Surprise, one of these that isn’t part of the ongoing dissertation in Rahi zoology for once.
The topic this time is “recycling”, i.e., returning cards that have been previously used up to advance the game state into a location where they can be used once more at a later point. This was on my mind with the last update specifically because Nuva Emergence does it, and so do the Bohrok and Bohrok-Kal that are the other focus of BPEV.
But before we go into these details, I actually want to start off with a more general tangent on the concept.
Recycling in Yugioh
Looking at the history of the actual game, there’s an argument to be made that recycling is one key thing that can contribute a lot to making a deck powerful, particularly in modern formats where you can make a lot from just the right few resources.
For example, Gladiator Beasts are often considered one of the first major decks with something resembling a modern playstyle, and sure enough a form of recycling is baked right into their core mechanics. Whether you tag out after battle or go into a Fusion, the monsters all return to the Deck, exactly where you want to have them for the next tag-out. This is what I would call “long-term recycling” – you don’t immediately get resources back, but it basically ensures you never run out of plays. Balancing-wise, it’s interesting to note that, because there is no direct advantage gain and because you technically lose potential resources on the field and such, this can be (and often is) even coupled with other benefits.
Later in history this long-term recycling also starts extending to the truly “spent” cards that are banished or in the GY, such as in the case of Thunder Dragon Fusion, a card that puts stuff back in deck with the side benefit of, once again, a Fusion Monster. On top of that, it also has a search effect in the GY itself, so over the course of two turns it alone lets a single monster perform a full circuit from GY/banished back to hand. Another common dynamic is recycling things into the Deck for draws, from Pot of Avarice to Runick Fountain. And in the Madolche archetype, we see returning to Deck not as something tied to an immediate benefit, but still as something all the monsters just do for free.
Of course, we can’t talk about long-term recycling without mentioning what is now widely known as perhaps the most powerful and versatile archetype ever printed, Tearlaments. Like Thunder Dragons, they can recycle fusion materials from the GY (though not banished) back into the Deck, and like Gladiator Beasts, they do this without the need for a Fusion Spell, instead using an effect on the same monsters you use as material. The result is a strategy that essentially makes its boss monsters at the “cost” of an infinite resource loop. It’s this entire concept we’ve been talking about taken to a logical extreme.
But that’s not even all Tear has to offer, because if you look at the Spells and Traps, you will find that many of their secondary effects when sent to the GY allow you to bring spent cards from all kinds of other locations back to your hand. Yes, this archetype also has short-term recycling, and there’s our segue.
By “short-term recycling”, I mean giving resources back into play directly, usually to the hand or field.
A personal favourite of mine that makes use of this a lot is Speedroid, including Speed Recovery, which actually does both revival and adding back to hand. Similar features are present on the three Synchro Monsters that help you climb into big bosses: Cork Shooter immediately brings its materials back to the field on Summon, Hagoita can revive itself if you control a Tuner, and Puzzle gives you a monster back in the End Phase to ensure followup. What we can see on all these effects is that, in contrast to the long-term recycling, the part where you get back a card is purely a payoff balanced by some kind of condition or cost. Which makes perfect sense when you consider the simple key difference that short-term recycling generates immediate advantage.
For our final example, let’s look at the Invoked engine, where Aleister searches Invocation, gets fused away and banished, and is added back to hand so you can also use him as a stat booster or to repeat the combo next turn. At the same time, Invocation itself gets put back into the Deck as long-term recycling, with the short-term recycling in and of itself being what you gain from doing so.
This is entirely in line with our overall hypothesis: Long-term recycling is a cost, short-term recycling is a benefit – and clearly the former can even pay for the latter.
Recycling in BYE Themes
Onu-Koro, Village of Earth
Field Spell
You can target up to 5 EARTH monsters in your GY; shuffle them into the Deck, then gain 600 LP for each card shuffled into the Main Deck this way. If your LP are higher than your opponent’s: You can send 1 EARTH monster from your hand or field to the GY, then pay LP in multiples of 1000 (max. 3000); draw 1 card for every 1000 LP paid, then, if your LP are lower than your opponent’s, send that many cards from your hand to the GY. You cannot Normal or Special Summon monsters the turn you activate this effect, except EARTH monsters. You can only use each effect of “Onu-Koro, Village of Earth” once per turn.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)
Starting in BCOT, our foremost representative of long-term recycling is Onu-Koro. Nothing makes this more evident than the effects of its central Field Spell, letting you shuffle back EARTH monsters to gain LP that can subsequently be converted into multiple draws. The theme here is being rewarded for the “work” you did putting those monsters into the GY, and that’s probably also a core reason shuffling stuff back is generally treated as a cost- it requires setup.
2 monsters, including an EARTH Warrior monster You can target 1 Level 4 or lower EARTH monster in your GY; the player with the fewest total cards in their hand and field draws 1 card, also add that target to your hand, and if you do, banish 1 card from your hand. If an EARTH monster(s) is Special Summoned to a zone(s) this card points to: You can target 1 of your banished EARTH Warrior monsters; Special Summon it in Defense Position. You can only use each effect of “Turaga Onewa” once per turn.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)
The village for truly short-term recycling is Po-Koro, where you just try to build big boards through elaborate combos and therefore have a strong interest in getting your resources back as quickly as possible. However, the fact that you tend to use up those recycled cards immediately makes this strategy surprisingly weak at recovery, and thinking about that made me just realize a hidden third mode of recycling I haven’t been distinguishing so far.
2 monsters, including a WIND Warrior monster During your Main Phase: You can Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower WIND monster from your hand in Attack Position, but its ATK becomes 0. If this card is sent from the field to the GY: You can activate this effect; during the Standby Phase of your next turn, add 1 WIND monster from your GY to your hand, then, if your opponent controls more monsters than you do, you can make all monsters they currently control lose 700 ATK/DEF until the end of that turn. You can only use each effect of “Turaga Matau” once per turn.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)
Le-Koro has recovery as its explicit focus, and to achieve that, it does a lot of “mid-term recycling”, as you might call it. Matau is a perfect example with his ability to return a monster from your GY on the next turn, but there’s also Makani’s delayed recycling of WIND Warriors and Tamaru’s ability to come back out of the GY with any discard. These effects are clearly more like short-term than long-term recycling since they’re still treated as benefits, but the delay associated with them acts as part of the tradeoff in the equation.
Rahi Swarm
Spell
If your opponent controls a monster and you control no monsters: Add 2 “Rahi” monsters with the same Type, but different names, from your Deck to your hand. For the rest of this turn, your opponent takes no damage. You can banish this card from your GY; Special Summon 1 “Rahi” monster from your GY, but it cannot attack, also it is destroyed during the End Phase. You can only use 1 “Rahi Swarm” effect per turn, and only once that turn.
Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.15.5)
There’s no dedicated recycling theme in BCOR (… yet!), but there certainly lies some potential in the fact that most Rahi Spells and Traps have additional effects in the GY restricted by a shared HOPT with the regular effect. That means after (hypothetically) building a big Rahi board, if it gets broken and the turn passes back to you, you could (hypothetically) use that accumulated stock of effects as followup to rebuild and remove whatever your opponent put up. Might be an idea worth exploring in an upcoming overhaul.
FLIP: Special Summon 1 Level 4 “Bohrok” monster from your Deck in face-down Defense Position, except “Bohrok Lehvak”. During your Main Phase 1: You can shuffle this card into the Deck; destroy 1 card on the field.
If you control “Bohrok Nuhvok”, you can Special Summon this card (from your hand). You can only Special Summon “Bohrok Nuhvok Va” once per turn this way. You can send 1 card from your hand to the GY; draw 1 card. You can only use this effect of “Bohrok Nuhvok Va” once per turn. During the End Phase, if this card is in the GY because it was sent there from the field this turn: Shuffle 2 “Bohrok” monsters, except “Bohrok Nuhvok Va”, from your GY into the Deck, then draw 1 card.
Bionicle: Beware the Swarm (v3.15.5)
And that brings us straight to BBTS and the Bohrok, an archetype equipped with massive long-term recycling capabilities because it needs to keep up the illusion of an endless swarm despite being limited to 3 of each monster. The Level 4 Bohrok put themselves from the field back as cost for their destructive effects, while (some of) the Level 2 Bohrok Va put monsters from the GY back as cost for a draw. All just as observed above, which is funny considering I had none of this theory really figured out back when I made these cards.
2 Level 4 “Bohrok” monsters Place materials detached from this card on the bottom of the Deck, instead of sending them to the GY. Once per turn: You can attach 1 “Krana” monster from your hand, field, or GY to this card as material. (Quick Effect): You can detach 1 material from this card, then target 1 face-up monster your opponent controls; it cannot attack or activate its effects this turn, also you can detach 1 more material from this card, and if you do, destroy all monsters your opponent controls with less than 2000 ATK. You can only use this effect of “Bohrok Tahnok-Kal” once per turn.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.3.3)🎉
Anyway, the Bohrok-Kal act as a logical extension of the concept with their shared clause of putting detached materials back into the Deck. However, this one is actually pulling triple duty because not only does it enable your resource loop, it also limits the ability to attach Krana from the GY by not putting them back there and can keep your opponent off GY resources if you snatch up some of their cards with Bohrok Counterattack .
Nuva Emergence
Trap
Fusion Summon 1 “Nuva” Fusion Monster from your Extra Deck, by shuffling the Fusion Materials listed on it into the Deck, from among your hand, GY and/or face-up banished cards. If your opponent controls a monster, you can also banish 1 monster from your Deck as Fusion Material. During the Main Phase, except the turn this card was sent to the GY: You can banish this card from your GY; add 1 “Nuva” Spell/Trap from your Deck or GY to your hand, except “Nuva Emergence”, then discard 1 card. You can only use each effect of “Nuva Emergence” once per turn.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.4.4)
Meanwhile on the Toa’s side, the aforementioned Nuva Emergence is the main point of recycling, being a classic Fusion Summon by shuffling back materials. However, this is less good in this particular strategy than it has historically been because the materials you can recycle are limited to Toa Mata and Energized Protodermis, meaning it can’t get spent Toa Nuva themselves back into rotation. That’s why it also has a way to use a material from the Deck, so you have a better chance to assemble what you need for the Nuva that are still available.
The secondary effect, meanwhile, is our mid-term recycling that can also act as a search, which is the same effect all the Nuva have on Summon. The key advantage it boasts on this card is the fact that you can do it without having to pull off a Fusion Summon, which is obviously greatly appreciated whenever you aren’t in a particularly good spot – the exact times you can really use some recycling.
Conclusion
Where was I going with all this? Good question. Just consider it my recent thoughts on the topic in somewhat organized form. Key points as takeaways:
Long-term recycling is beneficial, yet also treated as a cost due to the setup it needs.
Short-term recycling is a payoff that is balanced by some form of cost, which can even be long-term recycling.
Mid-term recycling is like short-term recycling, but delayed and cheaper.
Archetypes that are good at recycling have a strong track record of being both successful and seen as fun to play.
I should design more archetypes than I already have with recycling in mind.
And that’s all. Now time to get back on that Rahi classification grind!
Those who read the previous release post to the very end already know what should be in this one, and in a miraculous alignment of planning and execution, that also happens to be what is in this one: The remaining Toa Nuva, and a card that provides recursion in order to let you Fusion Summon on your opponent’s turn as well, as Spright Elf once did. Now, let us see what has emerged from the hidden pool of Energized Protodermis.
Some concepts for Toa Nuva decks can be found over here. Release notes below.
New Cards
Nuva Emergence
Trap
Fusion Summon 1 “Nuva” Fusion Monster from your Extra Deck, by shuffling the Fusion Materials listed on it into the Deck, from among your hand, GY and/or face-up banished cards. If your opponent controls a monster, you can also banish 1 monster from your Deck as Fusion Material. During the Main Phase, except the turn this card was sent to the GY: You can banish this card from your GY; add 1 “Nuva” Spell/Trap from your Deck or GY to your hand, except “Nuva Emergence”, then discard 1 card. You can only use each effect of “Nuva Emergence” once per turn.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.4.4)
Starting off, the title and cover card of this release is precisely the aforementioned upgrade of our fusion capabilities: Nuva Emergence. By default, it lets you fuse by shuffling materials back into the Deck, but if you wait for your opponent to have a monster first, you can also flip the script and banish one of the materials from your Deck – potentially even an Energized Protodermis Chamber that then acts as free removal as well.
The ability to do that is why I initially didn’t want to make this yet another cheap fuse-from-deck card, but the math just didn’t work out that way, so as a compromise it now lets you conditionally get just one of the two materials from there. That means you can recycle the Chamber from the Toa Nuva made turn 1 to make a different one turn 2, or recycle the Toa Mata to make the same one and trigger a fresh Chamber, or get both a different Toa Nuva and a Chamber trigger if you’ve managed to set up an additional Toa Mata as material somehow. Fairly reasonable tradeoffs that give you a surprising amount of flexibility.
Later on, the Nuva Emergence can also be banished from the GY to do the same search-and-discard all the Toa Nuva do on Fusion Summon, and while you can’t directly get another copy, you can do it indirectly via some updated Kanohi Nuva, as we’ll see a bit further down. This way, we have the issue of repeatability somewhat covered as well.
In the meantime, the remaining two Toa Nuva join the team with effects following the usual pattern. Almost.
“Toa Mata Pohatu” + 1 “Energized Protodermis” monster If this card is Fusion Summoned: You can add 1 “Nuva” Spell/Trap from your Deck or GY to your hand, then discard 1 card. (Quick Effect): You can destroy Spells/Traps your opponent controls, up to the number of Rock monsters you control +1. You can only use this effect of “Toa Nuva Pohatu” once per turn.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.4.4)
Pohatu Nuva is just a straightforward upgrade of his Mata form , replacing the Trigger Effect to destroy a Spell/Trap (and another if you control a Rock) with an unconditional Quick Effect to destroy a Spell/Trap (and as many more as you control Rocks). Subtle differences, but they provide powerful advantages.
Nuva Symbol of Granite Tenacity
Continuous Spell
You can shuffle this card you control into the Deck; add 1 “Toa Mata Pohatu” from your Deck to your hand, or reveal it in your hand and add 1 “Energized Protodermis” card instead. If a monster(s) is Special Summoned, and you control a “Nuva” Fusion Monster (except during the Damage Step): You can Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower monster from your hand or GY. You can only use each of the preceding effects of “Nuva Symbol of Granite Tenacity” once per turn. If this card leaves the field: Target 1 “Nuva” Fusion Monster you control; negate its effects, then Tribute 1 non-Fusion Monster.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.4.4)
The Nuva Symbol of Granite Tenacity provides one way to assemble the Rocks needed to really take this effect over the top, by giving you a Level 4 or lower Special Summon from hand or GY whenever anyone Special Summons (if you have a Toa Nuva). This extends to all monsters in the Level range and doesn’t negate effects or anything, so you can also use it to bring out anything from starters to extenders to a bit of extra battle damage – Pohatu is a sociable guy, after all. However, the loss of elemental power upon removal of the Nuva Symbol will force you to Tribute a monster instead, with Fusions being exempt because lore-wise the Toa Nuva does have to stay around in its negated state.
You might notice the direct synergy between the effects of Pohatu and his Nuva Symbol is relatively thin, and indeed I have been considering an additional portion of Pohatu Nuva’s effect that summons a Rock Token when you e.g. destroy a face-up card. That would not only give you a built-in ramp to reach a higher number of pops, but also provide a trigger for Granite Tenacity to do its thing. But in testing, Pohatu just kind of seemed good enough already that it felt hard to justify the significant amount of extra text a Token would have brought with it, so for now the effect remains short and crispy.
Great Kanohi Kakama Nuva
Equip Spell
If another “Kanohi” Equip Spell becomes equipped to the equipped monster, destroy this card. If the equipped monster is a “Nuva” Fusion Monster, it can attack all monsters your opponent controls, once each. it. If this card is sent to the GY, and you have not activated any “Kanohi” Equip Spell effects in the GY this turn: You can banish 1 monster from your GY; Set 1 “Nuva” Trap directly from your Deck, also if you control a “Nuva” Fusion Monster, the monsters you currently control can attack directly this turn, but if they do so using this effect, their ATK is halved during damage calculation only.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.4.4)
The Kakama Nuva is our first special case here, because it is one in the lore as well: This Kanohi Nuva alone provides not only a strengthened and shareable form of the power it had before its transformation, but also an entirely new ability of phasing through solid objects. Accordingly, the on-field effect has remained identical to the base Kakama , but the bonus effect it can grant from the GY instead lets your monsters attack directly. The halved ATK when doing so proved absolutely necessary to not make winning way too easy, and implementing it revealed to me that almost all the direct-attack cards in EDOPro are coded wrong since they don’t let you select which of multiple stacked effects of that type to use on a specific attack. At least Cyberdark Edge does it right.
