Elemental HERO Air Neos – Yu-Gi-Oh! Review

Alex
Searcy

Throwback Thursday hits a rarity again where (so far as I could see) we hadn’t reviewed Air Neos before.  Anyway, Air Neos is Level 7, Wind, Warrior, with 2500/2000 attack and defense, and is a Fusion of Neos and Neo-Spacian Air Hummingbird (as you might have guessed from this picture).  He has the standard ‘Special Summon without Poly, return the controlled Monsters to the Deck, I return to the Extra Deck @ End Phase’ clause as you see with these guys.  

He doesn’t do very much, and he ‘rewards’ you for losing or being behind.  Which is odd, I feel his effect should be ‘I gain attack to the difference in Lifepoints if you have more than your opponent’ since Air Hummingbird gives the player Lifepoints, but they spun the effect around to be the opposite here.  Then when/if your Lifepoints become higher than your opponent, whatever boost you had is gone.

As far as the Contact Fusions go, this guy is rather unremarkable, even only having to invest the two Monsters for it.  You don’t hurt yourself by carrying this guy in your Extra Deck, but I’m not sure how often I’d invest into bringing him out.  There could be times you’re so far behind the attack boost could be enough to win you a game, but I don’t see that happening often enough to be reliable.

Rating:  3.25/5

Art:  4.5/5  Air Neos, despite rather lackluster in effect, is one of the cooler looking Contact Fusions.  All the red and black, contrasting the blue and white in the background, as well as the wings, very nicely done.

WarlockBlitz

This is the card I think of when thinking of Neos Fusion Monsters. Elemental HERO Air Neos is a Level 7 Wind Warrior-type Fusion Monster with 2500 Atk and 2000 Def. The materials required are Elemental Hero Neos and Neo-Spacian Air Hummingbird. Those materials have to Contact Fuse from the field back into the deck. Or you can use some alternate method, just not Polymerization. Even more disappointing is that E HERO Air Neos returns to the Extra Deck during the End Phase. That can be the End Phase of either player’s turn so even saving it for one of your turns won’t let you keep it for very long. For all that trouble, this 2500 Atk monster can gain attack equal to the difference of life points if your opponent’s life points are higher than yours. Situational OTKs are not consistent. Basically, all the text on the card is bad unless you use better cards to overcome them. E HERO Air Neos gets a pass for looking awesome and for having OTK potential, but I do hate how this loses to Waboku (and stall tactics in general). 

Score: 3/5 Just run one.     Art: 5/5

Crunch$G

Throwback Thursday this week goes to a card that hasn’t been reprinted in so long that it doesn’t have HERO capitalized like the other Elemental HERO monsters, the cover card of Strike of Neos, we have Elemental HERO Air Neos.

Air Neos is a Level 7 WIND Warrior Fusion with 2500 ATK and 2000 DEF. Stats are perfectly fine, WIND is pretty meh, and Warrior is pretty solid. The Fusion Materials are Elemental HERO Neos and Neo-Spacian Air Hummingbird, which aren’t hard to get to really, especially with Elemental HERO Prisma dumping them into the grave to change his name for a turn or using Neos Fusion to summon this using the two monsters in the deck. This card can only be Special Summoned from the Extra Deck (the card is so old that it says Fusion Deck, lol) by shuffling the Fusion Materials you control into the deck (you don’t use Polymerization), but again there are ways to get around that with Miracle Contact and Neos Fusion. Being the standard Contact Fusion means it has that effect where at the End Phase of the turn, it goes back into the Extra Deck, but you can prevent that if you really want to with Neos Fusion or Neo Space if you still want to run the latter. While your life points are lower than the opponent’s, this card gains ATK equal to the life point difference. Before the support, Air Neos OTK was a popular variant of a Neo-Spacian deck to use cards like A Hero Lives to lower your life points by a ton to get Prisma to throw Neos or Air Hummingbird into the grave to help Fusion Summon this with decent ATK later on, and it gets better if you take more damage from the opponent. Sure this effect contradicts Air Hummingbird’s effect, but you don’t have to use the effect of Air Hummingbird so this can have more ATK. Air Neos nowadays can be a good game ender in the Neo-Spacian deck when you are so low on life points, and you likely are still running Air Hummingbird just for another Neo-Spacian name and to make use of Storm Neos since that card is still really good. Air Neos is a nice OTK machine when you are on the brink of defeat, so having a copy in the Extra Deck now is still useful, useful enough to still warrant running Air Hummingbird along with using it for other Fusions like Brave Neos, Storm Neos, and tomorrow’s card.

Advanced Rating: 3.75/5

Art: 4.5/5 Love the red here, this is my personal favorite Neos Fusion overall.