Review: Swordbound Silence
Silent Swordsman is a very good card for the exact same reasoning as Silent Magician. One free negate per turn is very good and upon destruction floats into a boss monster. Silent Swordsman LV7 with proper backrow protection can be oppressive against spell reliant decks such as Karakuri, Spellbooks, Buster Blader, Hero and Vampire. However, 2800/1000 is a poor threshold. He is easily outed with Paleozoic Canadia and Koa’ki Meiru Maximus. Additionally he can be taken by Vampire Vamp with ease. Another weakness to Silent Swordsman is that he starts at 1000-1500 which is a very poor threshold. Silent Magician often hit the field at 2000 making it much more difficult to handle. That said, Silent Swordsman gets big very quickly and puts the opponent on a timer to deal with it.
A lot of people expected this card to break the game but it has not due to a smart limit of Silent Sword Slash from Konami. If this card was at 3 its impact would have meaningful as very little can deal with Swordsman + Slash.
Another thing hindering this card is a lack of a good engine. Spellbooks were the perfect engine for Silent Magician to maintain card advantage. Additionally the deck thinned itself quickly enough to draw into Magician early. Warrior does not have an engine like this yet but there are ones which could come in the future.
That said, I think we have barely scratched the surface of the card. Its going to take a lot of time to optimize this deck. We have already seen it get Top 8 in the recent MCS with only half a day of testing. Good options to try the card in are the obvious Amazoness, Hero and Control decks. More interestingly, the card is quite good in Noble Knights and Six Samurai.
I recommend buying the structure deck if you already have good Warrior decks and want to have some fun; Its fun trying to make this card work and I am confident that a top deck will come out of it soon.
I’m torn, I’ve heard some people saying they think it’s good but I’m not convinced. Silent Swordsman coming in at 1000 is a really bad initial threshold, and him being a -1 by tributing over a monster is pretty brutal as well. The heavy trap backrow meta that we’re in doesn’t do him many favors either. I personally don’t think Amazoness is a phenomenal way to run him but we’ll see what people can come up with.
The value of this structure deck is tied to the release of the cover card Silent Swordsman. While there are many similarities between this card and Silent Magician, I do not believe this card is as powerful. Silent Swordsman gains 500 attack every standby phase and because of this it will always start out at 1500 on your opponent’s first turn after summon. This is a very weak attack stat in the current meta, not to mention this attack boost is wiped away if the monster is ever flipped face down. The prevalence of Paleozoic Canadia and Floodgate Trap Hole will likely hinder this card from seeing high level success as they have hindered Silent Magician. The most final weakness of the card is the floating: the scariest part of Silent Magician was its ability to float into a 3500 attack monster that was immune to spell effects while Silent Swordsman floats into a 2800 Silent Swordsman LV7 that negates all spell effects, even your own. This distinction really hurts seeing as 2800 is much easier to remove than 3500, not to mention that Silent Swordsman decks will be Warrior based so they will not be backed by Spellbook of Fate in the same way Silent Magician would be.
Overall I feel the Structure Deck is underwhelming. Silent Swordsman LV7 with its 2800 attack is not exactly spectacular. To make things worse, even a spell oriented deck is playing Paleozoic Canadias and/or Sphere Kuriboh.
A solid engine would make it better, right now its just throwing Warriors into a deck and a bunch of common spell/traps. If it could use Silent Sword Slash with a reliable engine it would be very good. As an engine, Amazoness with the limits isnt cutting it. The better boss in that deck would still be Amazoness Queen anyway.
Tell us your own thoughts on the structure deck in the comments below!
