Some of the most powerful monsters in the game usually aren’t even Summoned.

Cards like Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring, Ghost Belle & Haunted Mansion, and Ghost Reaper & Winter Cherries make an impact entirely with their effects – abilities you can play on your opponent’s turn to cut them off from their plays, which you activate just by discarding them from your hand.

Those types of monsters are some of the most popular for both Main and Side Decks today: Ash Blossom stops your opponent from using cards from their Deck, Ghost Belle stops them from mucking about in the Graveyard, and Ghost Reaper stops them from making key plays with their Extra Deck.  They’re all immensely powerful, sometimes ending your opponent’s turn half-played so you can crush whatever’s left.  And none of them have any Attack Points.

But what if one of those cards DID have Attack Points?  2400 ATK in fact.  And what if instead of going from your hand to your Graveyard as a discard, you Special Summoned it?  And what if it was a giant Level 7 Dragon with a negation effect that punished your opponent for targeting your monsters?

Well, then it would be the newest hand trap star from the upcoming Savage Strike booster set: Fantastical Dragon Phantazmay.

Fantastical Dragon Phantazmay’s one of the most anticipated cards from Savage Strike, a hand trap that does something almost no other hand trap can: rule the field.  If your opponent Special Summons a Link Monster you can Special Summon Phantazmay from your hand, then draw cards equal to the number of Link Monsters your opponent controls +1.  Then you shuffle cards from your hand into your Deck equal to the number of Link Monsters your opponent controls.

Let’s break that down.  You get to Special Summon a 2400 ATK monster with no strings attached.  Then you draw a bunch of cards, keep the ones you want, and shuffle other cards back.  Note the “+1” in the effect.  Fantastical Dragon Phantazmay would still be cool if it drew you some cards and then put back the same number.  You could get rid of cards you don’t need, get the ones you want, build all your combos and then go off.  But Phantazmay actually gets you a free card on top of all that, replacing itself in your hand with an extra draw.

So you get a free beatstick on the field, and if you’re into Synchro Summons or Xyz Summons Phantazmay’s a Level 7 material.  It fixes your hand, it’s got 2400 ATK, and it pops out of nowhere to complicate the Duel.  And it doesn’t stop there, because Fantastical Dragon Phantazmay’s next effect makes it even better: when your opponent activates a card or effect that targets one or more monsters you control, you can discard a card, negate that activation, and if you do, destroy the source.

Once Phantazmay’s on the field your opponent can’t use effects to target your monsters, because if they do they’re just going to lose whatever they try to play.  Phantazmay’s effects only work once per turn, but giving up one card just to try and force through another is a beating.  You’ll often stop your opponent dead in their tracks.

And you might ask, “But doesn’t that negation stop a bunch of awesome Link Monsters?”

And I would say, “Yes.  Yes it does.”

In fact, Fantastical Dragon Phantazmay keeps some of the best Link Monsters in the game from using their effects, at least on your monsters.  And a lot of those Link Monsters are commonly played on the way to making an Extra Link: Knightmare Cerberus won’t destroy any of your Special Summoned monsters, Knightmare Unicorn won’t spin a monster back to your Deck, and Tri-Gate Wizard has a tougher time banishing them.

You can also stop cards that are often intertwined with your opponent’s Link plays: when your opponent uses Knightmare Corruptor Iblee as a Link Material and activates its ability to Special Summon it to your field and lock you out of your Special Summons, you can Chain to Iblee’s effect and sneak Fantastical Dragon Phantazmay onto the field before Iblee arrives.  Then if your opponent tries to use a targeted effect to destroy Iblee or bounce it back, you can block them with Phantazmay’s negation.

While we’re at it, let’s not forget that Fantastical Dragon Phantazmay’s a Level 7 Dragon.  That lines up really well with powerful Dragon support like Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon, but it’s especially good with two new cards from Savage Strike.

Rokket Synchron’s a new Level 1 Tuner: when you Normal Summon it you can revive a Level 5 or higher DARK Dragon from your Graveyard.  That Dragon comes back in defense mode with its effects negated, you destroy it during the End Phase, and you can’t Special Summon anything except DARK monsters from your Extra Deck for the rest of the turn.

…But the good news is that you might not WANT to Summon anything but DARK monsters anyways.  Because you can Normal Summon Rokket Synchron, revive Fantastical Dragon Phantazmay, and Tune them together to Synchro Summon the new Borreload Savage Dragon!

Fantastical Dragon Phantazmay’s going to be popping up in everywhere in tournaments as a strong new addition to a lot of Decks, especially “rogue” strategies that have more Deck space to run it.  It’s going to be really strong right out of the gate, and you can find it in the Savage Strike booster set, out now!