Volcanic Shell – #LD10-EN025
Once per turn: You can pay 500 LP; add 1 “Volcanic Shell” from your Deck to your hand. This card must be in the GY to activate and to resolve this effect.
Date Reviewed: October 19th, 2023
Rating: 3.42
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,
Volcanic Shell is our Throwback Thursday choice and one that was an addition to decks that did a lot of discarding.
500LP isn’t anything to pay to add another copy of Volcanic Shell from the Deck to the hand, especially when it isn’t a hard once per turn. Almost all the time you are going to have Volcanic Shell in the grave to resolve the effect, so there’s no worry about that restriction. This card fuels Blaze Accelerator and Volcanic Blaze Accelerator, as well as fills the grave up for Volcanic Emperor’s Special Summon. Aside from that, Volcanic Shell was at a time used as discard fodder, and still could be, for archetypes that do a lot of it. You were almost guaranteed to always recoup the loss of your previous Shell with another, and then you could loop it once more. It wasn’t as good as discarding Thunder Dragon for two more copies, but it was still a way to keep a discard in your hand. With the influx of new Volcanic cards, Shell’s importance of firing off all three copies in one turn much like Lonefire Blossom has increased.
A must in all Volcanic Decks, and was a nifty tech card in some decks back in the day, but not anymore though. It was of critical importance to the brief moment Volcanics were a part of the meta in the mid 2010’s. Shell will always be needed in 3’s.
Advanced-3/5 Art-3/5
Until Next Time
KingofLullaby
Crunch$G
Throwback Thursday this week gives us the ammo to the Volcanic archetype: Volcanic Shell.
Shell is a Level 1 FIRE Pyro with 100 ATK and 0 DEF. Stats are bad as are with all Level 1s, but being a FIRE Pyro is good. The only effect is a soft once per turn while it’s in the graveyard, letting you pay 500 LP to add a Volcanic Shell from your Deck to your hand. This simply ensures you got a ton of ammo for your Blaze Accelerators and any other discard effects in the Volcanic archetype. Some other Decks could use this as well for discard fodder, since it’s basically 3 cards to discard by using the effect twice in the grave with 2 Shells you discard. It’s home will always be Volcanics, though. Those Blaze Accelerators have to blast something at the opponent. If you play Shell, you play 3.
Advanced Rating: 3.5/5
Art: 4/5 It’s an angry little bullet.
Mighty
Vee
Throwback Thursday brings us one of Axel’s more iconic cards, Volcanic Shell, a level 1 FIRE Pyro monster. Once again, it’s searchable with Volcanic Trooper and Bonfire, and you can access it through the upcoming Diabellstar engine, though you have much better targets for that. Predictably, Shell has an almost nonexistent stat spread of 100 attack and 0 defense, which makes sense logically and thematically since Shell is supposed to be literal cannon fodder, after all.
Shell has a single soft once per turn effect, letting you pay 500 LP while it’s in the Graveyard to search another copy of itself. In Volcanic, as demonstrated by the anime, it’s a cheap way to refill your hand with discard fodder from Blaze Accelerators, and even in modern times Volcanic still likes having Shell simply for free card advantage. Other decks, like Super Quantal and more recently Purrely, have teched in Shell as well since they require a large volume of discarding, which can quickly bleed advantage unless you have a way to recuperate. While Shell isn’t an auto-include in every deck, it’s very useful at its niche of providing discard fodder and is more accessible than ever with Bonfire, so decks that want to run it can run three copies with little consequence.
Advanced: 3.75/5
Art: 3.5/5 Funny bone lava lizard creature?
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