Toons have been at the top of many Duelists’ most-wanted lists for the better part of a decade, and now thanks to Dragons of Legend 2, the Pegasus pipedream is finally coming true! The Dragons of Legend sequel delivers no fewer than eight new cards for Toon fans, redefining Toon World and bringing new monsters, Spells, and Trap Cards for the theme. If you saw it in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TV show (or even in the Duel between Pegasus and Marik this past weekend at the North American WCQ!) and wanted it for yourself, it’s probably here, as your favorite Toon cards are finally breaking through into reality.

We’ll talk about the new material across three massive articles, and today we’ll start at the new beginning: Toon Kingdom. A powerful replacement for Toon World, it’s a new Field Spell that counts as “Toon World” while it’s active. It’s easier to activate, and solves some of the key challenges that have plagued Toons for years.

Since Toon Kingdom’s a proper Field Spell instead of a Continuous Spell like Toon World, you can search it from your Deck with Toon Table of Contents or Terraforming. And instead of paying Life Points like you would to activate the original Toon World, the new Toon Kingdom just banishes the top 3 cards of your Deck face-down. That’s not an activation cost, so you only banish cards when you successfully activate Toon Kingdom.

From there Toon Kingdom counts as Toon World while it’s on the field, and your opponent can’t target your “Toon” monsters with card effects. Even better, if one or more “Toon” monsters you control would be destroyed, you can banish a card from the top of your Deck face-down to keep each of those monsters around.

Why’s that important? If you haven’t looked at Toon cards for a while, most, but not all, of them have a few things in common:

-Most of the Toons can’t attack the turn they’re Summoned, so they have to survive a turn on the field before they can deal damage.

-If Toon World’s destroyed – or Toon Kingdom is destroyed while it’s treated as “Toon World” – the book slams shut and your Toons are destroyed with it.

-The tradeoff is that each “Toon” Effect Monster has an ability that lets it make a direct attack if your opponent doesn’t control any Toons themselves. (Some require you to control Toon World for that to happen, while some don’t.) A big Toon like Blue-Eyes Toon Dragon will end the game in two or three turns, while others like Toon Masked Sorcerer or Toon Gemini Elf will draw you free cards or discard your opponent’s stuff when they make successful attacks.

It’s easy to see the appeal: if all of your monsters are direct attackers, your opponent will struggle to deal damage while you swing straight to their Life Points. Totally unfair, just the way Pegasus likes it. But if you lose your Toons before you ever get to make those attacks that advantage won’t matter. Toon Kingdom helps solve that problem by making it really tough to destroy your Toons – it keeps them from being targeted or destroyed by card effects, and they can’t be destroyed by battle.

Since your opponent can’t destroy your monsters they’re immune to big attackers, they’ll ignore removal like Raigeki and Dark Hole, and they can’t be stopped by traps like Torrential Tribute and Mirror Force. Powerful themed cards like Ritual Beast Steeds, Fire Lake of the Burning Abyss, and Nekroz of Gungnir don’t apply to your monsters – your opponent will have to eliminate Toon Kingdom first. And since your Toons can’t be targeted either, non-destruction effects like Phoenix Wing Wind Blast, Book of Moon, and Fiendish Chain won’t matter.

While there are some non-targeting removal effects out there – stuff like Nekroz of Trishula’s banishing ability – your real concern is protecting Toon Kingdom. Your opponent can’t destroy your Toons, but if they can destroy Toon Kingdom with something like Mystical Space Typhoon or Galaxy Cyclone, you’ll lose all your monsters.

Field wipes like Evilswarm Exciton Knight or Black Rose Dragon still work too. You can play to defend Toon Kingdom, or just try to win so quickly that your opponent won’t have a chance to blow away your field; several of the new “Toon” cards help you crank out more damage, so both plans are viable. We’ll talk about the aggressive options in our next article, but for now, cards like these could protect Toon Kingdom…

Since many of your Toons are Special Summons, Normal Summoning Card Guard is a great way to protect Toon Kingdom; when it hits play, Card Guard gets a Guard Counter. You can move the Guard Counter to any card you want, and you can remove it to protect that card from being destroyed, making Toon Kingdom doubly tough to deal with. From there you can Tribute Card Guard for one of your Special Summons.

Starlight Road’s a great option too, since it can protect you from some basic mass destruction effects that many Decks will try to hit you with – think Black Rose and Exciton Knight. When Starlight Road resolves it even Summons Stardust Dragon so you can stop another destruction effect.

Note too that your Toons will only be destroyed if Toon Kingdom’s destroyed, and only if their effects are active. If your opponent banishes Toon Kingdom, bounces it back to your hand, or spins it back to your Deck, nothing happens. And if you “send” Toon Kingdom to the Graveyard yourself with something like Parallel Twister, or by Setting a second copy of Toon Kingdom over the first one, you get off scot-free.

Negation traps like Magic Jammer and Magic Drain can ward off simple removal spells, as can Spell Canceller if you Side Deck it in for Games 2 and 3. Cairngorgon, Antiluminescent Knight can force removal onto another target, too. It’s a solid option since Toon Duelists can easily make Rank 4 Xyz with Toon Mermaid.

Protect Toon Kingdom and it protects all your Toons! It also makes them direct attackers and helps you play awesome effects. On one hand, protecting Toon Kingdom buys you more time, while winning faster means less pressure on you to ward off your opponent’s destruction. Stay tuned, because next time we’re going to show you how to score speedy wins with more new Toon cards.