Blazing Vortex Set Review

Blazing Vortex is our first core Yu-Gi-Oh! set of the new year and with it comes a collection of new archetypes and a plethora of support for some classics. So we’re going to quickly dive in, see what’s new, what’s interesting, and what lovely Starlight Rares have been printed.

Looking at what new archetypes Blazing Vortex brings to the TCG is quite intriguing. We have two new ones from Japan in the form of S-Force and Springans and two developed exclusively for the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG.

Let’s start with what’s being imported, and first up we have S-Force.

Consisting of Light and Dark monsters, their aim is to try and control the field by making use of banishing and Special Summons. They can then restrict their opponent’s cards by using their effects on monsters in the same column as S-Force monsters. Similar to how Mekk-Knights work.

One of the best effects is the one from “S-Force Justify”. It’s a Link 3 and requires 3 Effect Monsters, including an S-Force monster. It has a Quick Effect which targets an opponent’s monster and negates its effect and moves that monster to a zone “S-Force Justify” points to. During its turn it can make an attack and before any damage can be dealt, it can banish all monsters it points to. Something I’m going to take a good look at doing myself.

Springans are all about their XYZ monster, “Springans Ship – Exblowrer”. Not only does the field spell “Great Sand Sea – Gold Golgonda” allow to you to bring out the XYZ monster even if you don’t have any materials for it, but all the Main Deck monsters have effects that allow them to be added to it as materials whether they’re in your hand, field or even graveyard.

Once “Exblowrer” is fully loaded with materials you can choose one of your opponent’s monster or spell/trap zones, detach any number of materials and then destroy the same number of cards in that zone and adjacent monster or spell/trap zones. For added fun it has a quick effect, during your opponent’s Main or Battle Phase you can banish “Exblowrer” until the End Phase. This is to keep him safe, ready for your next turn.

Now we move on to the two TCG exclusive archetypes and they come in the form of Materiactor and War Rock. Now, Materiactor is an odd one as it consists of just two monsters. One Effect Monster and one XYZ Monster, that’s it. There really isn’t much to talk about here, so we’ll just move swiftly on to War Rocks.

The War Rock archetype consists of Earth Warrior monsters and is primarily aimed at an aggressive style of play. This is mostly centred around spamming the field with your monsters and making use of their effects to steadily increase the ATK points of the monsters you control. To add on top of that, most of the monsters have an effect that goes off either during or after battle.

With two spell cards that also base themselves around the battle phase and the potential of more support further down the line, it might be worth giving these guys a little look.

One thing Konami have really been doing well with their last few core sets, is providing support for some older archetypes. Blazing Vortex is no different in this regard. This time we have some major support for a proper classic, Armed Dragon.

We have full retrains of the Armed Dragon LV monsters called “Armed Dragon Thunder LV”. While on the field or in the graveyard their names become the older version of themselves. For example “Armed Dragon Thunder LV3” becomes “Armed Dragon LV3”, this is so that they can seamlessly integrate themselves with the older cards.

Of course the levelling isn’t just in name, once we get all the way up to “Armed Dragon Thunder LV10” he has many effects all of which depend on his ATK level. The main one we should look at is his last effect. When he has 10000+ ATK, once per turn he can destroy all other cards on the field.

Other archetypes Blazing Vortex supports include Eldlich, Evil★Twin, Live☆Twin, Virtual World and Windwitch.

As has been the trend recently, Konami have been adding 5 Starlight Rares to every set. 4 of which are chosen from the Core Set and 1 Classic card. For Blazing Vortex these are:

New
● Armed Dragon Thunder LV 10
● Heavenly Zephyr – Miradora
● Live☆Twin Lil-la Treat
● Pot of Prosperity

Classic:
● Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier

The big card that everybody should be looking to pick up is “Pot of Prosperity”. With this card you can banish either 3 or 6 Extra Deck cards face down to then excavate cards up to the number you banished. You then add 1 to the hand and place the rest at the bottom of your Deck. This is great at allowing you to dig through your Deck to find that 1 card you need to kick start your engine, or to pull off that finishing blow.

You can see some similarities between this and “Pot of Extravagance” but the big difference is you’re not restricted to using it at the beginning of Main Phase 1 and that you can choose which Extra Deck cards to banish.

The only drawback is this effect can’t be used the same turn you’ve already searched for a card from the deck.

Other cards worth looking at are Underworld Goddess of the Closed World and Heavenly Zephyr – Miradora. All three of these cards are Secret Rares, so if you weren’t lucky enough to randomly pull one of these out of a box you can pick them up here.

That’s it for Blazing Vortex. It releases on the 4th of February and you can pick up your packs and boxes right now!