Invid's Bizarre Card Ramblings #3: Sword Breaker Vs. Vylon Disigma Vs. Ally of Justice Catastor

(Be warned: This is long and rambly; it's probably the most deserving of the title out of this series.)

Recently, I noticed a new card that I thought was interesting, Sword Breaker.

Sword Breaker
Earth Attribute/Warrior Type/Xyz
Rank 6
2700/1000
[2 Level 6 Monsters]

Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card to declare 1 Monster Type; this card gains the following effect. At the start of the Damage Step, if this card battles a monster of a Type that has been declared: Destroy that monster.*

Note the neat bit: The card can remember up to two declared Monster Types, and will destroy either; if you somehow give it more Xyz Material to use with its effects (for example, Overlay Regen), it can remember even more Types.

As I thought about it a little more, I remembered another, similar card from a bit further back, Vylon Disigma.

Vylon Disigma
Light Attribute/Fairy Type/Xyz
Rank 4
2500/2100
[3 Level 4 Monsters]

Once per turn: You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card to target 1 face-up Attack Position Effect Monster your opponent controls; equip that target to this card. At the start of the Damage Step, if this card battles a monster whose Attribute is the same as a card equipped by this effect: Destroy that monster.

I thought to myself that it would be interesting to compare the two, as they have many relative strengths and weaknesses, and decided to look at rulings on the cards. This led me to a third card, Ally of Justice Catastor.

Ally of Justice Catastor
Dark Attribute/Machine Type/Synchro
Level 5
2200/1200
[1 Tuner Monster + 1 or more non-Tuner Monsters]

At the start of the Damage Step, if this card battles a non-DARK monster: Destroy that monster immediately (without damage calculation).

Now that we've established the three cards, let's compare strengths and weaknesses in different categories.

Category 1: Summoning

Sword Breaker-Sword Breaker, as noted, needs two Level six Monsters. Level six Monsters are pretty hard to summon. On the other hand, lately Konami's released rather a lot of cards intended to help with Xyz Summoning by making these cards change the Levels of two or more Monsters to the same Level. The quickest and most card-efficient way I've found to get Sword Breaker out and ready: Summon Tour Guide From the Underworld, use her effect to Summon a Level three Fiend Monster with 1000 or less ATK, and use Tannhäuser Gate to make both Monsters Level 6.

This is actually pretty good, as lots of people use Tour Guide already (as of the time of writing, the card is restricted to two per Deck), and this only needs one extra card relative to what you would usually be doing with her; worst comes to worst and you can just grab whatever Rank 3 Monster you'd normally have used instead. Tannhäuser Gate can also be independently useful whenever you have at least two non-Xyz Monsters with low ATK on the Field, which is a bonus (though a limited one).

Sword Breaker Summoning = Easy.

Vylon Disigma-Vylon Disigma needs three Level four Monsters. Level four guys are pretty simple to Summon, although getting three can be tricky. There are plenty of fast ways to do it (Photon Veil for three Daybreakers plus a Photon Lead would do it, for instance), the most card-efficient way is probably to use Machine Duplication on a Level four Machine guy, the best choice of which is probably (because of the archetype) Vylon Pentachloro.

Note, though, that this combination is rather inefficient because you'll have to play three copies each of both Duplication and Pentachloro, and if you don't have other Monsters you can use Duplication with, those will probably be dead cards whenever you draw them. (There's only one other Vylon Monster you can use Duplication with, Vylon Sphere; I suppose there are worse targets for Duplication than a Tuner Monster with a relevant effect, especially with Vylon Omega out there, who rather wants two Tuners.)

Anyway, this is a bit clunkier than Sword Breaker, though it's not awful.

Vylon Disigma Summoning = Not hard.

Ally of Justice Catastor-Ally of Justice Catastor needs a Tuner Monster and non-Tuners, who all together have combined Levels of five. Let's see... Oh. Deep Sea Diva and a Level three non-Tuner Sea Serpent Monster from your Deck means instant Catastor action for just one card. You could also use Junk Synchron and any Level two non-Tuner in a later-game scenario with no more trouble.

Ally of Justice Catastor Summoning = SUPER EASY.

Winner: Ally of Justice Catastor.

Category 2: Attack and Defense

Each of these cards will only get to use its effect some of the time, and in the case of going up against other Monsters, being able to protect itself against being destroyed by battle against those Monsters that aren't affected by its effect.

