Spiritual Beast Tamer Lara – #BLTR-EN017
You can only Special Summon “Spiritual Beast Tamer Lara(s)” once per turn. You can discard this card; immediately after this effect resolves, Normal Summon 1 “Ritual Beast” monster from your hand. If a “Ritual Beast” card(s) you control would be destroyed by battle or card effect, you can banish this card from your field or GY instead. If this card is banished: You can Special Summon 1 “Ritual Beast” monster from your Deck, except “Spiritual Beast Tamer Lara”. You can only use each effect of “Spiritual Beast Tamer Lara” once per turn.
Date Reviewed: August 5th, 2024
Rating: 4.25
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,
Spiritual Beast Tamer Lara begins our look at Spiritual/Ritual Beasts which shocked the TCG world and was able to take down Snake-Eye Fiendsmith recently.
Because all Spiritual Beasts are considered Ritual Beasts, you gain far more with them if them than if they were considered another different archetype. Level 1 Psychic with a whole lot of DEF but nothing for ATK, Lara can be discarded to Normal Summon a Ritual Beast from your hand. While you can Normal Summon your Ritual Beast monster normally, using Spiritual Beast Tamer Lara this way creates a 1-card Fusion situation for Ritual Beast Ulti-Nochiudrago, and will activate one of Lara’s other effects. Getting things going on the field to get to Ulti-Cannahawk is the most important thing for Ritual Beasts though at the end of the day.
Discarding Lara to Normal Summon something like Spiritual Beast Cannahawk from your hand can activate one of her other abilities: banishing her to Special Summons a Ritual Beast from the Deck except herself. Doing it this way can leave Lara in the graveyard to use her other banish ability when needed while not losing any advantage you are trying to build. You’d end up with what you need for Ulti-Cannahawk on the field with the other copy of Lara in the grave.
Lara can banish herself to protect a Ritual Beast on the field from being destroyed on the field through banishing herself, which will in turn activate this Deck search as well. However you do it, you can pick what you want and presumably have two on the field to get to Ulti-Cannahawk. You can also use Emergency Teleport within the archetype because of the number of Psychic-Type monsters you use to achieve this combo with Ritual Beast Tamer Elder as well.
Spiritual Beast Tamer Lara is an upgrade to her older version and enables a lot for the archetype. Her protection ability is made far better because in addition to saving something on the field it also gives you something as well. Her discard enables you to go into the archetypes main plays and remains just as useful in the graveyard because of banish ability. Great card while still remaining balanced.
Advanced- 4/5 Art- 4/5
Until Next Time,
KingofLullaby
Crunch$G
Prepare for 20 minute combos, cause it’s Ritual Beasts up this week starting with one of the best cards the archetype could have got: Spiritual Beast Tamer Lara.
Lara is a Level 1 LIGHT Psychic with 100 ATK and 2000 DEF. A strong DEF stat on a Level 1, LIGHT is good, and Psychic makes it an E-Tele target. You can only Special Summon this card once per turn, cause otherwise Ritual Beasts would just be an infinite loop machine. You can discard this card to, immediately after this resolves, Normal Summon a Ritual Beast from your hand. It’s an addition summon for some of the main combo enablers like Ritual Beast Tamer Elder, Spiritual Beast Cannahawk, or Spiritual Beast Rampengu. It gets other names out of your hand, mainly Ritual Beast Tamers to summon your Spiritual Beasts, but the aforementioned 3 get combos going. If a Ritual Beast card(s) would be destroyed by battle or card effect, you can banish this from the graveyard instead, protecting some of the Ritual Beast boss monsters you might have put some effort into making. Finally, if it is banished, you can Special Summon any Ritual Beast from the Deck, besides Lara, getting you to any Ritual Beast name you might be missing to continue the combo. Hard once per turn on each effect, of course. Lara is great support for Ritual Beasts, giving them another Normal Summon and the banish effect to summon another Ritual Beast from Deck is great considering how many Ritual Beast effects can banish her, or you just banish her to summon a Fusion of course. Lara’s good enough to play 3 of her, she’s one of the few Ritual Beasts you’d max out on to see as soon as possible.
Advanced Rating: 4.5/5
Art: 5/5 Seeing Lara all grown up is nice.
Mighty
Vee
We’re moving on to currently the most successful of the Terminal World archetypes, the long-awaited Ritual Beast support. Spiritual Beast Tamer Lara leads the way, a level 1 LIGHT Psychic monster– this time, Lara is a member of the Spiritual Beast sub-archetype as well, so it can provide both the Ritual Beast and Spiritual Beast requirements for the Fusion monsters. It’s searchable with the new Ritual Beast Inheritance in addition to the classic Ritual-Beast Ulti-Cannahawk, though for some combo lines this won’t be necessary. True to Lara, this card only has a measly 100 attack in exchange for a fairly meaty 2000 defense, which hopefully won’t come up in the long run.
Oddly, Lara can only be Special Summoned once per turn. This restriction is probably meant to curb Cannahawk loops and enforce their Normal Summon playstyle, but it doesn’t matter too much since you can still set up strong boards regardless. Lara has three hard once per turn effects, the first letting you discard it to immediately Normal Summon a Ritual Beast monster from your hand. While I’m not usually a huge fan of these kinds of effects, this one is excellent since your Ritual Beast Tamers all trigger only on Normal Summon, so you can take advantage of Tamers that aren’t just Elder. Incidentally, the original Lara is also nice since you can immediately Special Summon new Lara back to the field. Lara’s second effect lets you banish it from your field or Graveyard to save a Ritual Beast card from destruction. It’s easily the least useful effect, but it can help bounce back for follow-up since that leads us to Lara’s last effect, which triggers if it’s banished in any way, letting you Special Summon any Ritual Beast monster from your deck except itself. This effect alone is the cornerstone of new Ritual Beast combos, since now, Cannahawk, Rampengu, and Golden Sarcophagus are now one-card combos. Previously, Ritual Beast relied on two card combos and were pretty much forced to open Elder, but now you can perform a myriad of combos just by banishing Lara. While playing three copies of Lara isn’t strictly necessary for combo lines, the first effect is useful enough that you can easily justify it, and having more copies in circulation certainly doesn’t hurt.
+Fantastic combo piece that enables one-card combo lines
+Flexible effects that can recover from a variety of situations
-Can be a brick with atrocious hands since it doesn’t combo on its own
-Special Summon restriction can make certain combo lines tricky
Advanced: 4.25/5
Art: 4.5/5 She survived Ultimate Providence after all! Older, stronger, and wiser, of course.
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