8 or higher fusion monsters, making it a monster negate. Disciple’s other effect can trigger if two monsters with zero attack battle, allowing you to destroy the opponent’s battling monster. This effect revolves around the semi-obscure ruling that monsters with 0 attack can’t destroy each other by battle, so if you happen to have a weakened Aluber or something on the field, you can at least use it for some cheap removal? This won’t come up too often especially since optimal Despia decks don’t want their little guys hanging around too much. It’s not the worst card since it provides disruption, but there are much better Branded cards out there and it’s hard to justify searching or using Disciple over them. On the plus side, it can protect you from the much-maligned Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring, assuming they let you search it in the first place.
Advanced: 1.75/5 (yes, it would be much lower with the incorrect TCG text)
Art: 3.75/5 Aluber sure likes to look smug whenever he appears
Shifting gears just a smidge, we go from covering Dogmatika cards to Branded cards (specifically one that is more closely tied to the Despia than Albaz, himself). Branded Disciple is a continuous spell that seems to do one thing well: kicking your opponent while they’re down.
B.D. can negate a monster’s activated effect, so long as you control a Level 8 or higher Fiend Fusion monster and THAT monster has 0 ATK or DEF. At first, I thought this card was tailor-made for that one Despia fusion, Quaeritis. And yeah, this card pairs nicely with it since it meets the qualifications for resolving Branded Disciple’s effect as well as possessing the ability to shrink your opponent’s monsters’ ATK to 0.
Since Branded Disciple isn’t a once per turn effect either – it essentially Skill Drains ALL your opponent’s monsters that have 0 ATK or DEF permanently.
B.D. also gives you the ability to crash your 0 ATK monsters favorably, but that’s not really useful at all as that will rarely happen.
At first this was all there was to this card, but then I reread the effect. It doesn’t say “face up monster” or anything along those lines. It just says “When a monster effect activated by your opponent resolves, if that opponent’s monster has 0 ATK or DEF…”
You see where I’m going with this. Basically, even if your opponent activates a monster’s effects from the Hand or Grave, if it inherently has 0 ATK or DEF, then that effect is getting shut down. I started to think about common monsters that have either 0 ATK or DEF and 5 hand traps came to mind: Ash, Belle, Ghost Ogre, Effect Veiler, and Gamma.
As long as you can keep your high level fiend fusions on the field, you can shut out 5 of the most common hand traps in the game.
Being a continuous Spell, I feel this card can be easily overlooked. But think about how little spell/trap destruction people main deck these days. Most people worry about monsters rather than back row, so despite being continuous, I’d argue B.D. is actually more protected than many monsters out there.
In the right deck it can be quite devastating.
Advanced Rating – 4/5
Art – 5/5 (Albion and Ecclesia have their work cut out for them as they face the star warrior of the Despia)
Therion
“Captain”
Tav
Alright, for today’s Card of the Day, we got the continuous spell card Branded Disciple, a card that somehow got misprinted and has errata in the official Yugioh card database.
The official text reads:
“When a monster effect activated by your opponent resolves, if that opponent’s monster has 0 ATK or DEF, and you control a Level 8 or higher Fiend Fusion Monster, you can negate that activated effect. At the end of the Damage Step, if monsters with 0 ATK battled each other: You can destroy your opponent’s battling monster. You can only use each effect of “Branded Disciple” once per turn.”
So, to break this down: If your opponent tries to use the effect of a monster with EITHER zero attack or zero defense points AND you control a Level 8 or higher Fiend-type Fusion Monster, you can negate that activated effect. So, for the requirement, Despia immediately comes to mind, since they can create high-level fusion monsters easily. This actually counters a lot of monsters currently popular in the game, Aluber the Jester of Despia and Fallen of Albaz comes to mind, but so do the hand traps Token Collector, Ash Blossom, and many more. But then again, you can only use this effect once per turn, so be careful.
The second effect is less interesting, which makes your 0 attack monsters battling others win combat. Needless to say, this is not very relevant and will not come up often.
All in all, I am skeptical about this card’s uses – getting Fusion monsters on the field is already hard enough, but locking you into fiend-types is rough. And for that, you get a once-per-turn negation effect that is impractical to use, can be stopped by targeted destruction, backrow hate AND can be seen coming from a country mile away? Plus an even more marginal effect? Yeah, I’m out.
Rating: 0,5/5
props:
the card has errata making it technically do something
slops:
it’s still awful, too conditional and can easily be outplayed
Art: 3,5/5
Incredible scene, I wish there was some way to learn of the story.. oh, wait, you have to make it up as you look at card artwork, never mind XD
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