Pre-Preparation of Rites – #SHVI-EN065
Add 1 Ritual Spell from your Deck to your hand, and add 1 Ritual Monster from your Deck or GY to your hand whose name is listed on that Ritual Spell. You can only activate 1 “Pre-Preparation of Rites” per turn.
Date Reviewed: May 19th, 2022
Rating: 3.92
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is awful. 3 is average. 5 is excellent.
Reviews Below:
King of
Lullaby
Hello Pojo Fans,
Pre-Preparation of Rites is that Ritual support mentioned yesterday and our Throwback Thursday choice.
A +1 if you have the right Ritual Spell to search with it. While Pre-Preparation of Rites can get you any Ritual Spell, making it a good 1-for-1, you only get a Ritual Monster if it is listed on the Ritual Spell, which means no generic broad Ritual Spells for you. While that may seem like a downer, it really isn’t. Pre-Preparation of Rites is a good 1-for-1 along with other cards like Manju, or the old school Sonic Bird and Senju monsters players used to run. Preparation of Rites needs the grave to have a Ritual Spell and only works with Ritual Monsters Level 7 or higher, but if you ran the specific Ritual Monster for that spell you are searching, it is a +1 for you.
Pre-Preparation of Rites is decent at worst and great at best. Another Normal Spell search card for Ritual decks, even if it restricts. It is balanced and an acceptable choice for any Ritual Deck as long as it works for you. It is a shout out to the old school Ritual Monsters as they required their own Ritual Spell and had no blanket Ritual Spell cards like Advanced Ritual Art.
Advanced-3/5 Art-2.5/5
Until Next Time
KingofLullaby
Crunch$G
Trhwoback Thursday this week brings us to a card that helps many different specific Ritual strategies: Pre-Preparation of Rites.
Pre-Prep is a Normal Spell that lets you add a Ritual Spell from your Deck to your hand, and then you add a Ritual Monster from your Deck or graveyard to the hand whose name is listed on the Ritual Spell. So it sets up the Ritual Summon at least getting you to the Spell you need and the Ritual, but you do need to hope your Ritual Spell names the Ritual Monster you want to summon, even if it isn’t on the line telling you what you can Ritual Summon. Kind of makes it a downside when Ritual Spells summon a full archetype of Ritual Monsters unless it mentions the Rituals in other effects. Still, there’s a ton of Ritual Monsters and Spells you can search off this, just as long as you can search both, otherwise this is no longer an option. Hard once per turn as well, which is fair. Any Ritual Deck using Ritual Spells that mention a Ritual Monster in their text should 100% run this still, it’s a massive consitency boost.
Advanced Rating: 4/5
Art: 4/5 Shouldn’t let Ritual Raven eat too much.
Alex
Searcy
THIS is the card Rituals needed, and ironically, despite the play it’s seen/sees, it still can be in the category of ‘Support for a type that desperately needs it…but it still doesn’t quite do ENOUGH). Throwback Thursday gives us the Magic card, Pre-Preparation of Rites, aptly named. This card grants you a Ritual Magic card from your Deck, as well as a Ritual Monster from your Deck OR Graveyard, so long as it’s listed on the Ritual Magic you selected with this. So this card IS technically a +1. Can’t be upset about that. You can only activate one of these a Turn, which I get, but I kinda feel like not, because I feel like you’d run out of the Monsters you need to Summon your Rituals before playing 3, but whatever. I think the biggest problem this card has is what I just touched on. There will be times you get your cards, but don’t have the necessary Level(s) of Monster for the Ritual Summon. I classify that as BAD. Even if you get it out NEXT Turn, your opponent gets a full Turn to prepare as for how to destroy or whatever your Ritual. Troubling. Still a solid enough card though, and while some cards in the Ritual Field have gotten better than this, it certainly still has a place in the game.
Rating: 3.5/5
Art: Meh 3/5
Mighty
Vee
Whenever a new ritual spell is announced, I think “Can you pre-prep it?” Pre-Preparation of Rites is a normal spell, and one of the few generic +1 cards (with a string attached, of course). You can only activate it once per turn, but you’ll be running 3 anyway for consistency in ritual decks. Pre-Prep will search any ritual spell from your deck as well as any monster mentioned in the card text, or retrieve that monster from your graveyard. It doesn’t even have to be part of the “This card ritual summons blablabla” text, so even this week’s Dogmatikamacabre works with it. On paper, this sounds pretty ridiculous, since this covers 2 out of 3 ingredients that a ritual monster generally needs to be summoned. Notable search pairs include:
-Heavy Interlock and Borreload Riot Dragon
-Dawn of the Herald and Herald of Perfection
-Revendread Origin and Vendread Slayer
-Super Soldier Synthesis and Black Luster Soldier
-Dogmatikamacabre and White Knight of Dogmatika + White Relic of Dogmatika
Unfortunately, modern ritual monster design has taken Pre-Prep into account; many powerful ritual monsters, like Nekroz of Unicore and Blue-Eyes Chaos MAX Dragon, are NOT specifically listed on any ritual spells, due to the trend of most modern ritual spells not mentioning specific monsters anymore. This is pretty fair since this card is meant to be used for classic ritual spells and monsters (that have not aged very well, to put it mildly). As a side note, you’re forced to search the monster as well, so you can’t use Pre-Prep just to search ritual spells (a mistake I fortunately caught before this review went up LOL). That said, most decks that can run Pre-Prep probably should.
