Konami has officially revealed the new Artmegia archetype for its upcoming expansion, Duelist’s Advance. Set for release this coming July 3rd, the Artmegia archetype seems to be Konami’s path for revitalizing the fusion monster archetype.
The Black Sheep of the Archetype
Starting off, the archetype is probably its most confusing member. Despite being a member of the Artmegia archetype, Medius the Innocent isn’t exactly considered an Artmegia card.
At first glance, Medius may seem like a good combo starter, but this may be far from the truth. You would definitely like to see Medius in your opening hand, but he isn't the first card you'd like to play, as we will see further down the list.
If there’s no alternative available, however, Medius can definitely kickstart the Artmegia combo.
So far, Medius has all the good hallmarks of a combo extender. He has a search function for an “Imprisoned Diety” named monster that activates when Medius is either normal or special summoned.
Said search function can also double as a special summon when needed, and the deck is always the best place to special summon from outright.
Medius can also be useful even in the graveyard as he can bounce any of its allied monsters from the field back into the deck in order to summon himself.
This does come with a caveat of banishing Medius should he leave the field, but given Medius’ versatility in either hand or graveyard, this is a very small price to pay.
The Partner-in-Crime
We’ll be skipping ahead a bit to the Imprisoned Deity Beast of Artmegia, as this is currently Medius’ only target for his search effect.
Imprisoned Deity Beast of Artmegia is the archetype’s lock into fusion monsters so long as it’s on the field. It also serves as a Polymerization on legs as it can be used to fusion summon any Artmegia fusion monster or, specifically, “Nerva the Imprisoned Deity of Creation”.
It even comes as a quick effect during the main phase, so the fusion capabilities of Imprisoned Deity of Artmegia can be used on the opponent’s turn if needed.
Once Imprisoned Deity Beast of Artmegia is sent to the graveyard from either the hand or the field, it can also search out an Artmegia spell or trap card from the deck as long as there’s no duplicate card already in the graveyard.
With how things stand at the moment, Medius the Innocent and Imprisoned Deity Beast of Artmegia are very good combo extenders and are healthy signs of the archetype’s ability to launch into its lines of play.
The Rest of the Main Deck Roster
One of the main features of the Artmegia archetype is how each member of their main deck roster is made up of different monster types. Medius and the Imprisoned Beast are a Fairy and Illusion-type monster, respectively.
As for the rest, we have a Warrior in Artmegia Finemelt, a Dragon in Artmegia Graphlare, and a Spellcaster in Artmegia Litera.
Juxtaposing this difference in monster type, Finemelt, Graphlare, and Litera all have a similar feature. These three monsters can all be special summoned from the hand if you already control another Artmegia card.
As far as the translations go, this special summon condition isn’t limited to the Artmegia monsters.
Starting with Artmegia Finemelt, she comes as the highest levelled main deck monster at the moment at level 7. Finemelt’s special summon lets her controlling player draw a card, allowing consistent card advantage with her use.
Finemelt also functions as an anti-targeting blanket for any Artmegia monsters who are at a lower level than her. Her final and strongest effect is that Finemelt can act as a pseudo-Forbidden Droplet if her controlling player has 3 or more different monster types.
Finemelt’s last effect isn’t as all-encompassing as Forbidden Droplet itself, lacking the ability to prevent the opponent from responding. That said, just having this proxy droplet on hand will force the opponent to respond or else see their current roster of monsters on the field lose all their effects until the end of the current turn.
Moving on to Graphlare, this card is the archetype’s standard backrow support and hate. When special summoned, Graphlare can search -and set- one of the many Artmegia spell cards from the deck.
This particular card can also destroy an opposing back-row card once a turn, which can be upgraded to a quick effect if the controlling player has 3 or more monster types.
Graphlare wraps up its effect package with the niche effect to protect itself from battle destruction once a turn. Given the state of how modern Yu-Gi-Oh! plays, this particular effect probably won’t see a lot of use outside of rare circumstances.
Finally, we have Archmage Litera, who functions as one of the archetype’s recursion tools. When special summoned, Litera can add any Artmegia card from the graveyard to the hand.
Litera’s recursion capabilities don’t end there, though. During the opponent’s turn, Litera can special summon any Artmegia monster from the hand or graveyard onto the field as long as it’s not another copy of herself for the low price of Litera herself bouncing back to the hand.
Given how easy it is to special summon Litera already, the self-bounce isn’t really much of a liability. Like Graphlare, Litera comes with a niche ability of preventing battle damage being applied from combat involving Litera herself.
The Fusion Payoffs
The Artmegia archetype currently has two fusion monsters revealed, Artmegia Diaktoros and Nerva the Imprisoned Deity of Creation.
Starting with Diaktoros, this fusion monster is probably the easier of the two to summon. Requiring Medius and any Artmegia monster, Diaktoros has 3 functions.
One, Diaktoros can change the battle position of any monster on the field. It’s a little niche, but if your only course to get rid of an enemy monster is to just kill it by battle, then this isn’t so bad to have.
Two, if Diaktoros’ controlling player has 3 or more monster types, Diaktoros functions as an on-field omni-negate. Given how the archetype can easily swarm the field, this ability is more than likely to come online.
If Diaktoros is ever destroyed, it can float into a Medius from either the hand, deck, or banishment. The last one is probably the only way for the archetype to get Medius back after it banishes itself by using its special summon effect from the graveyard.
As for the other fusion monster, we have Nerva the Imprisoned Deity of Creation. Compared to Diaktoros, Nerva is pretty simple with its abilities.
Its first effect is a conditional anti-destruction blanket, requiring a field spell to activate. As for Nerva’s second effect, players can be left gaping as Nerva can turn any activating Artmegia monster effect into a one-sided board wipe.
