#spyral gear - fully armed

Images from Konami’s own Facebook page

Sorry I’m so late! Konami unveiled the new SPYRAL cards a week or so ago and I’ve been hard at work testing them all, because they’re all quite good!

First up is SPYRAL Sleeper, a true behemoth of a card with an incredibly destructive effect and a relatively easy to access summoning procedure. Destroying two cards on either player’s turn is incredibly powerful, and destroying your own SPYRAL cards is usually beneficial to you as well! The SPYRAL MISSIONs all have great graveyard effects, and SPYRAL Master Plan will get her effect to search Resort and another SPYRAL monster when sent to the graveyard too! As for his self-destruct effect, although dangerous, I have yet to have it ever go off. It’s a matter of playing this card with the right support cards, namely SPYRAL Resort and the next card on the list:

SPYRAL Last Resort is a monster akin to Gwenhwyfar, in that it can equip from the hand to anySPYRAL monster and protect it from being destroyed by battle, and destroyed or targeted by card effects (mind you, the targeting is only from your opponent’s card effects, so you can still use cards like Drone or Sleeper on your SPYRALs). This card is most powerful when equipped to Sleeper, who can then target himself for his effect to destroy two cards and safely avoid nuking your own field. It also means your opponent will have a really hard time getting rid of your SPYRAL monsters, as usually you will also have SPYRAL Resort up on the field as well, protecting Last Resort from being targeted as well. It has one final effect, allowing you to send another face-up card you control to the graveyard in order to allow the equipped monster to attack directly. This is great for two reasons: the first is that, with Drone and the next equip card, your SPYRALs can reach pretty phenomenal levels of attack, so a direct attack can be lethal pretty quickly. The second is that it means, like Sleeper, you can send your SPYRAL cards to the graveyard in order to trigger their effects. You can also send an opponent’s monster you’ve taken with Recapture to the graveyard, which is very nice indeed.

The next card is SPYRAL GEAR - Fully Armed, an equip Spell only for Super Agent or Tough, granting a 1000 boost, banishing anything it destroys in battle along with 1 other card your opponent controls and floating into Agent when it’s destroyed. The card is pretty good, allowing Agent to beat over a great number of things, and non-targeting, non-destroying removal is always a great thing. Given it’s high searchability via Quik-Fix, the card is a definite good addition to the deck.

The final card is SPYRAL MISSION - Rescue, which I underestimated at first but definitely provides a lot of utility to the deck and enables some pretty fun plays. The on-field effect is a tremendous resource engine, adding back a SPYRAL monster each turn, including your opponent’s. It’ll be hard for you to ever be without cards in your hand with you adding back cards like Agent or Quik-Fix or Sleeper each turn, meaning you’ll have plenty to summon or even just use as discard fodder for Quik-Fix. The grave effect is where it really shines, however, allowing you to special summon SPYRAL monsters on your opponent’s turn. This allows you to summon Agent and destroy spells/traps during your opponent’s turn, as well as trigger Recapture and take an opponent’s monster before they can get any use out of it.

I’ll go ahead and make a separate post regarding builds, the direction the deck is heading and how competitively viable I think the deck is going to be in the upcoming future, but short version: I’m excited and optimistic~