Sword Breaker's ATK is a game-winning 2700, so the average Monster can't really touch it. Its 1000 DEF could be crippling if the opponent managed to use an effect to switch it to defense, though.

Vylon Disigma's ATK is a solid 2500, putting it out of reach of most Level six Monsters and tying with most of the remainder; its DEF of 2100 is also very solid, and will hold off a fair majority of Level four and lower Monsters.

Ally of Justice Catastor's ATK is 2200, which means it can't be defeated by many Level four or lower Monsters, though that's the best one can hope for, while its 1200 DEF is better than Sword Breaker's, but by a negligible amount. It's also notable that Catastor is the only one of these three that's vulnerable to Burden of the Mighty, a fairly commonly played card.

In terms of raw power, Sword Breaker is a clear winner, while Vylon Disigma is a close second for its defensive prowess.

Category 3: Effect Limits

Sword Breaker can be used to declare up to two Types. There are 23 Types in the game. The most common are Machine and Warrior; declaring those types because one was for some reason assuming random Monster types would as of this writing allow Sword Breaker to automatically destroy about 25.5% of all Monsters in the game just by its effect. (Yes, I did the math.**) Many Decks primarily use specific Types, such as Blackwings (Winged Beast) or Machine Decks (...Machines, duh), and this card clearly has the potential to be back-breaking against such Decks.

Vylon Disigma can be used to equip Monsters to itself of up to three Attributes. There are seven Attributes in the game, although you might as well ignore Divine because there are only four Monsters with it, one of which can't be targeted by the effect, and any of which are likely to end the game the turn they come down or not long after if you play them correctly (especially this one, since its effect is literally "If you Summon this, you win").

It does, however, have a rather unique advantage over both Sword Breaker and Catastor in that it can get rid of Monsters without actually attacking, and if it would be redundant to equip a Monster to itself, it can still clear a path for a direct attack that way. The most common Attributes are Earth, Dark, and Light, which combined account for about 72.3% of Monsters. Perhaps more Decks actually use just one Attribute than Decks that use just one Type, as well.

An additional note-the fact that it has the Monsters equipped to itself is a significant potential liability in three ways: The cards could be removed from the Field by your opponent, they clutter up your Magic/Trap Zones, and in a battle with either Sword Breaker or Catastor, due to card rulings Disigma's effect wouldn't work on them if it was the attacking Monster.***

Ally of Justice Catastor just destroys Monsters that have an Attribute that isn't Dark. Note that this is slightly different than its effect as written: As written, it shouldn't affect a multi-Attribute Monster that happens to have Dark as an Attribute, but it actually does destroy any Monster with an Attribute other than Dark, even if it's Dark too (the rulings say so).++ It does this immediately upon Summoning and doesn't need to activate an effect independently of this.

It obviously lacks flexibility, as it's obviously less than terribly useful if your opponent's Deck is dominated by Dark Monsters, but non-Dark Monsters also account for about 74.7% of Monsters in the game, which is actually the best score of these three cards in the "randomness" department. And yes, it would destroy one of the game-legal God cards with its effect, even good ol' untargetable Obelisk.

It also has another distinct advantage: When most cards Summon a Monster back from the Graveyard, an Xyz Monster is at the disadvantage of not getting its Xyz Materials (here's a notable exception). Catastor doesn't have that problem. On the other hand, Catastor can't not destroy a Monster its effect would destroy, so if you want to deal battle damage, you're out of luck.

Comparing these effects to each other is a little more involved. Catastor's effect is totally inflexible but the most powerful as well (you can't really argue with being able to destroy just shy of three out of every four random Monsters in the game). Disigma's effect is nearly as powerful in terms of sheer volume, even stronger with its potential to avoid dangerous Monsters, and incredibly flexible, but also has the drawbacks associated with turning things into equipment. Sword Breaker's effect is more flexible than Catastor's and doesn't have the cluttering disadvantage of Disigma's, although it has the same rather slower and less responsive requirement than Catastor's. (Note that all three of their effects don't work on face down Monsters.)

Ultimately, I'd have to give Catastor and Disigma a shared win here.

