Firewall Dragon – Yu-Gi-Oh! Throwback Thursday

King of
Lullaby

Hello Pojo Fans,

Firewall Dragon is our Throwback Thursday choice. A fine choice for a Cyberse week.

This card needed to be banned straight-away, but it wasn’t, and it was the driving force behind several archetypes becoming meta. Goki benefited so much from Firewall Dragon being so broken, but literally any deck that can Special Summon a lot can benefit from Firewall Dragon. The bounce effect is useful to pop back some of your monsters to reuse their Special Summon or abilities, as well as clearing your opponents monsters off the field. Having co-linked monsters with this Link Monster isn’t hard with the second effect being the most used/abused. You summon to one of Firewalls link points and get that monster off the field somehow and start Special Summoning. As long as you can get monsters to your hand, you will have ammo to Special Summon. With Master Rule 5 you’ve got all your Main Monster Zone slots back for Xyz/Synchro/Fusion monsters, and if you can pin your Firewall Dragon into one of them you are golden for double the slots. You really only need one link point and continue to link climb until you’ve developed your board. Knightmare monsters worked well with Firewall to complete easy Extra Links and shut down your opponent before they even got to play Yu-Gi-Oh. Not only did Firewall enable easy Extra Links and stop your opponent from getting to their Extra Deck, not only did it enable big board building with negaters, but it also facilitated FTK/OTKS. DANGER! Monsters made Firewall even more broken, and when combined into decks that spam Special Summon with various archetypes mixed in, it got even worse. It was overpowered, still is overpowered, and could be brought back by simply changing the second effect to “once per turn”.

It is good that it is banned, and unless they change that 2nd effect it isn’t coming back, no matter what cards come into the game.

Advanced- 5/5     Art- 4/5

Until Next Time,
KingofLullaby

Crunch$G

Since we’re looking at a Cyberse theme and the sixth protagonist ace was Cyberse, why not take a look at the VRAINS ace to get all 6 in a row, so here’s the banned Firewall Dragon.

Firewall Dragon is a Link-4 LIGHT Cyberse with 2500 ATK and arrows pointing Up, Down, Left, and Right. 2500 ATK is kind of the low end for Link-4s, I’ve talked about LIGHT Cyberse already, and the arrows work for its effect. The summoning requirements are any 2+ monsters, making it super generic and super easy to summon. The first effect is that once while this face-up card is on the field (Quick Effect): you can target monsters on the field or in either graveyard up to the number of co-links this card is in and add the targeted cards to the hand. Insane amount of recursion here if you can co-link it to 3 monsters, which is the most that’s feasibly possible. That or you can just bounce opponent’s monsters to the hand to disrupt them. This effect, while can only be used once on the field, isn’t a hard once per turn. This means you can just remove Firewall from the field and put it back, or summon another one and use the effect again. The second effect when a monster linked to this card is destroyed in battle or is sent to the graveyard by any means, you can Special Summon a monster from the hand. Synergy with the first effect to recur monsters from your grave to your hand and it’s an easy effect to pull off with Link Summoning being a thing. It allowed for so many easy Extra Links because neither effect was a hard once per turn. That’s why the card was limited and later banned and never gets the focus of being the ace monster really, even though we kinda know it’s meant to be. It’s a card that’s poor in execution due to the lack of a single sentence making both effects hard once per turns. If that was added, this could be back at 3 and still be good, but without it it’s staying banned forever.

Advanced Rating: 5/5

Art: 4/5 for the original art, 4/5 for the red Firewall Dragon in the OCG, and 3.5/5 for the Link VRAINS Box art in the OCG.

Solember
YouTube

Firewall Dragon

   This is a good example of a bad card. If any card needed a HOPT, it was this one. Even without the HOPT, this would be a viable card that would make a lot of plays obtainable.

   The effect is solid, but seeing as this card will likely never be removed from the L/F list without an errata, it is all wasted. This is the first signature card of a series’s main protagonist to ever be forbidden or limited. It is also the first Link Monster to be hit. Last week was the three year anniversary of this card’s debut in the OCG.

   Being able to return monsters to the hand equal to the number of co-linked cards worked well with several easily summoned Link Monsters such as Linkuriboh or the Knightmare archetype. The effect to Special Summon any Monster from the hand if a Monster this card points to is sent to the GY or destroyed by battle, though, is the loop maker. Konami initially tried to limit other cards that were part of the loops (it must have been really hard for them to forbid an iconic card, thus making it impossible to expand the archetype later). Cards like A – Assault Core (not to be confused with THE assault core) could search for a Monster as Chain Link 2 after being sent to the GY with Firewall Dragon summoning said Monster as Chain Link 1. PSCT made sure that the timing was never missed, which made this card incredibly versatile.

   I enjoy the design of the monster. It is a very unique look for a dragon. It works well with the Link Monster card frame.

Versatility – 5

-This card could fit into any deck, as it had very easy summoning conditions (it could be summoned with a single Scapegoats).
Rogue Plays – 5
– This card could be the beginning, middle or end of several plays.
Art – 5

– I like the design. I like the concept of it being part of a computer, too.
Balance – 0
– This guy should replace Sangan on Shared Ride, Mistaken Arrest and Mistaken Accusation.
Uniqueness – 5
– I hope to never see anything like it again.