Yu-Gi-Oh Card Review: Blue-Eyes White Dragon

Now for a little bit of nostalgia, Konami have decided to release the legendary collection. Comprising of 6 cards that everyone will recognise, as well as six packs: one of each of the first 6 sets (In the UK, we got 2 packs of the first 3 sets instead), it gives duelists another chance at pulling some old favourites that were until now, difficult to get hold of.

The Legendary Collection comes with the 3 god cards (In the new card format) as well as an alternate art Dark Magician, Red-Eyes Black Dragon and today's card, the all powerful Blue-Eyes White Dragon!

My Favourite Blue-Eyes artwork!

This card was first used by Seto Kaiba in the very first episode (excluding season 0 of yu-gi-oh) and he likes it so much, he has 3 of them in his deck! He could fuse them together to create the Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, with an impressive 4500 attack points.

It has 3000 attack points and 2500 defence points, which is 500 more attack and defence points than Yugi's ace card, the Dark Magician, respectively. Kaiba relied on Blue Eyes's powerful strength to take any monster down.

Alone, this card could not survive the evolving metagame we have today. It's not a card you can splash into a deck for some extra power and expect to get it out. Monster effects and mass destruction cards play more of a part in todays yu-gi-oh than ever, and Blue-Eyes white dragon wouldnt last a turn on the field if left unprotected.

But there are many support cards that make Blue-Eyes playable, and i will list a few of the best ones.

First up are the ways of getting him out onto the field without wasting tonnes of resources. Cards like Ancient Rules and Kaibaman can help summon him as easy as the first turn! But thats not all, you can also use Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon to special summon him from your hand or graveyard once a turn!

You will need to search him from your deck too. You can use cards like The White Stone Of Legend to add a Blue-Eyes to your hand whenever it is sent to the graveyard (Future Fusion can help with this!) or Summoner's Art, to add a level 5 or higher normal monster straight from your deck to your hand. You can go one step further and use Paladin of White Dragon to special summon him straight from your deck!

Lastly, you want to be able to special summon it from the graveyard (It has no special summoning restrictions and it can swing for 3000 attack. You dont see that very often anymore, just look at Judgment Dragon!). Monster reborn, Call of the Haunted and to a lesser extent, birthright and silent doom can bring him back over and over again.

But now that he is on the field, what can you do to keep him there? If by some chance that your opponent wants to take your precious dragon down in battle, you can drop an Honest since Blue-Eyes is a light attribute.
Alternatively, you can use Justi-Break to destroy all effect monsters on you and your opponents side of the field (sorry Sangan and Dandylion... oh, whats this?).

So as you can see, Blue-Eyes may not be able to hang around for long, but there are effective and near-costless ways to keep bringing it back and ploughing through your opponents resources, and if you happen to have your Blue-Eyes removed from play, you can always run 2 or 3!