Category 4: Additional Factors

Sword Breaker is an Earth Warrior. Both types are heavily supported, though a lot of that support isn't very helpful to a random Xyz Monster, as much of it is either random ATK boosting (largely irrelevant to a high-ATK guy) or Summoning stuff (not really too helpful except for getting out his Materials, and his Materials don't need to be Earth/Warrior). His relatively high Rank could help him out here and there, but again, it's rather edge case stuff.

Vylon Disigma is a Light Fairy. Light has some of the very best support in the game, most notably Honest, who makes people cry when they attack into Light Monsters at the wrong time. Fairies get tribal help from the Counter Fairy archetype, which probably has better finishers than Disigma, but probably also wouldn't mind using it to mop things up, and there's other support cards that would probably benefit Disigma, not the least of them of course being its very own archetype which it's a part of.

Ally of Justice Catastor is a Dark Machine. Dark has a lot of great support, and Machines also have a lot of great support. (That stuff about Honest? Replace "Honest" with "Limiter Removal" and "Light" with "Machine" and you've got another true statement.) As the easiest to Summon and the easiest of these Monsters to keep its effect going, it's also the easiest to use with DNA Transplant (or DNA Surgery for Sword Breaker).

So: Catastor wins at easy two-card combos, while Disigma is an interesting control option. ...Poor Sword Breaker (though I'd say Sword Breaker has potential in some random beatdown because of its raw power).

Tallying Results

Summoning: Catastor, Sword Breaker, Disigma (with the margin between Sword Breaker and Disigma being narrow). Catastor gets three points as a clear winner, while the other two get one each.

Attack and Defense: Sword Breaker, Disigma, Catastor (with Sword Breaker and Disigma being at relatively more comparable levels). Sword Breaker and Disigma get two points, Catastor gets one.

Effect Limits: Catastor, Disigma, Sword Breaker. Catastor and Disigma once again get two points to Sword Breaker's one.

Additional Factors: Catastor, Disigma, Sword Breaker. Again, a 2/2/1 split.

Sword Breaker: 5.

Vylon Disigma: 7.

Ally of JusticeCatastor: 8.+++

Incidentally, there have been a few older cards with somewhat similar abilities to these three; despite the fact that Disciple of the Forbidden Spell and The Hunter With 7 Weapons are both easy-to-Summon Monsters, and The Hunter requires no additional setup at all while the Disciple can hit over 50% of Monsters in the game by declaring Light and Dark (to get the Disciple to be able to hit two Attributes without having two already in the Graveyard, you can use your own Chain Destruction on it when you Summon it, and that'll be all you'll need), I wouldn't rate either of them as highly as even Sword Breaker because their effects don't have the blanket "[appropriate thing] that battles this card DIES."

(The Hunter just gets an ATK boost, which is rather lame with its original ATK, and with only one Type, its maximum amount of stuff it gets the bonus against is pretty low. There are guys with no drawbacks at all who have that much ATK against everything.

The Disciple, on the other hand, only gets its Monster kill while attacking, and thus is more vulnerable.)

My favorite of the bunch is Sword Breaker despite all this, though I quite like all three (I also quite like Disciple of the Forbidden Spell). It's just so... elegantly and conceptually pure, I think.

*I appreciate what the new card grammar is trying to do, and occasionally it's very useful and even important on what once would have been ambiguous effects. On those cards that were obvious enough before, though, it's actually just ugly. Sigh.

**These calculations don't account for tokens, or for the game's several multi-Attribute Monsters. They aren't that relevant to the calculations, which are only really intended as a rule of thumb, so they can largely be ignored.

***The reason for this is because of the way the effect chains-if Disigma attacks, its effect activates first, but will resolve second, and it won't have any Monsters equipped to it to power its effect. Note that if Disigma still has Xyz Materials, it can just eat the Monster without risk, though, so it's likelier that Sword Breaker/Catastor would be attacking, rendering the point moot, as the two Monsters would be mutually annihilating in this case. Probably, anyway-Sword Breaker's rulings aren't as thorough because the card is newer, and I've had to infer a bit.

++I bring it up because both linguistically and in other games, it wouldn't work that way.

+++Note, of course, that all this is completely arbitrary. Also note that Catastor is on the receiving end of a lot of hate from newer cards that mess with Level five and higher Monsters, a subject which will probably be covered the next time I ramble about this stuff. It's gonna be kind of angry-sounding.

-Signing off.