Thankfully, Nerva’s second effect only happens once a turn. Given how easy it is for the Artmegia monsters to activate their abilities, an opponent would have to find a way to neuter Nerva, or else the attrition from preventing the board wipes will grind down resources.
Back Row Support Traditions
The Artmegia archetype has a pretty meaty back-row support featuring five spell cards and a single trap card.
Our first spell card is the field spell, Artmegia the Academy City of Divine Arts. While functioning as an extra normal summon for Medius the Innocent, Artmegia Academy also doubles as the archetype’s main searcher.
Artmegia Academy’s second effect is a one-stop shop for searching all of your Artmegia monsters. By discarding one spell or trap card to the graveyard, the controlling player can declare and add an Artmegia monster not under their control from the deck.
The academy field spell does lock the controlling player to the Artmegia archetype should the second ability activate. It specifically states that the player can’t special summon from outside the extra deck for the rest of the turn unless it's for an Artmegia monster or Medius the Innocent.
This lock is an admittedly high price, but depending on card rulings, the academy might be able to search out all the Artmegia main deck monsters in a single turn as long as you have the sufficient spell or trap cards to feed its effect.
The translated text for the academy seems to be lacking the usual hard once-per-turn clause we’ve come to see. Instead, the translation reads, “You can only declare each card name once per turn to activate this effect of this card’s name.”
Additionally, with ‘Artmegia’ in the name for a lot of these lingering spell cards, they can be used to trigger the special summoning conditions for Finemelt, Graphlare, and Litera.
The next spell featured on the reveal is Theorealize. This card mirrors Medius as being technically part of the Artmegia archetype but not an Artmegia card itself. As we’ve come to expect nowadays for any new archetype, this is the Artmegia flavoring for Foolish Burial.
Theorealize puts its own spin on this concept by letting the controlling player peek at the opponent’s top card of the deck and then leaving it as is or moving it to the bottom. This is a pretty strong effect on top of what it can already do.
As an added bonus, Theorealize -once in the graveyard- can be used to change a target monster’s type and attribute until the end of turn. This makes it easier to hit that “3 or more monster type” parameter the Artmegia effects tend to look for.
Moving on, we have a quick play spell in the form of Artmegia Masterwork - Succession. Functioning as the archetype’s more traditional fusion spell, Masterwork - Succession adds a 500 attack power boost if there’s a card in the field zone of the controlling player.
This attack power increase does little for Nerva, but it is a welcomed power-up for Diaktoros, who only sits at 2,800. An attack value that’s a little under most boss monsters used in modern Yu-Gi-Oh!
As for its second effect, Masterwork - Succession can banish itself from the graveyard to return three Artmegia cards with different names from the graveyard to the deck.
This makes it easier for cards like Medius, the Imprisoned Deity Beast, or Graphlare to activate their deck searching functions once the grind game begins.
Next on our list, we have a continuous spell card in Artmegia Vandalism – Assault. With a hard once-per-turn clause, this is another reason why you don’t want to start your plays with Medius himself.
Vandalism - Assault allows the controlling player to search for a copy of Medius the Innocent from the deck. Its second effect allows its controlling player to treat an allied face-up monsters as an Artmegia monster for the purposes of fusion summoning material.
As for its final effect, Vandalism - Assault basically functions as a one-time anti-destruction shield for the academy field spell.
This last effect isn’t game-breaking, but it’s a nice piece of protection for a core part of the archetype’s engine.
For the last spell card, we have a normal spell card in Artmegia Banish - Change. It seems like Konami is propping this archetype up as they’re giving Artmegia another staple card effect.
This time, it’s the in-archetype flavor of Terraforming as Banish - Change can search out the academy field spell.
Just like Theorealize, Banish - Change can do more than its predecessor; if a copy of the academy field spell is already active, then Banish - Change can just search for any Artmegia card in the deck except a copy of itself.
As if this card can’t get any more bonkers good, once in the graveyard, it also functions as a Negate Attack for Artmegia monsters. Banish - Change doesn’t stop there, either, as after the enemy attack is negated, the controlling player is given the opportunity to summon Medius from hand.
Thankfully, Banish - Change is limited to a once-per-turn clause, otherwise, we’d be looking at a candidate for an emergency Forbidden/Limited list update.
Finally, to finish off the back-row support, we have Artmegia’s only trap card thus far: Artmegia Messena - Awakenin. A normal trap card with a lot of similarities to Branded Lost.
Messena - Awakenin allows its controlling player to summon any single Artmegia from the main deck or Medius. If this card is allowed to succeed in its activation, it protects any fusion summoning done during the turn.
This is not exactly hard to do, given that Artmegia’s fusion summoning is activated on either a monster quick effect or a quick play spell.
To further twist the knife, once in the graveyard, Messena - Awakenin can be banished to bounce an allied Artmegia monster from the field back to the hand or extra deck to destroy any 1 card the opponent controls.
Like Banish - Change, we are thankful this card is limited to a once-per-turn clause on top of being a normal trap card. Anything more and Messena - Awakenin would be on the fast track to the Forbidden/Limited list too.
That’s all for now for the Artmegia archetype. Konami has pulled out a lot of the checks and balances we normally see in a new archetype.
Even without a partner archetype or generic boss monsters filling out the gaps, Artmegia features a very solid lineup. That said, this is probably not the last we’ll see from Artmegia.
Given that the western market has about three months before Dualist Advance hits store shelves, Konami may give us more reveals down the line.
For those interested in reading the actual card translations, you can check out Yu-Gi-Oh! Meta or YGOrganization.