Xiangke Magician – Yu-Gi-Oh! Review: Alex’s 15th Anniversary on Pojo

Alex
Searcy

It’s been a minute since we looked at a Pendulum card, but as Spellcaster oddity week continues, we have Xiangke Magician.  Level 7, Dark, Spellcaster, and having 2500 attack makes this a Dark Magician who is a Light negator.  The 500 defense here kinda sucks, and being a high Level Monster so low on the Pendulum scale (3 here) is a bit strange as well.

But back to the Monster effect side here, once a turn, you can target a Light Monster on the Field (face-up) and said Monster has its effect(s) negated until the end of the turn.  While Light Monsters effects a LOT of Decks, and I do see this as good, this could all too often be too specific an effect that just won’t do you any good.  But there certainly would be times this could help you a lot.  

For the Pendulum effect, which is rather interesting, you can Target a face-up XYZ Monster of yours, and in this turn you can use it for XYZ Material for an XYZ Summon (treating its Rank as its Level) even if this card leaves the Field.  That’s really cool.  Using an XYZ I’d assume you used all the Material of to be able to bring out a new XYZ Monster, does open up some possibilities.  

I think as far as the effects go, this is definitely the better one, and the one you’re more likely to use more often.  More reliable an effect to me than the Monster one anyway.  

Rating:  3/5

Art:  4/5  While I enjoy what I see, he strikes me a bit more of a Warrior than a Spellcaster, but I get it too.  Xiangke means Buddhist in Chinese, and I’m not seeing much of this here, but fun fact anyway.

King of
Lullaby

Hello Pojo Fans,

Xiangke Magician is a Pendulum Monster, but not one that I see as really useful.

Low DEF isn’t anything new for some high ATK monsters, but with a low Pendulum Scale, you don’t get a lot out of him as a scale for providing useful Pendulum Summoning. Allowing you to use an Xyz monster as a regular monster for an Xyz Summon is unique, and helpful in certain situations. You could get another copy of the Xyz onto the field or get to a certain Xyz that has the same scale as that monster. Helpful when you’ve used up the materials on one Xyz and want to Xyz again (although with Link Summoning around, you have better options sometimes). The monster effect currently doesn’t apply well to the metagame. The top decks don’t main deck a lot of LIGHT monsters, and being until the end of the turn only, there are better cards that can deal with monster effects better than this card.

I think had it been something different, like changing this cards Attribute to negate a certain Attribute for the turn as a Quick Effect would’ve been better. LIGHT used to be a powerful Attribute, and still can be, but most decks topping regionals and YCS’s aren’t LIGHT-centered.

Advanced-2.5/5     Art-4/5

Until Next Time
KingofLullaby

Crunch$G

Something we don’t see often anymore as we got a Pendulum card for review with Xiangke Magician, and I can appreciate when Pendulums aren’t a giant wall of text sometimes.

Xiangke Magician in the Scale is a 3 with the effect of once per turn being able to target a face-up Xyz Monster you control for you to be able to use it as Xyz Material for an Xyz Summon this turn by using its Rank as a Level, even if Xiangke leaves the field before the turn ends. This was a pretty cool idea with Xiangsheng Magician to help summon Odd-Eyes Rebellion Dragon or Odd-Eyes Raging Dragon with the effect they have for using Xyz Monsters as material, even if using Rank-Up-Magics seems better since Xiangsheng does have a noteworthy downside for going to a Scale 4 just for the opponent having more cards.

As a monster, Xiangke is a Level 7 DARK Spellcaster with 2500 ATK and 500 DEF. Dark Magician ATK is nice, 500 DEF is not. DARK and Spellcaster also go extremely hand and hand together. Its lone monster effect is a Quick Effect to target a LIGHT monster on the field to have its effects be negated until the end of the turn. Well this does seem niche and in theory something that’s useful 1-in-6 times, but probably more since LIGHT is a far better Attribute than some of the others, but it can come up. Negation is nice, and this free negation can help in the right matchup while in others it is at least a free Level 7, something Pendulum Decks love to go into Absolute Dragon to Link it away for it to summon Vortex Dragon. It’s also searchable off Pendulum Call and as we saw it does have a good scale. It isn’t the best card, and its effects won’t come up often, but I can still give this an okay-ish score since what it is is pretty good and what it does won’t hurt you if it did come up.

Advanced Rating: 3/5

Art: 4.5/5 I can see the Chinese and Buddhist inspirations here. I like the design overall.