Category: Theme Guides

Theme Guide: Le-Koro (BCOT)

In accordance with the frankly inexplicable ordering of Bionicle’s six main elements I mentally insist on, Le-Koro is the final village to receive its updated strategy. As usual, the guiding principle is that of the village itself, and in this case that means “Faith”.

Le-Koro, Village of Air

Field Spell

Your opponent’s monsters cannot target WIND monsters you control for attacks, except the WIND monster you control with the highest ATK (either, if tied). When you Normal or Special Summon a monster(s) that has a Level: You can target 1 of those monsters; negate its effects (if any) and make its ATK 0, and if you do, add 1 WIND Warrior monster with a different name and an equal or lower Level from your Deck to your hand, also you cannot Special Summon for the rest of this turn, except WIND monsters. You can only use this effect of “Le-Koro, Village of Air” once per turn.

Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)

Now what does Faith mean here and how does it align with the effects listed above? Well, according to the BS01 page, “Faith is trusting your allies, and trusting that all will end well” – a definition whose actual origin I cannot verify because I never got past that annoying loadscreen bug in MNOG2 myself. Regardless, it’s what I went with, and so we have one effect to allow weaker WIND monsters safe existence on the field by trusting in their more powerful allies, and another to search a WIND Warrior by disabling a monster on summon, in the faithful belief that this newly arrived ally will cause all to end well. The first of these comes up occasionally (especially against AIs who have no idea how to deal with it), while the second forms an essential enabler for like half your plays.

If you have ever filtered the card pool to WIND Warriors specifically (first question: why?), you may now be wondering “what the heck are you even supposed to search with this?”. The obvious answer is “Le-Matoran”, which is the cue to introduce the resident C.C. Matoran as the preferred search target.

C.C. Matoran Tamaru

Effect MonsterLevel 2 | WIND Warrior | ATK 400 / DEF 400

If you control a Warrior monster with 1000 or less ATK: You can discard 1 card; Special Summon this card from your hand or GY, but place it on the bottom of the Deck when it leaves the field. During your Main Phase: You can activate this effect; your “C.C. Matoran” monsters can attack directly this turn, also return this card to the hand. You can only use each effect of “C.C. Matoran Tamaru” once per turn.

Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)

The mathematically inclined among you may notice that the range of 1000 or less also includes the number 0, which conveniently is the exact ATK value any monster will have after being used to trigger Le-Koro’s search. So Summoning any Warrior under Le-Koro gives you a Tamaru ready to summon himself (which is free from the hand – “from your hand or GY” means he can be used to fulfill his own discard requirement, just like e.g. Machina Fortress). As the bottom-dwelling type of Le-Matoran who is not particularly fond of heights, he will return to the bottom of the Deck after being summoned this way, but Le-Koro can just add him back at the next opportunity anyway. The second effect is more for use with other C.C. Matoran and references his contribution in clearing a path for the company on the road to Kini-Nui. This includes a self-bounce that is a bit oddly phrased with “also” so that the whole effect works even if Tamaru is marked for returning to the Deck.

Another point to consider about Le-Koro is that it doesn’t start negating your monster’s effects until its search has resolved, which means any on-summon effects chained to it will still go through. And that’s exactly what the other Le-Matoran take advantage of.

Matoran Musician Makani

Tuner Effect MonsterLevel 2 | WIND Warrior | ATK 500 / DEF 400

If this card is Normal or Special Summoned from the hand: You can Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower “Matoran” monster from your hand. If this card is in your GY, except the turn it was sent there: You can banish this card, then target 1 WIND Warrior monster in your GY, except “Matoran Musician Makani”; add it to your hand. You can only use each effect of “Matoran Musician Makani” once per turn.

Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)

Matoran Pilot Kongu

Effect MonsterLevel 2 | WIND Warrior | ATK 800 / DEF 400

If this card is Normal or Special Summoned: You can send 1 Winged Beast “Rahi” monster from your hand or Deck to the GY, and if you do, this card can attack your opponent directly this turn. You can only use this effect of “Matoran Pilot Kongu” once per turn. When this card inflicts battle damage to your opponent: You can banish 1 WIND monster from your GY, then target 1 face-up monster your opponent controls with DEF less than or equal to that banished monster’s ATK; destroy it.

Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.20.4)

Makani offers a simple yet enticing array of effects. On Normal or Special Summon, he brings out another Matoran (including visitors from other villages, whom he welcomes musically) from the hand, and in subsequent turns you can recycle a WIND Warrior by banishing him from the GY. Oh, and on top of this he’s a Tuner, giving you access to the pretty decent WIND Synchro pool.

Kongu‘s on-summon effect takes him to the skies on the back of a Winged Beast Rahi milled from the Deck, allowing him to attack directly for a turn. This makes it easy for him to inflict battle damage, which then triggers the effect to banish a WIND monster from the GY (potentially the very Rahi he sent there) and get rid of an opponent’s monster with insufficient defense. And the hidden trick to all this is that you can actually use Kongu even on the very first turn to get more monsters on the field. How? With the right bird, of course.

Kewa, Vulture Rahi

Pendulum Effect MonsterLevel 4 | Scale 2/2 | WIND Winged Beast | ATK 1400 / DEF 400

[ Pendulum Effect ]
You can target 1 Spell/Trap on the field; send 1 Beast or Winged Beast “Rahi” monster from your hand or face-up Extra Deck to the GY, and if you do, destroy that target. 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 other Level 4 or lower WIND monster from your GY, but negate its effects. If this card is banished: You can add 1 Beast or Winged Beast “Rahi” monster from your GY or face-up Extra Deck to your hand, except “Kewa, Vulture Rahi”. You can only use 1 “Kewa, Vulture Rahi” effect per turn, and only once that turn.

Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v4.7.3)

The Kewa is a common ride for Le-Matoran pilots, and makes itself attractive for Kongu’s mill effect by bringing back any other low-level WIND monster when sent to the GY. You do have to set up the GY first to do anything with this, but if you have that, it’s just a free monster on the field. It can also recycle a Rahi in your GY when banished, which might have some applications in this deck. I haven’t tried.

So we have seen that basically all our main deck monsters provide some way to potentially get 2 Warriors on the field, and with 2 Warriors on the field we of course make Isolde because that card is cra- wait, what do you mean Le-Koro locks you to WIND? Well, well, good thing we have a Turaga to go into instead.

Turaga Matau

Link Effect MonsterLink-2 [↙ ▶] | WIND Spellcaster | ATK 1400

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)

Noble Kanohi Mahiki

Equip Spell

If another “Kanohi” card becomes equipped to the equipped monster, destroy this card. Once per turn, while this card is equipped to a “Turaga”, “Toa”, or “Makuta” monster and you control no other monsters: You can Special Summon 1 “Illusion Token” (Spellcaster/WIND/Level 3/ATK 0/DEF 0), but destroy it when this card leaves the field. If this card is in your GY: You can Tribute 1 monster, then target 1 “Turaga Matau” in your GY; Special Summon it and equip it with this card. You can only use this effect of “Noble Kanohi Mahiki” once per turn.

Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)

Matau has a reputation as a jokester, with hilarious jokes such as “summoning a monster in Attack Position but with 0 ATK”. Funny how that just so happens to be a good way of making use of your Le-Koro searches in case they don’t have the ability to Special Summon themselves. Arguably more important, however, is his second effect, representing his other side as a reliable leader in times of crisis: Delayed recycling that comes with a debuff for your opponent’s field if you’re behind.

This is perhaps the single effect that most clearly shows what I’d like Le-Koro as a strategy to be about. While Onu-Koro ensures your ability to recover and make comebacks by refilling your resources in proportion to the work you performed with them, Le-Koro more so aims to achieve the same by giving you access to resources when you need them and allowing you to get the most out of just a few cards.

That second point, and the focus on recovery in general, make the Kanohi Mahiki’s ability to revive Matau a bit more relevant here than it was for the other villages. In particular, there’s a combo where you, starting from an empty field with Matau and Mahiki in GY, just need to Summon any monster, tribute it to get back Matau, summon a Token with the Mahiki, summon a WIND monster with Matau, and you have all the materials for a Link-4 (though one of them being a Token somewhat limits your options). If Matau gave you something back during the Standby Phase, you already have one of the two monsters required for this. If you have Le-Koro, the initial Summon can also be used to ensure you have something to Special Summon with Matau’s effect. If Tamaru is in your GY, you just need a WIND monster and any card, rather than two monsters. Everything has its part to play.

But what about the valiant hero of Le-Koro, the Toa of Air? Well, he doesn’t quite contribute to this directly, but can still make for a nice bonus if you have him around.

Toa Mata Lewa

Effect MonsterLevel 6 | WIND Warrior | ATK 2200 / DEF 1900

To Tribute Summon this card face-up, you can Tribute a WIND or “Toa Mata” monster in your hand, except “Toa Mata Lewa”, instead of a monster you control. Once per turn, if a monster(s) is Special Summoned from the hand, Main Deck, and/or GY while you control this card: 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.

Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)

Great Kanohi Miru

Equip Spell

If another “Kanohi” card becomes equipped to the equipped monster, destroy this card. If the equipped monster is a “Toa” or “Makuta” monster, negate any effect activated by your opponent that targeted it. If this card is sent to the GY: You can banish 1 monster from your GY; add 1 “Toa Mata Lewa” from your Deck to your hand. You can only use this effect of “Great Kanohi Miru” once per turn.

Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)

With air being the final element in my list, Lewa is also the last member of the Toa Mata to receive his overhaul, so his design is tailored more towards filling gaps in their strategy than towards helping out Le-Koro (partially also because I’ve noticed the Toa have rather limited usefulness in their village’s strategy anyway). Since the Toa Code has made me avoid monster removal so far, that was a pretty obvious gap, and I think bouncing them to the hand – a mechanic already associated with the WIND Attribute anyway – is gentle enough to not count as killing. It can even be non-targeting with the extra investment of also bouncing one of your own monsters, which is a design I’m fairly proud of. As for how this fits into Le-Koro, well, the trigger is Special Summons from just about anywhere other than the Extra Deck, which should be happening a lot with all the revival and re-setup going on. As I said, a nice bonus while you’re doing that.

Finally, the Kanohi Miru protects against targeting effects (“floating” out of their reach), and does it in such a way that equipping it mid-chain (e.g. with a Suva) still stops previously activated effects. No particular relevance to Le-Koro’s strategy here, but cool to have in those occasional instances when you do set up Lewa.

Sample Deck

https://www.duelingbook.com/deck?id=9363457

Since Le-Koro already locks you to WIND, I figured we might as well go for some Speedroids to easily access that Attribute’s Synchro pool, which is probably the most decently equipped Extra Deck toolbox it has to offer. They also happen to be pretty fun, and if I was above playing with toys as a grown man, we wouldn’t be here.

