Dark Red Enchanter Part 1: Card Analysis
 

          Welcome back to Ed’s section on Pojo.com; I’m going to take you guys through an article today that talks about a card that most people are overlooking. Dark Red Enchanter has existed in the OCG for a while now, and it’s just recently that it’s hit the TCG over here in America as a Secret Rare. You might think it’s strange that I’m talking about such a low-valued card when stronger and more precious cards like Dark Armed Dragon and Dark Nephthys dominate the format, but after you thoroughly absorb the contents of this article, you’ll wonder why you’ve never considered playing this card competitively.

To start off today’s article, let’s take a look at Dark Red Enchanter’s effect:

When this card is Normal Summoned, put 2 Spell Counters on it. Each time a Spell Card is activated, put 1 Spell Counter on this card. It gains 300 ATK for each Spell Counter on it. Once per turn, you can remove 2 Spell Counters from this card to make your opponent discard 1 random card.

After reading the effect of the card, you’ll most likely want to know what the other features of the card are. Dark Red Enchanter is a Level 6 DARK Spellcaster monster with 1700 ATK and 2200 DEF. At first glance, he can definitely be a horrible card that won’t ever see play in any decks, but when we think about his attribute, he can even be included in a Dark Armed Dragon Return deck.

Let’s take a look at his effect now, shall we? Each time this card is Normal Summoned it gets 2 Spell Counters. This means that whenever Dark Red Enchanter is Special Summoned in any way, he doesn’t get any Spell Counters until a Spell Card is activated. That’s not necessarily bad, because Tribute Summoning isn’t too difficult when multiple monsters are Special Summoned left and right each turn. Keeping in mind how many Spells we usually see in decklists nowadays, it’s not a bad idea to Special Summon Dark Red Enchanter, either. With more than 15 Spell Cards in almost every deck, this card can easily gain the Attack Points it needs to attack over a Dark Nephthys, or even a Dark Armed Dragon.

Dark Red Enchanter has a second effect as well, which is that it forces the opponent to discard 1 random card from his/her hand by removing 2 Spell Counters on itself. This is a great effect attached to a monster that can increase its attack points by a lot in a short amount of time. Discarding 1 random card from the opponent’s hand can result in the opponent losing a Dark Armed Dragon, Dark Grepher, or any other important monster that the opponent would be relying on. The cost of this second effect isn’t that hard to pull off either, since the Spell Counters can so easily be gathered onto Dark Red Enchanter by just activating multiple Spell Cards in a turn. However, because attack points wouldn’t matter too much after the opponent’s strong monsters are discarded to the Graveyard, Dark Red Enchanter’s effect can cause multiple cards to be discarded from the opponent’s hand in a single turn.

The purpose of this article was to get you guys familiar with Dark Red Enchanter’s effect and talk about it a little so you guys can remember what it does when reading the second part of this article. Right now, after Shonen Jump Championship Columbus, we can conclude that Dark Armed Dragon still reigns supreme. In this article, I attempted to reveal a somewhat hidden aspect of a card to you guys, and I hope that one of you can extend off of this card. In the meantime, I’ll be talking about someone that did run a deck at Shonen Jump Championship Columbus in the second part of this series. If anyone has any feedback, article requests, or deck fixes, please email them all to me at lightningsaphira94@gmail.com. Keep in mind the Submittal Guidelines at the top of my section, and I’ll leave you guys at that!

Have Fun and Play Fair!

Ed