Also don’t overlook that this card’s GY effect Sets a Trap rather than placing a Continuous Spell. That new feature was added to several Kanohi Nuva so that you can easily access and loop Nuva Emergence (or, more rarely, the Nuva Cube ).
“Toa Mata Kopaka” + 1 “Energized Protodermis” monster If this card is Fusion Summoned: You can add 1 “Nuva” Spell/Trap from your Deck or GY to your hand, then discard 1 card. Once per turn, during the Main Phase, if you control no other monsters (Quick Effect): You can target 1 monster your opponent controls; banish it. While this card is in face-up Defense Position, your opponent’s monsters cannot target other monsters for attacks, also your opponent cannot target other cards you control with card effects.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.4.4)
In the case of Kopaka Nuva, we leave the regular upgrade patterns aside pretty much immediately. Granted, Kopaka Mata had a similarly nonstandard sword-and-shield effect setup going, so obviously translating that requires a different approach.
For the “sword”, we still banish (freeze), but now it can be used freely as long as Kopaka is working alone … and isn’t non-targeting against all cards any more, because that would be a bit broken when it’s so much easier to use.
For the “shield”, the condition is still being in Defense Position, and the effect is still preventing your other monsters from being attacked. Oh, and your other cards from being targeted. One might suggest this could be toxic when combined with various floodgates, and I am not legally required to respond to these allegations. Don’t worry, it’s totally just for the Nuva Symbols.
Notably, the effect to change to Defense Position (and thus make your other cards untargetable) after battle was dropped to save space, as it isn’t really all that necessary on a Fusion Monster that can be summoned in defense to begin with anyway. It does make attacking with Kopaka Nuva a serious investment that leaves you unguarded for a turn, but for how broad the protection is that’s probably fair.
Nuva Symbol of Frigid Serenity
Continuous Spell
You can shuffle this card you control into the Deck; add 1 “Toa Mata Kopaka” from your Deck to your hand, or reveal it in your hand and add 1 “Energized Protodermis” card instead. If a “Nuva” Fusion Monster you control leaves the field because of an opponent’s card: You can banish 1 card from your opponent’s hand (at random) or their field. You can only use each of the preceding effects of “Nuva Symbol of Frigid Serenity” once per turn. If this card leaves the field: Target 1 “Nuva” Fusion Monster you control; negate its effects, and if you do, your opponent can add 1 of their banished cards to their hand.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.4.4)
The Nuva Symbol of Frigid Serenity then answers the remaining question of “but what if they go after Kopaka since they can’t target anything else?”. If that happens, or generally if your opponent dares remove a Toa Nuva, they’ll find themselves on the receiving end of a true non-targeting banish. And this one can even reach the hand, just so it still works if they drop a Kaiju right away. Unfortunately this does not help you recover your lost monster in any way, so it can almost feel a bit underpowered at times. But boy is it fun to swap it in with a Nuva Cube at the right moment.
The punish for letting this symbol get removed is, aside from the usual negate, an opportunity for your opponent to add back a banished card. The impact of which ranges from nothing to devastating depending on whether or not Pot of Desires previously resolved on their side. That’s right, face-down banished cards are also allowed.
Great Kanohi Akaku Nuva
Equip Spell
If another “Kanohi” Equip Spell becomes equipped to the equipped monster, destroy this card. While equipped to a “Nuva” Fusion Monster you control, your opponent must keep their hand revealed. If this card is sent to the GY, and you have not activated any “Kanohi” Equip Spell effects in the GY this turn: You can banish 1 monster from your GY; Set 1 “Nuva” Trap directly from your Deck, also if you control a “Nuva” Fusion Monster, look at your opponent’s hand.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.4.4)
Finally, the Akaku Nuva also deviates from the norm in its GY effect, but this time not because of the lore but because I could not come up with any way (that’s not horribly convoluted) to grant your entire field the power of revealing the opponent’s hand. Instead, it’s just a one-and-done hand reveal you get along with your Trap if a Toa Nuva is present. This card is also missing the banishing part of the base Akaku , because a) pretty hard to find the space for that, b) I think we’ve been doing quite enough banishing over here already, and c) just the information by itself is enough to make it worthwhile when every Toa Nuva can trigger it on summon.
Updated
The updates this time are numerous, but easily explained. You know how the Toa Nuva previously all said “You can only use each effect […] once per turn”? That says “this effect” now. That’s it. That’s the update. Check the sweet version selection dropdown I can enable in card blocks now.
“Toa Mata Tahu” + 1 “Energized Protodermis” monster If this card is Fusion Summoned: You can add 1 “Nuva” Spell/Trap from your Deck or GY to your hand, then discard 1 card. If your opponent controls a monster (Quick Effect): You can target 1 other face-up Attack Position monster on the field; its ATK becomes 0, and if it does, this card gains ATK equal to that monster’s original ATK, until the end of this turn. You can only use this effect of “Toa Nuva Tahu” once per turn.
“Toa Mata Gali” + 1 “Energized Protodermis” monster If this card is Fusion Summoned: You can add 1 “Nuva” Spell/Trap from your Deck or GY to your hand, then discard 1 card. (Quick Effect): You can target 1 other face-up monster on the field; negate its effects until the end of this turn. You can only use this effect of “Toa Nuva Gali” once per turn.
“Toa Mata Onua” + 1 “Energized Protodermis” monster If this card is Fusion Summoned: You can add 1 “Nuva” Spell/Trap from your Deck or GY to your hand, then discard 1 card. During the Main Phase (Quick Effect): You can target 1 card in either GY; place it on the top or bottom of the Deck, then gain 1000 LP. You can only use this effect of “Toa Nuva Onua” once per turn.
“Toa Mata Lewa” + 1 “Energized Protodermis” monster If this card is Fusion Summoned: You can add 1 “Nuva” Spell/Trap from your Deck or GY to your hand, then discard 1 card. During the Main Phase (Quick Effect): You can target 1 monster on the field; return it to the hand, then, if it was a monster you controlled, you can return 1 additional monster on the field to the hand. You can only use this effect of “Toa Nuva Lewa” once per turn.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.4.4)
Okay but why do we suddenly not want the search effects to be HOPT anymore? Multiple reasons for that, but I’ll be honest, the main one is that Kopaka Nuva already has a lot of words and can get away without a HOPT clause if we do that. I strongly doubt this can enable any serious abuse since you can use this exact same effect on 6 different names anyway (7 if we count Emergence), and the discard means it doesn’t even plus you – unless you weave in a Kanohi Nuva, which are collectively HOPT in their own right.
Oh, and apparently I totally forgot to put a little update Tahu Nuva got into the overview image. His effect to drain ATK now only works if the opponent controls a monster, which is my solution to how easy it was to OTK into an emtpy field by draining your own monster in the middle of the Battle Phase. Tahu may be a hothead at the expense of his own allies sometimes, but probably not so much in cases where there isn’t even an enemy in front of him.
Great Kanohi Pakari Nuva
Equip Spell
If another “Kanohi” Equip Spell becomes equipped to the equipped monster, destroy this card. If the equipped monster is a “Nuva” Fusion Monster, it gains 1000 ATK, also if it attacks a Defense Position monster, inflict piercing battle damage If this card is sent to the GY, and you have not activated any “Kanohi” Equip Spell effects in the GY this turn: You can banish 1 monster from your GY; place 1 “Nuva” Continuous Spell from your Deck face-up in your Spell & Trap Zone, also if you control a “Nuva” Fusion Monster, all monsters you currently control gain 600 ATK until the end of your opponent’s turn.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.4.4)
The tweak for the Pakari Nuva is technically a regression to a detail of its AoE ATK boosting effect from several versions ago, namely that it lasts through your opponent’s turn even if it was activated on yours. This is sort of a consequence of the Kanohi Nuva being split into Spell searchers and Trap searches, with one criterion being that the Spell ones ( Hau , Kaukau , Pakari) should have bonus effects more useful on your opponent’s turn and the Trap ones (Kakama, Akaku, Miru ) on yours. But there are other factors such as balancing things between Attributes, and through those the Miru with its targeting protection effect ended up split from Hau and Kaukau with their battle and effect protection. So to counterbalance that little mixup, the Pakari got similarly tweaked so its bonus effect works no matter whose turn you activate it on. Not sure that really makes sense, but it seems to go well in practice.
And with that we’ve also taken care of everything I wanted to say about the Miru Nuva, which only got changed to a Trap searcher and remained the same otherwise. Allow me to close this article with another fancy version-selectable card block.
Great Kanohi Miru Nuva
Equip Spell
If another “Kanohi” Equip Spell becomes equipped to the equipped monster, destroy this card. If the equipped monster is a “Nuva” Fusion Monster, negate any effect activated by your opponent that targeted it. If this card is sent to the GY, and you have not activated any “Kanohi” Equip Spell effects in the GY this turn: You can banish 1 monster from your GY; Set 1 “Nuva” Trap directly from your Deck, also if you control a “Nuva” Fusion Monster, your opponent cannot target the monsters you currently control with card effects this turn.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.4.4)
If you’ve gotten addicted to dropdowns, I can warmly recommend our shiny new card viewer page (that you may already have seen behind the hoverable card links, which are also a thing that exists now). It has EVEN MORE DROPDOWNS!!1!
Back when the Toa Mata first (or second, if you want to be technical) assembled in card form, I put together a few different builds to help get a handle on how they could be played and how to approach the remaining support. With the newest release, that time has come for the Toa Nuva.
This can also be considered a follow-up to the deck featuring Isolde and Spright Elf that has been included in recent versions. Or rather, the experimentation documented here started mainly because that particular deck was ruined once Elf got banned, which is why the first ideas still resemble it pretty closely
For a quick overview and duel footage of each deck, you can also check out the video.
Toa Nuva: Beyond the Elf
Spright Cope Nuva
https://www.duelingbook.com/deck?id=12178919
This is the same convoluted Elf replacement I came up with in the previous release already, but to briefly reiterate: Isolde plus a Level 2 Warrior summoned with her effect makes Gigantic Spright, which summons Spright Jet, which searches Spright Double Cross, which revives Chamber on the next turn for another Fusion Summon. Unfortunately you need an extra monster to do your first Fusion Summon and set up said Chamber via Energized Protodermis Destiny , so the Warrior you bring out is ideally Hafu while another Level 2 Warrior is already in the GY.
Such conditions as well as the various bricks you need to play make this approach pretty clumsy and you’re probably better off just playing triple Emergence . This particular build is here mostly for historical reasons.
As with most decks of this form, you can pretty much play any assortment of Mata/Nuva you want along with their matching symbols. The Kanohi Nuva are similarly exchangable, but you should make sure to always have a Spell searcher and a Trap searcher (unless you e.g. forgo Nuva Symbols entirely). For a 40 card deck, four Toa seems to be the most that can really be fit in – here Gali, Kopaka, Lewa, Onua, but it could be any other four. I even awkwardly shoved a whole Pohatu package into the side deck to potentially swap if needed.
2 Attributes Nuva
https://www.duelingbook.com/deck?id=13771135
Here’s what it looks like if you just play triple Emergence, with the extra twist that our four Toa Nuva are limited to two Attributes, WATER and EARTH. This doesn’t do anything other than make it marginally more likely you might be able to Tribute Summon a Toa Mata at some point, but it’s a nice way to identify the deck. Irrespective of that, this arrangement of Toa just happens to be pretty decent since it offers monster negation , GY control and recycling , Spell/Trap removal , and monster removal and blanket protection .
The Extra Deck also features some minor, but impactful tweaks compared to older builds, namely double Onua to be extra sure your Toa Nuva stay in rotation and Underworld Goddess to deal with monsters that resist everything else we can do.
60 Cards Nuva
https://www.duelingbook.com/deck?id=12179095
If 40 cards fit four Toa Nuva, then it is only logical that 60 cards would fit all six. And for the rest of the slots, we might as well include a bunch of Toa Mata support since we need to play those anyway. So the basic idea behind this deck that mostly operates along the standard combo lines, but occasionally can also do a whole bunch of other neat things that are best explained via reference to the Toa Mata Theme Guide.
In the spirit of being fancy, I’ve even included Energized Protodermis Flow without so much as an Instant Fusion, so if you ever open with two Chambers you can turn them into an Extra Deck rip and eventually a Fusion from the GY. That’s one less way to brick at least, shouldn’t hurt when the deck is 60 cards thick.
EARTH Pile Nuva
https://www.duelingbook.com/deck?id=13771160
Wait, what’s this? Where are the Isolde combos? Well, dear reader, this is a deck that makes use not of the Warrior type, but of the EARTH Attribute. Vernusylphs let us search and send Ishizu millers and shufflers to promptly fill up and curate the GY, modern Naturias provide a repeatable combo line, and Emergence lets us recycle materials amidst all of that to make Toa Nuva for even more GY control or just to pop some cards. Also Kashtira Fenrir is here.
Aside from the various engines doing their thing, I would like to draw attention to the fact that Energized Protodermis Flow is here with Instant Fusion this time. Since it’s Level 4, we can use it to overlay into Gallant Granite and search Nemeses Keystone, which is an extender if you have a banished monster (shufflers make this easy) and recycles itself if it’s banished e.g. by a Kanohi Nuva. Once you manage to resolve Emergence with this setup, that essentially means a Special Summon of a Rock each turn, which is pretty powerful with Pohatu Nuva and Granite Tenacity . Or you can just put up a Barrier Statue. You know, for those among us who enjoy “”fun””.
Kopaka’s Bad Day
https://www.duelingbook.com/deck?id=13771179
Speaking of “”fun””, this one is what I came up with trying to abuse the fact that controlling exactly a single Kopaka Nuva in Defense Position translates to a monster banish every turn while all your backrow is untargetable.
Foolish Burial Goods, Ice Barrier, and maybe Trap Trick help you set up what you need to make the icy dude, while There Can Be Only One and Summon Limit act as the best floodgates we can hide behind the protection without interfering with it. Ko-Koro complements that as a one-sided effect negate and protection for Kopaka so long as we don’t use his activated banish effect. What’s still missing from the equation is a way to win the game while ideally keeping Kopaka in Defense Position, and there Cauldron of the Old Man and Amano-Iwato come in. The former fits in perfectly as backrow, while the latter can be summoned on your turn after using up the OPT banish, attack for some damage, and go back to the hand in the End Phase so your banish is live once again.
So is it good? Not really, setting up Kopaka Nuva is actually pretty hard when you don’t want there to be any other monsters on the field at the end of it, and even then you instantly lose to standard board wipes like Harpie’s Feather Duster and Lightning Storm unless you lucked into drawing exactly The Huge Revolution Is Over. But this failure in deckbuilding is perhaps indicative of a success in design, since apparently Kopaka’s unrestricted targeting protection isn’t that easily abusable after all. Or maybe I just tried to hard to also make the banish work, and setting up a bunch of toxic monsters alongside him would be the way to go.
Takeaways
Unlike the case of the Toa Mata, this exploration of the deck space was not really meant to inspire the design of future support as much as it was checking how the potential of the current cards can be unleashed. Still, I suppose it might be useful to consolidate the experience into a few useful points.
The shared HOPT on all the Kanohi Nuva GY effects is the biggest limiting factor to how much you can pop off, and makes it absolutely crucial to Fusion Summon on as many turns as possible. The newly added Nuva Emergence has proven to be the best and most splashable way to do so.
Isolde is a powerful setup tool, but kind of railroads you into playing a lot of Warriors. Other strategies are well worth exploring.
The expansions thus far have populated the sky with a familiar number of 9 Rahi with the Winged Beast Type, their Attributes split between EARTH and WIND with a touch of FIRE and their Levels mostly ranging from 2 to 4 with outliers at 5 and 6.
Level 2
As usual, these are Tuners with handtrap effects, with both of the Winged Beast pair hailing from BBTS.
(Quick Effect): You can banish this card from your hand or field and 1 “Rahi” monster from your GY; monsters your opponent controls lose 500 ATK for each of your banished “Rahi” monsters, until the end of this turn.
Bionicle: Beware the Swarm (v3.15.5)
The Pokawi is a representative of the EARTH Winged Beasts, or the flightless birds as its name states. The ATK reduction effect represents a deterrence tactic employed by Pokawi swarms, in which they abruptly scatter to disorient predators and flee in the confusion.
(Quick Effect): You can banish this card from your hand or field and 1 “Rahi” monster from your GY, then target 1 card your opponent controls; banish it until the End Phase, and if it was a face-up monster with 2000 or more ATK on the field, banish 1 random card from your opponent’s hand face-down. You can only use this effect of “Mata Nui Fishing Bird, Rahi” once per turn.
Bionicle: Beware the Swarm (v3.15.5)
The Mata Nui Fishing Bird is the aerial WIND representative in this smallest size range, with an effect based on how it habitually annoys much larger creatures.
What both of these effects have in common at a glance is banishing – the Pokawi’s ATK reduction scales with the number of your banished monsters and the Fishing Bird is a banisher in and of itself.
