Box Review: Revolution Beginning Published on December 31, 2018 by superforms

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.

Card List

Community Reviews

Thoughts on Fableds

superforms :

Consistently making without using your normal summon is neat, but Fableds lack meaningful ways of interacting with and disrupting your opponent’s board. is unreliable if it even manages to hit the field at all (dodging and ). Overall, a Synchro spam deck without good Synchro monsters. No competitive potential.

Thoughts on Karakuri

superforms :

Extremely fast deck whose core actually doesn’t do that much, similar to Masked Heroes before all the nerfs (with the + draw engine). can be used to dig for high-impact tech cards and synergizes perfectly with every part of the deck (facilitating Anatomy, extending Synchro plays, and helping remove larger monsters). works very well to enable turn 1 Synchro summons. Game-ending cards like 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 + being exactly 4000 damage reminds me and OTKing together. Strong competitive potential.

Negative1 :

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. is a decent card that will help in this Trap-heavy meta, it is just not as useful vs Vampires. You need to resolve the effect, or else it is a dead card. The best addition to this deck is and this will allow the deck to even play with a 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.

superforms :

Diamond Core and are incredible support cards for sitting on one of the best monsters in the game, . gives you strong turn 1 plays and access to negates ( or ), searches ( ), or even more exotic side-deck options ( , , etc). is a tempting option but is harder to keep on the field; I like it less and less the more I use the deck. is a good way to buy time against faster decks like Vampires. Excellent staples like , , and all fit well in this deck. Strong competitive potential.

Bacon :

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

Mistilteinn :

is a great card, but the lack of good Fusions to summon is what makes it unplayable. Great synergy with and is what made it good in the TCG, but we currently lack both and . The moment we get either of these fusions I expect the card to have a meta impact.

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 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.

Negative1 :

: This card is terrible. The amount of setup necessary to make a Level 8 synchro with is too high to warrant running this card. 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.

: 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 up, and it can still get sucked up by . The low defense hurts when is in contention for best card in the game right now.

: This card is bad. The fact that the negation is mandatory means that it is very easy to bait out the negate; 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.

: 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 . Giving them more ways to summon their mediocre boss monsters does not solve the problem.

: 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.

: This card is decent. Vampires are heavily reliant on and , 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 . Someone also brought up and it’s quite valid. He’s an awesome 4-star Synchro but Canadia will kill him quite often. But even with that: a monster, summon , and grab Sphere Kuriboh. Balmung!

Zucram:

On vs : 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 , 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.

superforms :

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. is very versatile and I expect it to see fringe play. now competes with as the best generic level 6 Synchro in the game, but neither are very good. will start to compete with and for side slots against Vampires, also hitting and . has future side-deck potential.

Overall Thoughts

superforms :

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 . 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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