Box Review: Revolution Beginning
This is the 17th Main Box and was released on December 31, 2018. Revolution Beginning contains support for Fabled, Karakuri, and Koa’ki Meiru decks.
Thoughts on Fableds
Consistently making Fabled Ragin without using your normal summon is neat, but Fableds lack meaningful ways of interacting with and disrupting your opponent’s board. Snipe Hunter is unreliable if it even manages to hit the field at all (dodging Paleozoic Canadia and Enemy Controller). Overall, a Synchro spam deck without good Synchro monsters. No competitive potential.
Thoughts on Karakuri
Extremely fast deck whose core actually doesn’t do that much, similar to Masked Heroes before all the nerfs (with the Destiny HERO - Dangerous + Destiny HERO - Celestial draw engine). Karakuri Anatomy can be used to dig for high-impact tech cards and Karakuri Shogun mdl 00 “Burei” synergizes perfectly with every part of the deck (facilitating Anatomy, extending Synchro plays, and helping remove larger monsters). Level Augmentation works very well to enable turn 1 Synchro summons. Game-ending cards like Hey, Trunade! are also good options and can very consistently be accessed (in testing, I once pulled 11 cards out of my deck on turn 4 alone). Shogun + Karakuri Soldier mdl 236 “Nisamu” being exactly 4000 damage reminds me Cyber Angel Dakini and Senju of the Thousand Hands OTKing together. Strong competitive potential.
The only archetype that I could see becoming viable. A deck that has multiple search cards/thin options is always something to look out for.
Thoughts on Koa’ki Meiru
Milliardo:
These guys now have two options: Either create a control deck or an explosive OTK deck. Reckoned Power is a decent card that will help in this Trap-heavy meta, it is just not as useful vs Vampires. You need Iron Core of Koa’ki Meiru to resolve the effect, or else it is a dead card. The best addition to this deck is Diamond Core of Koa’ki Meiru and this will allow the deck to even play with a Balance build to search Iron Core if you do not start with it. The only problem with Balance is that you are forced to play Trap cards that you do not want to play or open with. Ideally you want to open with a hand that has multiple monster cards as options, but with Balance that will be pretty hard to see. Yes, Diamond Core will add that little bit of consistency to the deck, but two problems will remain: This deck heavily relies on card combos in hand to function and it needs answers to your opponents field simultaneously. Before writing the deck off, it is worth testing, but for now it is hard to see whether it will be consistent enough.
Diamond Core and Core Reinforcement are incredible support cards for sitting on one of the best monsters in the game, Koa’ki Meiru Maximus. Koa’ki Meiru Urnight gives you strong turn 1 plays and access to negates (Koa’ki Meiru Wall or Koa’ki Meiru Sandman), searches (Koa’ki Meiru Boulder), or even more exotic side-deck options (Koa’ki Meiru Ice, Koa’ki Meiru Beetle, etc). Koa’ki Meiru Rooklord is a tempting option but is harder to keep on the field; I like it less and less the more I use the deck. Sealed Tombs is a good way to buy time against faster decks like Vampires. Excellent staples like Paleozoic Canadia, Treacherous Trap Hole, and Enemy Controller all fit well in this deck. Strong competitive potential.
Koa’ki Meiru may have a legitimate place in the meta with the new box support. This box is adding another piece to the Rock stun combo, allowing constant Spell and Trap negation between Sandman and Wall. Reckoned Power provides a thundering blow to opponent backrows. Rooklord is a legitimate boss for the deck. And Diamond Core should have been UR. Its search combined with its GY effect is nuts and allows you to bypass your own End Phase upkeep costs without anything in hand or needing to send an Iron Core to the grave. It looks like there will be several possible versions to run with the archetype, each potentially being as viable as the last. Will expect to see OTK variants featuring Maximus as before but with more consistency. Will also anticipate seeing Rock stun versions or Balance versions of the deck featuring Diamond Core and Urnight along with Rooklord. This archetype lacked consistency in the past, but may finally have what it needs to make an immediate meta impact.
Thoughts on Other Cards
Miracle Fusion is a great card, but the lack of good Fusions to summon is what makes it unplayable. Great synergy with Elemental HERO Neos Alius and Gemini Spark is what made it good in the TCG, but we currently lack both Elemental HERO Absolute Zero and Elemental HERO The Shining. The moment we get either of these fusions I expect the card to have a meta impact.
Junk Destroyer is the best Junk Synchro we could have gotten, and I expect it to have immediate meta impact whenever someone finds a deck to put it into. One of the best effects in the game, being a one-sided Black Rose Dragon with an effect that will turn the duel heavily in your favor whenever it resolves. Could even see decks being built around this card on its own.
