Looks like Master Duel is finally getting a new selection pack. Officially announced in Master Duel itself, the Perpetual Maze selection pack is arriving on the 4th of June.
The Perpetual Maze selection pack will offer new support for Materiactor, Crystron, and Branded, as well as introducing Mimighoul and Ryu-Ge to Master Duel.
Crystron Leak Confirmation
First and foremost, it looks like the leaks surrounding Crystron have been proven true. Crystron Eleskeletus was featured in a leak earlier, and while the other Crystron cards featured in that same leak haven’t been proven yet, Crystron Eleskeletus’s existence in this selection gives a little more credence to the information.
Support for Existing Archetypes
Materiactor Exagard
While it's traditional for existing archetypes to receive much-needed support, it’s always a welcome one when it’s sorely needed.
Materiactor is an archetype whose current library is populated by only 3 cards. These are Materiactor Gigaboros, Materiactor Gigadra, and Materiactor Annulus.
While Materiactor Exagard is the only new card featured in the spotlight, there is hope that the rest of the archetype’s library will be included in the selection pack.
The Materiactor archetype features a focus on Level 3 monsters to allow access to various Rank 3 XYZ monsters in the card pool.
On their own, Materiactor has a pretty unique strategy of feeding more XYZ material cards straight from the deck to one of the Materiactor XYZ monsters. From there, players can bounce the materials back to the hand as needed.
This tactic bypasses a lot of staple hand traps, such as Droll & Lock Bird. Shrewd players can also bounce a hand trap that’s currently an XYZ material at quick effect speed to prepare a point of interaction once the turn shifts to the opponent.
If used as a splashable engine, then there are a host of Rank 3 focused archetypes, like Goblin Bikers, that would benefit from the support Materiactor plays into. For cheeky deck builders out there, Prima Materiactor is a Normal monster allowing the use of Primite archetyp
Dogmatikalamity Alba System
Another featured card in the selection pack is Dogmatikalamity Alba System. This is one of the stranger cards to come out of the Branded archetype.
A giant beat stick, this card’s redeeming qualities are: its ability to attack all opposing monsters on the enemy field as well as deleting (sending to the graveyard) all the cards in both players’ extra deck.
Unfortunately, the positives end there. Dogmatikalamity Alba System features no protection, making it highly susceptible to a lot of interactions from the opponent, regardless of the archetype you’d be facing.
There’s also the fact that the requirements of getting this card on the field, as well as activating its effect, are already herculean. Even if Dogmatikalamity Alba System is somehow cheated out, the return on investment for the effort is highly minimal.
New Archetypes to be Introduced
Mimighoul
One of the archetypes to elevate Flip Effect monsters to modern Yu-Gi-Oh! standards, Mimighoul features a host of layered interactions hidden behind a quirky, if somewhat comedic, facade.
The featured card for the archetype, Mimighoul Master is a very powerful consistency tool the archetype lacked during its debut back in the Trading Card Game (TCG).
As for the archetype itself, the Mimighoul main deck roster has the capability of being given to the opponent for varying effects.
The positives for the archetype are that it’s a functionally small engine. With some good deck building, you could end up with a good amount of non-engine pieces to reinforce any shortcomings you may have.
This small roster also extends to the extra deck, as Mimighoul’s main extra deck monsters are limited to two: Giant Mimighoul and Mimighoul Throne.
The former is a combo extender that doubles as targeted destruction for face-up cards for some burn damage. The latter can be used to search for the aforementioned Mimighoul Master, or if Master is already on the field, a way to bounce back up to two cards from the field (non-targeted) back to the hand.
With just these two XYZ monsters in their roster, Mimighoul can host a varying amount of generic extra deck staples like Accesscode Talker or Underworld Goddess of the Closed World.
Assuming the entire library of Mimighoul is ported into Master Duel, this archetype can potentially lock out the opponent’s ability to normal summon for the turn with Mimighoul Dungeon.
Unfortunately for Mimighoul, there are some natural predators for their style of play.
Droll & Lock Bird heavily interrupts a lot of this archetype’s play lines. Most of the Mimighoul engine pieces, like Mimighoul Dragon, need to add cards to the hand.
Additionally, any opponent using Dominus Impulse can immediately shut down this archetype’s main gimmick as Mimighoul is comprised exclusively of Earth monsters.
Mimighoul isn’t a world-shaking archetype, but it offers a fun and options-centric approach to playing Yu-Gi-Oh!
Ryu-Ge
The other archetype being introduced in this selection pack, Ryu-Ge, focuses on a small roster of Level 10 monsters, each with a different monster type: Sea Serpent, Dinosaur, Wyrm, and Dragon.
The featured card from the announcement, Sosei Ryu-Ge Mistva, is the archetype’s one-card combo starter.
Sosei Ryu-Ge Mistva allows the player to search for archetype Field Spell, Ryu-Ge War Zone, to set up the board with what is essentially a negate, a hand nuke, and targeted destruction.
As a pure build, Ryu-Ge is a pretty small engine, allowing for a lot of non-engine staples to be included in a deck list. The archetype inherently has a lot of big bodies to just beat over almost a good majority of end board pieces
That said, where Ryu-Ge shines is its splashability with other archetypes that share the same monster type as they do.
Swordsoul, Voiceless Voice, and Dinormophia are just some of the few deck types that can take advantage of Ryu-Ge War Zone.
The Field Spell can be used to put any of their important combat pieces to hand while seeding your other zones with necessary Ryu-Ge cards.
As a whole, Ryu-Ge is a little clunky to use and has very little response to most basic hand trap staples.
When paired with other archetypes, however, it makes for a good tech piece just for the big bodies it can field. When technique fails, sometimes brute force can be used instead.