Each “X-Saber” monster serves a special role in the overall X-Saber strategy. XX-Saber Hyunlei’s job is to eliminate any Spell and Trap Card that could get in your way. Many cards in the X-Saber Deck, like Saber Slash, only work on face-up cards. Hyunlei is different. This Level 6 Synchro Monster can destroy up to 3 Spell and Trap Cards when she’s Synchro Summoned, regardless of whether they’re face-up or face down! With the protection of Solemn Judgment, Dark Bribe, or My Body as a Shield backing this monster up, you can find yourself wiping away an entire field of Spell and Traps with one huge play!

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Most Duelists pack their Decks with monsters that have the strongest effects they can find. Fiendish Chain can negate those monsters’ effects and render those monsters unable to attack. If you shackle your opponents’ monsters with Fiendish Chain, your opponent will be forced to rely on other monsters to win.

Some of the strongest monsters in the game also have the best effects. Judgment Dragon has 3000 ATK, Dark Armed Dragon has 2800 ATK, Gladiator Beast Gyzarus has 2400 ATK, and all of these monsters can destroy cards on the field. Fiendish Chain takes away all of their strengths at once.

Make these monsters useless by activating Fiendish Chain!

Unlike Skill Drain and Forbidden Chalice, which can also negate the effects of your opponent’s monsters, Fiendish Chain will protect you from those monsters’ attacks too! Fiendish Chain also has some other advantages over these two cards.

Skill Drain has the drawback of negating all of your own monsters’ effects. The effects of Fiendish Chain, on the other hand, can be controlled more easily. You get to choose the monster you want to see affected by Fiendish Chain, and your monsters will keep all of their effects.

Forbidden Chalice has the drawback of only lasting until the End Phase, while Fiendish Chain paralyzes your opponent’s monster for as long as it remains on the field. When you use Forbidden Chalice on an opponent’s monsters, that monster will also gain an additional 400 ATK to attack you with.

Fiendish Chain is especially good against Decks that rely on certain monster effects to turn the Duel around. Since Fiendish Chain can make the effects of Dark Armed Dragon, Judgment Dragon, Chaos Sorcerer, and Phantom of Chaos inaccessible to your opponent, it can be a strong Side Deck option to use against Twilight Decks. Fiendish Chain can also be used to negate the effects of any of your opponents’ Monarch Tribute Monsters, including Caius the Shadow Monarch and Raiza the Storm Monarch. This makes it a useful card to Side Deck in against Monarch Decks too.

Since Fiendish Chain can also be used to negate the effects of strong Synchro Monsters like Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier and Mist Wurm, it can be a useful card against just about any Deck.

But watch out for monsters whose effects activate in the Graveyard! Fiendish Chain negates monsters’ effects while they’re on the field with Fiendish Chain, but doesn’t negate effects that take place while the monster is off the field. It also doesn’t stop opponents from activating their monsters’ effects. This means that your opponent can still activate the effect of Stardust Dragon or Exiled Force, even if you chose to negate its effect with Fiendish Chain. Monsters like Mystic Tomato and XX-Saber Emmersblade also can’t have their effects negated by Fiendish Chain, since they activate in the Graveyard.

Fiendish Chain has a lot of uses and can sometimes get you out of a tight spot. The power to tie up one of your opponent’s monsters so it can’t attack and loses its effect is unique to Fiendish Chain and can be especially strong against certain Duelists. Try it out and see how often it comes in handy.

It was never the most popular Deck, but if you were to go back into the archives and look at the results of the 2009 American National Championship as well as the 2009 Canadian National Championship, you’d see that Synchro Cat won them both. Synchro Cat was a powerful but under-represented Deck that used a full library of Beast-Type monsters such as “Neo-Spacian Dark Panther,” “X-Saber Airbellum,” and “Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter” along with “Rescue Cat” to Synchro Summon monsters like “Arcanite Magician” and “Dark Strike Fighter” at rapid speeds. It could wipe out your cards, your Life Points, or even both on just a moment’s notice.

 Synchro Cat was able to achieve this impressive results largely due to “Summoner Monk” and “Rescue Cat”, which were both Semi-Limited cards at the time. Now, both “Rescue Cat” and “Summoner Monk” are Limited cards, so for Synchro Cat to adapt it needs a new way to search out and Special Summon monsters: “Super-Nimble Mega Hamster”!

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“Consecrated Light” has 0 ATK and DEF, but it also has the power to render all of your opponent’s monsters useless. As long as “Consecrated Light” is on the field, DARK monsters can’t be Summoned or attack. “Consecrated Light” can’t be destroyed by battle with DARK monsters either. This means “Consecrated Light” has the power to shut down entire Decks!

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Absolute Powerforce has 1 new Ritual Monster and 3 new Djinns that can be used to Summon it. Each of these cards has a unique effect that gives you more options than ever when choosing to Summon a Ritual Monster.

The newest Ritual Monster is “Garlandolf, King of Destruction.” Garlandolf is a Level 7 Ritual Monster with 2500 ATK. When it’s Ritual Summoned, all face-up monsters with DEF less than or equal to the ATK of Garlandolf are destroyed, and Garlandolf gains 100 ATK for each of those monsters. Garlandolf is the perfect Ritual Monster to Summon when you want to clear the field, since most monsters have 2500 or less DEF.

Garlandolf can be Ritual Summoned with the Ritual Spell Card “Ritual of Destruction.” Then, you can remove “Ritual of Destruction” from your Graveyard so that all of your opponent’s monsters destroyed by your Ritual Monsters are sent to the top of your opponent’s Deck instead of his Graveyard. This can come in handy if you want to lock up your opponent’s draw with a card that won’t destroy your mighty Garlandolf. If you don’t remove “Ritual of Destruction” from your Graveyard, you can recover it with “Preparation of Rites” and get Garlandolf from your Deck along with it.

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