DPKB Part 1: How To Train Your Blue-Eyes

AKA, "screw 3D movies, I have YGO holograms".

Duelist Pack: Kaiba is finally out, for us nostalgic guys, and for those looking for some cool reprints. Whether you like Kaiba or not, one can't deny he is probably one of the most memorable characters in the YGO anime history. Almost every Card used by Kaiba can be reminded, even if one sets aside the mighty albino dragons. Even something as strange as Gyakutenno Megami takes up a slot in the Anniversary Pack, because Kaiba uses it to stop a gun. How cool is that?

This character's main emblem would obviously be his playset of Blue-Eyes White Dragons. While they are powerful and majestic, it doesn't make much sense to discuss rulings about a Normal Monster and a Fusion Monster without any effects. Instead, in this part we'll be looking at the new-age version of the colorless beasts. I'm talking about Malefic Blue-Eyes White Dragon, of course:

This card cannot be Normal Summoned or Set. This card can only be Special Summoned by removing from play 1 "Blue-Eyes White Dragon" from your Deck. There can only be 1 face-up "Malefic" monster on the field. Other monsters you control cannot attack. If there is no face-up Field Spell Card on the field, destroy this card.

Straight from the last Yu-Gi-Oh! movie which premiered in Japan some time ago, we have the first "Malefic" monster, strangely added to this pack. Essentially, it's an easy-to-Summon Blue-Eyes without many other benefits, but it will help explaining some mechanics attached to other monsters like Earthbound Immortals. Let's take a look:

This card cannot be Normal Summoned or Set. This card can only be Special Summoned by removing from play 1 "Blue-Eyes White Dragon" from your Deck.

This is the Summoning Condition for this version of Blue-Eyes. From this, we gather that it is a Special-Summon only monster. You can Special Summon it from the Graveyard or RFG Zone if it was properly Summoned. Of course, being an Inherent Special Summon, this Summon can be negated by Solemn Judgment/Rai-Oh, and it does not use the chain.

There can only be 1 face-up "Malefic" monster on the field.

The dreaded "highlander clause": There can only be one. This clause's classification is debatable, so reffering to it by its nickname isn't such a bad idea. You can think of it as a Continuous Effect which is applied all the time, no matter the location of the Card. Just don't call it a Continuous Effect ;)

The "highlander clause" causes some funny results in the Game State. Its first consequence is that you cannot manually Summon this monster if you would break this clause, so you cannot even target it with Call of the Haunted if you already control one Malefic BEWD. You can still place it face-down on the Field with Cards like The Shallow Grave. A second consequence would be that if a new Malefic Blue-Eyes appears on the Field while you already controlled one, the newest one to appear is destroyed by Game Mechanics. If you Summon them at the same time (Return from the Different Dimension, for example), you get to choose. If you control 2 of these monsters, one face-up and one face-down, and the face-down one is flipped by a Card Effect, it is destroyed by Game Mechanics after its resolution. If the face-down one is attacked, it will be destroyed during the "After Damage Calculation" Sub-Step if it survived battle.

The final consequence is the interaction of the "highlander clause" against Effect Negation. Most Cards that negate continuously applied effects can only do so against face-up Cards, like Skill Drain or Destiny Hero - Plasma. Effect negation does negate the effect of a face-up Malefic Blue-Eyes, but it will not negate the effects of other copies of it in your Hand, Graveyard, etc. This means that you STILL cannot manually Special Summon the other copies. You can, however,  "end up" controlling more than 1, such as if you Special Summon two copies at the same time (again, Return from the Different Dimension), or if the extra copy is face-down and something flips it face-up, be it an attack or an effect.

Other monsters you control cannot attack.

A very blunt Continuous Effect. Even so, there are some ways around it. This effect can certainly be negated with Cards like Skill Drain or Fiendish Chain, so that your other monsters can attack. This effect also relies on Blue-Eyes being face-up, so if it is flipped face-down (for example, by your opponent's Book of Moon) or Removed from the Field, your other monsters can declare attacks as usual. A final loophole is that, once you declare an attack with a different monster, Blue-Eyes can no longer stop it, so if you attack, and your opponent uses Ceasefire, flipping your Blue-Eyes face-up, the attack still proceeds as usual.

If there is no face-up Field Spell Card on the field, destroy this card.

And finally, a self-destruction effect. This is also a Continuous Effect. Simply put, Cards like Light and Darkness Dragon or Gladiator Beast War Chariot can't do anything against Malefic Blue-Eyes. Similar to the previous one, this Continuous Effect can be negated by Skill Drain, so that your monster doesn't self-destruct. There's also an important ruling regarding new Field Spell Cards being activated: If you control a Field Card, and activate a new one, it is considered that there is a time frame in which no Field Spell Card is active (because you must first destroy the old one), so the Blue-Eyes is destroyed. However, if you control a Field Spell Card, and the opponent activates a new one, this time frame never exists, as there is always one face-up Field Card (first yours, then both, then the opponent's only), so Blue-Eyes won't be destroyed.

That wraps it up for the first part. Stay tuned for part 2 where we will talk about some of the Blue-Eyes support in the pack. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me an e-mail at ness00[at]gmail[dot]com.