Junk Destroyer: This card is terrible. The amount of setup necessary to make a Level 8 synchro with Junk Synchron is too high to warrant running this card. Armades, Keeper of Boundaries control is the best deck using Synchros and if that deck can even make Junk Destroyer it is because it already has a Level 5 on board. Junk Destroyer is win more at best and is not reliable enough to be ran or spawn a new deck.
Underworld Fighter Balmung: This card is terrible. 2100 is a weak attack threshold since it doesn’t get over Armades, it doesn’t get over Vampire starters or boss monsters with the field spell Vampire Kingdom up, and it can still get sucked up by Vampire Vamp. The low defense hurts when Paleozoic Canadia is in contention for best card in the game right now.
Doomcaliber Knight: This card is bad. The fact that the negation is mandatory means that it is very easy to bait out the negate; Samurai Skull for instance will kill Doomcaliber and let Vampires special summon a Zombie from their deck. The fact that it is mandatory also shuts off any effects that you may want to use, so any deck using Doomcaliber will be heavily dependent on backrow.
Miracle Fusion: This card doesn’t do enough. The problem Elemental Heroes have always suffered from is that they do not have any good Fusion monsters to go into. Their boss monsters are nowhere near as versatile as Destiny HERO - Dangerous. Giving them more ways to summon their mediocre boss monsters does not solve the problem.
Shrink: This card is mediocre. The only deck that benefits from this card is Masked Heroes because of their OTK nature, but even then there are better backrow cards that Heroes can run.
Unending Nightmare: This card is decent. Vampires are heavily reliant on Vampire’s Domain and Vampire Kingdom, so a card that is capable of popping multiple cards in this manner is crazy strong. I would say this is among the best cards in this set.
Skilchil:
Junk Destroyer makes Junk Synchron useful with other abilities besides What Grows in the Graveyard. Someone also brought up Underworld Fighter Balmung and it’s quite valid. He’s an awesome 4-star Synchro but Canadia will kill him quite often. But even with that: Sphere Kuriboh a monster, summon Junk Synchron, and grab Sphere Kuriboh. Balmung!
Zucram:
On Shrink vs Paleozoic Hallucigenia: The cards are similar in the way that they can be used in the Damage Step. Hallucigenia is an old card that we have which has seen some meta play in Control decks and in some variants of Heroes. The difference between the cards is that Shrink halves original attack while Hallucigenia halves current attack.
Both cards are deck-dependent and meta-dependent in the way that they do the same thing. Shrink is also a quick play, so you don’t need to set it. Hallucigenia is a bit slower since it is a Trap. Shrink has also the possibility to be played in a more aggressive deck to go for more damage and Hallucigenia is slower and more preferable in a Control deck or Stall deck.
My last comment on this is that many decks have been using the skill Balance, and now when we have two cards that do the same thing there is a option to play one over the other to ensure that the math works out. And thanks to Milliardo for helping me with some rulings.
Doomcaliber Knight is a strong card in the right meta. I don’t think it’s great right now but could easily see it being good in the future. Shrink is very versatile and I expect it to see fringe play. Iron Chain Dragon now competes with Flamvell Uruquizas as the best generic level 6 Synchro in the game, but neither are very good. Unending Nightmare will start to compete with Magic Deflector and Skull Meister for side slots against Vampires, also hitting Karakuri Anatomy and Core Reinforcement. Ally Salvo has future side-deck potential.
Overall Thoughts
I like this box a lot. Two very strong new decks, a couple good “staples”, and a few new side-deck options. I also really like the reprints in the box (although I thought they were very lazy at first), for Karakuri especially. Putting Anatomy into the new box and making Karakuri self-contained instead of forcing players to go back to an older box for it is commendable.
KingSwagBodi:
The box can be skipped if you do not have the gems or previous archetypes that this box is enhancing. If you do not currently have Fabled or Koa’ki Meiru, then I would skip. The generic support is good but we have actual quality replacements already released. The new support may just be preferential “splash” cards. KingSwag will possibly whale or possibly not whale. It is because nothing in the box is 100% required or meta changing. Definitely see some fun decks coming along. KingSwag just thinks that it is not for the F2P players. KingSwag does approve of whales looking for whale support in cards like Doomcaliber Knight. KingSwag rates this box at least a 7.5/10 overall.
Milliardo:
This new box is not that great. Koa’ki Meiru look like the most promising deck. Overall most decks rely too much on combos, or specific cards, which will make it inconsistent. Will one of these decks turn into a tiered option? Possibly, but taking a spot in the current Tier List is not an achievement, since the there are barely any good decks. So, this is a typical case of “the one-eyed is king in the land of the blind”.
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