Following the wake of the Monarchs, Konami has also announced another wave of archetype support. This time, it is Psychic who will be benefiting from the release of Duelist’s Advance.
Big Box of Monsters
Surprisingly for this announcement, there’s a heavier emphasis on monster cards compared to past reveals. Starting off, we are given a suite of main deck monsters that, at first glance, look pretty substandard.
Serene Psychic Girl and Prototype Psychic Blaster can basically function as your combo starters. While the former can special summon a level 4 or lower psychic monster from the deck -barring itself-, the latter is restricted to the hand and banishment.
That said, both have their own distinct secondary abilities. Serene Psychic Girl is a tuner and its ability to slightly tweak the levels of monsters on the field does give her leeway when synchro summoning to higher levels than normal.
On the other hand, Prototype Psychic Blaster can special summon itself from the graveyard as long as you're willing to pay 1000 lifepoints and banish another Psychic monster. This particular effect works nicely with Mind Procedure.
Mind Procedure is another Psychic Tuner monster that can special summon itself from the banish zone also for 1000 lifepoints. Once summoned, you can pay an additional cost of 2000 lifepoints to add 1 "Teleport" normal or quick-play spell to your hand. This will be very important for later as currently the best target for this effect is Emergency Teleport.
As a side benefit, if used as synchro material, Mind Procedure can turn itself into a non-tuner monster. This makes it easier for the controlling player to run multiple tuner monsters while being able to summon into their suite of psychic synchro monsters.
Finally, we have Hushed Psychic Minister. Unfortunately, this card suffers from being more of a generic extender. Not exactly something you want to open your turn with unless you can get another Psychic monster on the board first.
Moving over to the extra deck we have Absolute Axon Kicker. This Psychic fusion monster came from left field. It's huge, can bypass most monster defenses except anti-banishment with its one-sided board wipe, and has its own anti-destruction protection.
If your opponent can somehow get this guy into the graveyard then it can float into a level 10 Psychic fusion monster the following turn. Axon Kicker is not the most game-breaking of Psychic monsters but it can be quite the thorn if the opponent can't stop it from sticking.
The synchro suite of Psychic monsters also suffers from being pretty generic. Silent Psychic Magician is a generic extender. It can special summon a level 4 or lower psychic monster from the graveyard or banishment, tweak its level like Serene Girl, and can even be considered as a non-tuner like Mind Procedure. Useful for synchro climbing but not much else.
Thought Cross Archfiend is almost the same as Silent Psychic Magician. It can summon an ally, this time level 7 or lower and limited to only the banishment zone. If it wants to grow bigger, it can tribute an ally to not only heal its controller for the tributed monsters attack power but also gain said attack value until end of turn.
Then finally, the extra deck monster suite is rounded out by Psychic Blaster Mk-2. It's basically Thought Cross Archfiend's bigger cousin with almost parallel effects. Target 1 banished monster and special summon? Check. Though this time, it is not limited to your own banishment zone and there's no level lock either.
Finally, you can target one of your monsters in the graveyard, target another face-up monster on the field to regain lifepoints equal to the banished target's attack power.
Like Thought Cross Archfiend, it's a good way to recoup the loss of all the lifepoints you'd be expending since a lot of the Psychic archetype cards tend to burn your own lifepoints for use.
All in all, the suite of monsters presented doesn’t offer much outside of extended combo plays. Unfortunately, there is currently no evidence of anything that can be used to counter hand traps. Not to mention all these extended plays and synchro climbing are ripe for Nibiru, the Primal Being to nuke.
The spell cards that tie everything together
Parallel Teleport and Teleport Fusion are the two new quick-play spell cards that help tie this package together. The former will let you quickly climb the synchro chain (up to level 7) with just a single psychic monster to start.
Even with its self-inflicted lifepoint burn, cheating out a synchro monster with a single main deck monster is pretty fast even by modern Yu-Gi-Oh! standards.
As for Teleport Fusion, it answers the question of how to get Absolute Axon Kicker onto the board. It's not as fast as Parallel Teleport but the ability to also use the graveyard as a resource if disruption occurs is a good safety net. In fact, Teleport Fusion has a lot of safety nets.
Assuming that a fusion summoned you control is destroyed, you can banish Teleport Fusion to float this spell card into another already banished Psychic monster; preferably one of your Pyschic synchro monsters.
This new Psychic support package isn’t that bad. It does have a glaring hole in that it’s very susceptible to hand traps, but if you’re running a standard anti-hand trap suite like Call by the Grave or Crossout Designator, then the engine can be pretty small as it features a lot of banishment recursion.
Even if your monsters end up in the graveyard instead, there are still ways to move them into the banishment. It’s not like your opponent can stop a lot of your lines of play with banishment hand traps, you want to go there anyway.
For those interested in the translation of these cards, you can find them here.