3000(and 1,) posts: ancient fairy dragon.

[vla1ne]

 

1 Tuner + 1 or more non-Tuner monsters

Once per turn: You can Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower monster from your hand. You cannot conduct your Battle Phase the turn you activate this effect. Once per turn: You can destroy a Field Spell Card and gain 1000 Life Points, then you can add 1 Field Spell Card from your Deck to your hand.

 

Well, it's a fairly iconic monster, and it's never gotten any real support in the 5D's anime, leading me to want something designed to improve on it's base form (yes, i know the alternate pixie dragon exists, but a direct upgrade, instead of a direct retrain would be nice, like clear wing to crystal)

 

As far as strategies, the card's rather outclassed by direct archetype support, and with the arrival of links and rival arrival, it won't even have much use in decks not meant directly for it, though with the uptick in field spell relevance, i suppose it does potentially have a lot going for it in particular duels. but the loss of the BP when using the SS effect takes away from much of the advantage that you could have gained with it.

 

 

Still, this is my third favorite signer after BRD and RDA, so feel free to say anything or nothing about this card. do you like it? hate it? is there a deck that uses it well that i'm not yet aware of? does the art offend you? does the art please you? do you want me to stop asking questions? discuss.

 

 

 

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

Think Tramids were slated to make use of this in their earlier days (or tried to); how that worked out in the end, I don't know. (Or that could've been Pixie, but I doubt it). At this point, yeah, this is going to have a hard time warranting that EMZ in Link format or even in legacy ARC-V, considering how passive this is. Even with Fields being existent, you're not going to get too much mileage out of it. 

 

As a whole, generally neutral on it (both as a card and its artwork). Agree that the BP lock just for summoning a monster is a bit much, even back then. Maybe just locking its own attack off for the turn would've been fine and not breaking anything. (Least you can still summon another monster that can strike). Right now, it's passive at best (ATK isn't great for a Level 7, especially now; also, the aforementioned BP lock hindering possible plays that would've made this relevant outside fan duels and requiring a field )

 

(Admittedly, I think I only bought her tin because I liked Ruka/Luna in general. Just need to wonder what happened to said card, even though I bought the LC5D print / Pixie a couple years ago in binder as replacement.)

 

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Then again, might've not helped AFD's case that she was absent for the first 50 episodes of the series, and Ruka's limited duel time during the whole series in general. If she had more time or was intertwined more into the main cast, MAYBE she would've gotten an evolution of AFD.

 

Same could be said about Life Stream too, but that's a slightly off-topic note.

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tl;dr, even with Fields being relevant, Link format and its own restrictions doesn't go well for AFD seeing much use nowadays.