This is not so much an early attempt at a Winged Beast gimmick as just something that came about because the Rahi handtraps are generally heavy on banishing, but maybe it can be transitioned into the former as well. After all, banishing is a mechanic with a lot of meanings in the design language, from different dimensions to freezing, so why shouldn’t “abducted by a bird” be a valid reading? Though in that case I guess it best fits the WIND ones …
Level 3 and 4
Following the standard pattern, these are the non-Tuner Pendulums with GY/banish triggers at Level 3 and granting effects to Synchros at Level 4.
Pendulum Scale = 2 [ Pendulum Effect ] If you control no other cards: You can add 1 WIND monster from your Deck to your hand, except “Kewa, Vulture Rahi”, and if you do, destroy this card during the End Phase. You can only use this effect of “Kewa, Vulture Rahi” once per turn. —————————————- [ Monster Effect ] If this card is sent to the GY: You can Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower WIND monster from your GY, except this card. If this card is banished: You can add 1 “Rahi” card from your GY to your hand. You can only use 1 “Kewa, Vulture Rahi” effect per turn, and only once that turn.
Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.15.5)
The Kewa belongs to the former category, and is also part of a series we’ve previously seen with the Ussal . Just like that one floated into other EARTH monsters, this one floats into other WIND monsters, and it’s for more or less the same lore reason: Matoran used Kewa as airborne steeds, so in a Le-Koro deck this can combo with an accomplished pilot such as Kongu . The Pendulum Effect to search any WIND if you control no other cards is similarly splashable support (and possibly a bit too generic), while the recycling of Rahi cards on banish is mostly useful in its native archetype.
Pendulum Scale = 2 [ Pendulum Effect ] Once per turn, at the start of the Battle Phase: You can target 1 face-up monster you control; this turn, when that target battles an opponent’s monster, destroy both monsters at the start of the Damage Step, except FIRE monsters. —————————————- [ Monster Effect ] If this card is sent to the GY: You can Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower FIRE monster from your GY, except this card. If this card is banished: You can banish the top card of your Deck; add this card to your Extra Deck face-up. You can only use 1 “Infernavika, Lava Bird Rahi” effect per turn, and only once that turn.
Bionicle: Beware the Swarm (v3.15.5)
The Infernavika, introduced one expansion later, is the FIRE member of that same series, but lacks the usual justification because nobody rides these. They’re more known for living around stuff so hot nobody dares approach them, which is a trait nicely implemented by the Pendulum Effect. The banish trigger, meanwhile, is a rare example of a Level 3 Rahi that does further banishing in hopes to trigger another, so that’s one more point in favour of banishing being a Winged Beast thing (though again not on a WIND one).
Pendulum Scale = 2 [ Pendulum Effect ] You can banish 1 “Rahi” Pendulum Monster from your Deck; this card’s Pendulum Scale becomes the same as that monster’s, and if it does, destroy this card during the End Phase. You can only use this effect of “Moa, Bird Rahi” once per turn. —————————————- [ Monster Effect ] If this card is sent to the GY: You can shuffle 1 of your banished “Rahi” cards into the deck. If this card is banished: You can Special Summon 1 Level 3 or lower “Rahi” monster from your hand. You can only use 1 “Moa, Bird Rahi” effect per turn, and only once that turn.
Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.15.5)
For an actual WIND example of that concept, we have the Moa‘s Pendulum Effect, which banishes straight from the Deck as cost, providing a way to trigger any other Level 3 Rahi. The monster effects are just sort of arbitrary utility things, so not much to be said about those. Actually it’s kind of weird this is even WIND when it’s a probably flightless Po-Wahi creature …
Pendulum Scale = 5 [ Pendulum Effect ] If a card in your Pendulum Zone is destroyed: You can Special Summon 1 face-up Level 4 or lower “Rahi” Pendulum Monster from your Extra Deck. You can only use this effect of “Husi, Ostrich Rahi” once per turn. If you control no monsters: You can Special Summon this card from your Pendulum Zone. —————————————- [ Monster Effect ] A Synchro Monster that was Summoned using this card as Synchro Material gains this effect. ●If this card is destroyed by a card effect and sent to the GY: Target 1 “Rahi” monster in your GY with a lower Level than this card; Special Summon it.
Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.15.5)
All the abilities here are pretty much based on the Husi trading going on at Po-Koro’s markets: The Pendulum Effect “trades” itself destroyed in the scale for a Rahi in the face-up Extra Deck, and a Synchro that used it as material gains a similar effect for the GY. I think there’s probably more interesting things that could be done from that foundation, especially if we put aside the standard Level 4 effect pattern and that weird destruction-based Rahi subtheme that never really worked. But what exactly that is will probably depend on the result of this current Winged Beast analysis.
Pendulum Scale = 5 [ Pendulum Effect ] During your End Phase: You can add 1 “Rahi” Pendulum Monster from your Deck to your Extra Deck face-up. If you control no monsters: You can Special Summon this card from your Pendulum Zone. —————————————- [ Monster Effect ] A Synchro Monster that was Summoned using this card as Synchro Material gains this effect. ● When a Spell Card is activated (Quick Effect): You can shuffle 1 face-up “Rahi” Pendulum Monster from your Extra Deck into the Deck; negate the activation, and if you do, destroy that card.
Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.15.5)
The Taku represents yet another subtheme, namely the negate-granting we previously saw with the Kofo-Jaga . This little ducky takes care of the Spells, and its Pendulum Effect is meant to help provide the fodder you need to pay the negate cost.
Synchros
We’ve had Tuners and we’ve had non-Tuners, so how about we put them together? Conveniently, the existing Winged Beasts also provide Synchros for that purpose.
1 “Rahi” Tuner + 1+ non-Tuner monsters When this card is Synchro Summoned: You can choose a number from 1 to 4; reduce this card’s Level by that number, then take damage equal to that number x 300. When using this Synchro Summoned card as a Synchro Material, you can use 1 face-up “Rahi” Pendulum Monster in your Extra Deck (and no other monsters) as the other Synchro Material.
Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.15.5)
The Dikapi is even a Synchro Tuner, and a pretty flexible one since it comes with built-in Level modulation and the ability to reuse Pendulums as Synchro material. Works in just about every kind of Rahi deck.
1 “Rahi” Tuner + 1+ non-Tuner monsters If this card is Synchro Summoned: Draw 1 card. If this card is sent from the field to the GY: Add 1 “Rahi” monster from your Deck to your hand. You can only use each effect of “Gukko-Kahu, Hawk Rahi” once per turn.
Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.15.5)
And one Level higher, the Gukko-Kahu provides the double utility of drawing and searching as the greatest example of a domesticated Rahi. Also very generically useful, and unfortunately that makes it hard to glean any ideas for unique Winged Beast mechanics from it.
What we see here is an actually already pretty complete package of Tuners, non-Tuners, and Synchros, but without much unifying them beyond matching Levels. There’s the banishing concept, but even that feels pretty questionable at this point …
Hopefully the unimplemented Rahi of this Type can provide some enlightenment.
Potential Members
With 11 more unimplemented, there’s about as much here as what we’ve already covered. The dominant Attribute is unsurprisingly WIND, with individual specks of WATER, FIRE, EARTH, and LIGHT, as well as a few DARKs (already covered in the other article). So pretty much everything, but EARTH in particular actually only appears one additional time despite previously looking like a major group of “flightless birds”.
Level 2 and 3
Being covered togethere here because frankly, with birds it’s always hard to tell whether they’re really smol or just kinda smol. So anything I’ve noted down for one of these Levels could very well fit the other.
Ko-Metru’s Ice Bats probably go on the smaller end since they’re generally talked about in terms of large swarms, and being a Level 2 Tuner with a handtrap effect (as is the current concept, which may or may not survive) would well fit their nature as pests causing constant property damage. We’ve previously heard of these critters over at the Beasts as the Crystal Climbers’ favorite food, so it’d probably pay off to have something mechanically a little unique so the Climbers can interact with the Bats specifically.
The sole LIGHT Winged Beasts are the Klakk, releveant in the 2008 storyline because their screams conveniently happen to be the cure for all kinds of inner light drain. This suggests an effect that brings back stolen monsters, cures debuffs, or stuff like that – perhaps even a “banish a monster and return it to the field under its owner’s control” that would do all of that. Which, by the way, is another mark on the banishing tally.
Then there’s the Smoke Hawk, a Xian bird you’ve probably never heard of because it only showed up once and got no description whatsoever. The only reason to adapt this one is if we want to do something specific with the FIRE Attribute, since just by the name it could go in there.
And finally, the already discussed DARKs are Cliff Screecher and Necrofinch, which we may as well cover together because for some reason they’re both WAY up there on the edge scale. Cliff Screechers are bats said to be immortal because they keep their soul outside their bodies, and even outside of mythology they hunt by killing their prey through the shock of repeated near-death experiences. Put together, this sounds like a monster that just keeps coming back, and has an effect to (temporarily) sacrifice itself in order to wear down the opponent’s resources. The Necrofinch, meanwhile, can “remaing singing after it is deceased”, which just makes me think of a Tuner that Synchro Summons from the GY.
Level 4
The Lohrak makes its third appearance here after being considered as a Sea Serpent and as a Reptile, and with the benefit of hindsight I think it’s safe to say it fits either of those better than the Winged Beasts. Pretty much everything in here is a proper bird with a beak and all that, so a ravenous poisonous snake would be an odd inclusion, wings or not.
Back to said proper birds, we have the Lava Hawk, which for all intents and purposes is just the Infernavika’s big brother. They hunt literally inside of lava streams and are completely immune to heat, so something like the Archnemeses where a normally self-destructive effect is combined with destruction immunity seems worth considering. Well, that particular example is obviously way too high-powered for a low-Level monster. Also, thinking back to the Smoke Hawk, the one reason I can think of to implement that one is to round the FIRE Winged Beast Rahi out to a trio of Level 2-4. Maybe.
And another repeat performance from the Manutri, previously covered under the Aqua type due to card design precedent for Penguins. All I have on record for them is a vague idea of doing something with equips, which is so far out there we probably don’t need to bother breaking tradition to put them into Winged Beasts. Plus, it would mess with the whole EARTH flightless bird idea to suddenly have one of them as WATER.
Level 5-8
On to the big birds, of which there are surpisingly few.
Nivawk is a named representative of a species of large flying scavenger Rahi, though this particular individual also engaged in nest robbery to feed. It might be DARK in order to synergize with Makuta Teridax, its master, but the broader species without those evil inclinations and connections would probably just be plain old WIND. Starting to sound a bit like Simorgh here, maybe we could see some Tribute Summoning happen?
The Gukko is not to be confused with the already implemented Gukko-Kahu subspecies, but really quite similar in its role as a flying Rahi domesticated by Le-Matoran. That means the two will probably overlap mechanically, providing some manner of utility effects, but since they are in fact distinct creatures and the Gukko plays a fairly significant role in Mask of Light, there does kind of need to be a separate card for this. Maybe we can come up with some cute interaction between the two kinds of Gukko. Could also involve the Taku as another Gukko relative and the Kewa as another flying steed.
And the largest thing the spreadsheet has to offer the Winged Beasts is … not really a bird, despite my earlier claims.
The Vahki Hunter just fell into this Type by virtue of a) having wings, b) not looking like anything else whatsoever, and c) that little joke in Rahi Beasts where they ask Kualus to comment as the resident expert for flying Rahi, because this one has wings too. In any case, it does fill the very empty niche of an actually large boss for Winged Beast Rahi, given the fact that they literally eat Vahki for breakfast. That diet immediately suggest some sort of anti-Machine effect, but to avoid being cripplingly specific, maybe it should be something generic with a lore-friendly bonus when used against Machines? The fact that this thing is also an ambush predator is a topic in its own right …
Conclusion
I can’t exactly say the design direction for Winged Beast Rahi became clear and obvious at any point here, but having reviewed the data we can at least assert some key facts:
The currently implemented Winged Beasts already contain a solid balance of Tuners, non-Tuners, and mid-Level Synchros.
The most common Attribute is WIND followed by EARTH, with some interesting smaller groups at FIRE and DARK.
The Levels cap out at approximately 8, with no actual gigantic final boss in sight.
A few of their effects involve banishing in some capacity, but not quite enough to consider it an ongoing theme.
I feel like that last point might be worth building on, especially for the WIND Winged Beasts. That Attribute, after all, has a recurring theme of returning to the hand that presumably represents flight, so combining that with (temporarily) banishing opponent’s cards as design language for “snatched by a bird” makes a really straightforward and fitting set of effects. The EARTH Winged Beasts, being mostly covered by the early Rahi in the current expansions already, could then act as the more down-to-earth (haha) combo enablers that don’t bother with the gimmick and instead just provide an efficient route towards making your Synchros. The two or three FIRE monsters could form a nice little engine centered around the idea of being too hot to touch, while the DARKs with their shared undead theming could provide plays in the GY.
That’s a fair variety of playstyles already, and that kind of versatility is probably good to have when there isn’t really the one big payoff we want to go into. Instead, Winged Beast Rahi combos would aim to get easy and repeatable access to their mid-sized Synchros, which then help them win the game without any single one being a full win condition by itself.
An unexpected guest joins the Takara with her own fiery dance moves. The stage? The Battle Phase, of course.
Basically, this is a spin on the basic Ta-Koro OTK strategy that also mixes in the Mikanko archetype, with which it shares a similar focus on inflicting massive damage through battle with the opponent’s monsters.
Specifically, we integrate a small engine of Water Arabesque (which removes problem monsters while Summoning a Mikanko from the Deck), Ha-Re (a FIRE Warrior just like most other monsters in the Ta-Koro deck), and Fire Dance (searchable by Ha-Re, lets us get her back to the field after being used as material). The gist of the synergy is simply that smashing the equipped Mikanko into a big monster deals a bunch of extra reflected battle damage before you run it over via Ta-Koro, making it that much easier to hit lethal.
You have a few different avenues to pull off the going-second OTK that forms the strategy’s ultimate goal. Generally it starts with a classic Isolde combo, here enabled mainly by Knights of Sublimation and Squeak, to dump some of your many Equip Spells and Special Summon one of your many FIRE Warriors. An easy route is sending Water Arabesque for Renaud, adding back the Arabesque, and bouncing an opponent’s monster to get Ha-Re, netting you enough material to make Vakama (and subsequently a Link-4) as well as a Fire Dance to revive your Mikanko. But under different circumstances, you might instead want to send Equip Spells including the Kanohi Hau and bring out Jala , who can then Normal Summon the Tahu searched by the Hau during the Battle Phase.
In fact, there’s a very powerful interaction between Mikanko damage reflection and Tahu specifically: A battle where your opponent takes the damage is, of course, still a battle, and therefore Tahu can trigger after damage calculation to turn an opponent’s monster into a 0 ATK bomb. This play alone, if you crunch the numbers, comes out to 8500 damage against an attack position monster with 3000 ATK. You know, like the Dogoran that’s also in the Deck. And combos really nicely with Water Arabesque, while we’re at it.
Since you only really need a few things in the Extra Deck to make all this work, Pot of Extravagance is our consistency booster of choice, and in consequence the important parts of the ED are secured with doubles and triples, while the 1-ofs are just for edge cases like being forced to go first. I should mention that the ratios here aren’t fine-tuned or anything – not all that much testing was done, so some things are just in here at a certain number of copies because that’s how they happened to fit. I figure even an optimized version might not be super consistent since all the OTK lines I know need several cards to work, but there being a few different combos like that has the nice effect of making each game a little riddle about stumbling your way into lethal with whatever hand you have vs whatever your opponent put up.
Sample Video
Mikanko Ta-Koro
Showcasing two of the many ways to OTK, one splendidly combining the titular Mikankos and Ta-Koro and the other, uh, not doing that at all.
After the Toa, it is now the Bohrok Swarms’ turn to undergo their (non-)Protodermic Evolution. Presenting the first wave of Bohrok-Kal, plus some related support cards.
As a reminder, the Bohrok were introduced in BBTS as an archetype of Flip monsters with massive potential for swarming and removal, mainly shackled by the fact that there’s inherently a turn of delay in starting a Flip-based engine. The Kal extension tries to cover for this weakness by providing an alternative gameplan to establish turn 1 disruption or deal with established boards turn 2, by means of Rank 4 Bohrok-Kal and Link-1 Krana-Kal.
But before we get into the additions to those Extra Deck groups, here are some new Main Deck cards to help as well.
Bohrok-Kal Strategy
Continuous Spell
When this card is activated: You can Special Summon 1 “Bohrok” monster from your hand. Once per turn, if a “Bohrok” monster(s) is Special Summoned to your field (except during the Damage Step): You can activate 1 of these effects, or, if you control a “Bohrok” Xyz Monster, you can activate both, in sequence; ●Target 1 other Spell/Trap on the field; destroy it. ●Add 1 “Bohrok” Spell/Trap from your Deck to your hand, except “Bohrok-Kal Strategy”. You can only activate 1 “Bohrok-Kal Strategy” per turn.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.3.3)
Bohrok-Kal Strategy is perhaps the key piece for consistent combos on your first turn, bringing out a Bohrok from hand when first activated and then immediately triggering off that Summon to either destroy a Spell/Trap or search an archetypal one – or both if you have a Bohrok-Kal out. The first of these options is purely lore, referencing the Kal’s theft of the Nuva Symbols (which are here Continuous Spells with negative effects when destroyed), while the latter is purely utility, letting you find essential Bohrok support cards without spending too much deck space that they really need for monsters.
