Service Puppet Play – #INFO-EN070
Target monsters your opponent controls, up to the number of “Gimmick Puppet” Xyz Monsters you control; take control of those monsters until the End Phase. If this card is in your GY, except the turn it was sent there, and you control a “Gimmick Puppet” Xyz Monster: You can banish this card, then target 1 Xyz Monster in either GY; Special Summon it to either field in Defense Position. You can only use each effect of “Service Puppet Play” once per turn.
Date Reviewed: September 10th, 2024
Rating: 3.33
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,
Service Puppet Play is one of three Trap cards for the archetype.
A trap version of Change of Heart, Service Puppet Play can take several monsters of your opponent if you have more Gimmick Puppet Xyz Monsters on the field. Gimmick Puppets excel at spamming the field with high level monsters to make big Xyz Monsters. You don’t need your heavy-hitting monsters for this to be useful. The more Gimmick Puppet Xyz’s you can make, the more you are able to steal from the opponent.
On that note, Gimmick Puppet Xyz Monsters are Rank 4 and 8, but Gimmick Puppet Chimera Doll is now available to them, and this is what you would likely use anything not Level 4 or 8 of the opponents to make during your turn. Using this as a defensive card is pretty obvious how it’d work: chain this to an effect, steal monster(s) your opponent controls to prevent them from progressing their turn.
Banish for a Monster Reborn of an Xyz Monster in Defense Position. You have to control a Gimmick Puppet to activate this effect, and you are prevented from using both effects in the same turn. Balanced and nine times out of 10 you will use this to bring back a Gimmick Puppet Xyz of yours. The “Chaos” versions of Fatanix Machinix and Dark Strings can activate their effects without materials attached, as well as Gigantes Doll tributing itself to make all Gimmick Puppets Level 8 for the turn, so there’s some utility with this card even without access to effect(s) that need materials for detaching.
Gimmick Puppet are an OTK strategy that also has added a lockdown kind of maneuver to their arsenal, but they likely will always be an OTK strategy. I’m not sure how many you’d want to play, but it can take away multiple monsters the way the Gimmick Puppets can spam Xyz’s and even if you cant do anything with them that turn because you use it defensively, you are preventing the opponent from making moves. Banish effect is balanced and doable for the archetype and can get you something even if all your Gimmick Puppet Xyz Monsters don’t benefit from it.
Advanced- 3/5 Art- 3/5
Until Next Time,
KingofLullaby
Crunch$G
With a new Trap searcher for the archetype, you might as well give them a new Trap as well, so here’s Service Puppet Play.
Service Puppet Play is a Normal Trap that lets you target monsters the opponent controls up to the number of Gimmick Puppet Xyzs you control and take control of them until the End Phase. It’s probably the only piece of disruption dedicated to Gimmick Puppets that I can think of. At most you can control 3 Gimmick Puppet Xyzs and have room to steal up to 3 monsters, but stealing just 1 from the opponent can be crucial to their plays. If this is in the graveyard, except the turn it was sent there, and you control a Gimmick Puppet Xyz, you can banish this from the graveyard to target an Xyz in either graveyard and Special Summon it to either field in Defense Position. Either you get the monster back and extend your plays some more, or give it to the opponent and destroy it with Giant Grinder for some burn damage. Any of those options are pretty good, since most Xyz Monsters don’t do much without Xyz Materials anyways. You can’t use this the same turn it was sent to the graveyard likely to make FTKing the opponent harder, though the Deck can still do it. HOPT on each effect of course. It’s a fine card for Gimmick Puppets, gives them something to sit on Turn 1 if they don’t manage to pull off the FTK. It’s searchable, so you only really need 1 considering you’re running a strategy focusing on FTKing, but it’s a backup to have at least.
Advanced Rating: 3.25/5
Art: 4/5 Always felt bad for Tin Archduke and Antidote Nurse.
Mighty
Vee
To complement the archetype’s new boss monster, Gimmick Puppet of course had to get a new Trap, which is today’s card, Service Puppet Play. While it’s not a Gimmick Puppet card, strictly speaking, it’s still a viable search target for (spoiler) CXyz Gimmick Puppet Fanatix Machinix. Puppet Play has two hard once per turn effects, with the second one only being usable if you control a Gimmick Puppet Xyz and not the turn it was sent to the Graveyard (which is a shame because of what it does). On activation, Puppet Play will let you target and take control of monsters your opponent controls up to the number of Gimmick Puppet Xyz monsters you control. Realistically speaking, you will almost always have at least 1 steal live since you’ll be sitting on Fanatix Machinix, so getting more steals will depend on how well you extend and put out more Gimmick Puppet Xyz (unfortunately, unless you FTK, most of them are quite terrible). Otherwise, it’s still very good disruption, though it doesn’t do much to shore up the deck’s weakness to backrow. Puppet Play’s other effect lets you banish it from the Graveyard to Special Summon an Xyz monster from either Graveyard to either side of the field in defense position. Yet another spoiler for Fanatix Machinix, the primary purpose of this effect is to summon a monster to your opponent’s field and force, thus forcing them to trigger Fanatix Machinix’s burn effect. In an emergency, this could bring back an Xyz monster to either extend or deny your opponent access to the Graveyard, but realistically speaking, you’re using this for the burn effect. It’s a great Trap for Gimmick Puppet (or rather, the only Trap); the only reason I can see not running it is if you’re going all-in on an FTK-heavy build, but I think the single deck slot is worth having a backup plan for when (not if, WHEN) the FTK inevitably fails.
+Strong disruption that can enable an OTK later
+Complements the burn strategy while being an extender in longer games
-Not very useful for the FTK strategy
-Doesn’t help the deck’s weakness to backrow
Advanced: 3.75/5
Art: 3.5/5 In case Giant Grinder didn’t look creepy enough, here’s Giant Grinder in action!
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