Fiendsmith Engraver – #INFO-EN017
Date Reviewed: December 30, 2024
Rating: 4.33
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
King of
Lullaby
Hello Pojo Fans,
Fiendsmith Engraver was going to be rated high in the countdown, and why not? The anchor of the toolbox that took over the OCG/TCG in 2024, the OCG has handled him at this point but the TCG…not as much.
Level 6 FIRE Fiend monster, Engraver you will use to discard alongside another card to search out one of the archetype Spell/Trap Cards, most likely Tract to get another search and discard. Engraver would often do this to get itself into the grave and search out Fabled Lurrie with Tract and discard it. Lurrie summons itself and then you link it off into Requiem and it begins.
On the field, Engraver can send a Fiendsmith Equip Card to the grave to send a monster on the field to the grave. The only Fiendsmith Equip Cards will be the Fiendsmith Link Monster(s) you attach to a Fiend Fusion Monster or Engraver himself. A 1-for-1 will always have utility in the game and the Link Monsters will give Engraver a slight ATK boost (600ATK for Requiem) or protection (Sequence). Engraver also having the ability to Special Summon himself from the grave plays directly into his discard effect. You won’t lose advantage because you can always bring Engraver out of the grave as long as you can cycle back a LIGHT Fiend monster. This ability allows you to run fewer copies of Extra Deck Fiendsmith cards or allows you to cycle back an Engraver or Lurrie to repeat the toolbox. With the ease of Special Summoning, Engraver was fodder for Rank 6 Xyz’s like High King Caesar or Fusion fodder for its Fiendsmith forms in the Extra Deck, or even one of the Fiendsmith Link monsters.
If a hand trap didn’t stop you, the moment you discarded Engraver you were off to the races. You were getting your search, maybe a Special Summon if you were lucky enough to have Lurrie in hand (though that didn’t matter). The search enabled another search most of the time which would set up Engraver in grave which lead to a few monsters out of the Extra Deck and a board built off this toolbox. There is a reason why it got thrown into so many strategies and pretty much kicked Fire Kings out of Snake-Eye: it just plain consistent and good. It can be played pretty much anywhere and has been thrown in when an archetype loses cards to the ban list. Tenpai have had it, Snake-Eye, Fire Kings, a mix of all of those, Yubel, and even the new Ryzeal and Maliss archetypes. Util the TCG dosn’t something about it, this box remains open for its tools to be used.
Advanced- 4/5 Art- 4/5
Until Next Time,
KingofLullaby
Crunch$G
We begin this week the same way we ended last, with Fiendsmith getting the #5 slot with the most important card, from The Infinite Forbidden we have Fiendsmith Engraver.
Engraver is a Level 6 LIGHT Fiend with 1800 ATK and 2400 DEF. Stats aren’t that impressive for a Level 6, but this is the archetype to make LIGHT Fiend one of the most respectable combinations in the game. You can discard this card to add any Fiendsmith Spell/Trap from your Deck to your hand. The most common target is Fiendsmith’s Tract of coruse to search out any LIGHT Fiend and get that discard, which is mostly Fabled Lurrie to revive itself and go into Fiendsmith’s Requiem. You could also search Fiendsmith’s Sanct for a LIGHT Fiend Token to get the same thing, or Fiendsmith in Paradise if you’re ending on Desirae or another high Level LIGHT Fiend to be a board wipe. You can also target a Fiendsmith Equip and a monster on the field to send both to the grave, so get a Reqiuem that likely summoned this back on it and if you don’t want to go into Necroquip Princess, you can use this for removal instead. Finally, if this card is in the graveyard, you can shuffle any LIGHT Fiend from the graveyard back into the Deck or Extra Deck to revive this, which should help you make a Rank 6, any Link Monster, or Chaos Angel potentially. HOPT on each effect of course. Engraver is a great card to go with all the other great Fiendsmith cards, but Engraver of course is the centerpiece. Most Decks can play Fiendsmith, and they can run 2-3 of this for that engine easy.
Advanced Rating: 4.5/5
Art: 4.5/5 Is that a Requiem on his back?
My #5: Bonfire
Mighty
Vee
The main man himself claims number 5 on our countdown– following Fiendsmith’s Requiem is Fiendsmith Engraver, the face of the Fiendsmith deck and engine. As a level 6 LIGHT Fiend, it opens up doors for a lot of decks that you’d think have no synergy with it otherwise, like Ryzeal, of all things. It’s insanely accessible, given that any deck that can make Moon of the Closed Sky can access it with Requiem, and even if you can’t, you can still hard open it or get it with Fiendsmith’s Tract. Engraver doesn’t need much more elaboration, since nobody really talks about its stats anyway.
Whether it was making Beatrice to foolish any card or plopping Fiendsmith Desirae on the board for omni negates, the Fiendsmith engine proves highly controversial, and it doesn’t help that it embodies the modern game’s emphasis on grind, given that Engraver recycles cards to combo. In our first review, I underestimated the engine’s splashability, but I’ve come to realize that it’s not as nasty as the age-old “Orcust problem”. Many people thought Fiendsmith would be a shell engine that overrides the win condition of any deck that uses it, but evidently that’s mostly untrue– Snake-Eye hybrids still used generic Link monsters, Yubel is still Yubel, Memento uses it as Link fodder, Ryzeal uses it to make Chaos Angel, and more! Aside from Ryzeal, Fiendsmith’s most popular shell has ironically become Kashtira, yet another boogeyman deck that has miraculously withstood the test of time. Of course, I’m also still a huge fan of Magical Musketeer Fiendsmith for obvious reasons. I still don’t think Engraver will actually be banned, but if Fiendsmith Ryzeal keeps winning, I think big hits are on the horizon…
+Very splashable and strong engine for Hand Trap resistance and better ceiling
+Provides access to strong disruption or combo pieces
-Extremely weak to Bystials and other anti-Graveyard cards
-Hefty space investment in both the Main Deck and Extra Deck
Advanced: 4.5/5
Art: 4/5 Funny red man with funny weapons and vague religious theming? Sounds awfully similar to a certain series about devils that might cry…
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