And now we enter the twilight portion of my set review, with a contrasted look at Light and Dark. Will it be these new cards time to shine? Or will the be overshadowed by many meta mainstays such as Yuri, Veritas, and Kam’lanaut?

As always, I’ll be looking at these for the constructed format only, and we’ll be doing both these elements in one go as it brings us to a staggering 4 (yes, FOUR) cards to look at in one go.

More after the jump!

Wol – 9-121L

First thing’s first, this art is absolutely 10/10 nuts. You need to see one of these in foil. Art this good is 100% deserving of a full art, although I wish I could say the same for the effect. Getting him onto the field isn’t massively unreasonable in Dual Color decks, we already know that Wind/Water is a combination that works, Earth/Water looks like it has potential to work, and Fire/Wind is the basis for a reasonable Cadet deck these days – so that puts him at an above-curve 4CP 9k, which isn’t horrible. His on-death ability is pretty relevant right now considering the meta is basically “spam Famfrit like Fist of the North Star Jesus Christ,” and gives you a bit of targeted spot removal when he inevitably heads to the giant break zone in the sky. Additionally, if your opponent has multiple forwards out, they’re probably not going to want to block Wol, as he can theoretically trade up to 18k which is okay too, I guess. Think of him as a super-Galdes in this regard, but less versatile on death. I do have a few issues with this card, that mostly revolve around clashes with existing cards, which I’ll detail below:

Being called Wol gives him some serious name clash with the Earth Wol from Opus V, and the Light Wol from Opus V. One is the gold standard for a 4CP 8k beater, and the other is a key part of any Warrior of Light combo based deck.

Having job Warrior of Light should promote him straight into a Warrior of Light themed deck, but as above, you’re likely already running the Light Wol from Opus V, or the Light Warrior of Light from Opus II, meaning that you’re probably good for Light/Dark slots.

His restriction could have actually been used to make him a more versatile card. If this card worked like Livia, and actually checked if he’d been paid with the correct CP when he was played, and broke himself if he did not meet conditions, it would open the card up to be used as pseudo-spot removal like Opus IV’s Raubahn, which I think would actually be really cool.

I’ve seen a few people mention some potential plays with things like Magic Pot, and he’s also Devout-able, so I’m sure there’s ways to make this card playable, even if he’s not optimal. He can also be hasted off of Meia? Which is especially annoying as Lightning is not one of the compatible elements with him. D’oh.

Locke – 9-122H

This card is not good enough to be called Locke. We have the ever-excellent legend Locke from Opus IV, and the new backup Locke as the absolute prime-choice card name Locke for virtually all scenarios. His effect cannot be sped up even with haste, meaning that you may not recoup that value back at all, but he does have a rubbish version of Light Rain’s effect on attack, at least. I’d put this card in the same sort of tier as Minerva from Opus III, and that card sees no play due to how slow the effect is (although admittedly some of the hate is from how much the card costs, too). VI is a deck that does need a good Light/Dark card that’s on-theme, if not just to rescue it from the monotony of Veritas, but this card is not that card.

Chaos (MOBIUS) – 9-123L

Main issue with this card is it’s not able to be abused by flickering it, which is often a thing I look for in something over 5CP. That said, I can see this card having some strange applications in things like a Fire-based field wipe deck, essentially serving as a less versatile Fina. If you’re running it in Fire/Ice, it can be a Fina that does the 5k to board, and discards a card from your opponent’s hand, which can be an especially nasty swing turn, especially if you’re comboing with something like Bomb or Lich to make sure you take out a well-developed board. I don’t think there’s anything too exciting with this deck so far, but I do think this style of modal effect is somewhat more interesting than Wol’s restriction to play him. Another 10/10 foil as well, the art for some of the cards has really been on point this set. With him being called Chaos (MOBIUS) as well, he can actually be played alongside Opus I Chaos as a colour fixer, allowing you to pick effects as needed (for example if you need to clear something like a Deathgaze (IX) but otherwise have no monster removal.)

Emperor Gestahl – 9-124H

Well, thank god this guy plays “5 or less” or not “6 or less” or this card would be absolutely nuts. Currently I think the best plays you will see off of this is playing Kam’lanauts (who replace the Emperor Gestahl you just broke to play Kam’lanaut) to chain breaks with Gestahl for reasonably economical removal + forward presence. Him being Category VI isn’t irrelevant too, as it allows Mono Ice VI to hit 3 Category VI backups (finally), making those critical Locke plays less disruptable. Give this card a shot if you’re looking at playing Kam’lanaut, I definitely think this card will get better as we get more things released, but I also thing its existence will affect the cost/power of Dark cards going forward during the design stage. Thematically he can also go into Kefka as well, so this guy may be worth a look if you’re running monsters.

So that’s the final article for my Opus IX review series done! What do you think of the set overall? Personally I’ve been really happy with it, and there’s been loads of new stuff I’ve had a great time testing so far.

A bit further into the set, I think I’m going to revisit a few opinions on cards I might have changed my mind on.

Thank you for reading & thank you for your continued support!

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