One of the best search targets is the newly added Counter Trap, Bohrok Counterattack (yes, the new Battlin’ Boxer card can technically search this too).
Bohrok Counterattack
Counter Trap
When your opponent activates a Spell/Trap Card, or monster effect, while you control a “Bohrok” monster or only face-down monsters (min. 1): Send 1 “Krana” monster from your Deck or Extra Deck to the GY; negate the activation, and if you do, you can attach that card to 1 “Bohrok” Xyz Monster you control as material.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.3.3)
This one represents the most straightforward form of the turn 1 disruption I’m trying to add – just a classic omni-negate that can be used both to protect your dormant Bohrok waiting to flip and to back up the swarms in action. Note that it does not destroy what it negates, so unless you have a Bohrok-Kal to attach to, this will let your opponent keep their monsters and continuous cards. Would be a bit too good otherwise, given its fairly low requirements and lack of HOPT.
Now for the stars of the show: Two more Bohrok-Kal join Gahlok-Kal to complete half of the team already.
2 Level 4 “Bohrok” monsters Place materials detached from this card on the bottom of the Deck, instead of sending them to the GY. Once per turn: You can attach 1 “Krana” monster from your hand, field, or GY to this card as material. (Quick Effect): You can detach 1 material from this card, then target 1 face-up monster your opponent controls; it cannot attack or activate its effects this turn, also you can detach 1 more material from this card, and if you do, destroy all monsters your opponent controls with less than 2000 ATK. You can only use this effect of “Bohrok Tahnok-Kal” once per turn.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.3.3)🎉
Tahnok-Kal, just like its base form, offers monster destruction as a Quick Effect, but looking at official media makes it quite clear that its electric powers were actually not really used for destructive purposes as much as to stun its enemies. At the same time, I can’t in good conscience make the Lightning Bohrok-Kal not have some kind of built-in Raigeki, so here’s the compromise I ended up with: Detach 1 to stun a target monster for the turn, and then on resolution, you can detach another to blow up all of your opponent’s monsters below the 2000 ATK “Toa threshold”. This is also an extra balancing factor on this very powerful effect for a Rank 4, since it means removing it from the field before it resolves will stop the destruction.
2 Level 4 “Bohrok” monsters Place materials detached from this card on the bottom of the Deck, instead of sending them to the GY. Once per turn: You can attach 1 “Krana” monster from your hand, field, or GY to this card as material. You can detach 2 or more materials from this card, then choose that many Main Monster Zones and/or Spell & Trap Zones on the field; return as many cards in those zones to the hand as possible, also those unused zones cannot be used until your next Standby Phase. You can only use this effect of “Bohrok Nuhvok-Kal” once per turn.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.3.3)
Nuhvok-Kal, in contrast, is slow, but armed with Gravity powers that are hard to resist and cover a wide range. I thought through a few concepts for this, but the one that won out is just a mass bounce (“floating” cards up off the field) limited only by material count that also locks zones in reference to base Nuhvok (“crushing” the land with supergravity). I kind of wanted to have something with flipping face-down in there as well, but couldn’t quite make it worthwile on a “slow” ignition effect. Fun Fact: This one can be really rude against Pendulum decks in particular.
Test footage of these two new bosses can be found in the below demo videos I posted earlier this month.
Thunderbolt and Lightning
Gravitation
The Krana-Kal have also been brought up to half-completion, but in their case that means 3 rather than 2 new ones, for a total of 4 (out of 8).
Krana Vu-Kal, Transporter
Link Effect MonsterLink-1 [↘] | DARK Zombie | ATK 0
1 “Bohrok” or “Krana” monster Cannot be used as Link Material. Once per turn: You can target 1 Level 4 “Bohrok” monster this card points to; Special Summon from your Extra Deck 1 “Bohrok” Xyz Monster using that target as material. (This is treated as an Xyz Summon.) A “Bohrok” Xyz Monster that has this card as material gains this effect. ●Once per turn (Quick Effect): You can banish this card until the End Phase, and if you do, you can add 1 “Bohrok” card from your GY to your hand.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.3.3)
The Vu-Kal grants flight like its base version, but also enhanced speed, so rather than “dodge” things with targeting protection, it more literally lets its Bohrok-Kal dodge instantly off the field, optionally recycling a card in the process to live up to its name of “Transporter”. As a downwards-pointing Krana-Kal, its utility effect provides a way to Xyz Summon with only a single Level 4 Bohrok, which can then attach the Link Monster as its second material. This card is part of my current preferred turn 1 play, where I use it to make a Tahnok-Kal that can, on the opponent’s turn, activate the banish effect in chain before its own Quick Effect, letting you detach both materials to blow up the field while still getting a card back with the effect granted by the Vu-Kal.
Krana Su-Kal, Demolisher
Link Effect MonsterLink-1 [▲] | DARK Zombie | ATK 0
1 “Bohrok” or “Krana” monster Cannot be used as Link Material. If an opponent’s monster this card points to battles a “Bohrok” monster, that opponent’s monster’s ATK/DEF become 0 during the Damage Step only. A “Bohrok” Xyz Monster that has this card as material gains this effect. ●This card gains 800 ATK/DEF and cannot be destroyed by card effects.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.3.3)
The upwards-pointing Krana-Kal, such as the Su-Kal, bring back a possibly familiar effect previously seen on the Servants of the Swarm, some technically-not-Bohrok (and thus kind of unplayable) cards from BBTS. A monster they point to will be brainwashed into voluntarily surrendering to the Bohrok in battle, setting its stats to 0 so it can easily be hit over. All of this is continuous, so it can out a gargantuan range of threats, assuming you can safely get it and a Bohrok to the Battle Phase. The actual power granted to a Bohrok-Kal using this Krana-Kal is as simple as it gets: Super strength (+800 ATK/DEF) and resistance to heat and cold (effect destruction protection).
Krana Za-Kal, Overseer
Link Effect MonsterLink-1 [↗] | DARK Zombie | ATK 0
1 “Bohrok” or “Krana” monster Cannot be used as Link Material. If an opponent’s monster this card points to battles a “Bohrok” monster, that opponent’s monster’s ATK/DEF become 0 during the Damage Step only. A “Bohrok” Xyz Monster that has this card as material gains this effect. ●Once per turn, when a card or effect is activated that would destroy a “Bohrok” card(s) you control (Quick Effect): You can detach 1 material from this card; negate the activation, and if you do, destroy that card.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.3.3)
The Za-Kal has the same on-field utility effect and grants the power of telepathy, which turns Bohrok-Kal into budget Stardust Dragons. Sounds strange, but the background to that is that the original Krana Za allowed you to protect a Bohrok from destruction by shuffling back another monster, to represent the squad coordination it enables. Now plain old protection would have been redundant when the Su-Kal does that and more, so instead it shuts down destructive effects against all your Bohrok by detaching (and thereby shuffling back) an Xyz Material. This is a little less convenient than it sounds because it requires the effect to be one that would destroy a card from the archetype, so you won’t be able to chain it to anything that could theoretically be resolved in such a way that it only destroys unrelated cards (e.g. the average DPE activation).
Updated
The updates this time are simple, just refining the first drafts of the Bohrok support a bit now that I’ve worked my way deeper into it.
2 Level 4 “Bohrok” monsters Place materials detached from this card on the bottom of the Deck, instead of sending them to the GY. Once per turn: You can attach 1 “Krana” monster from your hand, field, or GY to this card as material. At the start of the Battle Phase: You can detach 1 material from this card, then target 1 face-up monster on the field; that target cannot attack until the end of the next turn, also you can equip 1 other monster on the field to it. You can only use this effect of “Bohrok Gahlok-Kal” once per turn.
2 Level 4 “Bohrok” monsters Place materials detached from this card on the bottom of the Deck, instead of sending them to the GY. Once per turn: You can attach 1 “Krana” monster from your hand, field, or GY to this card as material. At the start of the Battle Phase: You can detach 1 material from this card, then target 1 face-up monster on the field; that target cannot attack until the end of your turn, also you can equip 1 monster adjacent to it or in its column to it. You can only use this effect of “Bohrok Gahlok-Kal” once per turn.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.3.3)
As I said the moment it was first released, it’s just thematically super neat to have the range of Gahlok-Kal‘s “magnetism” limited to adjacent zones or the same column, so I ended up doing just that. And sure enough, it made zero difference in testing, partially because AI doesn’t understand how to play around things and partially because I can always just put a monster in the column myself. Oh yeah, and the attack restriction now always lasts until your End Phase only, so you can’t block an opponent’s monster by targeting it on your turn. This way it’s more of a downside to targeting something on your own field than additional benefit for an already powerful removal effect.
Link Effect MonsterLink-1 [◀] | DARK Zombie | ATK 0
1 “Bohrok” or “Krana” monster Cannot be used as Link Material. You can Tribute this card; Special Summon 1 Level 4 “Bohrok” monster from your hand or GY, but shuffle it into the Deck if it leaves the field. A “Bohrok” Xyz Monster that has this card as material gains this effect. ●Once per turn: You can detach 1 material from this card, then declare 1 card name; your opponent cannot activate cards, or the effects of cards, with that original name, until the end of their turn.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.0.4)
4.3.3
Krana Ja-Kal, Tracker
Link Effect MonsterLink-1 [◀] | DARK Zombie | ATK 0
1 “Bohrok” or “Krana” monster Cannot be used as Link Material. You can Tribute this card; Special Summon 1 Level 4 “Bohrok” monster from your hand or GY in face-up or face-down Defense Position, but shuffle it into the Deck if it leaves the field. A “Bohrok” Xyz Monster that has this card as material gains this effect. ●Once per turn: You can declare 1 card name; until the end of your opponent’s turn, “Bohrok” cards and Set cards you control are unaffected by the effects of cards with that original name.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.3.3)
For the Ja-Kal, both effects got some significant changes. First, the tag-out was buffed to also allow Special Summoning in face-down Defense Position, so you can use it as a way to prepare the Flip engine without needing to commit an actual Set action to it. This is, for example, relevant when using Bohrok-Kal Strategy, since activating it, Special Summoning a Bohrok, searching a Spell/Trap, and then using Ja-Kal to put that Bohrok face-down leaves you in a significantly better spot than just setting the monster right away.
The effect to block a card by declaring its name did always feel a bit too oppressive, so I ended up nerfing that part by bringing it more in line with the original Krana Ja and just granting your Bohrok (and face-down) cards immunity to the declared name instead. In exchange, it’s now free, so you can keep the materials attached for more important purposes.
A deck update, rather than a card update, was forced from me by Konami’s ruthless (but honestly deserved) banning of Spright Elf, thus rendering the last version’s Toa Nuva deck illegal. Due to the strict collective HOPT on all the Kanohi Nuva, conducting a Fusion Summon on the opponent’s turn is kind of super important if you want to use your resources optimally, so I needed something that could replace Elf’s role in setting that up. A card that can bring back Energized Protodermis Chamber as a Quick Effect, while also being consistently accessible through the basic Isolde combo. And I can proudly report that I have found it.
https://www.duelingbook.com/deck?id=12178919
In fact, it wasn’t very far from the Elf-shaped hole in the decklist at all: Within the same archetype, there’s Spright Double Cross, a Trap with multiple effects including GY revival, searchable by Spright Jet and therefore via Gigantic Spright, which can be made in the standard combo line after the first Toa Nuva by overlaying Isolde with a leftover C.C. Matoran (we play Hafu now to ensure the latter is available). Gigantic Summons Jet and Jet adds Double Cross, and if you further link those two into I:P Masquerena, you even get an additional way to interact for your trouble.
Now of course, with Hafu, Jet and Double Cross, that means three extra bricks we need to run, and after all is said and done this only works once, unlike Elf’s infinite revival forever and ever. The deck’s definitely worse now that it has lost one of its central pieces, but I’m also kind of glad it happened because it reminded me that it probably isn’t a good idea to make all the recursion dependent on some external card. That’s why the next update will contain, in addition to the remaining Toa Nuva, a card that provides this functionality in-archetype. Probably. More or less. We’ll see how it turns out.
For this year’s stupid thing I can only justify doing on this specific date, I have … donned my Kanohi Rau and produced some translations.
Specifically, this version includes all the Ga-Koro cards from BCOT in German, Japanese, and Matoric. If you’ve never heard of that last one, it’s a fan-made “reconstruction” of the Matoran language from which the various strange names in Bionicle originate, courtesy of outofgloom. Go check it out, it’s really well made.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a YGOPro Expansion if it wasn’t playable, so here’s some download links (each containing the full BCOT, but with only Ga-Koro actually translated):
For the rest of this post, I’ll provide some notes on each language and the translation process, with the bulk of the focus of course falling on the Matoric PSCT grammar I had to construct from scratch to make this happen.
Um diese Karte offen als Tributbeschwörung zu beschwören, kannst du ein WASSER oder “Toa Mata”-Monster in deiner Hand, außer “Toa Mata Gali”, statt eines Monsters das du kontrollierst als Tribut anbieten. Einmal pro Spielzug, wenn der Gegner des Zugspielers einen Monstereffekt aktiviert, außer “Toa Mata Gali” (Schnelleffekt): Du kannst 1 anderes offenes Monster auf dem Spielfeld wählen; annulliere seine Effekte, und falls du dies tust, erhält diese Karte 400 ATK.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)
Kaukau
Große Kanohi Kaukau
Equip Spell
Falls das ausgerüstete Monster mit einer anderen “Kanohi”-Karte ausgerüstet wird, zerstöre diese Karte. Falls das ausgerüstete Monster ein “Toa”- oder “Makuta”-Monster ist, bleibt es von Effekten deines Gegners unberührt, es sei denn, sie wählen es als Ziel. Falls diese Karte auf den Friedhof gelegt wird: Du kannst 1 Monster von deinem Friedhof verbannen; füge deiner Hand 1 “Toa Mata Gali” von deinem Deck hinzu. Du kannst diesen Effekt von “Große Kanohi Kaukau” nur einmal pro Spielzug verwenden.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)
Nokama
Turaga Nokama
Link Effect MonsterLink-2 [▲ ↙] | WATER Spellcaster | ATK 1200
2 Monster, darunter ein WASSER Krieger Monster Diese Karte kann nicht durch Kampf zerstort werden, solange sie auf ein Monster zeigt. (Schnelleffekt): Du kannst 1 Karte von deinem Friedhof verbannen und dann 1 Karte abwerfen; bis zum Ende dieses Spielzugs bleiben diese Karte und Monster, auf die sie zeigt, unberührt von Effekten von Karten mit einem anderen Kartentyp (Monster, Zauber, und/oder Falle) als die Karte, die verbannt wurde, um diesen Effekt zu aktivieren, außer von denen dieser Karte. Während der End Phase deines Gegners, falls diese Karte auf ein Monster zeigt (Schnelleffekt): Du kannst 1 deiner WASSER Monster wählen, das verbannt ist oder sich in deinem Friedhof befindet; füge es deiner Hand hinzu. Du kannst jeden Effekt von “Turaga Nokama” nur einmal pro Spielzug verwenden.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)
Ga-Koro
Ga-Koro, Dorf des Wassers
Field Spell
Falls alle Monster in deinem Friedhof WASSER sind (min. 1), kann dein Gegner während seines Spielzugs als Reaktion auf die Aktivierung deiner WASSER Monstereffekte als Kettenglied 2 oder höher weder Karten noch Effekte aktivieren. Du kannst 1 Monster von deinem Friedhof verbannen; beschwöre 1 WASSER Monster als Spezialbeschwörung von deiner Hand in die Verteidigungsposition, aber seine Effekte werden annuliert und es wird zum selben Typ wie das verbannte Monster, zusätzlich kannst du für den Rest dieses Spielzugs keine Monster als Spezialbeschwörung vom Extra Deck beschworen, außer WASSER Monstern. Du kannst diesen Effekt von “Ga-Koro, Dorf des Wassers” nur einmal pro Spielzug verwenden.