Advanced: 4/5
Art: 4.5/5 This is really cute and funny, even though I know Ritual Raven is pretty much doomed, it’s nice that the cult guys bothered to make his last moments fairly happy.
Let’s double-back to our Ritual theme again, shall we? Today’s TT choice is Pre-prep, a great addition to any Ritual theme…well not quite ANY Ritual theme…but MOST Ritual themes.
At the very least, this card is a 1 for 1, in terms of card advantage. It’s a ROTA for any Ritual Spell. But, in the right decks, this card is actually a +1. See, if the Ritual Spell that you fetch off this card list’s a particular Ritual monster, then you get to add THAT monster to your Hand as well!
This card single-handedly solves one of the biggest issues that Ritual players find themselves in – needing have both a Ritual Spell and Monster in their Hand as the same time. Now, you still need Materials to perform this Ritual Summon, but come on! You can’t expect this card to literally do EVERYTHING for you!
As we start to get more modern Ritual Themes, we see this card not working as well as it once did since many new strategies don’t list specific Ritual Monsters. Usually, if an archetype revolves around Ritual Summoning, it just makes sense for the Ritual Spell to be “generic” by allowing it to work for any of your in-theme ritual monsters. This is good in general, but it means that Pre-Prep won’t be as good of a card for you.
Still, no matter what ritual strategy you’re running, using at least 2 – if not the full 3 copies of this card is highly recommended.
Advanced Rating – 4/5
Art – 5/5 (Just keep eating, Ritual Raven…just keep eating…)
Therion
“Captain”
Tav
Ahoy there, and welcome to another Throwback Thursday here at Pojo.com! You know you’re an elder duelist when you review a card that wasn’t even out when you were a little kid as a “throwback”, but I guess here we are now, so let’s dive into the spell card “Pre-Preparation of Rites”, a card that premiered six years ago in the Shining Victories set!
This nifty card gets you any Ritual Spell plus one corresponding Ritual Monster that’s listed on that spell from your deck, no strings attached. The only drawback? You can only activate one Pre-Preparation of Rites per turn. This card is obviously very useful and reminds me of cards like “Fusion Recovery”, “Fusion Reserve” and, probably more relevant to this current meta, “Frightfur Patchwork”. What do these all have in common? They take a pretty weak summoning mechanic, in this case traditional ritual summoning (having to use the actual card “Polymerization” to fuse monsters for the others), and just give you free stuff for trying to make it work. Since inherently, ritual and fusion summoning is card disadvantage where you give up multiple resources to get a payoff that might or might not actually be worth it, a card like Pre-Preparation of Rites helps you along the way to make giving up so many cards sting a little less. Needless to say, in a resource-starved game like Yugioh where every card matters, I am very happy these types of cards exist.
And we all know Ritual summoning especially needs some help. But then again, look at recent Drytron decks and their engines – not even all dedicated ritual-focused decks always run Pre-Preparation of Rites to get there if they can help it!
But beware – as we have recently seen with the Frightfur/Fluffal package getting splashed into the Despia Fusion decks running roughshod over the current meta, a card like this is only looking fair as long as its cause is actually on the side of good – if a broken ritual spell/monster combo comes along, duelists will happily go ahead and include three this card to maximize its potential and splash the great cards with as little effort as possible. This has happened with Frightfur Patchwork and it will happen with Pre-Preparation of Rites as soon as the opportunity presents itself – the latter being way too generic for its own good.
With all that said, this card is amazing and I love everything it does.
Rating: 5/5
props:
offsets card advantage inherent to its summoning mechanic, can be used in any ritual summon centric deck, helps an archetype that is both overlooked and underappreciated
slops:
cannot help out when drawing multiple different pieces of rituals/monsters, since it has to get the spell and monster for the same ritual summon, can only be used once per turn
Art: 5/5
This is simple anime artwork that was obviously inspired by that incredible scene from Studio Ghibli masterpiece “Spirited Away”, with a sinister twist, hooded figures waiting in the back, letting the greedy Ritual Raven stuff itself. The design on that monster is impeccable to see in action, and I love the high-carb vibe of the food, also a classic anime trope. Enjoy your meal!
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