It’s been over a decade since the airing of the Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal show. We were introduced to series protagonist Yūma Tsukumo, his Onomat archetype cards, and eventually his ace monster, Utopia. Recently, Konami has been on the trend of retraining their older archetypes and series signature cards, bringing them to the modern Yu-Gi-Oh scene. With the release of Duelist Advance for the Official Card Game (OCG) this coming April 26th, players will be brought back into the Zexal Era.
The Zexal era shared similarities with its older siblings in that the cards were made to support the special summoning mechanic being promoted at its time, this being XYZ summon. The newly revealed Onomat cards strengthen this notion as the different cards from this archetype are now designed to either:
- Manipulate a monster’s card levels (Zubababa Knight & Dodododo Warrior),
- Special Summon another monster card (Gogogo Goblindberg),
- Special Summon itself (Gagaga Ganbara Knight & Dodododo Warrior), or,
- Have the capacity of searching for other cards in the archetype to bring to your hand (Gagagaga Girl and all the previously listed monster cards)
Crowning this revealed list is the new Number F0: Utopic Future Zexal. An XYZ monster that specifically has the ability to steal an enemy monster card as a response to the opponent’s activation because of its quick effect clause.
This particular monster card parallels a currently banned card, Apollousa, Bow of the Goddess -who can repeatedly negate monster effects. However, unlike Apollousa, Utopic Future Zexal comes with a whole host of restrictions. The most glaring one is the “once per turn” clause that Konami has seen fit to shackle on to more powerful card abilities for the continued health of the game in general.
For now, it’s hard to say if this new Utopia will be able to measure up to the likes of its predecessors. Its abilities are indeed powerful, but Utopic Future Zexal is hampered by its summoning conditions. Two xyz monsters is a pretty steep cost given how fast modern Yu-Gi-Oh tends to be played.
The biggest elephant in the room is that this particular boss monster has a lack of self-protection. Yes, the protection can be gained at the cost of an XYZ material or through other support cards like the newly minted Gagaga Hope Tactics. A continuous spell card that can make Utopic Future Zexal untargetable and indestructible to card effects, but it pales in comparison to other powerful cards used to create board states.
The best boss monsters are usually praised for their ability to just ignore part of the opponent’s arsenal by just existing. There’s a reason why Master Peace, the True Dracoslaying King is on the Forbidden List for the Trading Card Game (TCG) at the moment, after all.
That aside, Utopic Future Zexal is further supported by Xyz Unbreakable Barrier, a quick-play trap card that basically acts as an omni-negate. If you’re willing to spend two XYZ materials from one of your XYZ monsters on the board, then Unbreakable Barrier can act as a pop and just destroy any vulnerable targets from your opponent’s board.
If you’d like to read the translated effects of each of these new cards, you can visit yugiohmeta.com for more information.