What’s FIRE, LIGHT, and has 4 stars? That’s right, Ryzeal. And also Jaller and Takua from the new Avohkii archetype. How curious. You could make a deck out of this.
On a more technical Level, the appeal of this combination is in the fact that by using either Takua or the Sealed Avohkii as a starting point, you can make a Rank 4 Xyz without spending your Normal Summon or getting locked into anything. That makes it good for baiting out interactions before you limit your further options, and if undisrupted has potential to go into interesting lines that might be difficult otherwise. As a big bonus, the archetype gimmick of the Sealed Avohkii being back in the hand at the end of the combo also guarantees follow-up, provided you still have search targets in your Deck. See for yourself how it works here:
As with everything, there are of course tradeoffs. While 6 of the 7 (how topical a number) extra cards included get you to the combo as desired, Jaller by himself only does it if you spend your Normal Summon, which gets in the way of the Ryzeal half of the deck. Going first, the Sealed Avohkii will also only work if you can put a monster on the field without it already, so with certain hands the play:brick ratio will feel more like 3:4 than 6:1. The numbers get even less optimal if you play multiple copies of Jaller to enable the Avohkii’s follow-up functionality, though if you’re based like me, you can get around this by instead playing Gearbreed to recycle him for a draw (never mind that Gearbreed is also kind of a brick, it gets away with this due to being based, as previously established). Finally, the lack of restrictions on the whole thing comes at the cost of card economy: Searching with the Sealed Avohkii will force you to lose one of the other cards in your hand (because if you use it to add Jaller, you certainly do not want to discard either of the 2), and if you start with Takua before having any other Avohkii cards ready, he’ll also cost you a card to Special Summon. Can feel pretty bad in a deck like Ryzeal, where your hand tends to be stacked with useful engine cards and handtraps, but well, first-world problem if I’ve ever seen one.
So, all things considered, is Avohkii Ryzeal going to be the next big thing for Rank 4 enthusiasts once I break into the Konami servers and install my expansions into the official card pool? Eh, probably not. The ability to get a “free” Rank 4 without so much as an Xyz lock is certainly enticing, but so far the most special thing I was able to do with it is make Utopic Draco Future as part of the endboard, which is also possible with existing engines like Sharks and takes just enough steps to lose to Nibiru. Assuming there’s nothing else crazy I completely missed, the slight awkwardness of ratios and the discards would probably make this a package that’s just worth considering rather than anything life-changing.
Another perhaps more realistically relevant thing I was trying to test here: Is it a balancing issue to let Takua be Special Summoned unconditionally at a slight cost, thus making the entire setup fairly splashable? The results so far say no, but of course the payoff isn’t yet complete without Jaller having anything to search other than a second Takua. At the very least, I feel confident in saying that the engine’s ability to Special Summon two Level 4 monsters in and of itself is not broken, we’ll see how it looks in general after the next update.
By the way, if it were to turn out we can’t get away with Avohkii plays being quite so free, my go-to solution would be to simply change Takua to “If you control a card(s) that mentions “Great Kanohi Avohkii”, you can Special Summon this card from your hand”. That leaves the Equip Spell, which is slightly conditional by nature, as the only thing that can get you started without the Normal Summon. A convenient side benefit of this change would be that the effect would no longer activate in the hand, making it possible to play around the K9 cards if needed. Come to think of it, Jaller’s SS effect could also perfectly well be a non-activated summoning condition, provided I spend some extra words on the HOPT clause.
Hmmm. Food for thought, for sure.