Breakers of Shadow Special Edition launches this Friday with a mix of past, present, and future cards to help you build and enhance your Decks! From the “past” column comes Number 23: Lancelot, Dark Knight of the Underworld, a Rank 8 Xyz Monster that saw a lot of play at the Ultimate Duelist Series Invitational in Los Angeles. It even appeared in 3 of the Top 8 Decks, including the winning Kozmo Deck piloted by Ryan Murakami!

Number 23: Lancelot, Dark Knight of the Underworld has fairly low ATK and DEF for a monster you Summon by combining any 2 Level 8 monsters, but it has a pile of great effects that make it worth the effort to Summon! As long as Lancelot has Xyz Material, it can attack your opponent directly, and whenever it inflicts battle damage you can target any face-up monster your opponent controls and destroy it! The direct attack ability gives Lancelot the same kind of game-ending power as Number 47: Nightmare Shark and Number 82: Heartlandraco without the “other monsters cannot attack” limitation that forces a strategic commitment for the turn.

Lancelot would be pretty great just with those first two abilities, but it actually has a third! During either player’s turn, you can detach 1 Xyz Material to negate the activation of a Spell/Trap Card or the effect of another monster. It won’t destroy a monster whose effect activation is negated, so if the monster is big enough it can just attack over Lancelot, but the ability to negate Spell/Traps, including cards activated in Pendulum Zones, is extremely relevant and powerful. Keeping Emergency Teleport, The Monarchs Stormforth, or Wavering Eyes from ever resolving can be the difference between a win and a loss, and that’s something that not very many Decks can do at the moment without access to their Side Deck.

Number 23: Lancelot, Dark Knight of the Underworld is one of 2 cards from the past you’ll have another chance to get when Breakers of Shadow Special Edition drops this Friday! Each Special Edition has packs of Breakers of Shadow, one of 2 popular cards from the past, and one of 2 preview cards from the next booster, Shining Victories!