Duke Shade, the Sinister Shadow Lord – Yu-Gi-Oh! Card of the Day

King of
Lullaby

Hello Pojo Fans,

Duke Shade, the Sinister Shadow Lord may start out small, but its ability to grow and combo with the Lair of Darkness support make it an interesting card.

The more DARK monsters you invest into tributing for Duke’s Special Summon, the higher his ATK goes. Obviously you want bang for your buck, so Duke is gonna give you a Level 5 or higher DARK monster from your grave. The restriction to only DARK special summoning the turn you activate Duke’s effect isn’t anything (unless you need a specific non-DARK monster for that situation, but you wouldn’t play Duke then if you needed that). Duke can still work as a regular Level 4 DARK Fiend-Type that can be used for Link and Xyz summons, but with the Field Spell you can pop a monster your opponent has for Duke, make him 1000ATK, get that search from the grave, and keep pushing. Caius is the first monster you should be thinking about bringing back with Duke’s effect. Darkest Diabolos can handle himself and sometimes you’d prefer him to stay in the grave for easy access.

It’s not the best monster, and best works with other cards. You get that search no matter how you summon him though.

Advanced-2.5/5     Art-3/5

Until Next Time
KingofLullaby

Crunch$G

More Lair of Darkness cards and we look at the final new card in the deck (as the others were reviewed weeks ago as I mentioned previously). One of the more interesting cards of the deck, Duke Shade, the Sinister Shadow Lord.

Duke Shade is a Level 4 DARK Fiend with 500 ATK and 2000 DEF. ATK is terrible, but the DEF makes up for it and makes it searchable off the card reviewed yesterday. Level 4 is the best level in the game, DARK is a great attribute, and Fiend is a solid type. When in the hand, you can tribute any number of DARK Monsters on the field to Special Summon Duke Shade from the hand. This can sorta act like a Kaiju with Lair of Darkness on the field only it comes to your field, so that is great. It gains 500 ATK for each monster you tribute to summon this guy with his effect. If this card is Normal or Special Summoned, you can add a Level 5+ DARK Monster from the GY to your hand. Any sort of recursion is nice, though I don’t see much of a reason to add the boss monster, Darkest Diabolos, back since it can be revived from the GY unless you just want discard fodder. If you play Vanity’s Fiend, that will be a great card to get back with this. Caius the Mega Monarch is a good monster maybe, the original Caius is power crept in my opinion though. Each effect of Duke Shade is a hard once per turn, but I guess that is acceptable. If you use any of Duke Shade’s effects though, you are locked into only Special Summoning DARK Monsters that turn, but shouldn’t be an issue in a DARK themed deck. This card is nice and worth experimenting with, so have fun testing ratios with this guy.

Advanced Rating: 3.5/5

Art: 4/5 Very sinister!

Alex
Searcy

Dark Shade, the Sinister Shadow Lord…I get upset when a card with something like Lord in its name has such a pathetic attack (500 for Level 4) and 2000 defense (while good) isn’t enough to make up for that.  I want to like this card, but I think I’ve got to take the Ex Minion of Darkness approach here, and see this for what it is…

This card can be Special Summoned from the Hand (and this makes the 2000 defense irrelevant as you only get the attack increase by using this effect) and it gains 500 attack for each Dark Monster you Tribute to bring it out.  So if you waste THREE Monsters on this, you’re still only at a Level 4 Monster with 2000 attack…

Now obviously, the Dark Deck (structure or not) can work well with having Monsters in the Graveyard, setting up other combos, BUT, why detract all this Field presence just for this guy, when you can so much more easily dump the Monsters from your Hand and/or Deck instead?  

If Normal or Special Summoned (options are nice) you get a Level 5 or higher Dark Monster from your Graveyard added back to your Hand (note, that’s a Target effect).  That’s not a terrible effect, but as you’re giving up Monsters (again, probably more than is necessary to begin with) they could’ve capped it at Level 5 or something, and let this Monster come to the Field.  It wouldn’t have broken the card.

The non-Dark Special Summon is appropriate enough I suppose.  It prevents this card from being broken, in or out of a Dark Deck.  Or in whatever variant I suppose.  The card is decent, but it’s not going to break anything open.  Nice effort, too much restriction, and not enough given back.

Rating:  2.75/5

Art:  4/5