Salamangreat Sanctuary – Yu-Gi-Oh! Review

King of
Lullaby

Hello Pojo Fans,

Salamangreat Sanctuary isn’t a card you’ll likely see in 3’s of in the deck, but it remains a useful piece for the deck.

The Reincarnation Link mechanic is available off this one card, allowing you to turn a Link 2 or higher Salamangreat into itself without needing more materials for the Link Summon. Anytime you can get a Link Summon of a Rank 2 or higher with only one monster needed it is a good play. The LP gain off making a Link Monster of yours 0ATK is handy if you can break even off the 1000LP cost to activate the effect. Also, you won’t be attacking with that Link Monster, so you need another monster to attack with. You’ll likely Link Summon using that monster you just dropped in ATK, so it shouldn’t be a real loss, but I don’t know how often that effect of Sanctuary will be used. The first effect is more applicable to your playstyle with the deck and the much more important effect.

Advanced-3.5/5     Art-3.5/5

Until Next Time
KingofLullaby

WarlockBlitz

I think this card is great for the way Yugioh! is played now. Salamangreat Sanctuary is a Field Spell Card with no cost to activate and two effects. Not surprisingly, you can only use each of those effects once per turn. Now that that is out of the way, the first effect allows you to Link Summon any Salamangreat Link Monster if you have another copy with the same name on your field. I hope Mind Control and Enemy Controller come back because of this. Something wrong with your Link?, use it to Link Summon the same Salamangreat at original power with its own bonus effects. Stole the opponent’s Salamangreat off Monster Reborn or something?, get your own copy spending fewer materials. Use the second effect of this card and then the first during Main Phase 2, why not? Speaking of the second effect, you get to pay 1000 Life Points to make your targeted Link Monster have 0 Atk but gain its original Atk value as more Life Points. Something has to battle any of your monsters during Damage Calculation for this to trigger, but that’s no big whoop. During games 2 and 3 of a match, all you need are more Life Points to win. This makes Salamangreat Sanctuary a very obscure win condition. It also makes it versatile in other decks since it just requires you to control a Link Monster. Just make sure the Link Monster you neuter has more than 1000 Atk otherwise the cost doesn’t make sense. Run this at one or two since it is searchable. 

Score: 4/5     Art: 4/5

Crunch$G

Probably the heart of the Salamangreat deck here as it has its own searcher. Here we have Salamangreat Sanctuary.

Sanctuary is a Field Spell where if you would Link Summon a Salamangreat monster, you can use one Salamangreat Link Monster you control that has the same name as the entire Link Material. The Salamangreat Links like using themselves to summon themselves as they get bonus effects when summoned that way, so having the ability to summon a Salamangreat Link using a monster with the same name is great to have in this archetype so you don’t have to give up more monsters for the Link Summon. During damage calculation, if your monster battles, you can pay 1000 LP to target a Link Monster you control and make its ATK 0 to then gain LP equal to its ATK. I don’t know how often this would come up, but I guess if you know you’ll use a Link Monster for a Link Summon in your Main Phase 2, giving up all its ATK points for some LP is nice to have, but only if said monster has more than 1000 ATK points otherwise you don’t really gain anything out of doing this. Each effect of Sanctuary is a hard once per turn, which is more important with that first effect so you can’t just burn through your Extra Deck that fast. Still, Sanctuary is staple in the Salamangreat deck and with so much searching and recursion, I’m sure you can get away with one or two.

Advanced Rating: 4/5

Art: 4.5/5 Love the volcanoes behind what I assume is Heatleo.

Alex
Searcy

It’s fun to look at theme specific Magic cards when they’re Field cards, and I assumed we’d get here, coming to Salamangreat Sanctuary.  There was a time when such a thing as a playable Field Magic outside of say ‘Necrovalley’ was all but nonexistent.  How things change.  This likes to deal with Lifepoint gain, and as a whole, I know that’s never been the favorite aspect of many in this game.

I, however, have always considered Lifepoint gain to be a very underused, underrated aspect of the game, as a whole.  But more on that part in a minute.  So, a Link Summon of a theme specific Monster can be done with one Salamangreat Link you control of the same name as all required Material.  I like this, it seems a little over complicated, but it should help you out.  Redundant, perhaps, but useful enough.

If your Monster is involved in Battle, you can (during Damage Calculation) pay 1000 Lifepoints to Target a Link you control (any Link, the one Battling, another, whatever) and drop its attack to 0 to gain Lifepoints equal to the original attack of that Monster.  I do actually like this a bit more.  This could certainly be a protection effect, or even just more Lifepoints for later.  

We’re to the part where I have to say (by law) each effect is only able to be used once per turn.  Can’t have any insane Link spams here or some broken, to be found, infinite Lifepoint combo, now can we?

Rating:  3.5/5

Art:  4.5/5  The color scheme here is better than yesterday, but I feel this is a bit more bland, too.  I still enjoy the overall picture though.