Prophecy Duelists dropped High Priestess of Prophecy to put more emphasis on Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer and Jowgen the Spiritualist (and eliminating dead draws).  Dragon Ruler players are firing back, now running Dark Hole, Lightning Vortex, and Last Day of Witch for more monster removal, attempting to destroy those two monsters and free the field from their deadly control effects.  So what are Prophecy Duelists doing to escalate the fight?

They’re running two different cards today to try and beat the counter-trends: Defender, the Magical Knight and Gagagashield.  Defender is a 1600 ATK / 2000 DEF Spellcaster that gets a Spell Counter when it’s Normal Summoned.  Then, once a turn, Defender protects your Spellcasters from destruction by letting you remove a Spell Counter from your side of the field for each monster saved.  Searchable with Spellbook of Judgment, Defender brings enough Counters to the party to protect one Spellcaster – itself, or another.  But it’s at its best in a Prophecy build with multiple copies of Spellbook Star Hall.  Since Star Hall gains Spell Counters as well, you can rescue an entire field of monsters once a turn.  That forces a Dragon Ruler duelist to set up a combo play of two destruction effects to try and break your Kycoo or Jowgen lock.

Alternatively, Gagagashield has suddenly become a hot topic of discussion this afternoon as well.  Though Shield will only protect one monster at a time, it doesn’t require any Spell Counter combos and it doesn’t weigh down the Prophecy duelist’s monster lineup.  That’s important, because Prophecy competitors are critically aware that if they open with too many monsters, they risk losing immediately because they won’t be able to put together basic combos with Spellbook of Judgment and Spellbook of Secrets.  It also offers more protection: while Defender’s ability works only once a turn, and can be played through with a combo of any two destruction effects, Shield forces your opponent to muster three full destructions before the Shielded monster goes down.  At the same time though, Shield is useless on its own and vulnerable to Heavy Storm.  Shield seems as if it might be the lowest risk option of these two cards, but the jury’s still out.

We’ll have to see how both cards perform over the course of the weekend.