The glaring weakness of the Speedroids is that they aren’t Warriors, and thus neither searchable by Le-Koro, nor qualified as material for Matau, nor able fulfill the conditions for Tamaru to Special Summon himself. Luckily, at this point the expansion includes enough Le-Matoran to easily fill that gap, with triple Makani and Tamaru for the free summons and double Kongu to do funny things with the Kewa if we already have GY setup. Takua is also playable in this deck since we can sneak him in before any WIND locks go into effect, and with that amount of Matoran in attendance, the Vuata Maca Tree can be a pretty good way to provide us with extra gas.

Other inclusions of note are Ghost Mourner – a bad Effect Veiler with a good Attribute – as well as an unusually high number of two copies of the Noble Kanohi Mahiki. This is because, as previously stated, its revival effect is actually relevant to this strategy, and making a Token isn’t bad either. However, the reliance on making Matau means it’s more nice-to-have than essential, so two is the highest I’m willing to go.

The Extra Deck consists of Matau, some generic WIND Links (there really aren’t many, sadly), Isolde for when we aren’t locked and want to set up Kanohi for basically free, Unchained Abomination as a Link-4 that can easily be made from a Mahiki-revived Matau, and WIND Synchros for just about every Level.

Best of Test

Best of Test: Le-Koro

This strategy’s performance in testing was initially quite poor, but eventually improved to more average levels after a lot of fiddling in the deck editor without needing that many signficiant design changes. I think the main problem was just in making what was, at the time of the video, a mashup of a subcritical mass of Speedroids sprinkled with just a few Six Samurai monsters work without the two halves tripping each other up, and I’m sure it could be done much better than I had it at that point (e.g. even one Den-Den Daiko Duke would probably help the recovery focus a lot). Also, firing the Le-Koro search at the wrong point so it either negates an important effect or locks you into WIND too early can screw everything up in an instant, and as the supremely intelligent individual I am it took some practice before I finally learned to not do that.

Conclusion

The aim of Le-Koro as a strategy is to make comebacks and rebuild somewhat decent boards from a bare minimum of resources in your hand and field. This is facilitated by a village that will give you access to more or less any of its villagers if you manage to summon anything, a Turaga who will give you back a crucial resource just in time to start rebuilding, and Matoran who let you easily make the important jump from one monster on the field to two.

Theme Guide: Ko-Koro (BCOT)

When I set out to make Ko-Koro, there were already a few specific goals I was aiming for with the design: It should reflect the principle of Peace that MNOG2 assigned to the village, the playstyle it facilitates should be clearly distinct from the other Koros, and it should especially be incompatible with the Ga-Koro strategy with which it shares the focus on the WATER Attribute. Given these requirements, the following part of the quote at the top of the BS01 “Peace” article stood out to me:

On Mount Ihu, nothing grows and nothing changes. The mountain is perfectly at Peace.

In other words, “Peace” as a concept is (semi-)canonically equated to a lack of change, and in card game terms that comes out to a type of strategy that is as unique as it is controversial – stall. By preventing your opponent from making progress towards victory, you buy yourself the time to achieve some win condition that would normally be too slow to work. And this inherent slowness gives us a nice big point of distinction from Ga-Koro, which is all about quick effects and playing on both your and your opponent’s turn.

Ko-Koro, Village of Ice

Field Spell

While all face-up monsters you control are WATER (min. 1), apply these effects.
●If you did not declare an attack during your last turn, monsters your opponent controls cannot attack the turn they are Summoned.
●If none of your opponent’s cards were destroyed or banished by your card effects since your last Standby Phase, monsters you control cannot be destroyed by your opponent’s card effects, also your opponent cannot target them with card effects.
●If you did not activate any monster effects this turn, negate the effects of face-up Special Summoned monsters while your opponent controls them.

Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)

With that settled as the direction I wanted to go in, I sketched up the Ko-Koro field spell with three effects that limit your opponent on the condition that you also limit yourself in a similar way (much like a peace treaty), all under the shared condition that your monsters are all WATER to establish that Attribute focus. While the basic outline of this idea survived testing pretty much unchanged, the details of the effects underwent a lot of changes, so let’s just look at them point by point:

  • If you did not attack during your last turn, your opponent’s monsters cannot attack on the turn they are Summoned. This effect started life as a total attack lock with the same condition and I honestly think that might have been fine in a realistic environment, but apparently the EDOPro AI is completely unable to deal with this type of restriction and it leads to the overly long stall games everybody hates, so I had to tone it down a bit. If the strategy works as intended, this honestly barely makes a difference, for reasons I’ll get into in a bit.
  • If you did not banish/destroy any of your opponent’s cards since your last Standby Phase, your monsters get targeting and destruction protection. This one is super significant since the blanket protection makes it very hard for your opponent to break through even otherwise unimpressive opening boards, enabling you to build on them in consecutive turns until you reach something actually game-winning. On the other hand, the condition attached to it requires you to opt out of the vast majority of removal, massively influencing deckbuilding and the design of other cards related to Ko-Koro. Initially, the restrictions were even harsher as you were not allowed to make your opponent’s cards leave the field with your effects in any way whatsoever, but after one particularly atrocious test duel I realized this just forces you into situations where you cannot possibly clear the way to deal damage and are stuck passing back and forth for like 40 turns. Speaking of damage, I briefly had an extra stipulation that did not allow you to deal effect damage if you wanted this protection (because burn of all things as a win condition for an ice deck is kinda stupid), but then I remembered Wave-Motion Cannon exists and enables burn wins without ever needing to deal damage while you are stalling. So I gave up on that restriction – I will be judging you if you play Ko-Koro Burn, but you are free to do so.
  • During turns in which you did not activate any monster effects, your opponent is pretty much under Lose 1 Turn (sans position changing) Skill Drain (for Special Summoned monsters). The main purpose of this one is to prevent most decks from comboing into big bosses that just win them the game even under Ko-Koro’s restrictions, while also ruining any possible Ga-Koro synergy with its condition. It actually didn’t change much from its very first draft to its initial release, unlike the other two. I honestly think “no monster effects for you” is generally a cool drawback on a big floodgate, as it pretty much prevents it from being used in tandem with an oppressive board of negating and disrupting Extra Deck monsters. One thing that did get dropped on a later revision was the limitation that effects only stay negated during the turn the monster is summoned, because it just made you way too vulnerable to something as simple as Special Summoning a monster during your End Phase.

Overall, the payoffs for these effects make it so that your opponent has a very hard time doing anything to your monsters unless they get an extra turn of setup so they can attack, while the restrictions greatly limit your ways to counteract that setup. The game you play under Ko-Koro essentially consists of using your limited options to keep your opponent off anything that could break them out of this stall situation, while gradually building momentum turn by turn until you reach a point where you are ahead far enough to safely break the peace and go on the offensive.

But if we want to avoid destruction, banishment, and battle, how are we actually supposed to get the opponent’s monsters off the field before they stop being affected by Ko-Koro? Some generic real cards can do that of course, but the answer that exists natively within this village’s support is Turaga Nuju.

Turaga Nuju

Link Effect MonsterLink-2 [◀ ▶] | WATER Spellcaster | ATK 1100

2 monsters, including a WATER Warrior monster
If this card is Special Summoned: You can target 1 face-up Spell/Trap you control; until the end of the next turn, while you control a WATER monster, that target cannot be destroyed by card effects (even if this card leaves the field). Once per turn: You can target any number of cards your opponent controls; change face-up monsters you control to face-down Defense Position, equal to the number of targeted cards, and if you do, return those targeted cards to the hand.

Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)

Noble Kanohi Matatu

Equip Spell

If another “Kanohi” card becomes equipped to the equipped monster, destroy this card. Once per turn, while this card is equipped to a “Turaga”, “Toa”, or “Makuta” monster: You can change the battle position of 1 monster on the field. The equipped monster cannot attack the turn you activate this effect. If this card is in your GY: You can Tribute 1 monster, then target 1 “Turaga Nuju” in your GY; Special Summon it and equip it with this card. You can only use this effect of “Noble Kanohi Matatu” once per turn.

Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)

Being concerned with the future as he is, the first thing Nuju will do upon entering the field is protect a face-up Spell/Trap from destruction for a short while, and he himself doesn’t need to stay around for this – you just need any WATER monster. Now, the idea here is obviously to target Ko-Koro, hopefully leading to a situation where your opponent cannot get rid of your monsters because of the Field Spell, but also cannot get rid of the Field Spell before dealing with your monsters. Other applications are quite limited, and while this one important use case is kinda enough, I am strongly considering also allowing face-down targets for just a bit of extra utility.

But the main point of the card lies in the second effect, representing the most notable trait of the Turaga of Ko-Koro: He communicates almost exclusively in bird language. And thus, he has a removal effect that is tailored for the strategy and designed in the “language” of birds, specifically those of the frosty variety, by which I mean exactly Penguins. By flipping one or more of your monsters face-down, he returns the same number of cards your opponent controls to the hand, resetting any progress made towards escaping the Ko-Koro lock. Get it, because there are Penguins in the game that bounce stuff when they flip, haha

Meanwhile, the Kanohi Matatu is a non-targeting “telekinetic” battle position changer, and one neat way to use it is to flip the monster you used for Nuju’s effect back up and trigger some effect that way. Yes, the mental focus required for that on the noble version means you don’t get to attack with the equipped monster the same turn, but being able to reuse a Penguin Soldier seems well worth that.

Or, if bouncy birds are not your speed, maybe I can interest you in some villagers who also have beneficial interactions with the strategy.

C.C. Matoran Kopeke

Effect MonsterLevel 2 | WATER Warrior | ATK 300 / DEF 600

If this card is Normal Summoned or flipped face-up: You can add 1 Level 2 Warrior monster from your Deck or GY to your hand, except “C.C. Matoran Kopeke”, then, if you added a non-WATER monster by this effect, place 1 card from your hand on top of the Deck. You can only use this effect of “C.C. Matoran Kopeke” once per turn. If another “C.C. Matoran” monster(s) you control would be destroyed, you can change this card to face-down Defense Position instead.

Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)

Matoran Scribe Jaa

Effect MonsterLevel 2 | WATER Warrior | ATK 300 / DEF 700

You can banish 1 Spell/Trap from your hand or field; Special Summon this card from your hand. If this card is sent to the GY: You can target 1 of your banished Spells/Traps; place it on top of your Deck, and if you do, Special Summon 1 WATER “Matoran” monster from your GY, except “Matoran Scribe Jaa”, but negate its effects, also you cannot Special Summon while you control that face-up monster. You can only use each effect of “Matoran Scribe Jaa” once per turn.

Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)

Matoran Translator Matoro

Effect MonsterLevel 2 | WATER Warrior | ATK 300 / DEF 900

If this card was Normal Summoned or flipped face-up this turn: You can Tribute this card; Special Summon up to 2 Level 2 “Matoran” monsters from your GY, except “Matoran Translator Matoro”. When a monster(s) you control is flipped face-down, while this card is in your GY: You can banish this card; change those face-down monsters to face-up Defense Position. You can only use each effect of “Matoran Translator Matoro” once per turn.

Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.20.4)

Kopeke, the resident Chronicler’s Company member, is a classic searcher on Normal Summon who also works when flipped face-up. This means that in a stall situation where your opponent can’t remove your monsters and you keep flipping and bouncing with Nuju, you get a search every turn. You get to pick from a fairly wide (but not particularly powerful) pool of all Level 2 Warriors, but for best advantage you want to pick the WATER ones, meaning Ga- and most importantly Ko-Matoran.

For example, getting Jaa is an easy way to set up Nuju. This scribe who writes down translations from the Wall of Prophecy has a pair of effects that, if used with Kopeke already on the field, really just amount to a Nuju ready to bounce at least one card and a Spell/Trap stacked on top of the Deck (this one’s the prophecy part). Ko-Koro decks generally being heavy on Spells and especially Traps (because they cannot disrupt with monster effects) means you should usually have the necessary fodder, and the nasty Special Summon restriction on the monster you bring back from the GY is conveniently turned off the moment Nuju flips it face-down.

Going even further beyond, Matoro is a Normal Summon for later in the game and trades himself off for up to 2 Level 2 Matoran in your GY. In his function as Nuju’s translator, he is also able to dispel the confusion caused by the Turaga’s use of bird language on your side of the field, immediately unflipping your newly face-down monsters. This basically speeds you up by a turn, lets you immediately trigger (pseudo-)flip effects, and gives you material for maybe ending the game with a big boss monster while your opponent’s field is clear.

Toa Mata Kopaka

Effect MonsterLevel 6 | WATER Warrior | ATK 2000 / DEF 2500

To Tribute Summon this card face-up, you can Tribute a WATER or “Toa Mata” monster in your hand, except “Toa Mata Kopaka”, instead of a monster you control. If this card attacks, it is changed to Defense Position at the end of the Battle Phase. While this card is in face-up Defense Position, your opponent’s monsters cannot target monsters for attacks, except “Toa Mata Kopaka”. Once per turn, if another card(s) you control leaves the field by an opponent’s card effect: You can banish 1 card your opponent controls.

Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)

Great Kanohi Akaku

Equip Spell

If another “Kanohi” card becomes equipped to the equipped monster, destroy this card. If this card is sent to the GY: You can banish 1 monster from your GY; add 1 “Toa Mata Kopaka” from your Deck to your hand. You can only use this effect of “Great Kanohi Akaku” once per turn. While equipped to a “Toa” or “Makuta” monster you control, this card gains these effects.
●Your opponent must keep their hand revealed.
●Once per turn, if your opponent adds a Spell/Trap(s) to their hand (except during the Damage Step): You can banish that Spell/Trap(s) until the End Phase.

Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)

Finally, Kopaka is one of the major ways you can actively put pressure on your opponent amidst this stall-focused playstyle, and that is despite him technically being a mostly defensive card. The key point is that he can, to a degree, let you ignore Ko-Koro’s restriction on attacking, as he will change himself to defense at the end of the Battle Phase and proceed to redirect any attacks from your opponent’s side into his hefty 2500 DEF butt (incidentally, this marks the first actual stat change I’ve made in the BCOT overhaul – 2000/2150 was just a bit underwhelming). He also kind of indirectly protects your other cards (such as Ko-Koro itself) from removal effects by punishing any harm to those on his side with a non-targeting banish – this would turn off Ko-Koro’s protection and negation effects, but in the case where that’s the card that got removed, it doesn’t matter, right?

Protecting Ko-Koro is also the intent of the Kanohi Akaku, which uses its power of X-Ray vision to see through the opponent’s hand and can temporarily snipe out a freshly added Spell or Trap with expert precision. Since Spells in particular represent the most common form of generic S/T removal next to Extra Deck monsters that are neutered by Ko-Koro itself, this potentially takes those threats to your attempted lockdown out of the equation until you’ve had time to prepare for them.

Sample Deck

Ko-Koro forces you to forgo monster-based disruption if you want to use it as a proper floodgate, so in order to not get completely wrecked every time an opponent does manage to play through the village’s passive restrictions (or we just don’t draw it), the logical move seemed to be using lots of Traps to fill this hole. And when WATER and Traps are in the requirements, the answer probably lies in Paleozoics with a decent helping of Frogs.

https://www.duelingbook.com/deck?id=8852285

Starting from the boring parts, we have the classic Frog engine of Dupe Frog, Ronintoadin, and Swap Frog plus Paleozoics Canadia and Olenoides to get lots of Aqua Level 2s. Why only two Olenoides in the Main Deck and no Dinomischus? Because we don’t want to destroy or banish anything if we can help it, but also can’t justify skipping out on Spell/Trap removal entirely.

To make Nuju, we need WATER Warriors, and so we have the Ko-Matoran lineup of triple Kopeke, triple Jaa, and a single Matoro. Normal Summoning Kopeke and searching Jaa gives you Nuju with fodder to bounce at least one card, assuming we have access to even a single one of the Spells and Traps that make up more than half of the Deck (an especially good play is using Mata Nui to search Ko-Koro and then using the island still on the field to fuel Jaa’s effect). Matoro is a secondary search target to speed things up a bit once the engine is running, playing more than one would probably be justifiable as well. Our final WATER Warrior is Kopaka, but he’s more for edge cases and lethal pushes than for Nuju material.

The Spells are merely Ko-Koro itself plus its searcher Mata Nui, the Kanohi, and basic consistency stuff, so not much to say there. For non-Paleo Traps, I included Ice Dragon’s Prison as nontargeting removal (clashes with Ko-Koro, but sometimes you can’t avoid that – at least it’s an ice card) and Infinite Impermanence as just about the only major handtrap we can use without disabling the floodgate.

The Extra Deck is a mix of Links and Rank 2 Xyzs, most importantly Nuju and Toadally Awesome. Another inclusion to deal with untargetable stuff is Sky Cavalry Centaurea, and amusingly enough, using that sets you up perfectly for Zeus. Of course, neither of those are WATER, so once you do that you’re at least temporarily abandoning the usual Ko-Koro strategy. But hey, gotta have a Plan Z.

Funny things in the side deck include Gameciel and Sphere Mode Ra for going second, Demise of the Land and Metaverse to hit your opponent with the Ko-Koro floodgate as a surprise, Evenly Matched and Macro Cosmos because even though their effects make cards get banished it doesn’t count as cards being banished by your effects (’tis a very silly game), and Ice Barrier as another nontargeting removal option (also an ice card!).

Best of Test

Best of Test: Ko-Koro (v3.16.6)

This deck performed quite interestingly in testing. Not only did it have the highest winrate out of everything I’ve put through the structured test circuit so far (mostly because the AI is unable to play under Ko-Koro), its good and bad matchups were also quite different from usual. In particular, this was the only deck so far that won its match against the Dragoon AI (by simply never letting the boy come out), and also the only deck that lost the match against the Chain Burn AI (turns out going slow and protecting your field is a bad strategy against heaps of effect damage, and Ojama Tokens screw me over to a hilarious degree).

Conclusion

The central strategy of Ko-Koro is restricting yourself in order to slow down your opponent as well, and then using the fact that you’re better adapted to playing under these limitations to gradully approach a game-winning position. This is a very unusual playstyle with a lot of weaknesses, such as Ko-Koro doing almost nothing against already established boards (though this point was somewhat helped by unlimiting the effect negation), but between the additional support offered by powerful Traps and the AI’s sheer inability to counteract what you’re doing, it worked so well in testing that I kind of had a hard time justifying any buffs. As a result, the cards this time may be a bit undertuned if you wanted to use them against a human opponent with brain cells and all that, but that may not matter much when the main use case for EDOPro custom cards is just the AI.

As a final note, despite my doubts about the powerlevel, I must say I’m very happy with some other aspects of the design, in particular how “icy” it ended up being:

  • It accomodates some ice-related cards like the Penguins, Ice Dragon’s Prison, and Ice Barrier really well.
  • The strategy of going first and preventing battle stands in perfect contrast to Ta-Koro, were you want to go second and battle as much as possible.
  • The crucial need to accurately judge when you can start pushing for victory and turn off Ko-Koro without screwing yourself mirrors the Ko-Matoran’s focus on knowledge and foresight.
  • The deck melts against burn like an ice cube in the sun.

Theme Guide: Po-Koro (BCOT)

Po-Koro, Village of Stone

Field Spell

If a monster(s) you control would be destroyed by battle or card effect, you can banish 1 Rock monster you control instead of destroying 1 of those monsters. If you Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, or Link Summon using an EARTH monster as material: You can banish 1 EARTH Warrior monster from your GY; you cannot conduct the same type of Summon for the rest of this turn, also Special Summon “Sculpture Tokens” (Rock/EARTH/Level 1/ATK 0/DEF 0) equal to the number of EARTH monsters used as material. You can only use this effect of “Po-Koro, Village of Stone” once per turn.

Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)

Among the villages on Mata Nui, I’d say Po-Koro is pretty high up there in terms of memorable traits. There’s the sculptures made by the resident carvers, the busy trading going on at the bazaar, the entire sport of Koli, and of course that little plague it suffered under in MNOG. For my particular depiction of the Village of Stone, I chose to focus on the first two of these: Trading and carving. (Koli is something I plan to study in more detail when it transforms into Kolhii later down the line, since it gets much more focus in the story then, and the plague is a topic for BCOR.)

Let’s begin dissecting from the second effect, since that will usually be the first you use. This one represents carving, and what it does is, like most Koro stuff, mainly inspired by the corresponding MNOG2 principle. In Po-Koro’s case, that means “Creation”. My first association with this in game terms has alway been the various Extra Deck summons (literally putting your monsters together to CREATE a new one), but upon further reflection I realized that there is one mechanic that creates stuff more literally than any other, and that is Tokens – those straight up don’t exist in any form until an effect says they do. So by combining those two ideas, I ended up with an effect that summons Tokens whenever you Special Summon from the Extra Deck.

