Assault and Battery - Part V: Hyper Psychic Blaster and Red Dragon Archfiend

Hey all, sorry for the delay in this week's blog.

For the past couple weeks now, I've been trying to find innovative and effective ways to utilize the Assault Mode monsters, whether it's Arcanite Magician or Doomkaiser Dragon. But this week, I've lumped two of them together because, to be Honest, I haven't been able to find a decent use for them.

Let's start with Hyper Psychic Blaster. A lot of people say that the original is better than the Assault Mode, and I'd have to agree here.

Hyper Psychic Blaster
EARTH/Psychic/Synchro/Level 9/ATK 3000/DEF 2500
1 Tuner + 1 or more non-Tuner Psychic-Type Monsters
During battle between this attacking card and a Defense Position monster whose DEF is lower than the ATK of this card, inflict the difference as Battle Damage to your opponent's Life Points. If this card attacks a Defense Position monster whose DEF is lower than the ATK of this card, gain Life Points equal to the difference at the end of the Damage Step.

It's not too bad; the only synchro requirements is that the non-Tuner be Psychic. He has piercing, which is a lot to say for a 3k ATK monster, and even better, you gain Life Points equal to that piercing damage (even if the damage is negated by Waboku or the like).

Hyper Psychic Blaster/Assault Mode
EARTH/Psychic/Level 11/ATK 3500/DEF 3000
This card cannot be Normal Summoned or Set. This card cannot be Special Summoned except with "Assault Mode Activate". If this card battles a monster, at the end of the Damage Step, inflict damage to your opponent equal to that monster's DEF and gain Life Points equal to its ATK. When this card on the field is destroyed, you can Special Summon 1 "Hyper Psychic Blaster" from your Graveyard.

In today's meta, there are a lot of weak monsters that have powerful effects (GK Spy, Summoner Monk, Mystic Tomato) and a lot of times, you'd gain far more life points and deal far more damage with piercing damage than by taking the card's original ATK and DEF. HPB/AM's effect does nothing to abuse its massive 3500 ATK, and the effort that it takes to get it out for the possible bonus of slamming into, say, a Blue-Eyes White Dragon and dealing 3k damage to them while gaining 3k lifepoints is just not worth it. The only heavy hitters in today's meta are cards like JD and DAD, and those will take you out far before you manage to get out HPB/AM. And the life-point gain itself doesn't help too much either, serving as only a buffer for a turn or so. Hyper Psychic Blaster, additionally, only fits in a Psychic deck, as only Psychics abuse their own life points that much as to make real good use of HPB's effect. I don't pretend to be an expert on Psychics, so I'm afraid I can't post a deck here. In any case, though, HPB/AM is really just not worth using. It's too much effort for just 500 more ATK/DEF and a worse effect.

Red Dragon Archfiend/Assault Mode is a similar story:

Red Dragon Archfiend
DARK/Dragon/Synchro/Level 8/ATK 3000/DEF 2000
1 Tuner + 1 or more non-Tuner monsters
If this card attacks a Defense Position monster your opponent controls, destroy all Defense Position monsters your opponent controls after damage calculation. During your End Phase, destroy all other monsters you control that did not declare an attack this turn.

You don't see this guy in a game too often, but he's occasionally used for getting over the ever-so-common Spirit Reaper or Marshmallon, or can be brought out against a defensive player with 4-5 wall monsters. His second effect, the destruction one, is usually only detrimental if your opponent chains a Threatening (believe me, this happens more often than you'd think). In games, RDA is usually eclipsed by Stardust, only brought out when that extra 500 ATK is really needed.

Red Dragon Archfiend/Assault Mode
DARK/Dragon/Level 10/ATK 3500/DEF 2500
This card cannot be Normal Summoned or Set. This card cannot be Special Summoned except with "Assault Mode Activate". If this card attacks, destroy all other monsters after damage calculation. When this card on the field is destroyed, you can Special Summon 1 "Red Dragon Archfiend" from your Graveyard.

"Destroy all other monsters after damage calculation". There's practically no warrant for this. This effect is only even barely useful if you're confronted with multiple high-powered enemy ATK position cards that your other monsters can't get through, or if you happen across the occasional monster that RDA/AM can't get over. If it was "opponent's monsters", this card would possibly have a place, but as it clears all monsters but itself, this is an effect that is generally not desired.

What's the only practical use that has ever been seen of RDA/AM? Yugioh World Championship 2009, for the Nintendo DS, had a puzzle in which the opponent had triple Tytannial (one in ATK, two in DEF) and the solution involved getting out RDA and Stardust, attacking with RDA, attacking with Stardust, flipping over double Assault Mode Activate, attacking with SD/AM, attacking with RDA/AM, then negating RDA/AM's destruction effect with Stardust to destroy RDA/AM to bring back RDA and attack for game. How many times will you get RDA/AM and Stardust on the field like that and be able to abuse it? Only in that puzzle, I assure you. Besides, in any normal duel, any effort spent getting out both SD and RDA/AM would be far and away better used to OTK in a more reliable, efficient, way.