Wenn dein Gegner eine Karte oder einen Effekt auf dem Spielfeld aktiviert (Schnelleffekt): Du kannst diese Karte als Spezialbeschwörung von deiner Hand oder deinem Friedhof in deine Zone in die Spalte jener Karte beschwören, und falls du dies tust, ändere 1 offenes Monster auf dem Spielfeld in die Verteidigungsposition. (Schnelleffekt): Du kannst 1 andere offene Karte wählen, die du kontrollierst; für den Rest dieser Kette, oder bis zum Ende dieses Spielzugs, falls es ein “Matoraner”-Monster ist, bleibt sie von Karteneffekten unberührt, außer von ihren eigenen. Du kannst jeden Effekt von “C.C. Matoranerin Maku” nur einmal pro Spielzug verwenden.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)
Rau
Edle Kanohi Rau
Equip Spell
Falls das ausgerüstete Monster mit einer anderen “Kanohi”-Karte ausgerüstet wird, zerstöre diese Karte. Einmal pro Spielzug, falls das ausgerüstete Monster ein “Turaga”-, “Toa”- oder “Makuta”-Monster ist, wird der erste aktivierte Effekt, der es als Ziel wählt, zu “Du kannst 1 Monster in der Main-Monsterzone in eine andere Main-Monsterzone auf der Spielfeldseite seines Beherrschers bewegen, dann kann dein Gegner 1 Monster in der Main-Monsterzone in eine andere Main-Monsterzone auf der Spielfeldseite seines Beherrschers bewegen”. Falls sich diese Karte in deinem Friedhof befindet: Du kannst 1 Monster als Tribut anbieten und dann 1 “Turaga Nokama” in deinem Friedhof wählen; beschwöre sie als Spezialbeschwörung und rüste sie mit dieser Karte aus. Du kannst diesen Effekt von “Edle Kanohi Rau” nur einmal pro Spielzug verwenden.
Wenn ein Monstereffekt aktiviert wird, solange du ein WASSER Monster kontrollierst und sich diese Karte in deiner Hand befindet (Schnelleffekt): Du kannst 1 Karte ziehen und vorzeigen, dann, falls es ein Monster ist, beschwöre diese Karte als Spezialbeschwörung, und falls du dies tust, wird ihre Stufe gleich der Stufe des vorgezeigten Monsters. Andernfalls wirf diese Karte ab. Falls diese Karte von der Hand oder dem Spielfeld auf den Friedhof gelegt wird und du keine Zauber/Fallen in deinem Friedhof hast: Du kannst 1 Zauber/Falle von deinem Deck auf den Friedhof legen. Du kannst jeden Effekt von “Matoraner-Astrologin Nixie” nur einmal pro Spielzug verwenden.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)
Being the only one of these languages that I actually speak, this one was far and away the easiest to figure out. I pretty much just sat down and translated, though since PSCT is its own beast, there was also a good bit of cross-referencing with the German TCG card database involved.
One somewhat interesting aspect here is the handling of gendered nouns and their corresponding pronouns. For some reason it appears that players, who are referred to with “they” in all modern English card texts, are simply assumed to be male, but when it comes to cards, German PSCT does go out of its way to match the language with the name’s grammatical gender (such as in T.G. Hellebardenkanone/Angriffsmodus). While I couldn’t find a clear precedent on how that works when the name is a completely made-up personal name, like “Turaga Nokama” on the Kanohi Rau, as a Bionicle lore nerd I obviously can’t miss an opportunity to clarify that the blue ones are in fact girls. So the Rau revival effect does properly refer to Nokama with “sie”.
Also, check the alt art on the Rau I included to go with the occasion. Being able to get high-quality Kanohi images at any angle from Studio does open up some nice possibilities in that department, even for my artistically challenged self.
The difficulty level got a lot higher here, what with my understanding of Japanese only being good enough to reasonably navigate the card database and Frankenstein together relevant effects. And there were also the barriers of a different writing system and different basic card text structure to overcome. But clearly I managed, so here we are.
To figure out how names should be written, I took a look around archives of the official Japanese Bionicle website as well as some fan sites that popped up in search. Most of it was just a straightforward representation of the sounds in katakana, but one little surprise was that Kanohi apparently becomes カノイ (that is, the “h” is dropped). For Nixie’s job description of “Astrologer”, I had to consult an actual dictionary too, ending up with 占星術師. Googling it brings up FF14 stuff, so I assume it’s appropriately mystical. For a while I also considered spicing up some of the boring katakana names with meaningful (read: chuuni) kanji representations and ruby text, but that idea was dropped in favour of keeping card image generation simple.
As for the card text structure, I do love the numbered effects and how easy it makes all varieties of HOPT clauses. On the other hand, our PSCT generally feels like it flows much better with the way it’s clearly sectioned by punctuation and can leave a lot of boilerplate phrases unsaid thanks to that. Tradeoffs.
Matoric
Alright, welcome to the deep end. Not only did I not know anything about this language when I started, but there was also zero documentation or precedent on how to apply it in Yugioh card text. There was no cross-referencing or Frankensteining here, just raw, unfiltered, phrase-by-phrase, sentence-by-sentence translation. On that note, a huge shout out to the language’s original creator outofgloom – not only for writing the Matoric documents that made this at all possible, but also for taking the time to personally answer several questions I couldn’t figure out on my own.
The result is a PSCT variant that looks quite similar to the Matoric language, but technically should be considered distinct from it for a number of reasons:
Punctuation and general effect layout has mostly been retained from the English texts, even where it doesn’t quite match with conventions of Matoric grammar.
The vocabulary for game mechanics and some other things are my own additions that more or less derive from official terms, but may well be contradicted by future dictionaries.
I’ve incorporated some grammatical concepts from unpublished WIP material that I obtained through communication with outofgloom, so those might also change by the time the language gets its next proper update.
And of course, it’s always possible that I’ve simply misunderstood a grammar rule or two and ended up with the Matoran equivalent of Engrish.
So, we are looking at a base Matoric language and a presumably quite similar “PSCT Matoric”, but explaining the core grammar or even just all the modifications made to accommodate card text would turn out far too long and dry. If you’re interested in the former, I once again refer you to the official resources instead, and for the latter, I’ll do my best to quickly list out the points of note for each card.
To Tribute Summon this card face-up, you can Tribute a WATER or “Toa Mata” monster in your hand, except “Toa Mata Gali”, instead of a monster you control. Once per turn, when the turn player’s opponent activates a monster effect, except “Toa Mata Gali” (Quick Effect): You can target 1 other face-up monster on the field; negate its effects, and if you do, this card gains 400 ATK.
Paro’o-sapo za okhau-ido ihu ya ke, ke a manas GAHA “Toa Mata” su (“Toa Mata Gali” va) arnoro’u po, manas ya-uka borau-za va za okhau ya vo. On agiro u takaro, e’e alhii agiro ai-rupu ta manas-akiro “Toa Mata Gali” va za lutu ya po (Kah-Akiro): Uka ihu-ku-manas nuala po 1 za aro ya vo ke; akiro’ai rya, e apaia paro’o-sapo ai-ATK za peha 400 ya ke.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)
The most complicated part of Gali is actually the special Tribute Summoning condition, structured as “To […] you can Tribute […] instead of […]”, a combination of two grammatical features not explicitly covered anywhere. So I went and asked outofgloom directly, to which he kindly provided me the following solutions:
[do X] ke ke [do Y] – “To do X, do Y”; this is a pretty roundabout phrasing based on conditional markers that more directly translates to “conditioning of doing X is conditioned by doing Y”. A further layer of complexity arises from the fact that Tribute Summoning Gali this way is optional, which I tried to represent by attaching the “ability” marker vo to the full sentence – making “conditioning of doing X can be conditioned by doing Y”.
a [X] [Y] va – “X instead of Y”; a simple repurposing of a basic coordinative marker meaning “but not” or “except”. Which brings some unfortunate overlap with the “except “Toa Mata Gali”” in the same sentence, so I moved that into parentheses for clarity.
Homecooked vocabulary in this effect includes sapo (“card”; lit. “thin stone”, based on the idea that a paperless culture would play card games on stone tablets), okhau (“Tribute”; from okh hau u “without preservation”), ido (“Summon”; shortened form of ika do ya “to call a being”) and ihu (“face-up”; lit. “upward”, mirroring iru for “downward”, plus it’s pretty funny to have a mountain with that name).
The other effect is comparatively simple in grammar, but makes significant use of those bits of artistic license that separate the language of these cards from “raw” Matoric. Right at the start you have on agiro u takaro (“once per turn”; lit. “once inside of a turn”), which is probably grammatical nonsense but serves as a nice way to keep the OPT clause together. And at the macro level, I’ve retained the punctuation of English PSCT since that saves me a lot of text to translate.
That means we begin with a “when” activation timing represented by e’e [X] po, the first half of a conditional construct with explicit present tense to distinguish from “if”. After the colon, this is followed by targeting instructions, which close out the conditional with [Y] ke, and finally the actual effect with its “and if you do” conjunction. Said conjunction simply translates to e apaia (“if successful”), allowing it and the second half of the effect to occupy a nice standalone conditional clause.
Lots of original vocab here too – agiro (“turn”; lit. “game cycle” from the root word algis “game” and rho “cycle”), takaro (“once”; combination of taka “one” and aro “discrete unit”) , rupu (“opponent”; from ru-apu “not-friend”) and akiro (“effect”; from akiro’a “originating from work”).
Finally, one might wonder why the Warrior Type is translated to Toh. The reason is simply that the only word in the dictionaries with a translation in that direction is Toa (“hero”, “warrior”), which is obviously loaded with a lot more meaning than what we want here. So as a cheap trick I just changed it ever so slightly, perhaps someone with actual knowledge of linguistics could argue this is some kind of archaic form that retained generic use even after the modern Toa split from it.
If another “Kanohi” card becomes equipped to the equipped monster, destroy this card. If the equipped monster is a “Toa” or “Makuta” monster, it is unaffected by your opponent’s card effects, unless they target it. If this card is sent to the GY: You can banish 1 monster from your GY; add 1 “Toa Mata Gali” from your Deck to your hand. You can only use this effect of “Great Kanohi Kaukau” once per turn.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)
Matoric
Kanohi Nui Kaukau
Equip Spell
E’e haran-manas aha ku-sapo “Kanohi” ran ai ta, paro’o-sapo za ikhya ke. E’e haran-manas manas “Toa”, “Makuta” su ai, ohi a hiki rupu ai-akiro yaru-aka iza aro ru ke. E’e bakuala ko paro’o-sapo za ivo ya: Uka manas bakuala’u po 1 za khu ya vo ke; at sapuru’u a arnoro’u ko “Toa Mata Gali” 1 za ivoya. On agiro u uka paro’o-akiro ai-“Kanohi Nui Kaukau” za ran 1 ko ya voru.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)
The standard Kanohi exclusion effect is clearly a conditional structure that translates straight to e’e [X] [Y] ke, so the more interesting detail of grammar here is that I translated “A becomes equipped to B” as an equative sentence with the inceptive marker ta, making it more literally “B begins to be equipped with A” (the switch from “to” to “with” is just because it makes flipping the relation easier, but that’s not relevant here). I’ve decided to adopt haran (“armor”) as the term for the Equip mechanic, and so the marker for the “equipped with” relationship is somewhat randomly derived from that as aha_ran. The use of ikhya for the imperative of “destroy” might technically not be correct – one dictionary lists ikhi as “destruction”, but another has just khi ya as “destroy”. However, with the word for banishing being khu, using the shorter version would lead to “destroy” and “banish” not being distinguishable when their end vowel is dropped in an imperative sentence, which would be a much bigger problem.
The on-field protection effect is notable for its use of a subordinate clause in “unless they target it”, which I paraphrased to “that do not target it”. Subordination is the part of the Matoric language that I am most likely to have screwed up in my translations, but to my best understanding in this case it works by taking the sentence akiro ta iza aro yaru (“The effect(s) do(es) not target it”), lifting its subject akiro (marked by ta) outside and replacing it with the placeholder aka, and turning the original sentence’s suffix yaru into a prefix so that the resulting phrase can be used as a modifier. Hence, akiro yaru-aka iza aro should mean “effects that do not target it”.
The unaffectedness by those effects is expressed using a negated equative sentence ending in ru, with the help of the marker a hiki _ (“manipulated by”). That means a literal translation would be “it is not manipulated by effects that do not target it” – sounds about right!
As for the GY effect, it showcases both the use of Location/Direction markers in sentences dealing with movement and the Matoric names of various in-game locations. The activation condition is bakuala ko paro’o-sapo za ivo ya (“this card moves forward to the GY”), where the ko marker lets us conveniently keep a clear distinction from “returning to the GY” (which would be marked by nu “moves backward to”). And what you do is at sapuru’u a arnoro’u ko “Toa Mata Gali” za ivoya (“move “Toa Mata Gali” originating from your Deck forward to your hand”).
The location names I made up are bakuala (“Graveyard”; from kui-vala “loss-place”, prefixed by an Agoric stem ba- “death” because there’s no known direct word for that in Matoric and I really wanted it included explicitly) and sapuru (“Deck”; from sapo-huru “card elevation”). Arnoro for hand is just the standard term for the body part, didn’t bother coming up with anything card game specific.
Link Effect MonsterLink-2 [▲ ↙] | WATER Spellcaster | ATK 1200
2 monsters, including a WATER Warrior monster Cannot be destroyed by battle while it points to a monster. (Quick Effect): You can banish 1 card from your GY, then discard 1 card; until the end of this turn, this card and monsters it points to are unaffected by the effects of cards with a different card type (Monster, Spell, and/or Trap) than the card banished to activate this effect, except this card’s. During your opponent’s End Phase, if this card points to a monster (Quick Effect): You can target 1 of your WATER monsters that is banished or in your GY; add it to your hand. You can only use each effect of “Turaga Nokama” once per turn.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)
Matoric
Turaga Nokama
Link Effect MonsterLink-2 [▲ ↙] | WATER Spellcaster | ATK 1200
Manas 2 ai-ohi po manas GAHA Toh E’e ka manas a paro’o-sapo ai, paro’o-sapo za barra-ikhi ya voru ke. (Kah-Akiro): O’o uka sapo bakuala’u po 1 za khu ya, uka sapo 1 osapu ya ka vo; paro’o-agiro ai-oko po, paro’o-sapo manas ai-ka’a ohi no a hiki sapo ya-aka ku-atu (Manas, Doka, Ilhura no/su) za ima te sapo paro’o-akiro lutu ya ke ke ya-khu-za nu ai-akiro paro’o-sapo ai-akiro va ru. E’e rupu ai-End-Phase po ai, ka manas a paro’o-sapo ai (Kah-Akiro): Uka manas’u GAHA khu bakuala’u su po 1 za aro ya vo; arnoro’u ko ivoya. On agiro u uka aro-akiro ai-“Turaga Nokama” ran 1 ko ya voru.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)
Okay, so on this one I really have to hold back, because the moment I start rambling about all the things in Nokama’s translation is the moment this article gets out of hand.
It starts with the materials line, which is paraphrased to “2 monsters among whom there is a WATER Warrior monster” and translated via subordinate clause. Then the battle protection has ka_a (“pointing to”) used in reference to Link Arrows and features the term barra-ikhi (“battle-destroyed”), whose similarity to Barraki probably makes for quite the pun in-universe.
And with the main Quick Effect, we get into the real meat of the matter. The cost and targeting clause includes an original coordination marker o_ka that connects things in sequence (i.e., “then”), as well as the fancy term osapu (“discard”; from ohsapo’u “separation from card”). Once you start resolving, you have to apply something until the end of the turn, or paro’o-agiro ai-oko po (“during the future of this turn”), followed by identifying the “monsters [this card] points to”. What sounds like a simple task for a subordinate clause is immensely complicated by the fact that the clause being subordinated is an equative sentence without a real subject or object, so how do we signify that the “monsters” it is modifying goes within the ka_a marker? The answer I settled on is “not at all”, simply leaving the marker empty and hoping the gap makes it obvious enough how it should be read.
As if that wasn’t enough, the next task is to state “cards with a different card type from […]”, or “cards that have a different card type than […]”, if we want to phrase it with a subordinate clause. This, however, is a rare sentence where that subordination isn’t even the biggest hurdle – it’s the fucking from. To tackle this, I had to employ a sentential marker right out of the previously mentioned WIP materials: _te_, translatable to various things including “relative to”. So, by extending the subordinate clause of “having a different card type” with te X, we can express the card type should be different “relative to X”. But wait, what’s X? Well, X is “the card (that was) banished to activate this effect”.
Ooohhh boy. That is a “[did X] to [do Y]” construction, which as seen back with Gali would already be a headache to do straight. And now it has to be bent into its subordinated form as well. What I settled on, without any real idea whether it’s right or not, is sapo paro’o-akiro lutu ya ke ke ya-khu-za nu – using the whole purpose-expressing structure as a modifier on the card, but only actually writing the directly relevant part (“the card was banished”) as a desentential unit ya-khu-za nu.
The interesting terminology are obviously the card types. Manas (“Monster”) is obligatory as a canon term, Doka (“Spell”) comes from do ka ya (“speak with energy”; the idea being that literal magic would mostly set itself apart from standard MU powers by its verbal incantations or, well, Spells), and Ilhura (“Trap”) from ilahu tura (“suprising binding”).
And during the End Phase, which is a term imported unchanged to Matoric just like it isn’t any different in German or Japanese, you just get to “move a card forward to your hand” once more.
