Spikes & Baron Duel Monster Comet - Card Review #286

Card Name: Chain Dragon (CSOC-JP040)
Effect: Tuner + 1 or more non-Tuner monster(s)
Remove all [Chain] monsters in your Graveyard from the game. For each monster removed by this effect, increase this card's attack strength by 200 until End Phase of this turn. When this card does battle damages to opponent's life, send the top 3 cards on opponent's deck to Graveyard.

Chain Dragon

Comment: You may asked what took me so long to write a whole new card review. Well, right now I am writing an article on Plant type monsters.

Which means, in another word...not much time, plus harder to choose which card to review as I get less choices as most Plant cards are fouled out of the process.

Anyway, this time, I decided to look at the Synchro monster of Takasu's "Chain" series cards. This "Chain" series is really nothing Chain (game mechanic) related, like the cards from CDIP. The Chain monsters get the identity from...well, there are just not much identity, except that 2 cards discards cards from deck, it burns opponent for the discards, and so on...

So let's start.

Art:
When you first look at the art of this card, man...did the Dragon fans really disappointed at how ugly and unmighty it looks.

On the second look, well, it is a Dragon, it has the wings and tail and the long neck. It does has Chain on the body and the background. So what else I expected? Nothing...I mean, it looks the same in the anime, for god sake!
RATING: 7.1/10

Stats/Requirement:
This card is a level 6 Synchro monster with stats of 2500/1300. If comparing the attack strength of this card compared to other level 6 Synchros, well, it's not the highest, for sure (Goyou "crazy" Guardian is, and for that matter, Gaia Knight is higher). As like any other level 6 Synchros, however, this card is super easy to be brought out (Summon Priest way, Rescue Cat way, etc.). Earth/Dragon really means nothing if you used Synchro...and I don't think anyone would actually use THIS Dragon as their Synchro over the "cooler" Stardust/Red Demons/Black Rose that were already out.

RATING: 8.3/10

Effect:
This card have a 2 part effects. The first effect is an attack boost if you use this card in a [Chain] monster deck. You can choose to remove ALL Chain mosnters from the Graveyard from the game to increase this card's attack strength. Consider how few [Chain] monsters there existed in this game, the attack increase can actually be hard! Another "negative" things about this card's effect is that you must remove ALL, not your chosen Chain monsters, from the game. Really, [Chain Repairer] special summoned cards from Graveyard, and removing them just does not help the cause at all.

The second effect of this card would discard 3 cards from the top of opponent's deck to Graveyard if this card dealed battle damages. Although a person can build a [Chain] deck around deck discard, in normal case, in the enrivonment right now helping opponent to get cards into Graveyard is VERY dangerous, as a lot of decks currently revolved around doing unfair things with cards in Graveyard. Really, it takes like a lot of attack from this card to even make opponent deck out (and you will probably win just by battle damages before then). It's not a bad effect, it's not, in Chain deck...

RATING: 6.7/10

OVERALL - 5.4/10 - I would not even talk about the fact that [Chain] monsters are weak and useless in general. Although this card can be well use in any deck, there are just WAY better level 6 Synchros (Goyou Guardian, Ice Barrier Dragon) existed in the game right now that the power beat this card up by miles. In a deck that built around the Chain strategy, the problem is that they do not have one. Yes, this card can get some temporary power boost, but so what since there are just so few [Chain] monsters existed in this game anyway. Then the discarding effect is not bad...just BAD in this enviornment.