Soul-Absorbing Bone Tower – Yu-Gi-Oh! Throwback Thursday (2004)

Crunch$G

I felt that Throwback Thursday this week should go to a card played in the best version of Mayakashi, the FTK version, and that card is Soul-Absorbing Bone Tower.

Bone Tower is a Level 3 DARK Zombie with 400 ATK and 1500 DEF. I’ve seen much better stats on other Level 3s, but being DARK and Zombie is really good and offers a good amount of synergy. If you control another Zombie monster, your opponent cannot target this for attacks. Basically if you get two of these, then you can have a soft lock from attacks. This card can use battle protection considering its poor stats, but considering how I mentioned this is used in a Mayakashi FTK, you probably won’t care about this effect. Each time a Zombie monster is Special Summoned, your opponent must send the top 2 cards from their deck to the GY. The Mayakashi are known for Synchro Climbing, so that requires a lot of Special Summons. Get this on the field first, preferably by Normal Summon so you can then Special Summon Hajun to get to Dakki or Shafu to revive a Dakki you might of put in the GY with Foolish Burial or Mayakashi Return. Then you can begin Synchro Climbing and then Link Summon with your highest level Synchro and a Dakki to then revive the Dakki and hopefully have another non-Tuner to do Synchro Climbing again. All those Synchro and Link Summons along with Dakki reviving herself and the other monsters getting to Dakki should deck your opponent out with this. It might not be the best FTK since you are sending cards to your opponent’s GY, and they could just start main decking something like Farfa to banish a monster that’ll stop all your Special Summoning or stop you from decking them out. Considering they didn’t put a once per turn on this when it was first printed, it was bound to find an FTK, just like many other cards in the past they never gave a once per turn restriction to, I’m looking at you Cannon Soldier and Amazoness Archer. Bone Tower will probably only ever be used for degenerate stuff like deck out strategies, so it deserves a good rating, though this strategy does suffer from GY effects existing now.

Advanced Rating: 4/5

Art: 4/5 I really wonder what’s in there.

Alex
Searcy

Throwback Thursday is so old (with one prior review, link below) even in all the years I’ve been here, the review was before I was on the team.  

• July 2004

Oh, and this guy is Dark, so that’s our fourth attribute in four days.  This guy is obviously useful in about any Zombie build, he’d be more useful if he were a Tuner, but alas, this was before the Tuner days.  Level 3 is fine though, even if the 400 attack is abyssmal, but 1500 defense doesn’t suck.  But none of that matters much as he can’t be attacked so long as you control another Zombie.

But, on the flip side, there’s more effect destruction than ever in Yugioh, so not be able to attack is irrelevant at times, too.  But the protection from Battle is still nice, and it’s something that’s completely unrestricted in how easy it is to accomplish.  This guy probably has the most going for it attribute wise as far as Zombies go, being Dark, oh but wait…we haven’t talked about his Deck destruction effect yet…

Each time a Zombie is Special Summoned, send the top 2 cards of your opponent’s Deck to their Graveyard.  Zombies love their Special Summon ability, and they have more ways to do it than most.  One might not immediately think Deckout when they think of Zombies, and I’m inclined to agree.  BUT as fast as Zombies can Special Summon, and how often, and given this can be done multiple times in a turn…

Rating:  3.5/5  I see potential in and out of our theme, but I don’t feel that just throwing one or two of these in here is going to accomplish as much as you’d ideally like.  The protection is good, but marginal, and the Deckout is going to help more themes than hurt these days.  Still solid though

Art:  4.5/5  Yugioh loves to use Goblin Attack Force (or just Goblins in general) not that it’s exactly a complaint.  The tower is cool, creepy, I like the vortex in the sky, and you can see a soul, I presume, being taken from the Goblin on the bottom right.