During your opponent’s turn, if all monsters in your GY are WATER (min. 1), your opponent cannot activate cards or effects in response to the activation of your WATER monster effects as Chain Link 2 or higher. You can banish 1 monster from your GY; Special Summon 1 WATER monster from your hand in Defense Position, but its effects are negated and it becomes the same Type as the banished monster’s, also you cannot Special Summon monsters from the Extra Deck for the rest of this turn, except WATER monsters. You can only use this effect of “Ga-Koro, Village of Water” once per turn.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)
Matoric
Ga-Koro, Gaha Ai-Koro
Field Spell
E’e rupu ai-agiro po ai bakuala’u po maa-manas GAHA (ve 1 u) ai, manas-akiro’u GAHA ai-lutu ve ivai-aro 2 u ta rupu u sapo akiro sa za lutu yai voru ke. Uka manas bakuala’u po 1 za khu ya vo; a’a at arnoro’u a ka hau a manas GAHA 1 za fe-idoya o’o akiro’ai za ru ya vah’ai manas ya-khu-za nu ai-vah ai ta na va, paro’o-agiro ai-oko po at sapuru va a manas ru-GAHA za fe-ido ya voru. On agiro u uka paro’o-akiro ai-“Ga-Koro, Gaha ai-Koro” ran 1 ka ya voru.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)
This one has the concept of “in response to”, which had me quite stumped until I was pointed towards causative sentences that express meanings such as “X makes Y do Z” (X ta Y Z yai). Adapting them for this complex use case took a bit of (guess)work, but what I ended up with essentially translates to “The activation of your WATER monster effects as Chain Link 2 or higher cannot make your opponent activate cards or effects”.
The new term Chain Link translates to ivai-aro (“linked structure item”; ivai “Chain” from ivo-vai “linkage-arrangement”), and what’s also interesting is my repurposing of Location/Direction markers to express relations on numbers. This was already subtly visible in all the HOPT clauses, but this effect does itself include two instances of ve_u (“extending from”) around a number, meaning “min.” and “or higher”, respectively – basically >=.
The other effect has nothing weird going on with its grammar for once, but introduces a bit of new vocabulary as well, such as fe-ido (“Special Summon”; from fehi “innovation”, in the sense that it’s an “unusual” Summon), ka hau a (“in Defense Position”; lit. “oriented towards defense”), vah (“Type”; lit. “herd, swarm”), and sapuru va (“Extra Deck”; lit. “non-primary Deck”).
When your opponent activates a card or effect on the field (Quick Effect): You can Special Summon this card from your hand or GY to your zone in that card’s column, and if you do, change 1 face-up monster on the field to Defense Position. (Quick Effect): You can target 1 other face-up card you control; for the rest of this Chain, or until the end of this turn if it is a “Matoran” monster, it is unaffected by card effects, except its own. You can only use each effect of “C.C. Matoran Maku” once per turn.
E’e nuala po rupu ta sapo akiro su za lutu ya po (Kah-Akiro): At arnoro’u bakuala’u su a vala’u on otu’u-sapo ai-zasa u ko uka paro’o-sapo za fe-ido ya vo, e apaia ihu-manas nuala po 1 za hau-kama ko itya ke. (Kah-Akiro): Uka ihu-ku-sapo ya-uka borau-za 1 aro ya vo; paro’o-ivai ai-oko, e manas “Matoran” ai paro’o-agiro ai-oko ke su, ohi a hiki akiro akiro’ai va ru. On agiro u uka aro-akiro ai-“A.A. Matoran Maku” ran 1 ko ya voru.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)
The most interesting portions that haven’t been touched on already are probably the “to your zone in that card’s column” and “for the rest of this Chain, or until the end of this turn”. The former can be handled with nested Location/Direction markers [vala’u [on otu’u-sapo ai-zasa u] ko] (“forward to your zone inside of that card’s column”) , and the other by appending the su (“or”) coordination marker to a conditional-marked unit to make that “or […] if”.
Defense Position appears for the second time, but this time with a more complete name hau-kama(“defensive orientation”; kama derived from marker ka_a “oriented toward”), and we also encounter zasa (“column”; based on tsasus from the Agoric dictionary).
You might also be wondering why C.C. becomes A.A. – that’s because Chronicler’s Company translates to something like Amaja-Apu. The alliteration survives!
If another “Kanohi” card becomes equipped to the equipped monster, destroy this card. Once per turn, if the equipped monster is a “Turaga”, “Toa”, or “Makuta” monster, the first activated effect that targets it becomes “You can move 1 monster in the Main Monster Zone to another Main Monster Zone on its controller’s field, then your opponent can move 1 monster in the Main Monster Zone to another Main Monster Zone on its controller’s field”. If this card is in your GY: You can Tribute 1 monster, then target 1 “Turaga Nokama” in your GY; Special Summon it and equip it with this card. You can only use this effect of “Noble Kanohi Rau” once per turn.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)
Matoric
Kanohi Lui Rau
Equip Spell
E’e haran-manas aha ku-sapo “Kanohi” ran ai ta, paro’o-sapo za ikhya ke. On agiro u takaro, e’e haran-manas manas “Turaga”, “Toa”, “Makuta” su ai, lutu-akiro ya-aka iza aro takua “O’o uka manas manas ai-vala ga po 1 za manas ai-ku-vala ga boraua’ai ai-nuala po ko ivo ya vo, rupu ta manas manas ai-vala ga po 1 za manas ai-ku-vala ga boraua’ai ai-nuala po ko ivo ya vo ka” ai ta ke. E’e bakuala’u po paro’o-sapo ai: O’o uka manas 1 za okhau ya, uka “Turaga Nokama” bakuala’u po 1 za aro ya ka vo ke; o’o iza fe-idoya, aha paro’o-sapo ran ai ta na. On agiro u uka paro’o-akiro ai-“Kanohi Lui Rau” za ran 1 ko ya voru.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)🎉
This card’s name actually includes the one piece of vocabulary I’ve decided to borrow from the older version of the Matoran Language that was not yet called Matoric: Lui for “Noble”. In the context of Kanohi, it’s just really nice how that rhymes with Nui for “Great”.
The on-field replacement effect is structured around a “becomes”, which is a verb that translates neatly not into a full verbal sentence, but rather an inceptive equative sentence (i.e., one that ends in ai ta – a “starts to be”). The effect in quotation marks is nothing shocking at this point, just two optional actions linked with “then”, but it does introduce the term I’ve chosen to use for “Main Monster Zone”: manas ai-vala ga (“primary zone of monsters”; the ga particle is a made-up one to contrast the va already seen in the translation of “Extra Deck”). Notably, the core of this phrase is the possession-marked vala, so further modifiers like “other” can attach directly to it and yield interesting results such as manas ai-ku-vala ga.
The GY effect showcases the basic “and” conjunction, which is adapted directly by use of the o_na marker. The final portion of the sentence is yet another inceptive equative sentence replacing a verb, paraphrasing “equip it with this card” to “it starts to be equipped with this card”.
When a monster effect is activated while you control a WATER monster and this card is in your hand (Quick Effect): You can draw 1 card and show it, then if it is a monster, Special Summon this card, and if you do, its Level becomes the shown monster’s Level. Otherwise, discard this card. If this card is sent from the hand or field to the GY, and you have no Spells/Traps in your GY: You can send 1 Spell/Trap from your Deck to the GY. You can only use each effect of “Matoran Astrologer Nixie” once per turn.
E’e manas-akiro za lutu ya po, uka manas GAHA za borau ya, arnoro’u po paro’o-sapo ai (Kah-Akiro): O’o o’o uka sapo 1 za kiva ya iza aku ya na vo ke. E’e ohi manas ai, paro’o-sapo za fe-idoya, e apaia bahtu’ai manas aku ai-bahtu ai ta ke ke ka. E’e ohi manas ru, paro’o-sapo za osapya ke ka. E’e at arnoro nuala su a bakuala ko paro’o-sapo za ivo ya, bakuala’u po Doka/Ilhura ru: At sapuru’u a bakuala ko uka Doka/Ilhura 1 ivo ya vo ke. On agiro u uka aro-akiro ai-“Nixawa-Matoran Nixie” ran 1 ko ya voru.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)
Nixie closes out the set, but not without some grammatical quirks of her own. That already begins with the card name that lists her occupation and name, which ends up sounding a bit redundant since Matoric often interprets Matoran names as relating to that individual’s Duty. To slightly alleviate this, I went and attached a little marker -wa (“representative of”) to the job title.
The next eyecatcher lies still before the card text, namely Dehrab (“Tuner”; from dehi-raba “sound finalizer”), and once we finally get into the text, the weirdness continues. Not only is Nixie’s first effect a “when” with multiple requirements, it also operates on an if-else basis when it resolves, with a “then” thrown in for good measure. The result is some pretty involved nesting of o_ka and e_ke, crossing sentence boundaries in a way that might just lose more clarity than the boundaries themselves provide. Also somewhere in there is the term bahtu (“Level”; a generalization of bahtua “sea level”).
On the other hand, the final effect is almost laughably simple by comparison, to the point where I feel comfortable weaseling out of an explanation by simply speaking the magic words: Left as an exercise to the reader.
Final Notes
So does this mean the project is officially going multilingual? Absolutely not, there’s no way I have the time to do this on any kind of larger scale. For the foreseeable future, it’s going to remain a one-time April Fools’ thing.
However, in putting this together, I was able to set the stage fairly well for supporting more than one language in the creation and release processes. As you can see, the card viewer blocks have no problem displaying the information (though I have not bothered to translate card types, Attributes, Monster Types, etc), and I also succeeded in jury-rigging my installation of the ygopic card generator into outputting not only additional languages, but even using different fonts and layouts for Japanese and Matoric. Really, translation time is the only major problem stopping this from being an actual thing.
That is to say, if there’s a language in which you really want to see Bionicle cards, you could probably make it happen by just sending me finished translations 😉
There aren’t that many of them, but the Reptilians have surely invaded every single influential position in the Matoran Universe. What scaly visage is hiding beneath YOUR Turaga’s mask?
A nice set of 5 Reptile Rahi is currently in the expansion, though with not much diversity on other card properties – all of them are Level 4 or higher, and the only Attributes present are FIRE, WATER, and EARTH.
Normal Pendulum MonsterLevel 6 | Scale 3/3 | WATER Reptile | ATK 2600 / DEF 1200
Pendulum Scale = 3 [ Pendulum Effect ] While you have a Level 6 Reptile “Rahi” Pendulum Monster Card in your other Pendulum Zone, your opponent’s cards and effects cannot be activated in response to the Pendulum Summon of a “Rahi” monster. When an opponent’s monster declares a direct attack: You can destroy this card, and if you do, Special Summon 1 face-up “Rahi” Pendulum Monster from your Extra Deck. —————————————- [ Flavor Text ] The first thing to remember about Tarakava is that even if you can’t see them, they are always there.
Pendulum Scale = 8 [ Pendulum Effect ] While you have a Level 6 Reptile “Rahi” Pendulum Monster Card in your other Pendulum Zone, cards in your Pendulum Zones cannot be destroyed by your opponent’s card effects. Once per turn (Quick Effect): You can target 1 “Rahi” Pendulum Monster you control; place that target in your Pendulum Zone. —————————————- [ Flavor Text ] Sand Tarakava are slightly smaller than their Tarakava relatives. Their hunting method is to hide under the sand and wait for unsuspecting prey to come near.
1 “Rahi” Tuner + 1+ non-Tuner monsters You can target 1 monster your opponent controls; this card loses 1000 ATK, and if it does, shuffle that target into the Deck. You can only Special Summon “Tarakava-Nui, Lizard King Rahi(s)” once per turn.
Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.15.5)
These Lizards with a Determination to Fist are mostly characterized by their high ATK stats, though the Sand variant is a lot more balanced in that regard. For Pendulum Effects, other than the standard Type-based protection clauses, the regular Tarakava summons itself into battle in a way matching its signature surprise attacks, while the Sand Tarakava kind of performs the inverse operation by putting a Rahi into your Pendulum Zone at will. And the big Tarakava-Nui can just punch things straight back into the Deck at the cost of its own big ATK.
I feel like all of these effects could use some improvement, considering the Sand Tarakava one is even a Quick Effect on a Spell and thus massively against design principles, but let’s consider them as they are for now. An interesting theme I’m seeing here is a mix between beatsticks and effect-based removal on the same cards, almost like a middle ground between the proposed Beast and Aqua/Fish/Sea Serpent Rahi playstyles. A “missing link”, if you will. Fitting, isn’t it?
Others
Now let’s see if that idea holds up through the remaining two examples.
Pendulum Scale = 5 [ Pendulum Effect ] If your opponent takes effect damage: Draw 1 card. You can only use this effect of “Bog Snake, Rahi” once per turn. If you control no monsters: You can Special Summon this card from your Pendulum Zone. —————————————- [ Monster Effect ] A Synchro Monster that was Summoned using this card as Synchro Material gains this effect. ● Each time your opponent activates a card or effect, inflict 300 damage to your opponent immediately after it resolves.
Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.15.5)
And immediately the Bog Snake makes things screwy by going into a completely different direction, namely effect damage. Because venom. This is more significant for its interaction with the Ghekula, its natural enemy, than with any other Reptiles, so maybe we shouldn’t think too much about this one.
1 “Rahi” Tuner + 1+ non-Tuner monsters You can target 1 card your opponent controls; banish both that target and this card until the End Phase of your next turn. You can only use this effect of “Ranama, Magma Toad Rahi” once per turn.
Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.15.5)
The Ranama is our one and only Level 4 Synchro, and it does bring the desired combination of reasonably high stats and effect-based removal. That said, I feel like it tilts a bit more towards the latter, and, come to think of it, a toad should probably rather be placed in the Aqua Type for consistency’s sake. Hmmm.
Not much clarity on what exactly could set the Reptiles apart yet, but moving on.
Potential Members
The unimplemented part of the spreadsheet promises up to a quintupling of the Reptile Rahi pool, with 20 more entries waiting in the wings. Granted, some of those are the Rahi Nui and various worms that are unlikely to really get this Type in the final product, but that still leaves a fair number.
Level 4 and below
The selection of small (potential) Reptile Rahi starts at the Level 1 Spine Slug (already aptly covered in the DARK article), continues with the Level 2 Sand Frog (mentioned once in a serial), right into the Level 3 Fire Serpent (mentioned once in an online character bio with no direct archive available).
And after that three-card straight flush of things we don’t need to bother with, Level 4 finally brings some more noteworthy examples. Well, once we skip over the Air Serpents allegedly from Karda Nui, at least. Okay, the Stone Snake Krahka transformed into one single time probably also doesn’t count.
Which leaves us with two we’ve actually looked at before. The Crystal Climber could be a Beast or could be a Reptile, and is probably going to end up wherever its little mini-synergy with the Ice Bat can be implemented more smoothly (probably Beast though, to keep the Tri-Types together).
The Lohrak has a pretty good chance of becoming a Reptile since it is primarily a snake, and the same thing applies here as when we went over it for the Sea Serpents: Surprise attacks and poisonous flesh, kind of a decent fit mechanically.
Level 5
A surprising number of Reptiles are seemingly sized just between Matoran and Toa, which is a range of exactly this one Level.
A familiar one is the Cable Crawler, a bird-eating Rahi that kind of seems like a climbing lizard. Or a Beast, the lines tend to blur. What speaks for the Reptile typing is their vertigo-inducing Rhotuka power, which they use both to hunt their prey and stun larger creatures – a fine match with the kind of modular strategy considered so far. Assuming you can make the Rhotuka effects work, which might be a bit though in a Deck not focused on them. The tangentially mentioned Mud Crawler suffers from the same Beast-Reptile ambiguity, but if we even bother implementing it, it probably falls here as well due to the acid breath.
The Longfang is explicitly a Reptile, but also a bit disappointing in terms of abilities, since it’s just big and hunts with it jaws, which sounds more like a beatdown-focused Beast Rahi. Throws a little wedge into our plans.
The situation with the Swamp Stalker is similar, though it at least has the decency to be an ambush predator. Estimating the Level for this one is a little tricky because while we know the one that existed as a combiner model was mutated and enlarged, it’s not exactly clear what size the regular ones would be. Of course, that only matters if that version gets a card to begin with.
Finally, the Tunnelers make up for the above examples’ lack of abilities in spades, with their special power to absorb and reproduce anything used against them. This notably can and has been exploited as a weakness, so what it likely translates to is a mandatory trigger effect that copies the opponent’s effects somehow. There’s also the strange “madness” that causes them to change physically and go on a rampage, which could supply the beatdown component to round out this tricky effect in a hybrid Reptile strategy.
Level 6 and 7
Tahu reached the top of the barrier and looked at Lewa as if his brother Toa had turned into a giant swamp lizard.