“But isn’t that basically just Linkross for every summoning method?”, you might ask, and you wouldn’t be exactly wrong. However, there are some extra hoops to jump through here that hopefully fix the glaring balance issues with the concept. Most trivially, this card is in the Main and not the Extra Deck, so it’s already less consistently accessible by default. Then there are also two points that prevent using it too generically: You need to banish an EARTH Warrior (the “sculptor”) from the GY as cost, and you only get Tokens (the “sculptures”) up to the number of EARTH materials (the “raw materials”) in the summon. Note especially the banishing, which is meant to directly discourage mixing the Po-Koro strategy with Onu-Koro (where the resource loop relies on not getting your monsters banished). They both revolve around the EARTH attribute since Stone doesn’t exist separately in Yugioh, so I made sure to strongly distinguish them by playstyles instead. The final restriction meant to prevent Linkross-tier combos even in those decks that can make Po-Koro work is that whichever summoning method you use to trigger it becomes entirely locked for the rest of the turn (as opposed to just restricting how the Tokens are used). So the moment you make your Tokens, you need to be ready to pivot to something else. In MNOG2 terms, this sensitive issue of timing matches up quite well to the Kolhii skill of Strategy that is derived from Creation. I was quite cautious making this effect since it’s so close to a recently banned card, and initially it was even more restricted, but test runs suggest the current level of power should be fine without causing any notable problems. As usual, feel free to prove me wrong.

The secondary effect (which is listed first because that seems to be the convention for continuous vs activated effects) allows you to save your monsters from destruction by “trading” fancy Rocks, as they do on the Po-Koro bazaar. This is possibly not the best trade since you have to go as far as banishing a monster to protect another, but the Tokens made by the other effect are conveniently Rocks and in their case banishing is no different from destroying, so the idea is to mainly use those. One pesky detail I only noticed after implementing the effect is that it does not protect from full boardwipes because you can’t banish a card already marked for destruction as replacement, but it’s still fairly handy regardless.

If you compare to the other Koro field spells, you might notice that this one is much less xenophobic: You need to play EARTH monsters, including at least one EARTH Warrior, to make it work, but it doesn’t punish you for playing anything else. This is because, in the name of creation and creativity, I wanted to leave it possible to put whatever you want into the Extra Deck, as long as you’re using at least two different summoning methods.

Those were some long-ass design notes, but to summarize and boil the strategy down to its essence: The idea of a Po-Koro deck is simply to spam as much as possible from the Extra Deck, building a board while combining at least two different summoning methods, and any Tokens left at the end of that can act as additional protection.

As usual, the village itself is only part of the equation here, so on to the rest. For example, what could you summon from the Extra Deck to make especially good use of Po-Koro’s effect?

Turaga Onewa

Link Effect MonsterLink-2 [↙ ↘] | EARTH Spellcaster | ATK 1450

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)

Noble Kanohi Komau

Equip Spell

If another “Kanohi” card becomes equipped to the equipped monster, destroy this card. If the equipped monster is a “Turaga”, “Toa”, or “Makuta” monster and your opponent controls 2 or more monsters, the monster(s) your opponent controls with the lowest ATK cannot activate its effects. If this card is in your GY: You can Tribute 1 monster, then target 1 “Turaga Onewa” in your GY; Special Summon it and equip it with this card. You can only use this effect of “Noble Kanohi Komau” once per turn.

Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)🎉

Turaga Onewa is meant to be one answer to this question. On having an EARTH monster summoned next to his arrow, he will immediately bring back a banished EARTH Warrior, which transforms the cost to summon Tokens into one more monster on the field. Of course, the summoning restriction means you can’t use all this field presence to just continue Link Summoning, so you’ll need to make sure you have a Tuner or something to really benefit here. One thing I considered doing for a bit was letting Onewa turn the monster he brings back into a Tuner, but what bothered me there was that it would potentially allow you to just use the same Gouki-based deck I had for Onu-Koro and still reliably fulfill the requirement of two Extra Deck summoning methods. Kind of runs counter to the separation I’m trying to achieve, although it would technically be a distinct strategy even if it uses the same cards as its vehicle.

Since you can’t always expect to draw Po-Koro and do the setup that way, Onewa’s first effect provides another way to banish stuff, and comes with a lore gimmick to its math representing his famous ability to resolve disputes fairly. On top of the perfectly neutral action of putting a monster from the GY back into the hand and banishing a card from the hand, it gives a draw to only the player who is currently behind in advantage, so it works out to +1 if that’s you and -1 if it’s your opponent (and neutral in every other case). Fair.

The Kanohi Komau has mind control as its power, and with the original version back in 2014, I was quick to make the obvious association and write an effect that takes control of an opponent’s monster. In hindsight, that’s a bit above the intended powerlevel of Noble Kanohi, so the redesign instead turns it into a passive effect of using mind control to “stun” the weakest enemy (in terms of ATK, because unfortunately there isn’t a willpower stat that could be used for perfect accuracy). This fits well with the Huna and Rau as an effect that just inconveniences the opponent a bit and forces them to play around it, and for Po-Koro’s particular strategy of building a board with Extra Deck monsters, it makes a reasonable addition to the usual negates and disruptions you want to set up. Tributing a Sculpture Token to revive Onewa together with the Komau is something that happened semi-frequently during testing.

One noteworthy aspect of the way Onewa brings back banished monsters is that they are free to use their effects, so we can gain further advantage by using targets with beneficial effects on Special Summon. This is the niche our first Po-Matoran plays into.

C.C. Matoran Hafu

Effect MonsterLevel 2 | EARTH Warrior | ATK 700 / DEF 400

If this card is Special Summoned: You can Special Summon 1 Level 2 Warrior monster from your hand or GY, but negate its effects, also banish it when it leaves the field. You can only use this effect of “C.C. Matoran Hafu” once per turn. A monster that was Special Summoned from the Extra Deck using this card as material gains this effect.
●This card’s name is also treated as “C.C. Matoran Hafu”.

Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)

Both of Hafu’s effects are essentially retained from his original incarnation, with a bit of adjustment. Being the master carver, he’s fully meant to facilitate more Extra Deck summoning and brings back another Level 2 Warrior (could be another Matoran, or a generic Tuner like Junk Anchor to enable Synchros) when Special Summoned. His other ability is crafting “Hafu originals” in his own likeness, meaning whatever uses him as material inherits his name. This mainly has applications in a dedicated “C.C. Matoran” strategy, where members of the archetype get a range of neat benefits. Here, it’s really just a cute gimmick that barely comes up.

The other thing about Onewa is that you need to Special Summon an EARTH monster to the correct zone so he triggers, which is also something the villagers can assist with.

Matoran Trader Ahkmou

Effect MonsterLevel 2 | EARTH Warrior | ATK 400 / DEF 600

During your Main Phase: You can Special Summon this card from your hand to your opponent’s field, and if you do, Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower “Matoran” monster from your hand. You can only use this effect of “Matoran Trader Ahkmou” once per turn. If you activate a monster effect, except “Matoran Trader Ahkmou”: Give control of this card to your opponent.

Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)

Matoran Champion Huki

Effect MonsterLevel 2 | EARTH Warrior | ATK 800 / DEF 300

If your opponent controls a monster, you can Special Summon this card (from your hand) in Attack Position to your zone in a column with no monsters. You can only Special Summon “Matoran Champion Huki” once per turn this way. Once per turn: You can target 1 face-up monster your opponent controls in the same column as a “Matoran” monster you control; until the end of this turn, this card gains ATK equal to that target’s current ATK, but it cannot attack directly.

Bionicle: Challenge of the Rahi (v3.20.4)

Ahkmou, the perfectly loyal and honest businessman who is definitely not in cahoots with evil or anything, puts himself on the opponent’s field from your hand to allow you a free Special Summon of a Matoran. Not only does this offer an additional way to start and extend combos, it also protects you from handtraps that require an empty field, which is further enhanced by his second effect to betray his current controller whenever they activate another monster effect (including pretty much all other handtraps). Just two things to note about this: It’s a trigger effect and thus won’t happen until after the chain with the monster effect has resolved, and it’s not once per turn in any way, so he might just betray you back right after joining your side.

Koli champion Huki is a very easy Special Summon going second, placing himself precisely in front of any open spots in your opponent’s lineup – ideally one of the two zones Onewa points to. Even going first, you can actually set up his Special Summon with Ahkmou, so that’s potentially neat. Furthermore, as a highly competitive pro athlete, he will rise to any challenge directly facing him or his fellow Matoran, gaining enough ATK to hit over any monster in the same column.

If you’re familiar with the structure of these Koro strategies, you already know that the last piece of the puzzle is the village’s Toa, but in the case of such an Extra Deck focused theme, a Main Deck boss is a bit of an odd fit. Still, I feel like I managed to give him an effect that provides a fair level of utility.

Toa Mata Pohatu

Effect MonsterLevel 6 | EARTH Warrior | ATK 2400 / DEF 1700

To Tribute Summon this card face-up, you can Tribute an EARTH or “Toa Mata” monster in your hand, except “Toa Mata Pohatu”, instead of a monster you control. Once per turn, if a monster(s) is Special Summoned from the Extra Deck, or a monster Special Summoned from the Extra Deck activates its effect: You can target 1 Spell/Trap on the field; destroy it, also, if you control a Rock monster, you can destroy 1 additional Spell/Trap on the field.

Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)

Great Kanohi Kakama

Equip Spell

If another “Kanohi” card becomes equipped to the equipped monster, destroy this card. If the equipped monster is a “Toa” or “Makuta” monster, it can attack all monsters your opponent controls, once each. If this card is sent to the GY: You can banish 1 monster from your GY; add 1 “Toa Mata Pohatu” from your Deck to your hand. You can only use this effect of “Great Kanohi Kakama” once per turn.

Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)

What Pohatu brings to the table is Spell/Trap removal, and to match Po-Koro, he does it whenever monsters are Special Summoned from the Extra Deck. Furthermore, since we don’t want him to be useless after you have already built your board, he has a secondary trigger off the effect activations of Extra Deck monsters. Do note, however, that this is a trigger effect and not a quick effect, meaning it will activate on a separate chain only after the triggering effect has resolved.

The mental image behind this S/T destruction is destroying stuff by kicking a rock at it, and so it’s fitting to have a bonus effect if you actually happen to have a Rock monster (e.g. a Sculpture Token or a Suva). I went with the ricochet idea here, which means you get an additional (non-targeting) S/T destruction in that case. Seeing how the law of creative heroic thinking permits using the environment to harm enemies indirectly, letting the second destruction affect monsters as well may be a viable option, though in that case it would probably be fair to also destroy your Rock monster as a downside.

Finally, the Kanohi Kakama, Great Mask of Speed, lets the equipped monster move fast enough to attack everything in a single Battle Phase, essentially letting you use Pohatu to clear out all the monsters after using his effect to clear up to 2 backrow. This is a scenario that occured exactly 0 times during the test circuit, but hey, theoretically it sounds useful.