In conclusion, both Red Dragon Archfiend/Assault Mode and Hyper Psychic Blaster/Assault Mode just take up too much effort to get out while providing too little of a bonus to be able to use. And unlike other hard-to-get-out cards like Majestic Star Dragon or Armitael, the Chaos Phantom, their effects are actually worse than their Synchro predecessors.

Now, some of you have been asking if a general Assault Mode deck is at all plausible. I have to say that it's possible, but probably not very strong to use the assorted Assault Mode cards (Assault Mercenary, Night Wing Sorceress). First of all, the different Assault Modes would have to support themselves and they'd have to be easily summonable. This strikes Arcanite and Doomkaiser off the list, and Hyper Psychic Blaster is a level 9. The remaining three, Colossal, Stardust, and RDA, are all level 8, easily summonable, and have more or less generic effects. Constructing a deck based around these would have to be more or less a synchro deck, and we look to past creations. I present deck 1 of 2: SD/RDA Drain.

Card Count: 41
Monsters: 19
2x Stardust Dragon/Assault Mode
1x Red Dragon Archfiend/Assault Mode
2x Beast King Barbaros
1x Dark Armed Dragon
2x Destiny Hero - Malicious
1x Destiny Hero - Defender
1x Destiny Hero - Fear Monger
1x Elemental Hero Stratos
2x Assault Beast
1x Blackwing - Gale the Whirlwind
1x Plaguespreader Zombie
1x Mystic Tomato
1x Sangan
2x Krebons

Spells: 12
2x Allure of Darkness
3x Destiny Draw
1x Magical Mallet
1x Reinforcement of the Army
1x Emergency Teleport
1x Brain Control
1x Giant Trunade
1x Mystical Space Typhoon
1x Pot of Avarice

Traps: 10
3x Skill Drain
3x Assault Mode Activate
1x Torrential Tribute
1x Mirror Force
2x Phoenix Wing Wind Blast

Extra Deck: 15
3x Stardust Dragon
2x Colossal Fighter
2x Red Dragon Archfiend
1x Mist Wurm
1x Black Rose Dragon
1x Thought Ruler Archfiend
1x Goyo Guardian
1x Arcanite Magician
1x Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier
1x Ally of Justice Catastor
1x Chimeratech Fortress Dragon

Side Deck: 15
1x Caius the Shadow Monarch
1x Gorz the Emissary of Darkness
2x Mind Crush
1x D.D. Crow
1x Burial from a Different Dimension
1x Heavy Storm
1x Metal Reflect Slime
2x Threatening Roar
2x Bottomless Trap Hole
3x Thunder King Rai-Oh

This deck is largely based off of my Stardust Dragon/Assault Mode deck, which can be found here. The theme is the same, synchroing for level 8s easily, then busting out a beatstick. The main bonus of RDA in this deck is having Skill Drain up, meaning you can still have a huge 3500 ATK monster up that doesn't kill all your monsters later, and when it's sent to the Graveyard, you can SS an RDA from there. But the potential of the deck was much higher when used with solely SD/AM, and this is why I feel that RDA/AM will never really find a place until more dedicated support cards come out.

Colossal Fighter/Assault Mode, on the other hand, fits much more nicely with Stardust. It's very plausible to create numerous decks abusing both cards, from X-Saber Synchro (formerly a top deck in Japan) to Zombies/Destiny Heroes to MonkDAD. With the plethora of warriors in these decks, Colossal makes enemies seem like nothing. With Colossal protecting Stardust from being destroyed by bigger monsters and Stardust protecting Colossal from effects, it's a duo that's very difficult to stare down. Creating the deck would be as simple as tweaking some elements of synchro decks nowadays. For example, there's Shadow Master's Z-Hero deck:

Monsters: 19
1X Dark Armed Dragon
1X Caius the Shadow Monarch
2X Destiny Hero - Malicious
2X Mystic Tomato
2X Necro Gardna
2X Mezuki
1X Destiny Hero - Diamond Dude
1X Goblin Zombie
1X Pyramid Turtle
1X Destiny Hero - Doom Lord
1X Destiny Hero - Fear Monger
1X Sangan
1X Elemental Hero Stratos
1X Blackwing - Gale the Whirlwind
1X Plaguespreader Zombie
1X Zombie Master

Spells: 15
3X Destiny Draw
2X Allure of Darkness
2X Book of Life
2X Foolish Burial
2X Burial from a Different Dimension
1X Brain Control
1X Heavy Storm
1X Mystical Space Typhoon
1X Reinforcement of the Army

Traps: 6
2X Bottomless Trap Hole
1X Trap Dustshoot
1X Mirror Force
1X Torrential Tribute
1X Phoenix Wing Wind Blast

(Props to Zelink and his blog)

This deck could be easily tweaked to include Colossal/AM and Stardust/AM, and become a raging beatstick that can't be taken down in battle and can't be destroyed by effects. Formidable? Yes. Easy to accomplish? No. Above all else, dedicated Assault Mode decks simply lack the consistency needed, to be in the top decks nowadays. So while I don't see them climbing up to be Tier 1 anytime soon, I still believe that playing an Assault Mode deck is fun and rewarding.

And that concludes the Assault and Battery series. I hope you've enjoyed it; as usual, I'd like feedback and what I could do to improve, and suggestions for future blogs are greatly appreciated.



See you guys around.