BIONICLE Chronicles #4: Tales of the Masks
And that’s all it took to put the “Giant Swamp Lizard” into the BS01 Rahi list and therefore into my spreadsheet. No way we’re implementing this one, but presumably it would be Giant (Level 6-ish) Swamp (WATER/WIND) Lizard (Reptile). Shocking.
Speaking of which, the Red Serpent is a Maze of Shadows Rahi with electric powers, which in their one canon use had the remarkable effect of temporarily fusing Matau into a wall. And this right here is where I get a brilliant idea for a gimmick that could set Reptiles apart from all other Types of Rahi. It’s based on a pun, so get ready for this. Are you ready for this?
Scale Manipulation.
As in, Pendulum Scales. Because Reptiles have scales, the two main deck Tarakava already sort of do something like this, and the Red Serpent’s ability could also be very nicely represented by having it shove a monster into the backrow Vaylantz-style. The beatdown/removal hybrid could then be a secondary thing to ensure you have all the tools you need to win while playing around with such a weird gimmick.
The DARK Subterannean Worm is the kind of Worm that I’d rather have as a Reptile than as an Insect, but really both of those options kind of overlap the Normal Pendulums it’s supposed to be grouped with for the whole Rahi Nui package. Still unsure about this one, but its Attribute means it’s not too relevant for the broader Type anyway.
Night Creepers belong to the category of briefly described creatures, with six legs and seven feet (of length), overall sounding kind of like a lizard to me. Nothing of major interest here either.
Furnace Salamanders are said to be the size of a Toa when upright, but upon further consideration, that’s probably a poor reason to put them at the same Level – their swarming behaviour definitely suggests a smaller, less powerful creature at Level 4 or something. Size aside, they’re notable for their agile movements and painful bite, so it sounds like we have another candidate for mixing tricky effects and decent beatdown ability here.
Level 11 (Crystal Serpents)
The most magnificient (likely) Reptile Rahi are those created not by a Makuta, but by the master smith Artakha: The four Crystal Serpents. They spend most of their time dormant in the four corners of their maker’s island, but when active, amplifying light through their bodies lets them generate heat rays powerful enough to destroy a whole wave of Visorak at once. So between that impressive feat and their general legendary status and origins, they obviously have to get a pretty high Level. However, given how odd they are in the context of Rahi overall, I went with 11 rather than the 12 usually used for ginormic boss monster Rahi, just to make it a little weirder.
And while it’s subtle, the above description does contain a nice connection to the Pendulum Scale gimmick considered before: The serpents live in the four corners of the island, and where are the Pendulum Zones located? That’s right, the four corners of the field.
So what I’m thinking here is this: Each of the four serpents actually gets a distinct card to make a little Level 11 mini-archetype, and their effects allow them to be placed into both your and your opponent’s Pendulum Zones. Then, on some trigger, they wake up, Special Summon to your field, and just blow shit up immediately. It’s even more fitting because Crystal Beasts, while not Pendulums, are the OG “monsters in S/T Zone” gimmick deck, and what is a Crystal Serpent if not an off-Type Crystal Beast?
Conclusion
The Reptile Rahi are a mix of snakes, lizards, and generic predators that could just as well be argued to be Beasts. Unlike that Type, however, their hunting methods tend to involve “trickery” such as toxins or special abilities, suggesting something other than the most straightforward beatdown strategy. At the same time, they are also physically more formidable than the smaller end of the aquatic Types of Rahi, which kind of puts them at a balanced middle ground between being beefy beaters and control tools with disruption or removal effects.
That alone may not be enough to guarantee a solid identity, but several of them also have powers or traits suggesting a gimmick of backrow and Pendulum Scale manipulation (which coincidentally also fits with the already implemented Tarakava). So by focusing on that, we can establish a unique playstyle and win condition for Reptile Rahi decks, which the individual monsters’ jack-of-all-trades nature should help carry out in a variety of situations.
In BCOR, we can find 9 Insect-Type Rahi, spread across all regular Attributes except DARK, with WIND just barely being the most common at 3. Of these Rahi, 4 are Level 2 or lower Tuner monsters, which isn’t all that surprising considering smallness is quite the intuitive Insect trait. The rest doesn’t get all that big either, capping out at Level 6.
Pendulum Scale = 8 [ Pendulum Effect ] While you have a Level 5 Insect “Rahi” Pendulum Monster Card in your other Pendulum Zone, cards in your Pendulum Zones cannot be destroyed by your opponent’s card effects. Once per turn: You can add 1 face-up “Rahi” Pendulum Monster in your Extra Deck to your hand, then destroy 1 card in your Pendulum Zone. —————————————- [ Flavor Text ] Nui-Jaga commonly hunt in packs, which helps to make up for the fact that they are not very fast. One of the creatures will drive prey forward, usually into a canyon, where others wait to strike. Once the target is surrounded, the Nui-Jaga will call to each other. Their cries have been compared to the sound of glass breaking.
Pendulum Scale = 3 [ Pendulum Effect ] While you have a Level 5 Insect “Rahi” Pendulum Monster Card in your other Pendulum Zone, your opponent’s cards and effects cannot be activated in response to the Pendulum Summon of a “Rahi” monster. You can target 1 “Rahi” monster you control; Special Summon 1 “Rahi” monster with the same Type and a lower or equal Level from your Deck, but it cannot attack this turn. You can only use this effect of “Nui-Rama, Fly Rahi” once per turn. —————————————- [ Flavor Text ] A harsh buzz fills the air…a rustle of wings…a dark shape flying out of the sun…the warning signs of a Nui-Rama attack.
Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.15.5)
Nui-Jaga and Nui-Rama form the only pair of Rahi to currently rely on the Insect type, in this case to get the same standard Pendulum enhancements that Muaka and Kane-Ra have over at the Beasts. Additionaly, the former recycles a monster while popping a Pendulum Scale for synergy with the destruction-based subtheme (you can really tell how poorly thought out that was when a card that demands Insects interacts in a way not relevant to a single other Insect Rahi), and the latter does some good old swarming.
Both of these effects are useful, but more in a generic way that doesn’t really suggest any particular design direction for the Type as a whole. I guess swarming makes some literal sense when you think of Insects, but that alone does not a gameplan make.
1 “Rahi” Tuner + 1+ non-Tuner monsters Once per turn: You can target 1 face-up monster your opponent controls; excavate cards from the top of your Deck until you excavate a “Rahi” monster, then, if that monster’s ATK is higher than the target’s, send all excavated cards to the GY and take control of the target until the End Phase. Otherwise, Special Summon that monster and shuffle the remaining cards into the Deck.
Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.15.5)
The matching Synchro upgrade is the Nui-Kopen, which implements a very fancy method of stealing a monster or Special Summoning even more Rahi from the Deck. One option references the role it played in Lewa getting an infected mask in MNOG and the other fits into the swarming theme, so this seems sensible enough in principle.
You can banish this card from your GY, then target 1 Level 3 or higher “Rahi” monster you control; reduce that target’s Level by 1, then Special Summon 1 “Fikou, Spider Rahi” from your hand or Deck. You can only use this effect of “Fikou, Spider Rahi” once per turn.
Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.15.5)
In case you were wondering why the Synchro upgrades are always one Level higher than the base forms, it’s because of the Fikou, a Level 1 Tuner that brings out other copies of itself by draining a Level from a Rahi on the field. Which technically means you’d end up with the same total Level rather than +1, so I may not have entirely done the math to the end. Still, I really like the idea of this effect, and again it provides another way of swarming.
Handtraps
Other than occuring in swarms, Insects have a reputation for being annoying as hell, so it’s only fair that we find a relatively high concentration of the Level 2 handtrap Rahi in this Type.
(Quick Effect): You can banish this card from your hand or field and 1 “Rahi” monster from your GY, then target 1 Spell/Trap your opponent controls; banish that target. Your opponent cannot activate the targeted card in response to this effect’s activation. You can only use this effect of “Hoto, Firebug Rahi” once per turn.
Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.15.5)
The Hoto is your Spell/Trap removal, with the built-in benefits of banishing and not letting the targeted card be activated in response, since the cost would otherwise be pretty high for such an effect.
(Quick Effect): You can banish this card from your hand or field and 1 “Rahi” monster from your GY; negate the effects of 1 face-up monster on the field until the end of this turn. You can only use this effect of “Lightning Bug, Rahi” once per turn.
Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.15.5)
The Lightning Bug, which if the wiki is to be believed should actually be called Electric Bug (they hadn’t figured that out yet when I made BCOR), negates monster effects, and even does so without targeting, which is pretty strong to have as a Quick Effect. In a more functional Rahi archetype, this might honestly be overpowered, but right now it really doesn’t feel that way. Also, only currently implemented LIGHT Insect.
When your opponent activates a card or effect (Quick Effect): You can banish this card from your hand or field and 1 “Rahi” monster from your GY, then target 1 card on the field; it is unaffected by the effects of cards with the same card type (Monster, Spell, or Trap) as the card your opponent activated, until the end of this turn. You can only use this effect of “Cliff Bug, Rahi” once per turn.
Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.15.5)
The Cliff Bug goes in a more defensive direction by just making cards unaffected by some card type. This is actually pretty similar to what Turaga Nokama does in the updated version of BCOT, which is quite fitting due to the Cliff Bug being a Ga-Wahi creature (and the only WATER Insect Rahi for now), but completely accidental. I did not remember this card existed until a good while after I did the overhaul for everything Ga-Koro.
It’s worth noting that in contrast to the Beasts, which had a few monsters that benefit from being banished but no handtraps to do the banishing, the Insects suffer from the opposite problem right now – handtraps, but no banish triggers.
Others
Two more cards remain. First, a single Level 4 Pendulum and the second FIRE Insect Rahi.
Pendulum Scale = 5 [ Pendulum Effect ] When a “Rahi” monster is Normal Summoned: You can add 1 “Rahi” Pendulum Monster from your Deck to your hand. You can only use this effect of “Kofo-Jaga, Scorpion Rahi” once per turn. If you control no monsters: You can Special Summon this card from your Pendulum Zone. —————————————- [ Monster Effect ] A Synchro Monster that was Summoned using this card as Synchro Material gains this effect. ●When a monster effect is activated (Quick Effect): You can shuffle 1 face-up “Rahi” Pendulum Monster from your Extra Deck into the Deck; negate the activation, and if you do, destroy that monster if its ATK is lower than the ATK of the monster you shuffled into the Deck.
Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.15.5)
The Kofo-Jaga is the first we’re seeing out of an attempted three-part engine that all grant monsters using them as Synchro material a negate at the cost of shuffling back a Rahi Pendulum from the Extra Deck. In the Pendulum Zone, it has the standard ability to Special Summon itself, and it can search another Rahi Pendulum if a monster is Normal Summoned. You’re basically meant to use this by Normal Summoning a Tuner, searching your other Pendulum Scale, and spamming out a bunch of monsters for a big Synchro play, which is certainly … a bit less reliable following MR4.
1 “Rahi” Tuner + 1+ non-Tuner monsters When this card is Synchro Summoned: You can send 1 “Rahi” monster from your Deck to the GY; this card gains 500 ATK. You can banish this card until the End Phase of your next turn; destroy 1 card on the field. You can only use this effect of “Kirikori-Nui, Locust Rahi” once per turn.
Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.15.5)
Keeping with the theme of Insects being smol, the Kirikori-Nui is a tiny Level 3 Synchro, and one I’m quite fond of. It dumps a Rahi to the GY for cost on summon (potentially triggering various things … that are not Insects), and then can just banish itself for a bit to non-targetingly destroy a card. Probably a bit too slow by modern standards seeing how it’s not a quickie and for some reason comes back during your next End Phase, but still cool.
Potential Members
35 of these little critters still await their implementation, so that’s quite a lot. For the most part, we are looking at tiny Level 1 and 2 monsters, but there’s also a few at Levels 3 and 4 and a decent amount at Level 5 and above, up to legitimate Level 12 candidates. Given the massive skew towards low Levels, it will be interesting to see if we can actually derive a competent strategy from these.
Level 1
Practically every Level 1 monster in the spreadsheet belongs to this Type, boasting a grand total of 11 unimplemented entries.
This includes a wide variety of astonishingly irrelevant critters such as the Acidfly, Bog Leech, and Metallic Hornet – names that probably won’t seem intimately familiar even to dedicated Bionicle fans, because they were each mentioned one single time solely as a comparison for how something sounds or looks or whatever. Given the nigh-zero amount of information that can thus be gleaned from the source material about them, the only reason I could see to implement these is if I really need some extra Level 1s. Which seems unlikely given how many there are here anyway.
Just marginally higher on the relevance scale are Fireflyers and Devourers, whose swarms at least have a smidgen of actual screentime courtesy of an Insect Control Rahkshi. Still, they’re more likely to appear on a Spell/Trap depicting that particular incident in the Archives than as dedicated monster cards. Sand Snipes are one of those curious creatures that only appear in guidebooks, but have a unexpectedly interesting description – in this case, they’re small biting pests with a strange habit of drowning themselves in liquid protodermis. That suicidal nature could well inspire some kind of entertaining self-sacrifical effect.
Meanwhile, the Fikou-Nui is a boss from the cancelled ’01 game, but the fact that visual footage of it exists and its relation to the iconic little orange spider might just mean it will get its share of spotlight in the expansion at some point. Maybe because it’s all black, I once upon a time put together a draft of it as a Rank 1 Xyz Monster, which would be quite a unique niche to fill in the archetype.
And probably the most significant role played by any of these miniature Insects in the actual story goes to the Protodites, microscopic beings who were seen in 2006 both as the building blocks of Zaktan’s body and in massively enlarged form as Protodax. Their ability to split in two when struck could make for a neat monster effect (though kind of limited by only having 3 copies), but since their appearances are so indirect, maybe they’ll also end up relegated to a Spell/Trap slot.
The remaining entries – Worms, Spine Slugs, and Niazesk – are clear DARK monsters and therefore have already been covered in that article.
Level 2
A wide variety of worm-like Rahi can be found noted at this level, among them Spiked Fire Worms, Slime Worms, Feeder Worms, Borer Worms, and Rock Worms. All but the last one are just more rhetorical devices with a single mention in the books, and the Rock Worm’s slightly greater relevance only stems from the fact that the Toa Metru once faced a giant one mutated by Energized Protodermis. So the small one might make it in too at that point, just to have a canon material for bringing out its big version.
The Electric Spider is exclusively a Quest for the Toa enemy that was retroactively packaged into a common naming pattern with the Electric Bug. If implemented as a card, it would probably do something similar to that little effect-negating handtrap. Maybe negate effects outside the field or something?
And finally, the Frost Leech is another parasite like the aforementioned Spine Slug, except it feeds off heat rather than rage. Perhaps this could translate to some kind of union-like mechanic where the Leech attaches to a monster and slowly “freezes” it.
The surprising takeaway so far is that, even though the numbers suggest a cornucopia of extremely low-Level Insect Rahi, a detailed inspection reveals that almost all the actually relevant ones have been implemented already.
The Visorak Ecosystem
Perhaps the most relevant Insect Rahi are 2005’s Visorak, already featured prominently in the DARK article along with various Rahi directly related to them. Still, it’s not totally impossible that the Visorak could end up getting other Attributes once we reach them, so let’s quickly go over them in the context of Insects as a whole too.
The Visorak themselves would be Level 4 monsters that, if not DARK, would be spread across FIRE, WATER, EARTH, and WIND as per their color schemes. The main features I have currently planned for them are a generally tightly coordinated playstyle likely making use of a dedicated “Visorak” archetype, and Rhotuka effects that trigger off the activation of some basic “Rhotuka” Spells to represent the various Rhotuka powers found in the lore. These very specific features mean they probably wouldn’t mix too well with random other Insect Rahi, but perhaps planning some crossover points in advance would be nice.
The obvious candidates for those are the other Insects canonically related to Visorak: Venom Flyers, Gate Guardians, Silver Chute Spiders, and Metru Mantisses. All of those do even have options for non-DARK Attributes listed: WIND because it flies, LIGHT because it projects illusions, LIGHT because its shiny, and WIND because it’s green, in that order. However, in the case where Visorak aren’t DARK either, WIND would overlap with the main horde’s Keelerak, which is a bit annoying. An interesting point for the Insect Rahi pool as we’ve seen it so far is that all of these are Level 4 or higher, but it’s possible that the ones we have yet to cover sufficiently fill that niche anyway.
The Zivon also needs to be mentioned as a gigantic Level 12 Insect Rahi, meant to be the final boss Visorak. I’ve cooked up a nice little plan to make this one a Ritual Monster summoned not by a regular Ritual Spell, but rather by the Rhotuka effect of the Visorak Kahgarak – exactly the way it’s canonically called forth from the Field of Shadows. That’s not exactly compatible with generic usage, however, so another reason I’d honestly prefer the Visorak sectioned off in their own DARK Insect corner.