Sample Deck

I couldn’t think of any existing EARTH Warrior archetype that focuses mainly on Extra Deck spam while also adhering to the rule of using 2+ summoning methods, so instead of using such a thing as a starting point I just had to jam some appropriate enginges together with Po-Matoran and hope it does what I want. Because of this, the sample deck explanation is a bit more elaborate than usual here.

https://www.duelingbook.com/deck?id=7787031

The route I took to fulfill the 2 summoning method requirement was Link + Synchro, since they’re much easier to pull off than Fusion and immediately put banishable monsters into the GY unlike Xyz. In order to get access to the necessary Tuners, I picked Junk monsters as the EARTH Warrior core: Forward as a free Special Summon to start making Onewa, Anchor as a Tuner that also happens to be a Level 2 Warrior for Hafu, Converter as another Level 2 Warrior who does both searching and setup for Synchron (who is unfortunately not EARTH, but still good), and Servant as a free Special Summon whenever I have any of the others out. For the actual Matoran, we have just one Hafu (he only triggers on Special Summon, so having him in the hand isn’t the greatest), three Taipu because free Special Summon going first (not a Po-Matoran, but since the Chronicler’s Company are meant to work together, I figured there was no way to avoid synergy through the shared attribute in this case), three Ahkmou for the same reason, and two Huki since he’s mainly good going second. Thanks to Taipu’s presence, Hafu’s name change actually matters occasionally, by still letting you attack with some of your monsters from the Extra Deck after you summoned Taipu. The remaining EARTH Warriors are one Super Agent as an unreliable Special Summon and potential Spell/Trap remover, and Pohatu as your main Spell/Trap remover, Kakama search target, and Suva enabler.

Additional Tuners to get us consistent Synchro access are Adamancipator Researcher, whose Special Summon from the hand is enabled by Po-Koro’s Tokens, and Plaguespreader Zombie because this deck has a few garnets we’d like to put back if we draw them.

The Spells can be quickly summarized as Kanohi, searchers, and ways to Special Summon to Onewa’s zone (most interestingly Word Legacy Succession, which does exactly that). And of course, we have the Dragoon package I put in to celebrate the complete freedom of Extra Deck choices and then proceeded to regret immensely because it’s so powerful and easy to make that it ends up distracting from the actual point of the Deck. Which is why I ended up intentionally siding it out for the rest of the match every time I won a duel during testing, even when I didn’t actually use it.

The Extra Deck could probably be filled a million different ways, but what I settled on after trying a lot of variations is:

  • Onewa to get free monsters.
  • Amaja-Nui to get additional Tokens by linking off Onewa.
  • Isolde to trigger the Kakama’s search and to get Hafu or Junk Anchor (either as followup to Onewa or as an alternative if you don’t have the setup to trigger him).
  • Halquifibrax because it has just as much synergy with Po-Koro as it did with Linkross.
  • Desert Locusts to summon via Halq for a discard while potentially triggering Onewa.
  • Link Spider because it can be made with a single Sculpture Token.
  • Avramax as a big dude you can make e.g. with Onewa and Isolde.
  • Herald of the Arc Light as an easy banishing floodgate and negate.
  • Jiujiu as an indestructible removal tool.
  • Marcher and Integrator so you can get to Jiujiu from Researcher and two Sculpture Tokens while drawing in the process.
  • Dragite as a negate and removal tool.
  • Quandax to make Dragite while getting a WATER into the GY so the negate is turned on.
  • Verte Anaconda plus Dragoon in case you mess up the actual combo but feel like winning anyway.

Finally, the side deck is just a pile of EARTH staples and cards that are really good in some situations, plus options to fill the Extra Deck slots left open when removing the Dragoon stuff (Accesscode as an alternate boss, Geonator Transverser as an alternate Link you can make with random monsters).

To see all this in action, continue right on.

Best of Test

Best of Test: Po-Koro (v3.15.5)

Conclusion

Po-Koro decks encourage Special Summoning from the Extra Deck and excel at providing a bunch of material to do so. However, lacking dedicated boss monsters of its own and having some tricky requirements and restrictions on the Field Spell, the success of the strategy is very much dependent on what other cards you combine it with, perhaps more so than any of the other villages. Also, the need to have cards to both make Onewa in the Extra Monster Zone and trigger him with an additional Special Summon can be quite the hurdle to consistency.

Theme Guide: (Exo-)Toa (BBTS)

After collecting all types of Krana and descending into the depths of the Bohrok Nest to stop the swarms for good, the Toa Mata came across a new power to aid them in this quest, sealed deep beneath the earth. Suits of armor equipped with powerful weaponry, at the cost of inhibiting their innate elemental powers.

The Exo-Toa, like the Boxor used by the Matoran, is represented by a Union Monster, but like the Toa, it’s Level 6, so getting it on the field where it can do all the Union stuff is the first challenge. The built-in solution is being able to Special Summon itself if all monsters you control are Normal Summoned Toa, though in hindsight it probably wouldn’t be broken to drop the “all monsters” part. Anyway, equipping it gives an enormous boost of 2000 ATK, but comes with two downsides. First, it negates the monster’s effects (i.e., the “elemental powers”), and second, it robs the Toa of their individuality by replacing their name with “Exo-Toa”. Which, due to the little clause at the start of the card text that I’m pretty sure has never actually been used in history (because why would it?), means the are not technically “Toa” monsters anymore and thus lose access to archetypal support cards. This, unfortunately, includes the Kanohi (even in their most recent and well thought out form as of the time of this writing), which canonically shouldn’t be affected by the armor. Might have to come up with something to fix that.

As if this wall of text wasn’t enough, the Exo-Toa has a final consistency-boosting effect to make sure it’s capable of carrying the frankly kind of useless original Toa Mata designs to playability: After going to the GY, it Sets Exo Armaments from the Deck during the End Phase. And once the next turn starts, you can immediately use this Trap Card to bring out a Toa Mata from your hand and equip it with an Exo-Toa from Deck or GY, completing the package in one shot. This also conveniently makes it so the effect negation is actually relevant on the old versions of the Toa Mata who only had on-summon effects, since this way the negation is already active when that effect tries to resolve.

Once in the GY, the Trap turns into what it really takes its inspiration from, namely the array of equipment found on an Exo-Toa. The “boxing claw” works similar to the Boxor (just because of the name) and prevents your opponent from using effects while an Exo-Toa (which could be the Union Monster itself or a Toa that has been equipped and renamed) battles. The armor simply grants protection as you would expect it to. And the electro rocket flies in a straight line to destroy something in the same column as an Exo-Toa, which can be two columns with one copy if you set up the zones correctly when equipping (one from the equip card, one from the equipped monster). Do note that all of these are Quick Effects due to this being a Trap Card.

So the Exo-Toa has many powerful features, but in the story, they were not enough to overcome the combined power of the Bahrag. And I did indeed design the cards specifically so nothing they do can actually out the Bahrag when paired up with both their protection effects online. Because that requires an ability that can only be used when the Toa shed the armor and return to their own elemental powers.

The Toa Seal is the ultimate finishing move achieved when six Toa of different elements combine their powers, imprisoning whatever is unfortunate enough to be in the middle in an inescapable mass of crystalline Protodermis. Accordingly, this card requires six Toa to activate, but due to Yugioh’s Attribute lineup not quite containing the boatload of elements Bionicle has, we will settle for different names. And since getting 6 monsters on the field is only technically possible, you may also pick from those in your hand and GY, though those will be banished on resolution. The result is a non-targeting mass banishing of up to 6 cards, which easily gets past the mutual protection of the Bahrag queens and wipes out pretty much everything else while it’s at it. The number of cards banished from the hand is limited by the number of Normal Summoned Toa participating in the seal, because just banishing 6 from the hand specifically sounded a bit too broken even with these difficult requirements.

The final new card on the Toa’s side is The End of the Swarm, and it’s a … kinda weird one. Assuming you have a Toa, it grants you the choice between two effects relating to Level 8 or higher monsters (?). One temporarily banishes (??) one of those to recover a Continuous Spell (???) from the GY. The other locks a number of your opponent’s monsters depending on your Level 8+ count into face-down Defense Position and basically makes your monsters go UCT on them, except continuous.

Now I can reveal that the second of these effects represents the deactivation and subsequent cleanup of the Bohrok, referenced in the name of the card. Face-down is their sleeping state, so they get switched into that, and the rest is mostly to bypass their Flip effects because this would be kind of self-defeating otherwise. As for what is going on with these Level 8 or higher monsters, Continuous Spells, and the entire first effect, I will remain quiet. Just enjoy the foreshadowing and wait for the answer to your questions to one day rock your universe (okay, that might be overstating it a bit).

Conclusion

While the Toa Mata are currently undergoing a total redesign in order to make them playable on their own, this was actually one of my first attempts to fix those old designs by introducing a small, consistent combo that they could use in the likely event that Plan A (just somehow summoning a lot of Toa) didn’t work out. It provides a 4k+ ATK beater who, with the Exo Armaments correctly set up in the GY, has access to either an effect lockdown during battle, protection against both destruction and targeting, and a limited Quick Effect destruction. Nothing crazy, but at least good enough to actually start getting somewhere in most games.

Once the BCOT overhaul is done and the Toa Mata are fully updated with a more competent strategy, these cards may have to be adjusted for that. But in the meantime, you can find a sample deck using both them and the old Toa in the BBTS release.

Theme Guide: Matoran (Boxor) (BBTS)

In chronicling the struggle between Matoran and Bohrok, the BBTS expansion obviously also needs to show some stuff on the Matoran side. That mainly means their famous anti-Bohrok invention, but let’s first look at some new cards unrelated to that.

Kotu, serving as the left hand of Turaga Nokama and a Rahi Tender, gets her only real notable bit of screentime in this part of the story, so I took the opportunity to include her. She has the skills to calm aggressive beasts, lowering their ATK, and on Normal Summon can return a monster to the hand in such a way that it’s mainly beneficial in the specific case where your opponent stole one of yours (or you’re just playing Kaijus).

The Chronicler’s Courage depicts Chronicler Takua’s heroic last stand against the swarms invading Ga-Koro, which really just stalled them for that brief moment before the Toa defated the Bahrag. Accordingly, this card simply stalls against battle by bringing out small Warriors to guard against attacks and granting them some protection. Hey, it could potentially buy you a turn.

And now for the main event.

In the village of Onu-Koro lives Nuparu, a Matoran with a passion for machinery. Though this sometimes leads him to neglecting other work such as digging (or attacking, to explain one of the card’s effects already), his time to shine comes when he is trapped in a cave after the Gahlok invade Onu-Koro. There, he and his fellow Matoran discover an Empty Bohrok Shell, the mechanical hull of one of the attackers that has lost its Krana. Nuparu begins tinkering, and soon the machine is remodeled into a new weapon that would shift the power balance between Matoran and Bohrok: The Boxor.

