Stardust Dragon/Assault Mode – Yu-Gi-Oh! Review

Crunch$G

Assault Mode Activate is too easy for Throwback Thursday, as a choice and to review in general, so instead I went with one of the best Assault Modes, Stardust Dragon/Assault Mode.

Stardust Dragon/Assault Mode is a Level 10 WIND Dragon with 3000 ATK and 2500 DEF. A 2 level increase and 500 ATK/DEF boost just like every other /Assault Mode is to their Synchro counterpart, WIND is pretty meh, but Dragon is a well supported type. This card cannot be Normal Summoned or Set sadly and can only be Special Summoned with Assault Mode Activate tributing Stardust Dragon or with his own effect normally (but again Assault Reboot ignores this and Assault Zero treats the summon as Assault Mode Activate since that’s an option). When a card or effect is activated (Quick Effect), you can tribute this card to negate the activation and destroy said card. Better negation than Stardust by a country mile, just with a little more effort to summon, though not that much anymore. Negating any card is great, and while tributing this for a negate might suck, Stardust Dragon/Assault Mode revives himself at the end of the turn you use this effect and it wasn’t negated (assuming you summoned Stardust Dragon/Assault Mode properly first, Assault Reboot isn’t the proper way, meaning this couldn’t revive itself). If this card is destroyed, though, you can revive a Stardust Dragon from your graveyard, which is great when a monster replaces itself, it gives you your resource back to use Stardust Dragon again for its effect or to summon another Stardust Dragon/Assault Mode. This is easily the best Assault Mode and worth building a deck around, and that’s much easier to do now.

Advanced Rating: 4/5

Art: 4/5 It’s Stardust Dragon with armor, looks cool but not a fan of the green background here.

Alex
Searcy

Assault Mode Activate would have been too simple and bland for Throwback Thursday, and while we did this once it’s been a decade, so why not look back at Stardust Dragon-Assault Mode

So it’s a juiced up Stardust Dragon, obviously.  Level 10, 3000 attack (an obvious improvement over Stardust’s 2500) Dragon has insane support, even if the Wind hurts or balances it out a bit.  A Tribute of this to negate any effect, and being optional, along with revival, and the benefit of getting the original Stardust back when destroyed.  I know the Assault Monsters didn’t get much love before, but there’s no reason not to build a Stardust/Dragon variant around this guy now.  He’s phenomenal, and even better with support for Dragons and Assault Mode specifically.  Use and abuse the hell out of this card.

Rating:  4.75/5

Art:  5/5  I’ve never seen a Stardust Dragon I didn’t like 

WarlockBlitz

Once per turn negation is very good. Stardust Dragon/Assualt Mode is a Level 10 Wind Dragon-type monster with 3000 Atk and 2500 Def. We would normally want higher attack with Level 10, but Blue-Eyes stats are still good. Assault Modes need Assault Mode activate to summon off their corresponding Synchro Monster, which is why they were slow and unreliable. There are ways to ignore some summoning conditions, but at the end of a play like that, you end up with this monster that tributes itself to negate the activation of anything. Then SDAM comes back during the End Phase. However, coming back is a technically a secondary Special Summon from the grave that is somewhat easy to negate. If SDAM is destroyed while on the field, you get to Special Summon a targeted Stardust Dragon from the grave, provided that Stardust Dragon was properly summoned first. It’s a good floating effect and a good negation effect. However, Stardust Dragon Brick Mode is still a brick card that would need to be run at 1 in the main deck with other brick cards. It looks amazing though and would be fun to play. 

Score: 3/5     Art: 4.75/5