The Dark Illusion is currently the first and only new booster set of the 2016-2017 Dueling season, but it won’t have long to wait for company! Dragons of Legend: Unleashed drops on August 19^th, a mere 24 hours before the World Championship begins. Unleashed continues the 3-year tradition of searching through each of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime and manga series for cards that were popular with fans but never translated over to the physical card game and finally giving them life!

We start things off at the tail end of the first season of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. The Shadow Riders have been defeated and Alexis Rhodes has upgraded her Deck! Originally based on Fusion Summoning Cyber Blader, her new Deck is more focused on Ritual Summoning “Cyber Angel” monsters using Machine Angel Ritual. Despite being her strategic focus for the vast majority of the series, the Cyber Angels never made it to print… until now!

In general, Ritual Summoning is a very card intensive process. You need the Ritual Monster, the Ritual Spell, and the appropriate amount of monsters to Tribute for them. Befitting of an Obelisk Blue student, Alexis’ Cyber Angels all provide some measure of value when you Summon or Tribute them to ensure that you don’t run out of cards during the course of a Duel!

Cyber Angel Benten and Cyber Angel Idaten are both Level 6 LIGHT Fairy-Type Ritual Monsters that are useful whether you Ritual Summon them or use them as a Tribute for a Ritual Summon. Benten inflicts damage to your opponent equal to the DEF of any monster she destroys and sends to the Graveyard, but her 1800 ATK makes it a little difficult to do that. Tributing Idaten for the Ritual Summon of Benten lets you permanently boost the ATK and DEF of all your Ritual Monsters by 1000, making Benten a much more credible threat. Idaten, on the other hand, is all about ramping you up into a bigger monster. Summoning her will get you a Ritual Spell Card from your Deck or Graveyard, but not a monster to Summon with it. Tributing Benten lets you add any LIGHT Fairy-Type monster to your hand, so Ritual Summoning Idaten turns into a play where you set up a bigger Ritual Summon of something that will gain 1000 ATK and DEF.

Cyber Angel Dakini is the actual offensive powerhouse of the Deck that you’re looking to Summon. When you Ritual Summon her you can force your opponent to choose 1 monster they control and send it to the Graveyard, similar to Apoqliphort Towers, but without giving them the option to ditch a useless monster from their hand. Furthermore, Dakini gives all of your Ritual Monsters the ability to inflict piercing battle damage. And just to make sure the Value Train keeps on rolling, at the End Phase of each of your turns you can add a Ritual Monster or the Machine Angel Ritual Spell Card from your Graveyard to your hand.

You probably noticed that 2 things were missing from the above explanation: Machine Angel Ritual itself and another monster to make the Levels add up to at least 8 for Dakini’s Ritual Summon. Machine Angel Ritual is pretty simple. It works for any “Cyber Angel” Ritual Monster, the Tributes don’t have to be exact, and you can banish it from your Graveyard to protect your LIGHT monster(s) from destruction a la Hymn of Light or Return of the Dragon Lords. As for the other monster, the most likely Tribute is going to be Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands. It’s a monster that every Ritual Deck is looking to see early in the Duel, but Cyber Angel Decks will get to see it even more often because they can play 6 of them instead of the standard 3.

Cyber Petit Angel was one of the earliest retrains of a Normal Monster ever made, but it took a long time for it to show up in the physical game! If it’s Summoned in any way you can add a “Cyber Angel” monster or a Machine Angel Ritual from your Deck to your hand, allowing it to act as Manju numbers 4 through 6 in a Cyber Angel Deck. It also just so happens that it can combine with either Benten or Idaten to make the 8 Levels worth of Tribute that you need for Dakini. But maybe that’s not quite enough Manjus to ensure that your Deck runs properly every single Duel. Maybe you need some more Manjus that are searchable and don’t take up a Normal Summon? Alexis had that base covered too!

Given Chazz’s particular delusion in the episode where it first appeared, the backdrop of a chapel provided by the Ritual Sanctuary Field Spell wasn’t exactly the sort of setting Alexis wanted to conduct their Duel in, but that didn’t make its effect any less useful! Ritual Sanctuary lets you discard a Spell from your hand to add a LIGHT Ritual Monster or any Ritual Spell Card from your Deck to your hand once per turn. It also lets you shuffle any number of Spells from your Graveyard back into the Deck to revive a LIGHT Fairy-Type monster whose Level matches the number of cards you shuffled back.

Ritual Sanctuary is perfect for smoothing over your draws and helping you Ritual Summon faster and more often, especially in Decks that use multiple LIGHT Ritual Monsters. Consider, for instance, a Cyber Angel Deck that also makes use of Saffira, Queen of Dragons. Ritual Sanctuary can add any of the combo pieces to your hand while swapping out doubles or mismatched Ritual Spells. Hymn of Light even shares the anti-destruction effect of Machine Angel Ritual, so discarding extra copies helps to keep your monsters on the field even longer.  You can also use Ritual Sanctuary in any Deck that uses a Field Spell and a LIGHT Ritual Monster. A Subterror Deck, for instance, wants to see The Hidden City and Prediction Princess Tarotrei on the first turn as much as possible. You probably already run Terraforming in that Deck, so you can simply add in a copy or two of Ritual Sanctuary and search for it when needed to help kick-start your strategy.

Duelists have been asking for Alexis’ Cyber Angels for years, and we’re happy to finally be able to release them! You can get them in Dragons of Legend: Unleashed, which launches on August 19^th, and don’t forget to tune in to the live coverage of the World Championship on August 20^th and 21^st!