Playing these cards, you too can recreate this grand tale. The Empty Bohrok Shell places itself directly into your GY in order to search any EARTH Matoran, which includes of course Nuparu, but also the Boxor due to its full name. Then, with Nuparu on the field and a Boxor in your hand, you can activate Nuparu’s effect, banish the Shell from the GY, bring out the Boxor, and use its Union ability to equip to a Matoran of your choice. And now you are ready to overcome any Bohrok in battle and even halt the march of the swarms by denying them their monster effects that would call more of them from the Deck. As a bonus, banishing the Shell can unleash some vestiges of the Bohrok’s destructive power (though not during the same turn you used it for searching), and if the Boxor-equipped Matoran is not Nuparu himself, Nuparu can grant that 2000 ATK beater a second attack at the low cost of not attacking with his own measly 600 (though not during the turn he summoned the Boxor).

Demo

Sample duel ft. Bohrok AI from development version (some cards outdated)

Conclusion

These cards still predate the dedicated Koro playstyle just like the ones in BCOR, but in this case that doesn’t matter as much because at least the Boxor series forms its own little combo independent from other strategies. Adding them to a Matoran deck of any kind will significantly increase its power in the Battle Phase, which is a pretty good niche to cover for an archetype of Level 2 monsters with (almost) only three-digit ATK values.

The BBTS release includes a sample Boxor deck, which uses Matoran from BCOR (also included in the link) together with the new cards.

Theme Guide: Rahi (BBTS)

The Bohrok invasion also introduced some new Rahi into the story, because the designers came up with a bunch of combiners and had nothing better to do with them. This means the Rahi archetype experiences a bit of growth in this expansion.

For the Level 4 group (Remember: Special Summon themselves from the Pendulum Zone, grant effects when used as Synchro Material), there are two new additions.

The Waikiru is a creature with two sides in multiple ways: Slow on land but quick in the water, and docile at rest but aggressive when threatened. It changes much like monsters change their battle positions, so that’s the theme for this Rahi’s effects. A Synchro monster summoned with it gains a position-changing Quick Effect, and in the Pendulum Zone it grants appropriate buffs to your monsters when their battle position changes.

The Ghekula, natural enemy of the Bog Snake, is entirely built to be a counter to that exact Rahi from BCOR (which had effect damage as its gimmick), granting a Synchro Monster the ability to effectively redirect effect damage you take to your opponent. And if you don’t want to wait for your opponent to damage you, the Pendulum Effect provides a good source of damage as well.

A battle between Ghekula and Bog Snake, captured in the wild (little known fact: swamps have wooden floors)

The Level 3s with the banish/GY triggers get 3 new members.

The Infernavika is a small bird that protects itself from predators by hiding among streams of lava, and thus has a Pendulum Effect that can cause battles to take place in an environment hostile to all but FIRE monsters. The attribute theming continues with its effect when sent to the GY, which complements the Daikau, Ussal, and Kewa from BCOR by reviving a FIRE monster, and when banished, it can deftly escape to the Extra Deck while banishing the top card of your Deck in its place.

Serving as a steed to Matoran in the battle against the Bohrok swarms, the Keras helps out your small monsters with both its Pendulum Effect (aiding them in battle for an ATK boost) and its GY effect (carrying them across difficult terrain to protect against effects). The remaining effect that triggers when banished is anti-Bohrok rather than pro-Matoran, but still derives from the same idea.

Perhaps the most notable addition is the Hapaka, a Rahi used to safeguard flocks of other Rahi. Accordingly, its Pendulum Effect boosts the DEF of Rahi and prevents their destruction, but the more interesting part is the GY effect, or lack thereof. Instead, it has a Special Summoning procedure from hand or GY by “guarding” another small Rahi. And when banished, including as a result of its own summoning condition, it will return “stray” (banished) Rahi to the “herd” (GY).

Finally, there are two new Level 2 Tuners, both of them coincidentally birds.

The Pokawi disorient enemies by moving quickly in great numbers, so its effect weakens your opponent’s monsters in proportion to how many Rahi you have gathered up in the banished “zone”. Mata Nui Fishing Birds have a habit of swooping in to annoy larger predators and then escaping again, which I translated into a “swoopy” (if that makes sense) temporary banishment effect that includes an extra reward if used against large monsters.

Conclusion

These new cards mostly focus on fitting the available tidbits of lore on these Rahi into the established frameworks of the archetype from BCOR, so while they do introduce some new gimmicks and options, I’m pretty sure there isn’t any real change in terms of the overall playstyle. The possible exception is the Hapaka, which actually does break with the framework a bit and introduces an entirely new way to get a Level 3 Rahi on the field. But given the myriad of unpredictable deckbuilding options Rahi have in their current wonky state of design, it probably isn’t even feasible for me to conduct enough tests to confidently confirm or deny this assessment.

Anyway, the BBTS release includes not only a sample deck featuring all of the new Rahi, but also decks built entirely around the Waikiru’s and Ghekula’s respective gimmicks. They also require cards from BCOR, so be sure to use the complete version linked above rather than just the standalone BBTS expansion.

Theme Guide: Bahrag (BBTS)

At the top of the Bohrok swarms stand the Bahrag, ancient twin queens utterly dedicated to carrying out their one and only mission. As the final bosses of the 2002 storyline, it is only appropriate that they are also the ultimate boss monsters of the Bohrok archetype.

Since I like to make pairs into Pendulum Monsters, that’s what they are, and also Synchros to complement the Fusion Bohrok Kaita and the Xyz [REDACTED]. Their Pendulum Effects attempt to alter the way Bohrok function in order to let them take better advantage of Pendulum Summons: Cahdok lets you put a Bohrok into face-down Defense Position when it’s Summoned face-up, with added protection to make sure you’ll get to the Flip effect. Gahdok replicates the recursion ability of Pendulum Monsters by returning a Bohrok that gets sent from the field to the GY to your hand.

In the Monster Zone, their shared gimmick is that they gain and grant each other protection if you control the other Bahrag anywhere on the field (including as a Pendulum Scale!), with Cahdok protecting from effects and Gahdok protecting from battle. Both of them also place themselves in the Pendulum Zone if they are face-up during your Standby Phase – their shadowy presence behind the Bohrok swarms cannot be easily eliminated, and if you successfully summon them once you will have access to them for the rest of the Duel.

Finally, each queen has the ability to Special Summon certain members of the swarm (the Level 2 Bohrok Va for Cahdok, the Level 4 Bohrok for Gahdok) from the GY if it is the only face-up monster you control. This has a lot of situational utility since there are no restrictions on attacks or effects for the Summoned monster, but the main intent actually is simply to help assemble the materials for the other Bahrag (usually you need 1 Bohrok Va + 2 Bohrok).

A potentially simpler, if temporary, way to get to the Bahrag is Queens’ Illusion, a Trap Card based on, well, the queens’ ability to generate illusions. By shuffling the materials from hand, field, or GY into the Deck, it places an “illusory” Bahrag in the Pendulum Zone and imposes attack restrictions based on its stats. The illusion ends after a turn, but while it is active you can freely use the Pendulum Effect and potentially enable another Bahrag’s protection with the added name.

And once you do get the Bahrag out, is there anything you can do other than sitting on them and throwing Bohrok at your opponent? Well yes, there’s a card specificall to ensure that all shall be …

Representing the final goal of the Bahrag and their Bohrok swarms, As It Was in the Before-Time is the ultimate payoff to assembling the pair. By activating this Quick-Play Spell and returning both of the Bahrag (either as monsters or as Pendulum Scales) to the Extra Deck, you can send everything on the field except the swarms themselves to the GY, completing the great mission of cleaning it all. Somehow I feel like that sounded more impressive before Konami made Zeus, but whatever. To make the card not completely useless outside the absolute best case scenario, it can also be used as a draw spell at the cost of destroying a number of Bahrag cards equal to how much you want to draw (again, these can be monsters or just Pendulum Scales). With the Bahrag automatically returning from the Extra Deck each Standby Phase, this is usually a pretty good trade.

Conclusion

Sucessfully setting up the Bahrag provides significant lasting benefits to a Bohrok strategy, and on top of that they simply serve as nice big boss monsters to go into. This makes them into a package that can be included both as just an additional option and as the main win condition.

The BBTS release provides examples of the former approach in any of the multiple Bohrok decks, and of the latter in the Bahrag deck specifically.

Theme Guide: Krana (BBTS)

The eight types of Krana are sentient, organic beings that provide the guiding intelligence as well as a set of special powers to the Bohrok swarms, so the BBTS expansion implements them as monsters that allow Bohrok access to some effects that are generally a bit more clever than what the archetype otherwise does. Each Krana essentially has two effects: One that activates in the hand and is different for each monster while following one of two templates, and another that can only be one of two options, each of which is shared by half the Krana.

Let’s just use those second effects to segment the Krana in the following explanation and cover the rest as we go.

Based off the idea that Bohrok are really just robot suits piloted by the Krana inside them, these monsters have the ability to return themselves from the field to the hand to get any of the Level 4 Bohrok directly from the Deck. This is not something you want to rely on unless you need to since it only works during your Main Phase 1 and then ends the turn, but having the option at least avoids total bricks when playing a lot of Krana.

Regarding the first effect, the Krana Yo and Krana Ca follow the template of equipping themselves to a Level 4 or higher Bohrok from the hand in order to grant some continuous benefit. The Yo, holding the power to let its Bohrok dig through most substances, allows the equipped monster to attack directly. The Ca with its shielding powers protects all of your Bohrok from battle, but only once per turn for each.

Krana Xa and Krana Ja feature the alternative effect template, which means you can activate them by sending them directly from the hand to the GY at a certain timing. With the Xa, which are mainly in charge of formulating the more complex strategies of the plans, you can counteract negations or other responses to your Bohrok effects. It can be activated in any chain that has a Bohrok monster’s effect anywhere but as the last link and will negate the effects of all non-Bohrok cards on the field that appear in this chain. This lasts all the way to the end of the turn, so you might be able to disable something vital using this if you can just bait an activation out of it first. Another mass effect negation option is provided by the Krana Ja, which gives the swarms advance warning of known threats and thus renders everything that is visible on your opponent’s field useless during the following turn. This effect can be activated at any time as long as you control a face-up Bohrok, so you’d probably want to use it during the End Phase for maximum effect.

The other group of Krana are those that can banish themselves from the GY to steal a monster destroyed by a Bohrok from your opponent’s GY, controlling their enemies to make them part of the swarm. The monsters are Special Summoned in face-down Defense Position for thematic reasons and there’s a restriction on it that effectively prevents you from doing it more than once per turn, but even with that it’s obviously a damn strong move.

