While the cards in Battles of Legend: Monster Mayhem may not be new to veteran Yu-Gi-Oh! players, there's still a lot to enjoy. These Gem-Knight cards, for instance, have been in the OCG since November of last year, but they're new to the TCG with this release. This is great news for fans of the archetype, as these new-ish cards should provide a major boost. Renowned for their strong fusion and recycling capabilities, Gem-Knights were notorious during their time in the spotlight. This was largely thanks to their ability to FTK (First Turn Kill) the opponent through burn damage.
Gem-Knight Hollowcore
One of the biggest issues the Gem-Knight archetype faces, despite the resilience of the engine, is the lack of safeguards against hand traps.
Even back in the archetypes’ prime FTK state, all the opponent had to do was activate Ghost Sister & Spooky Dogwood, and the main win condition would be almost unachievable.
Gem-Knight Hollowcore’s introduction helps to alleviate some of these issues.
As a stand-alone package, Gem-Knight Hollowcore’s special summoning is extremely powerful by design. A Foolish Burial into a body on the field is good value if an appropriate follow-through is available.
Thankfully, the archetype has enough extra deck play lines (e.g. Gem-Knight Phantom Quartz) to get Hollowcore into the graveyard to prepare for its monster negate.
There are a few more hoops to jump through, though. Hollowcore needs another 2 Gem-Knight bodies in the graveyard before it can go online. It’s neither the quickest nor most efficient monster negate in the game, but it’s a solid piece of support the archetype lacks.
Seeing as Hollowcore is a Dark attribute monster, players could also tech in some of the Bystials for some added versatility.
Gem-Knight Nepyrim
This card is primed to be the archetype’s main combo starter and extender. As long as Gem-Knight Nepyrim makes it to the field, it can immediately search for any Gem-Knight card from the deck.
The lack of parameters on Nepyrim’s search allows a player to pivot to any of the named Gem-Knight spell cards if it’s needed.
The added normal summon functionality increases the card advantage Nepyrim generates. The old archetype staple of Gem-Armadillo can easily be brought down alongside Nepyrim for added strength.
With just these two bodies alone, a Gem-Knight player can easily extend further with generic XYZ bodies such as Gallant Granite or Infernal Flame Banshee.
The latter card can be used as a bridge to the Nemeses engine for access to Archnemeses Protos. This card can act as a specialized floodgate if you can glean what the opponent needs to summon on their turn.
With a small recursive package tacked on, Gem-Knight Nepyrim will more than likely be at maximum copies for any Gem-Knight deck, regardless of the win condition.
Gem-Knight Master Diamond Dispersion
The only extra deck monster on this list, Gem-Knight Master Diamond Dispersion, can come off as a little quirky extender for the archetype. This is assuming you don’t need a generic 3,000 attack power beat stick.
With its quick effect, Gem-Knight Master Diamond Dispersion can be used to re-seed the field with the cards above or bring out some of the non-rock Gem-Knight extra deck monsters.
This effect locks the player into Fusion monsters for the rest of the turn. Players running generic non-Fusion extra deck monsters will have to meticulously plan this card’s activation in the overall turn sequence to prevent any backfires.
While not the best of recursion packages, just having one at all in the overall design just adds to the archetype’s longevity once the late game grind begins.
Gem-Knight Dispersion
This is another flavor of fusion spell, adding to this archetype’s already long list.
On its own, Gem-Knight Dispersion is functionally a basic fusion spell or the in-archetype Reinforcement of the Army. If a second copy can be brought into the hand, then both effects can be used.
The soft once-per-turn gives Gem-Knight Dispersion some form of extra utility. Add to the fact that Gem-Knight Nepyrim can search this card out makes it fairly easy to reach even with a bricked hand.
Thanks to Gem-Knight Hollowcore’s ability to dump Gem-Knight Fusion straight into the graveyard, Gem-Knight Dispersion can easily transform into the archetype’s version of Branded Fusion.
With its more powerful fusion effect, Dispersion can bring out more copies of Nepyrim and Hollowcore for their respective capabilities from the deck.
The enhanced version of Gem-Knight Dispersion does limit the list of materials to non-Rock Gem-Knights monsters, though. Players will need to keep this in mind if they decide not to use Gem-Knight Hollowcore or Gem-Knight Nepyrim as materials.
New P.U.N.K. and Orcust Support in Battle of Legends: Monster Mayhem