Level 3 and 4
The only(!) Level 3 Insect Rahi on record is the Dagger Spider, found in the Green Belt of Voya Nui and built as a tiny little combiner model. Incidentally, the latter is a quality it shares with the Kirikori-Nui, so maybe it could be another low-Level Synchro? Effect-wise, their method of attacking involves feints, so maybe similar mechanics as with Utopia + Double or Nothing could be applied.
Level 4 includes the Visorak and some other DARK Insect stuff mentioned previously, but also the Sea Spider. Which is technically still connected to the Visorak, but since it’s one of their natural predators and unlike the nocturnal Metru Mantis has nothing to do with darkness, I can’t really justify shoving it into DARK. Not sure what to do with this one.
And that’s it for this section. Shockingly, there are practically no Insect Rahi I would place at these Levels, so unless I find other stuff to up-/downgrade or come up with a very unusual playstyle, there might legitimately be no choice but to let the Visorak mix with the general Insect pool after all. But even then, that would mean Insect Rahi only really start working in 2005 …
Level 5 and Higher
After the drought in the middle Level range, it’s surprising to see that quite a few oversized Insects can still be found at the higher Levels.
One particular subcategory I’d like to start with are those that have “Flip” listed as a potential subtype: Archives Beast, Tunnel Stalker, and Chute Lurker. These three share the common trait of being ambush predators, which is something I might yet devote a separate article to since it applies to quite a few Rahi and has some interesting ways to be implemented in card form. One possibility being that we make them Flip Effect Monsters, and since they’re all pretty big and high-Level, they’d probably Special Summon themselves face-down as well. Also, all three of these could have different Attributes (Beast DARK, Stalker EARTH, Lurker WIND/WATER), which is always nice for variety.
Outside of the ones connected to the Visorak, there’s some further big DARK Insect Rahi. The Subterranean Worm set to release in BPEV is probably going to be support for the Rahi Nui since that’s the main focus of that expansion Rahi-wise, but if it really does end up an Insect, it could be generically useful enough to also include in the broader strategy of the Type. Protodax and Fenrakk Spawn appear in Voya Nui and are both related to the guardians of the Ignika (the former directly, the latter indirectly), but again, generic usefulness in an Insect deck may be possible.
With the WATER Attribute, we have the Frost Beetle, one of several creatures closely connected to Ko-Metru’s Knowledge Towers (maybe a multi-Type subtheme/engine is hiding here?). Their thing is that the whole species got more intelligent by consuming the Towers’ Memory Crystals and integrating the information therein into their hivemind, which is … cool, but doesnt quite give me any functional ideas until I’ve figured out what Knowledge Towers do. In-game, I mean.
The magma-shooting Catapult Scorpions are FIRE Insects for a rather obvious reason, and since they look like significantly beefier Nui-Jaga, their Level is noted as up there at something along the lines of 8. Considering that they are explicitly super aggressive in addition to their size, they’re probably the most straightforward choice for a big game-ending Insect Synchro boss monster.
And if you want to go even more huge, consider the Troller, a worm stated to have a mouth “large enough to swallow a city block”. That would suggest it can’t possibly be anything below Level 12 as noted in the spreadsheet, but at this point I’ve practically dropped that idea for two reasons. One, Krahka transforms into one while fighting Roodaka, and I just see no way that scene could logistically work if their size was really as described. And two, from what we’ve seen so far, there’s really no way an Insect Rahi deck could support a full-on Level 12 boss monster. So we might go a bit smaller with this, maybe a more defensive option in the same weight class as the Catapult Scorpion (though it also doesn’t feel entirely right to group these two together).
Conclusions
Quite possibly the strangest Type yet. They’re either tiny or gigantic, with very little in the mid-Level size range, which leads to them almost completely missing certain crucial components of the Rahi playstyle as it has been implemented so far. The main redeeming factor in that sense are the Visorak, but they’re kind of busy doing their own thing and also don’t show up until a while later in the story.
It might therefore be necessary to step out of preconceived notions about Rahi card design a bit further than I’ve done in previous Type analyses. Beasts were a Pendulum/Synchro deck with a beatdown focus while Fish & co were a Pendulum/Synchro deck using more effect-based means of board control, but maybe Insects don’t necessarily have to be Pendulums or Synchros in the first place. Especially the latter is kind of inconvenient for a deck full of low levels anyway, unless we’re talking about teensy utility Synchro Monster like the Kirikori-Nui. For actual boss monsters, it could very well end up being the case that Insect Rahi instead put out a Link, a Rank 1 or 2 Xyz, or even an easily searchable Main Deck monster. Maybe the Level 2s won’t even be Tuners or handtraps if both of those features don’t synergize well with everything else.
Of course, once the Visorak and their relatives/allies/enemies do appear, the potential for a more conventional Synchro strategy does increase significantly. I am, however, still leaning towards placing those into a more isolated section as DARK Insects, so if the main Insect Rahi deck should use them, that would require an unusual degree of DARK acceptance on that end. I think this is realistically achievable by just making sure the Visorak never apply any locks that extend beyond the Type and keeping their interactions with the “Visorak” archetype and the DARK Insect typing strictly positive, so you can still put them in a non-DARK deck to use some of their features (though they’d obviously be more powerful in their dedicated strategy). This special mixing of Attributes could then be yet another strange feature of Insect Rahi compared to other Types.
More generally, I think “weird kinds of variety” might unexpectedly wind up being the niche for Insect Rahi, judging by these last two points. Having stuff like Links, Xyz, low-level Synchros, Main Deck bosses, and an entire DARK sub-archetype in the toolbox would probably provide ways to work around certain things regular Rahi decks might struggle with. And in that sense, having the weirdness of Insects also be splashable to some degree should be very healthy for the versatility and resiliency of Rahi as a whole.
I guess I should get around to this one before it slips my mind again, huh.
Welcome to the very first Theme Guide featuring BPEV cards, specifically the mystery substance that is secretly the root cause of just about the whole Bionicle lore: Energized Protodermis.
This shiny silver liquid had its first appearance at the end of 2002 and immediately exhibited its strange properties by transforming the Toa Mata into the Toa Nuva when they came in contact with it. As the story went on, we also learnt that it will destroy anything that does not have a destiny to transform, that the substance is in fact sapient, and finally that its discovery on the ancient planet Spherus Magna was what ultimately led to the Core War, The Shattering, and the creation of the Matoran Universe as a whole. So yeah, it’s kinda important.
But as we still remain on the island of Mata Nui, what matters for now is its basic ability to transform those who are destined and destroy all others. Hence its current implementation as a small, simple archetype revolving around two key phrases – “Fusion Summon” and “send it to the GY”.
If only your opponent controls a monster, you can Special Summon this card (from your hand). If this card is Normal or Special Summoned (except during the Damage Step): You can Fusion Summon 1 Fusion Monster from your Extra Deck using this card and 1 monster in your hand as material. If this card is used as material for a Fusion Summon, except by its own effect: Target 1 Special Summoned monster on the field; send it to the GY. You can only use this effect of “Energized Protodermis Chamber” once per turn.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.1.3)
Both of them can immediately be seen in our sole Main Deck monster, Energized Protodermis Chamber. When Normal or Special Summoned (the latter of which it inherently allows you to do against established boards), it fuses with exactly 1 monster in your hand, and when fused by any effect except that one, it has a mandatory Trigger Effect to send a Special Summoned monster from the field to the GY.
Let’s unpack that bit by bit. The main effect is obviously the one that performs a Fusion Summon, and the idea is to “induce transformations” by Energized Protodermis to turn the monster in your hand into its upgraded form from the Extra Deck. This paradigm is currently implemented on the Toa Nuva, represented below by their glorious leader.
“Toa Mata Tahu” + 1 “Energized Protodermis” monster If this card is Fusion Summoned: You can add 1 “Nuva” Spell/Trap from your Deck or GY to your hand, then discard 1 card. If your opponent controls a monster (Quick Effect): You can target 1 other face-up Attack Position monster on the field; its ATK becomes 0, and if it does, this card gains ATK equal to that monster’s original ATK, until the end of this turn. You can only use this effect of “Toa Nuva Tahu” once per turn.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.4.4)
That, of course, is an entirely separate archetype that just incorporates Energized Protodermis by design, but what’s relevant for this guide is just the first line with the Fusion Materials: A specifically named Toa Mata, plus any “Energized Protodermis” monster. This is how we represent the destined transformations – if exactly the correct individual comes into contact with Energized Protodermis, a new being will be born. Also keep in mind that Toa Mata are Level 6 monsters, so Chamber taking the other material from the hand specifically saves you a Tribute Summon.
The other half of Energized Protodermis is that it will destroy those not destined to transform by it, and this is represented in a slightly roundabout way by the mandatory effect sending a monster to the GY. The idea is that “forcibly” using it as Fusion Material is a violation of destiny, and so the destruction kicks in, eliminating a Special Summoned monster such as the one you just Fusion Summoned. Or, and this is pure bullshit for gameplay convenience, you can also hit any other Special Summoned monster including your opponent’s, so this drawback can be twisted into a major advantage if you play your cards right. It will just sometimes give you trouble when going first. And even though I say “destruction”, it’s implemented as non-destruction removal because of how almost nothing can resist it in-universe.
Funnily enough, as long as you use Chamber’s own effect to fuse, it has no problem whatsoever with making things that aren’t lore-accurate, destiny-conforming transformations. In fact, any Fusion is fair game as long as this particular Level 2 LIGHT Aqua monster is valid material for it, including quite a few pretty significant boss monsters from existing archetypes. That freedom is the main thing allowing us to mix Energized Protodermis with a lot of things other than just the Toa Mata/Nuva.
An additional option you have, at least under somewhat specific conditions, is the archetype’s own Fusion Monster: Energized Protodermis Flow.
2 “Energized Protodermis” monsters If this Fusion Summoned card is sent to the GY: Look at your opponent’s Extra Deck and send 1 monster from it to the GY. During your Main Phase: You can Fusion Summon 1 Fusion Monster from your Extra Deck, by banishing 2 Fusion Materials mentioned on it from your GY, including this card. You can only use each effect of “Energized Protodermis Flow” once per turn.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.2.5)
While 2 monsters from the archetype is normally a really easy and generic material requirement, that’s not so true when the archetype currently only has a single Main Deck monster. Basically, Chamber + Chamber is your only means to bring this out, which won’t come up outside of very specific situations.
If it does, though, one of the Chambers would be fused away by an external effect, hence triggering its mandatory effect to send a monster on the field to the GY. Ideally this is aimed at your opponent’s side as removal, but Flow is also built to take a little advantage of the cases where no targets other than itself are available, since it will then proceed to relay the archetypal “send to GY” to the opponent’s Extra Deck. Also, it can be used to Fusion Summon from the GY, which technically works even if it wasn’t on the field before (but it’s kind of hard to usefully mill a 0 ATK monster from the Extra Deck).
To walk back that earlier statement a little, there are a few other ways to make this monster. It’s Level 4, so Instant Fusion works, and the effect to send from the opponent’s Extra Deck will then trigger in the End Phase even if you don’t have a way to e.g. Link it off more quickly. Or you could use the final card currently included in the archetype.
Energized Protodermis Destiny
Quick-Play Spell
Target 1 face-up monster you control; Special Summon 1 “Energized Protodermis Token” (Aqua/LIGHT/Level 2/ATK 0/DEF 0), then apply 1 of these effects. ●Send the targeted monster to the GY, and if you do, you can destroy that Token and Special Summon 1 “Energized Protodermis” monster from your Deck. ●Fusion Summon 1 Fusion Monster that mentions an “Energized Protodermis” monster as material from your Extra Deck in Defense Position, using only that Token and the targeted monster as Fusion Material. You can only activate 1 “Energized Protodermis Destiny” per turn.
Bionicle: Protodermic Evolution (v4.1.3)
Energized Protodermis Destiny is the entire transformation/destruction dynamic on which all the effects are based, encapsulated into one neat little Quick-Play Spell.
When you activate this card, you take the role of a Great Being shortly before everything went to shit and conduct an experiment with a little sample of Energized Protodermis in the form of a Token. If the unwitting guinea pig you targeted at activation has a destiny to transform, you can carry out that transformation with a Fusion Summon, limited to Defense Position because this works in the Battle Phase. Otherwise, your only option is to send the target to the GY, but in order to study the strange substance more closely (and still benefit in some way), you can then trade your Token for an actual Energized Protodermis monster in your Deck. Which, notably, will trigger Chamber, so under the right circumstances both options secretly say “Fusion Summon”.
Sample Decks
Aside from the straightforward Toa Nuva deck that will be covered in its own guide eventually, you have a couple interesting build options that take advantage of Energized Protodermis and its particular characteristics.
One example I’ve worked out in detail and tested is Pure Energized Protodermis Shaddoll Invoked (P.E.P.S.I).
https://www.duelingbook.com/deck?id=12382564
The key synergy lies in El Shaddoll Construct and Invoked Mechaba having a generic LIGHT material that can be covered by an Energized Protodermis monster, so Chamber + a Shaddoll or Aleister is a hand that makes the respective boss monster in basically a single move. This is especially valuable with the Shaddolls, since it gives you an additional way to send them to the GY and trigger their effects, but on the Invoked side too, having an alternative to the classic combo helps you bait out and play through more things. That’s especially true going second, where you’ll usually be able to Special Summon Chamber and then, should it get negated, just follow up with an unhindered Normal Summon of Aleister to make Mechaba anyway.
Another way the archetypes line up is in the Fusion Spells: Shaddoll Fusion can use materials from the Deck under certain conditions, and Invocation from the GY. That gives you two extremely efficient ways of triggering the mandatory effect on Energized Protodermis Chamber in order to poke a hole in a board of Special Summoned monsters. And since the timing at which it triggers is sharead with the Fusion Summon itself, having Magical Meltdown active will render your opponent unable to respond to this threat.
Finally, we also have Energized Protodermis Flow summonable by Chamber + Chamber, Destiny targeting Chamber, or plain old Instant Fusion. You can get this into the GY at your leisure using Gravity Controller, where it can then create the aforementioned Fusions practically ex nihilo … and also Invoked Augoeides, because as it turns out a Fusion in the GY is still a Fusion.
To take proper advantage of both Shaddoll Fusion and Chamber’s S E N D, this deck tries to go second, which also enables the use of powerful board breakers including Forbidden Droplet and Super Polymerization.
If you lean just a little further into the Bionicle aspect and also add just a smidgen of Toa Nuva to this formula, you obtain another similar recipe that is no longer Pure, but rather Protodermically Energized Nuva Invoked Shaddoll. You’re not getting an acronym for this one.
https://www.duelingbook.com/deck?id=12383388
Of course, Tahu and Onua here could be any other pair of Toa, or even just one to leave a little more space. Either way, there really isn’t much difference to the PEPSI deck – in fact a lot of the time you’re just doing Invoked/Shaddoll stuff and that’s enough to last you a whole game. But the occasional chance you get to bring out a Toa Nuva does feel nice, as does sometimes being able to search your Energized Protodermis cards via Nuva Symbols. While it’s nowhere near as good as a proper Nuva deck and fitting in all the necessary cards is a real struggle, it’s another option to play around with for some fun.
I previously compiled some footage of these two builds into the Best of Test: Energized Protodermis video, as seen below.
Best of Test: Energized Protodermis
Beyond that, there’s some more ideas that could be worth exploring in the future. In a similar vein to Shaddoll, Albion is a Fusion with a generic LIGHT material and Branded Fusion a compatible Fusion Spell using materials from the Deck, so some kind of Branded pile going second could make real good use of Chamber.
Or, to go even more modern, you could follow the Type instead of the Attribute and put Chamber to work as the Aqua material of Tearlaments Kitkallos. Probably not particularly optimal in that Deck since it’s a) useless when milled and b) won’t trigger its removal effect if shuffled back into the Deck as material, but perhaps it could to some degree serve as additional copies of Instant Fusion. Maybe even a replacement in a hypothetical future where that card is banned. Sure, it takes another Tearlaments monster to work, but that monster’s effect would then also trigger to Fusion Summon at least Rulkallos, in the process triggering Kitkallos to mill 5,I may have managed to forget how Tear fusion effects work in the span of 2 sentences here and holy hell it’s already sounding insane. Might have to try this after all.
Conclusion
Energized Protodermis a substance whose central property is that, upon contact, it transforms those who are destined and destroys those who are not. Translated to cards, this becomes a small Fusion engine whose main monster is a combination of Fusion Spell and material, meant to be merged with certain specific monsters in order to fulfill their destiny of evolution. Meanwhile, fusing it by external means will cause a violent destructive reaction that sends a Special Summoned monster from the field to the GY – potentially an opponent’s monster, so what is a liability going first can be utilized as a weapon going second.
In addition to the currently intended use case with the Toa Nuva, Energized Protodermis can be splashed into a variety of Fusion decks, the one condition being that some purple card in the Extra Deck can use exactly Energized Protodermis Chamber as material. In such a hybrid, the base strategy is enhanced with not only an additional way to Fusion Summon, but also with the potential of targeting non-destruction removal tied to its own Fusion Spells.