The equipping Krana among these are the Krana Za and Krana Su. The squad leader-type Za allow Bohrok to communicate and coordinate telepathically, which in this case is used to protect the equipped monster via strategic retreats of your other monsters (including face-down ones) while also keeping up the card supply. The Su is the caveman among the Krana, merely granting a stat boost, but that is very versatile in its simplicity, especially considering the equipping is a Quick Effect.

The pure hand effects here belong to Krana Vu and Krana Bo. The Vu makes Bohrok capable of flight, so it can be used to dodge targeting effects and even goes as far as negating and destroying the card in question to really make your opponents think twice about targeting your Bohrok with anything. The Bo can be triggered in response to your Bohrok cleaning up any card with their removal effects, using its night vision capabilites to track down further copies of the same card hiding in the darkness of your opponent’s hand and get rid of them for good.

On the topic of Krana that can steal your opponent’s monsters, we should take another look at Bohrok Confrontation, which was already covered in the main Bohrok article. What it does is send a Krana from your Deck to the GY to boost a Bohrok’s ATK/DEF, and knowing what we do about Krana now, the idea is obviously to have a Bohrok run over a monster in battle and then immediately steal it with the Krana.

There are other cards that further expand on the idea of Krana mind control. The following four monsters, for which I like to use the umbrella term “Servants of the Swarm”, represent the unwilling victims of this power.

Bohrok Servant is the generic standin for arbitrary beings under the control of a Krana. Its purpose is basically to make immediate use of the face-down monsters you get from the stealing effect, by contact fusing them (remember, that works when face-down) with a Krana from pretty much anywhere, banishing both and giving you a monster that at least copies the stats of whatever you stole.

The remaining Servants of the Swarm are a bit more specific, each of them being based on one particular inhabitant of Le-Koro that was possessed by a Krana during the takeover of that village. They generally work by sending a Krana from the Deck to the GY to neutralize an opponent’s monster and set up a situation where you can easily steal it, though the way in which they do so differs greatly.

Matoran of the Swarm counters Xyz Monsters by attaching to them as a material, which locks their effects and makes their ATK/DEF become 0 during battle with a Bohrok. It can also attach itself from the GY to your Xyz Monsters that are flipped face-up, obviously so a stolen Xyz can actually have material.

Turaga of the Swarm interferes with Synchro Summons in a particularly funny way, inserting itself on the opponent’s field in place of a Tuner and immediately forcing a Synchro Summon. When used as material, it gives you control of the Summoned monster for a turn and permanently makes it so its ATK/DEF become 0 when battling a Bohrok. This approach comes from the fact that Turaga were originally Tuners, so now that the BCOT remake is changing them to Link Monsters this card might be due for a redesign sooner or later as well.

Toa of the Swarm is the simplest of these, since it just Tributes over an opponent’s high-level monster and then surrenders itself willingly by making its ATK/DEF 0 when battling a Bohrok. The Level restriction was already iffy to begin with and is even more so when considering the prevalence of Link Monsters, so I might eventually tweak that to something like “2000 or more ATK”.

Finally ,we have a funny little card that simultaneously supports and counters Bohrok/Krana decks. Krana Pit lets you protect a card from destruction each turn by banishing a Krana monster from the GY instead, but since this works on both GYs you can just as well use it if your opponent is the one playing Krana. Similarly, it allows recovering a banished monster when there are 2 or more Krana banished, without specifying whose Krana they must be.

Conclusion

Krana add quite a few sophisticated effects to the Bohrok toolbox, giving you interesting options to interact with your opponent beyond just razing their field to the ground. The ability to steal a destroyed monster makes the Bohrok’s effects and attacks a bit more threatening than they already were, and with the Servants of the Swarm can itself be made into a central strategic element of your deck.

A selection of Krana can be found sprinkled throughout the sample Bohrok decks in the BBTS release, while the Servants of the Swarm usually appear as Side Deck options.

Theme Guide: Bohrok Va (BBTS)

The Bohrok Va are the secondary monsters of the Bohrok archetype, lending different kinds of support to the primary Level 4 Flip Monsters. They themselves all come in the form of Level 2 Tuners with the ability to Special Summon themselves from the hand if you control their respective breed of Bohrok, making them the main means of access to the archetype’s own Synchro bosses, the Bahrag.

In addition to the shared traits above, all Bohrok Va have a helpful effect on the field and another one that activates during the End Phase of the turn in which they were sent from the field to the GY. The former is different for each monster, the latter divides them into two distinct flavours.

One of those are the Bohrok Va that use the End Phase to return a banished Krana to your hand, where it can lend its powers to the swarms once again.

Tahnok Va

Bohrok Tahnok Va

Tuner Effect MonsterLevel 2 | FIRE Machine | ATK 800 / DEF 900

If you control “Bohrok Tahnok”, you can Special Summon this card (from your hand). You can only Special Summon “Bohrok Tahnok Va” once per turn this way. Once per turn: You can excavate the top 3 cards of your Deck, and if you do, banish 1 of them, and if it was a “Bohrok” monster, increase this card’s Level by the Level of the banished monster, until the end of this turn. During the End Phase, if this card is in the GY because it was sent there from the field this turn: Add 1 of your banished “Krana” monsters to your hand.

Bionicle: Beware the Swarm (v3.15.5)

The Tahnok Va, speedy and reckless, can pump its Level to 4 or 6 by banishing a Bohrok from among the top 3 cards of your Deck, but this might backfire if you fail to find one there. Should you succeed, though, you will instantly be able to pull out a nice and big Synchro in most cases, so it’s worth the risk.

Pahrak Va

Bohrok Pahrak Va

Tuner Effect MonsterLevel 2 | EARTH Machine | ATK 600 / DEF 1100

If you control “Bohrok Pahrak”, you can Special Summon this card (from your hand). You can only Special Summon “Bohrok Pahrak Va” once per turn this way. Once per turn: You can place 1 “Bohrok” card from your GY on the top of the Deck. During the End Phase, if this card is in the GY because it was sent there from the field this turn: Add 1 of your banished “Krana” monsters to your hand.

Bionicle: Beware the Swarm (v3.15.5)

The Pahrak Va, known to be slow unless they have a reason to move quickly, will stack the top of your deck with a Bohrok card from the GY, which is an effect that goes from slow to fast depending on whether or not you have some way to draw a card.

Lehvak V

Bohrok Lehvak Va

Tuner Effect MonsterLevel 2 | WIND Machine | ATK 1100 / DEF 600

If you control “Bohrok Lehvak”, you can Special Summon this card (from your hand). You can only Special Summon “Bohrok Lehvak Va” once per turn this way. When your opponent activates a Spell/Trap Card while you control another “Bohrok” monster (Quick Effect): You can Tribute this card; negate the activation, and if you do, destroy that card. You can only use this effect of “Bohrok Lehvak 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: Add 1 of your banished “Krana” monsters to your hand.

Bionicle: Beware the Swarm (v3.15.5)

The noisy Lehvak Va drown out not only other sounds, but also your opponent’s Spells/Traps, though only with the backup of another Bohrok and at the cost of tributing itself. Would be a bit unfair otherwise.

The other flavour of Bohrok Va are those which grant you a draw in exchange for shuffling Bohrok from the GY into the Deck during the End Phase, which is a particularly valuable ability when things aren’t going too well for your strategy.

Gahlok V

Bohrok Gahlok Va

Tuner Effect MonsterLevel 2 | WATER Machine | ATK 900 / DEF 800

If you control”Bohrok Gahlok”, you can Special Summon this card (from your hand). You can only Special Summon “Bohrok Gahlok Va” once per turn this way. During your Main Phase: You can excavate the top card of your Deck, and if it is a “Bohrok” card, add it to your hand. You can only use this effect of “Bohrok Gahlok 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 Gahlok Va”, from your GY into the Deck, then draw 1 card.

Bionicle: Beware the Swarm (v3.15.5)

The Gahlok Va move slowly, yet steadily, and will attempt to add an extra Bohrok card from the top of your Deck to your hand once per turn.

Nuhvok Va

Bohrok Nuhvok Va

Tuner Effect MonsterLevel 2 | EARTH Machine | ATK 700 / DEF 1000

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)

The Nuhvok Va take a more straightforward approach and just dig into the Deck at the appropriate cost of losing a card from your hand.

Kohrak Va

Bohrok Kohrak Va

Tuner Effect MonsterLevel 2 | WATER Machine | ATK 1000 / DEF 700

If you control “Bohrok Kohrak”, you can Special Summon this card (from your hand). You can only Special Summon “Bohrok Kohrak Va” once per turn this way. When an opponent’s monster declares an attack: You can Tribute this card; negate the attack, then end the Battle Phase. 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 Kohrak Va”, from your GY into the Deck, then draw 1 card.

Bionicle: Beware the Swarm (v3.15.5)

Finally, the Kohrak Va are masters of evading attacks through camouflage, which lets them help you avoid battle. Not an amazing effect in the face of, you know, the entire concept of removal effects, but occasionally it does something.

With these monsters and the main Level 4 Bohrok in mind, the true power of the already good search spell Beware the Swarm becomes apparent. By adding either a Bohrok or Bohrok Va whose matching counterpart is in the GY, you instantly become able to place both of those monsters on the field. Assuming your hand is in a good enough state to not have to shuffle either of them back and you still have your Normal Summon, of course.

Like the larger Bohrok, the Bohrok Va also have the ability to form Kaita. These combiner models never played any role in the story at all, so I just went the route of giving them extra useful ways to support the archetype. And I’ll leave going over the dedicated fusion spell to the main Bohrok article, because most of the time you’d probably just Instant Fusion these guys out anyway.

Bohrok Va Kaita Ja

Fusion Tuner Effect MonsterLevel 2 | LIGHT Machine | ATK 1000 / DEF 1500

“Bohrok Gahlok Va” + “Bohrok Kohrak Va” + “Bohrok Lehvak Va”
If this card is used as Synchro Material, all other Synchro Materials must be “Bohrok” monsters. During the Standby Phase: You can Tribute this Fusion Summoned card; Special Summon 1 “Bohrok” Fusion Monster from your Extra Deck. During the End Phase, if this card is in the GY because it was sent there from the field this turn: You can add 1 “Bohrok” or “Krana” card from your Deck to your hand. You can only use this effect of “Bohrok Va Kaita Ja” once per turn.

