El Shaddoll Winda – Yu-Gi-Oh! Throwback Thursday (2014)

King of
Lullaby

Hello Pojo Fans,

El Shaddoll Winda is our Throwback Thursday and the fist of many Shaddoll Fusion Monsters, and still one of the best.

About as playable and popular as Construct, Winda is the lockdown Shaddoll Fusion monster. Lower ATK/DEF, but card destruction protection takes away outs your opponent has to it. The Spell/Trap add back is standard on Shaddoll Fusion monsters, and appreciated, now that they have Schism as another way of Fusion summoning. Winda is a control card, meant to slow the game down from the start, or prevent your opponent from making a comeback. Pair it with something that can negate a Special Summon (many Shaddoll Fusion monsters do this) and your opponent won’t have a leg to stand on. As a DARK monster, it works incredibly well with Schism to bounce an opponents monster back to their hand. Any deck that can splash a few Shaddolls in alongside their DARK monsters can Fusion Summon this and benefit from its control ability, and because of that El Shaddoll Winda has seen a rise in rouge playability in recent years. Even with her lower ATK, Winda can completely cripple strategies that have weaker monsters like Sky Striker, as well as decks that need to Special Summon and link climb to make their strategy work.

Winda is a favorite among players Shaddoll and otherwise. A balanced card: Lower ATK/DEF to counter the blanket Special Summon restrictions. Both players affected, but also has card destruction protection, but only from your opponents cards.

Advanced-4/5     Art-4/5

Until Next Time
KingofLullaby

Crunch$G

Throwback Thursday has probably the best card to synergize with your Shaddoll Schism: El Shaddoll Winda.

Winda is a Level 5 DARK Spellcaster Fusion with 2200 ATK and 800 DEF. You got the Daigusto Gulldos stats on here, considering it’s a Dark version of that card, which is fine alongside DARK and Spellcaster. The Fusion Materials are any Shaddoll and any DARK Monster, which is the easiest in Shaddoll considering most of them are already DARK. It must first be Fusion Summoned, which I guess isn’t that bad considering that’s already easy to do. It cannot be destroyed by the opponent’s card effects, which you’d love to see to make this harder to out, especially with the effect only letting players Special Summon once a turn. This bit can be difficult for many to deal with if they don’t have an established board because now you’d probably need more Special Summons to get over 2200 ATK in all honesty. It locks you as well, but that shouldn’t bother you since you should be in a better position summoning this. The final effect lets you recover a Shaddoll Spell/Trap from the graveyard if this is sent to the graveyard. Good recovery as well to probably get a Fusion Card to go for another Winda maybe if not any of the other Shaddoll Fusions. It isn’t unique to Winda, but it’s still a good effect. Winda is probably the better Shaddoll Fusion in 2020 over Construct considering there’s various ways to try to fit in a Shaddoll package to get to Winda, and that’s not devaluing the power of Construct. Winda locking down Special Summons gets better as those get more important. It’s probably why you’re using Shaddolls.

Advanced Rating: 4.5/5

Art: 4.25/5 for the original art and 4/5 for the alternate art

Alex
Searcy

Naturally, a Shaddoll made sense after yesterday to be our Throwback Thursday choice, so here’s El Shaddoll Winda.  Level 5, Spellcaster, and Dark, the latter two being things we like with insane support.  2200 attack and 900 defense are both rather ehh, and we see Fusion Materials are a Shaddoll Monster and a Dark Monster.  Specific enough to keep it in the Theme while open enough to not be forced or ruined if you don’t happen to have multiple Shaddolls at the time.

Both likely being moot points anyway with the variety of ways to Fuse in the Deck(s).  First must be Fusion Summoned, which is the way things go for Shaddolls.  Immunity to your opponent’s card effects is always a tremendous thing to have.  Especially when your attack is a bit on the lower end of things.  A nice restriction effect here keeps each player from Special Summoning more than once in a turn while this card is face-up.  That’s going to keep your opponent at bay, at least temporarily.

This card going to the Graveyard, no matter how or by which player, lets you Target a Shaddoll Magic or Trap card in your Graveyard and add it back to your Hand.  Getting anything back when you lose something is always certainly good, and very likely you’re going for whatever Fusion card you used to bring this card out.  But you have a plethora of options as to what to play and what you retrieve.  This card is another solid choice in their loaded arsenal.

Rating:  4/5

Art:  4.5/5  That’s one mean looking…serpent?  Pretty enough though