Deciding that two was not enough, Bushiroad has graced Great Nature with a third iteration of Grade 3 Bigbelly. Teacher’s Cane of Affection improved on some of the shortcomings of the original G era boss of Great Nature. Can this newer, bluer Bigbelly up his game once again?

[AUTO](VC/RC):Success 20000

[AUTO](VC)[1/Turn]:When this unit is placed on (VC), or when your G unit Stride, choose up to one card from your hand, call it to (RC), and it gets [Power]+4000 until end of turn. If you called a card, at the end of that turn, draw a card, and retire that rear-guard.

[AUTO](VC/RC)[1/Turn] Generation Break 1:[Counter Blast (1)] At the end of the battle that this unit attacked, if this unit is successful, you may pay the cost. If you do, choose one of your other rear-guards, [Stand] it, and it gets [Power]+4000 until end of turn.

At first glance, Astonishing Professor’s on-Stride ability looks like nothing but a straight upgrade from Teacher’s Cane. You still get to call something on-Stride, that thing still gets a power boost as well as an end-of-turn draw and retire, and this time what you call does not even need to have a Success ability, all for no cost. You can even do all of this on-Ride if you choose, though it is limited to once per turn, meaning you cannot do it twice if you Ride this unit and Stride in the same turn. Bushiroad loves to find strange ways to claim that they have balanced a card instead of completely power creeping them. In this case, you must give the power buff to the unit you called off of Bigbelly’s on-Stride skill instead of giving you a choice. However, since you will do quite a bit of retiring and need to refill key spots on your field anyway, you will likely want to be buffing the unit you called anyway. A restriction in theory, but not in practice.

The main takeaway, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, is that Astonishing Professor does what Teacher’s Cane did without using up a single one of your increasingly valuable Counter Blasts. Finally, about two years after the advent of Great Nature in the G era, we have received a Bigbelly that has what should have been our original on-Stride skill. Though late, having a Bigbelly with this skill is certainly not any less welcome.

The Counter Blasts come into play when looking at Bigbelly’s second skill. This newest wave of support for all clans has seen many retrains of previous on-Stride Grade 3s with abilities that work on Rear Guard and Bigbelly himself has not escaped that fate, though it is definitely for the better. On Vanguard circle or Rear Guard circle, Bigbelly becomes a Success-locked Tusk Master. After Bigbelly swings, a single Counter Blast will perform the majority of Crayon Tiger’s function for you. Stand a Rear Guard and give it 4000 power. Bigbelly does not need to be boosted and the targeted unit does not die at the end of the turn, but the tradeoff for that freedom of use is that using him will not net you a draw at the end of the turn. A small price to pay for running extra copies of Crayon Tiger that are, at the same time, incredible to ride as your Vanguard.

Prior to this set being revealed, I felt certain that it was time for Bushiroad to give us a reprint of Crayon Tiger. Crayon is becoming increasingly hard to find as its original printing moves farther and farther into the past and more and more new students join Cray’s most prestigious university. I was disappointed at the lack of announced Crayon reprints in this set, but now I see why. Even if you cannot afford to pick up Crayon Tigers, your new Vanguard has most of its ability built in. Bigbelly still likely will not eliminate Crayon from all players’ decks, but you may start to see Crayon being run at slightly lower numbers to make room for other valuable Grade 2s. This may even have the side effect of lowering Crayon’s secondary market price, but only time will tell on that front.

Overall, this new Bigbelly is a very solid card. No longer are Bigbelly decks locked into needing to cram as many Success-capable units into their deck as possible. Astonishing Professor allows you to run whatever you feel you need to in order to maximize your deck’s potential without sacrificing the consistency of his on-Stride ability. He does not necessarily elevate the Bigbelly archetype to a whole new level on his own, but he certainly does set the deck up to climb to new heights with more Rear Guards and G Units to be revealed.

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