Bionicle: Beware the Swarm (v3.15.5)

Bohrok Va Kaita Za

Fusion Tuner Effect MonsterLevel 2 | LIGHT Machine | ATK 1000 / DEF 1500

“Bohrok Tahnok Va” + “Bohrok Nuhvok Va” + “Bohrok Pahrak Va”
If this card is used as Synchro Material, all other Synchro Materials must be “Bohrok” monsters. During the Standby Phase: You can Tribute this Fusion Summoned card; Special Summon 1 “Bohrok” Fusion Monster from your Extra Deck. During the End Phase, if this card is in the GY because it was sent there from the field this turn: You can Special Summon 1 “Bohrok” monster from your GY in face-down Defense Position, except “Bohrok Va Kaita Za”. You can only use this effect of “Bohrok Va Kaita Za” once per turn.

Bionicle: Beware the Swarm (v3.15.5)

Just like the regular Bohrok Va, both of the Kaita are Level 2 Tuners (their Level remains the same when combining simply because it’s more convenient for Synchro math this way), but being just a Spell Card away in any arbitrary deck means they need the restriction of only performing Synchro Summons with other Bohrok. Both also share the ability to replace themselves with another Bohrok Fusion (including the big ones) during the Standby Phase, but only if they were properly Fusion Summoned themselves, and Instant Fusion’s little clause doesn’t help here because in that case they won’t even live to the Standby Phase.

Their other effects activate during the End Phase of the turn they went from the field to the GY, be it because they were used as Synchro Material, tributed by their own effects, or otherwise destroyed. In the case of Bohrok Va Kaita Ja, this allows you to add any part of the swarms, Bohrok or Krana, from the Deck to your hand. Bohrok Va Kaita Za on the other hand Special Summons any Bohrok monster, regardless of Level, from the GY in face-down Defense Position.

Conclusion

Bohrok Va supplement the basic Bohrok strategy by aiding the circulation of resources and simplifying access to more powerful boss monsters. Since they require specific Bohrok names on the field to work to their full potential, they are best when used together with a smaller subset of the six breeds, which seems like the most reasonable way to play Bohrok anyway.

Examples of incorporating Bohrok Va like this can be found in any of the Bohrok decks of the BBTS release.

Theme Guide: Bohrok (BBTS)

The Bohrok swarms are the central focus of the BBTS expansion, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that a lot of the cards relate to them. This article will only cover the actual Bohrok that make up the main body of the swarms, as well as their standalone support cards. There are some additional groups of support that will be covered separately, namely Bohrok Va, Krana, and the Bahrag.

With that said, let’s take a look at these colorful rolling pellets of doom and destruction.

The Bohrok come in six breeds, making six Level 4 monsters with varying stats but relatively similar effects. Most importantly, they all share the Flip Effect that allows them to Special Summon a Level 4 Bohrok with a different name directly from the Deck in face-down Defense Position. So waking (flipping) one immediately sets up the next, and if this chain continues uninterrupted for a bit, you will soon have woken them all.

Once face-up on the field, the Bohrok will begin their work to clean all that must be cleaned, or in other words everything on your opponent’s field. Each type has a different removal effect at the cost of shuffling itself back into the Deck (so it can later be called by other Bohrok and continue the onslaught of the seemingly limitless swarms), with the slightly less potent ones delaying the shuffling until the End Phase.

Among the powerful effects that require their cost instantly at activation, we have the Tahnok, known for their speed, who can target and destroy an opponent’s face-up monster as a quick effect. Out of all Bohrok removal effects, this has the least options for targets but the highest options for timing, and it’s the only one of the six that can be used for disruption on the opponent’s turn. The other end of this spectrum are the Lehvak, which can use their acid powers to destroy any card on the field without even targeting, but can only do so specifically during your Main Phase 1. Finally, the Kohrak tend to value their cleaning task over fighting those wo try to stand in their way, and therefore have the more impactful removal of banishing an opponent’s face-up card at the additional cost of not being able to attack that turn.

The other three breeds leave you with the rest of the turn to use them for some kind of cost or material to avoid returning to the Deck, but in exchange their removal effects are also a bit weaker and/or more conditional. Such as the Gahlok, whose ever-changing and unpredictable methods of attack are implemented as three possible effects with the choice depending on the top card of your opponent’s GY. A monster allows you the standard move of destroying an opponent’s card, a Spell lets you non-targetingly turn a monster into a 0 ATK vanilla to deal with well-protected obstacles the other breeds struggle with, and a Trap enables a strike entirely beyond the normal range of the swarms, banishing a card directly from the hand. As you may have noticed, the power level of these options is scaled to how often each type can be expected to be found on average. Also conditional, but less mind-bending, is the effect of the Pahrak, which simply destroys a card at the end of a Battle Phase in which it battled. Their iconic trait of stubbornly ignoring outside interference while pursuing a goal aids them here by granting them protection from effects while they are battling. The last remaining Bohrok breed are the Nuhvok, and their effect is to destroy a Spell/Trap on the field and temporarily render its zone unusable with the holes they dig in the process. Note that this only works on the main five Spell/Trap Zones, so no locking your opponent out of Field Spells for a turn with this (but you can still destroy one).

Beware the Swarm is the archetype’s all-purpose search card, which can also recover an additional monster from the GY if you use it to search a monster, at the cost of returning a card from the hand to the Deck. Since it requires different levels, it’s not actually relevant with just the monsters above, but becomes very valuable if you also consider the Bohrok Va.

The Field Spell Bohrok Nest helps Bohrok do their thing in various ways. Your face-down monsters are protected from forms of interaction that don’t flip them, to increase the chance of properly getting the engine started. You get to draw of the Bohrok’s shuffle costs to maintain card advantage. And should it be destroyed, the Bohrok swarms released by that foolish action will wreak havoc and destroy something else on the field.

For those last two effects, it’s worth noting that the draw effect specifically only triggers when a Bohrok card in a public location (so not face-down or in the hand) is placed into the Main or Extra Deck face-down (shuffling not strictly required), and that it is entirely possible to upgrade the Nuhvok’s Spell/Trap destruction into a general destruction if you’re willing to sacrifice the Nest.

Moving on, we have a support card that is beautifully simple yet somehow effective in what it does. Bohrok Confrontation is basically just an archetypal version of Rush Recklessly, but with the added “cost” of sending a Krana from the Deck to the GY. Now, if you check out the Krana article to see what some of them do in the GY the synergy becomes clear, but for this section I’ll just say that pumping Bohrok stats up comes in handy in a surprising amount of situations.

Bohrok Invasion is a Continuous Trap that rewards Bohrok for successful cleaning work with a stacking ATK boost, potentially allowing them to attack for game right away through your opponent’s cleared field. It also helps you recover from setbacks by bringing a Bohrok from the GY back to the field in the ideal face-down Defense Position, and when you’re under attack, you can abandon the invasion to focus on defense instead.

The Bohrok come with several memorable taglines that were very helpful in deciding the focus of their archetype. We have already seen “Beware the Swarm” as the name of the search Spell, but another catchy phrase has made it onto not one, but two cards that form a little mini-combo put together.

If You Wake One… begins the play by supplying an additional face-down Bohrok along with an iteration of the regular engine, so you then have two ready to be flipped rather than just one. After doing so, it goes to the GY in the End Phase, and at that point it will Set you another Bohrok Trap that is then ready to use once the turn changes. To continue the combo, you would use this to get …You Wake Them All. Then, on your turn, you flip the two face-down Bohrok, get two more, and then return one of your 2-3 face-up Bohrok to the hand with the Trap to once again flip 2 Bohrok and summon 2 more. There’s actually a risk of running out of space on the field before summoning all the monsters with this combo, but that can be avoided by using the Bohrok’s insta-shuffling removal effects or just putting them into some Extra Deck monster.

Speaking of Extra Deck monsters, we also have some of those. The Bohrok Kaita are implemented as Fusions, and in fact specifically have to be Fusions because that’s the only Extra Deck summoning mechanic which allows the use of face-down materials. Obviously kinda pretty damn important for a Flip archetype.

The two Bohrok Kaita, Za and Ja, are each made by fusing three specific breeds of Bohrok. When Fusion Summoned, both of them allow you to add 1 Krana from your Deck to the hand and 2 to the GY, with your opponent choosing which of the three you offer goes where. Again, Krana are the focus of their own article, but generally they’re nice to have in both hand and GY, so this is certainly beneficial. Both of them also have quick effects on the field that banish up to 3 Bohrok from the GY (so you basically use their materials, is the idea): Za can buff itself up and, if it gets big enough, even become unaffected by card effects for a turn, while Ja banishes multiple cards from your opponent’s GY.

The idea of Bohrok Kaita in the lore is that the swarms form them to combat problems they cannot overcome on their own, so this is kind of what I was also going for here. The archetype generally relies on removing things with effects, so Kaita Za is a big beater that can just run over bosses that don’t allow this. And all the removal they have focuses on the field, so Kaita Ja is the tool required to combat GY-focused decks.

Bohrok Swarm Fusion is the archetypal fusion spell, though it does not actually fuse in any special way. But it does take advantage of the Kaita’s banishing costs with its own GY effect that triggers when Bohrok cards are banished from the GY, shuffling them back into the Deck and drawing a card.

With the final card I want to discuss here, we take a look at what actually caused the Bohrok swarms to awaken before their time. And fittingly enough, the role this card plays in the archetype is the ability to start your engine without needing to wait out the usual Flip monster delay.

Premature Bohrok Beacon has the rather unimpressive effect of flipping your own face-down monster face-up, but being able to activate it from the hand as long as the game state is “premature” enough to not contain any face-up monsters makes it a tool Bohrok can use quite well. Since this is a Makuta-related card, it also has a GY effect that adds more utility, in this case being able to summon itself as a Level 4 DARK Machine (obviously sneaky Orcust support and not just a combination of Bohrok Type and Makuta Attribute) that can replace any of the Bohrok as Fusion Material.

Conclusion

Bohrok have a lot of strong points: The very convenient Level of 4 on all the main monsters, the ability to bring each other out from the Deck, easily accessible removal effects, a really good search Spell that finds them any of their cards and still potentially does more, and multiple nice draw effects to offset the resource loss of shuffling themselves into the Deck. All of this dragged down by the unfortunate yet vital fact that they are Flip monsters whose entire engine relies on their flip effects. Let’s face it, setting one monster and hoping everything goes well so you can snowball from there isn’t exactly an unbeatable strategy in this decade or the last.

But what they lack in speed, the swarms can hopefully make up in consistency and sheer fucking resilience. Assuming you do manage to get the engine going at some point – and with help like Nest and Beacon this is not an entirely impossible task – your opponents will find themselves faced with a constant assault on their field while your monsters just keep calling each other from and returning to the Deck for all eternity. Before long, you will be clearly ahead in resources, and victory shall be yours. Probably. I never tested this on anything newer than the old YGOPro Percy AI that still lived in blissful ignorance of Link Monsters, so it might just be completely unusable in the modern game anyway. But the strategy is sound on paper, at the very least.

A few different ideas for Bohrok decks can be found in the BBTS release.