This Space
For Rent

Cosmic Roar And You: What to Expect   

Saikyo dissects the support coming for the robots of justice.

Grease up your Gundam, Mazinger and Tengu Topping Guru Lager (or however you pronounce the thing) references because the Extra Booster for Dimension Police hath descended to Earth (or at least the most Western-ly part of it). And so, again, I feel that the cards as a whole deserve greater scrutiny, and with luck it should be a worthy investment.

Bushiroad decided to market this one as providing support to all the conceivable Dimension Police archetype-based decks around, as well as providing a new deck for the next-gen players to enjoy. But of course you could release a big library of cards for something but it doesn’t automatically ensure that any of it is actually good, so, just to wrap up my various reviews on Cosmic Roar cards during the COTD segments, here are my views on each archetype and how they will probably stack up in the modern format.

Enigman: Four cards for them here; Enigmans Cloud, Nightsky, Sunset, and Tornado. Sunset isn’t really interesting to talk about since a Critical Trigger is a Critical Trigger and its skill isn’t worth the 10k loss in shield, so let’s move on. Cloud’s okay, but really, it’s just about just unscrewing your ride at the end of the day. What’s more, it kind of forces the use of the Ride Chain, which I never saw much point in owing to a high risk where the reward doesn’t seem to add up. Nightsky? Same problem, but at least he can work towards a Tornado gambit. As for Tornado himself, I’m not really a fan of how he needs two shots from Nightsky and no Grade 1s for Enigman power him up for no advantage loss. It’s also only really good once, so no mind-games DOTE-style. Not surprised it’s just R rarity because it is somewhat disappointing. If they only provided a G1 Enigman that worked like Nightsky we would be rolling, but here we are. Storm’s also RRR, so I hope you like Scavenger hunting.

Score: Like a casual Pokemon player finishing Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire in 1-2 days and getting bored of it already. 2.5/5

Dimensional Robos: Five cards for them here; Daijet, Dailion, Daiwolf, Daishoot, and Great Daiearth. Dailion’s the new Critical, so I guess say hit to a bit more consistency for Great Daikaiser, if you’re still doing that, I guess. (Except Stride happened, so suck it) Dailion’s the LB remover, meaning faster Crossride-yusha gambits, which is okay. Daijet’s okay too, sending dead Grade 3s back to deck and maybe triggering old Daiyusha in the process. Daishoot’s an oddity because this relies on you Striding in this deck, but once you do that once, he’s a better Daimagnum. Not losing too much sleep over the restriction since I consider old Daiyusha to be a bit outdated now and there are other cards to make him live. But now, we move onto the Stride unit Great Daiearth. Good way to fill a board, even without having Stridden nothing else previously, and a good way to set up Laurel. Out of the five cards here, I’d say Reverse Daiyusha and True Daikaiser builds are the ones who can use these the most effectively, but True Daikaiser wins out overall with the whole “bang, you die” factor and thanks to not being LB restricted any longer and having Daijet to get your targets back.

Score: Like the invention of Super Training/spamming Sweet Scent for EVs. 4/5

Metalborgs: 5 units for them here; Valen Grader, Hammer Hell, Glass Cutter, Magmafork and Loco Battler. It’s difficult to really improve on Metalborgs since Sin Buster is already a solid unit in its own right, but let’s see. Loco Battler replaces Black Boi, definitely. Valen Grader’s for people who want to try and use Sin Buster ASAP. Also, Bushi have not yet announced the limiting of Commander Laurel for English format so milk that if you don’t like Daikaiser. Milk it HARD. Glass Cutter…staple. Moving on. Magmafork and Hammer Hell aren’t bad, but there’s just not a lot of room for them, to me. Hammer Hell’s slots are taken up by PGs, Laurel, Mist Ghost and Black Doctor, so there’s nowhere for him to go. Magmafork’s got a little more wiggle room but personally, I’d relegate him to the waiting list too. Overall, pretty solid, with 3/5 useable cards, which aren’t bad.

Score: Like Gliscor not really changing tier for the third gen in a row. 3/5

Zeal: Four cards support this deck, with Darwin, Legion-Zeal, Plazum and Dark Superman Omega. Legion-Zeal’s basically the backbone here and is a staple. In terms of usefulness, he’s sort of a bad Freezeray Dragon during your opponent’s turns and an expensive Master of Fifth Element during yours. Plazum exists just as an extension because let’s be honest, he doesn’t compliment Legion-Zeal at all. Darwin’s to unscrew a bad ride but has a nice combo with Ride-related skills like Original Savior, Zero. Dark Superman’s the budget Stride and works as a nice follow up to Zeal since the deck is otherwise pretty Counterblast heavy. Overall, it’s basically working like Deletor-lite, being cheaper and more consistent but with less options for a crap enemy vanguard attack. But you will probably be wanting to dig through unsold BT-08 for Fighting Saucer and Cosmic Mothership if not the Ride Chain.

Score: Like the sudden uprising of Galvantula, with equally horrifying results. 3/5

Cosmic Heroes: Too many to mention so I’ll just rate the deck itself. The good news is that this Extra Booster has enough Criticals to run 12 of them, which is good since Dimension Police is all about centralised pressure and these are perfect accompaniments. How the deck works is chaining power-up skills together to create a vanguard that’s MASSIVE (and I do mean massive; the main bosses ask for 45k power, so guess what? Stride is instrumental here) and basically milking as much advantage as possible from the guard dropped or the many advantage gaining effects such as drawing, retiring, or even extra damage on hit. Sometimes, several of them at once. Luckily, most of them are good column formers so there’s no need to sacrifice vanilla play here and there are a LOT of them, so consistency is good. You get two Stride units for them as well, in the form of X Falcon, and X Tiger. Falcon’s for the final blow, when you’ve up and wasted a lot of shield from the opponent and is too good to use carelessly. Overall, then, this is actually a brilliant deck for a DP user to get started with. Sadly, it lacks a good backup card so see if anyone has something like Sin Buster and Uru Buster that they’re willing to part with just to make it a little better, but it’s still a good choice anyway.

Score: Like the rise of Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre, not changing tiers but giving new life to the both of them. 4/5

So overall then, this is shaping up to be a pretty solid Extra Booster for pretty much everyone. Apart from you, Enigmans. You’re D-Police’s Bruce Forsyth at this point.

Accuse me of following Smogon’s dirty-ass tier system at saikyocardfighter@outlook.com

Ask if I pronounce it “The Ex” or “The Cross” at saikyocardfighter@outlook.com