A couple of days ago, Konami officially announced the release of a new selection pack for Master Duel. Titled “Metal Raiders’ Dominance”, this pack is set to bring in a host of cards from the various expansions in the Trading Card Game (TCG) on March 28th.
Unlike past announcements, Metal Raiders’ Dominance is a little short and to the point. A total of 5 different cards have been highlighted as features of the set.
While the spotlight was on the likes of Performage Trapeze High Magician and Goblin Bikers Gone Wild, the other three cards in the selection pack have arguably stolen the show.
Metalmorph Legacy Support
The announcement for Metal Raider’s Dominance prominently featured Red-Eyes Black Fullmetal Dragon as one of the signature cards. While not solely a support for the Red-Eyes Black Dragon archetype, its existence in Master Duel does signify that Max Metalmorph may be included in this set.
Max Metalmorph is a trap card that was originally released in the Rage of the Abyss expansion in the TCG. In case you're unfamiliar, it is a requirement that can’t be bypassed for Red-Eyes Fullmetal Dragon to be summoned to the field.
Taking this line of logic to its conclusion, we can hypothesize that other legacy support cards like Metal Flameswordsman and Metalzoa X will be included in the set. Like Fullmetal Dragon, the aforementioned cards need the existence of Max Metalmorph to be summoned.
Admittedly, this is still speculation, though, as Max Metalmorph was not part of the official announcement. Given the existence of Fullmetal Dragon and the fact that it mentions Max Metalmorph, however, then it’s pretty likely for the rest of the Metalmorph legacy retrains to be coming in as well.
As a form of legacy support, Red-Eyes Full Metal Dragon offers a pretty powerful omni-negate that includes a burn effect of quite significant potency. Even if it was limited to a hard once per turn, taking a bite out of the opponent’s lifepoints for a minimum of 3,400 can be a lot once the grind game gets going.
The Dominus Twins
Dominus Impulse and Dominus Purge are definitely the twin stars of this selection pack. These two trap cards have made their rounds in the competitive scene of the TCG, so their pedigree has already been established.
These trap cards were designed to punish any card activation that allowed the opponent to special summon a monster or add a card from deck to hand, respectively.
In line with modern Yu-Gi-Oh! design philosophies, both Dominus Impulse and Dominus Purge have a feature that allows them to be activated from hand. This is provided that the opponent has at least one card under their control during this time.
Of course, they both come with some strings attached when either Dominus card is activated from the hand. Impulse locks the controlling player out of activating the effects of Light, Earth, and Wind monsters from the rest of the duel. Impulse, on the other hand, locks out Dark, Water, and Fire monsters.
This lockout is for the rest of the duel and may seem a hefty cost, but deck builders can take this ‘drawback’ into account so that it’s not so bad in the long run.
Competitive Blue-Eyes decks tend to run Dominus Purge quite handily in a lot of tournaments nowadays. Impulse, meanwhile, has found a home in some Maliss decks. To make sure that both Dominus Purge and Impulse don’t get too abused for how good they are, there’s a very hard once-per-turn clause tacked on to them.
While coming out of the woodwork without any warning, the inclusion of the Dominus cards may change the current environment of Master Duel. Rogue players will definitely enjoy the legacy support that’s coming in