The Ultimate Wizard Returns!
Written by Jonnii Small - Feb 08 2022
The first core set in Yu-Gi-Oh! for 2022 is Battle of Chaos! This box is full of support for several archetypes, mainly focusing on support for Yugi Moto's main monster, Dark Magician! In this set, we also see the debut of two brand new archetypes ready to take the world of Yu-Gi-Oh! by storm! There is plenty to look forward to here, so let's get into it!
Illusion of Chaos is the latest 'Chaos Form' Ritual Monster to hit our booster packs, supporting the Dark Magician collection of archetypes. This card lets you search a Dark Magician or non-Ritual monster that mentions Dark Magician, simply with a reveal from the hand! But that's not all! Illusion of Chaos has a Quick Effect allowing you to negate an opponent's monster effect, bouncing Illusion back to hand and special summoning a Dark Magician from your GY in its place. This versatile card might be worth a shout in more ritual-focussed Spellcaster lists. Continuing with the nostalgia, we have Blue-Eyes Jet Dragon, clearly influenced by Kaiba's Blue-Eyes White Jet from the show/movie. This card, while in play, protects your cards from being destroyed by your opponent, has the ability to bounce a card back to your opponent's hand at the beginning of the damage step, and has pretty easy special summoning conditions to meet too! This card can be a neat little summon in Blue-Eyes focussed decks, and is also a Level 8 Dragon which will undoubtedly be helpful!
Heading into our new archetypes, we'll start off with Dinomorphia. This trap-centric, Dinosaur themed set of cards revolve around a 'high-risk, high-reward' strategy, with all of their monsters having 0 ATK or DEF and their trap cards requiring the owner to pay half of their Life Points. However, many of the monsters, like Dinomorphia Therizia, gain benefits if you are low in LP. Libromancer is the second new archetype we see in Battle of Chaos, a Ritual-based archetype that completely disregards the need for Ritual Spells! Their play-style involves control, using their spell and trap cards, while also getting out your decently-sized Ritual monsters to defeat your opponent!
There were a couple of popular archetypes that released in Burst of Destiny that received more support in Battle of Chaos too, like Swordsoul Sinister Sovereign - Qixing Longyuan. This Synchro Monster gets you a draw when you Synchro summon another Wyrm monster and lets you banish your opponent's cards while also inflicting damage to them! Floowandereeze and the Advent of Adventure is a Quick-Play Spell that allows you to search for almost anything Floowandereeze in your deck, and gives you a neat little LP boost too! Icejade also get more cards here in a Field Spell and a searcher in icejade Aegirine. Aegirine also has some nice protection and can special summon other Icejade monsters from your GY.
All in all, there's some recent and decent support in this set that some players will undoubtedly be looking forward too! There is also some nostalgia here too, in the new alternate art Dark Magician and the other cards surrounding the original ace monster. As usual, there are Starlight Rares to be found too, which will definitely be highly sought after, and we could see a prolific use of Sales Ban too! If you're interested in Battle of Chaos, make sure to check out our Booster Boxes,Booster Packs and Singles that will soon be available! Next time, we'll be looking at Hidden Arsenal Chapter 1!