Wednesday

Dark Bug, a misshaped Tetris piece, with insect legs...one of the strangest looking monsters ever.  Dark Bug, whose statistics are rather irrelevant, a Level 1, Insect, with 100 attack and defense, of the Dark attribute.

Stop me if you have heard this before...you get to Special Summon a Level 3 Tuner from your Graveyard when you Normal Summon this card, and the effect(s) of the monster is (are) negated.  We have some cards that Special Summon Tuners...

Sometimes it is of a specific Level, Level 3 in this case, they almost always have their effects negated, but it's not usually a big deal, as you're almost immediately going to Synchro Summon anyway.  Play with what works for you.

Ratings:

Traditional:  2/5 

Advanced:   3/5 

Art:  2/5

Dark Bug …

This card is interesting. Right away it is pretty good. The stats are horrible, but for a level 1, u don’t often expect too much, so it’s the effect that gives the bug it’s edge. A rule of thumb in Yu-Gi-oh – if a card allows u a free special summon – it is often something worth exploring. Dark Bug will give u that free special summon from your graveyard, but only of a very specific type of monster. A level 3 Tuner. Without wracking your brain too hard for all the level 3 Tuners out there, all u NEED to know is that the very BEST Tuner in the game – Blackwing Gale is a level 3. So a dark monster that can immediately fetch back a spent Gale from your grave will definitely have merit, especially since Gale is limited to 1 per deck. That Level 3 Tuner loses its effect, but can still tune with the Dark Bug to build a Level 4 Synchro … Armory Arm comes to mind … or u can add the Tuner and Dark Bug to whatever else u have on the field. The only thing that limits Dark Bug at all is basically how many level 3 Tuners u actually play with and how necessary they are to your deck and play style. It’s a nice accessory to have and can open up for some really cool moves, but unless u are really playing with a good number of level 3 Tuners, u can probably make better use of the deck space.

Traditional: 3/5
Advanced: 3.5/5

- FREEZA

I was wondering how long it'd take for something like Dark Bug to be released. We have tuners that revive monsters, but not the other way around, and now we do. Dark Bug, level 1 Dark monster that has 100 attack and defense, when its normal summoned you can special summon a level 3 Tuner monster from your graveyard, its effects are negated. This is pretty good, considering in Quickdraw Synchro, this card would be pretty handy being able to revive Junk Synchron. Speaking of, Junk Synchron is a dark monster, so you can discard a level 5 or higher to special summon Dark Grepher, discard and send a dark to the grave (Junk Synchron) and then summon Dark Bug, grab back Junk Synchron for a free level 8 monster. Now will this combo really see any play, probably not but its just an example. Dark Bug has many possibilities, and for a rare I'd have to say this is a pretty good card. Other tuners that can be revived by Bug would be like Eccentric Boy, Blackwing - Gale the Whirlwind, X-Saber Airbellum and Psychic Commander, all of which are really good level 3 tuners.

Traditional: 3.5/5
Advanced: 4/5

Dark Bug:

     All I can keep thinking is "There has to be some combo I'm missing that makes this card good..."  but I just don't see it.  It can make an Armory Arm really easily, but uh, that doesn't really make for a stellar deck.  True if you have another monster already on the field when you summon him, you can tune for a bigger synchro than level four, but that's the same for any tuner.  Hopefuly there is a combo to come, or I've just missed it...

Traditional:  1.0

Advanced:  1.5

Name: Dark Bug
Level: One
Attribute: Dark
Type: Insect
ATK: 100
DEF: 100

Dark Bug is all about its effect: it lets you bring a Tuner back from the Graveyard to the field.  There are multiple mitigating factors.  The least important is that it requires you Normal Summon Dark Bug: it isn’t optional and wasn’t intended to be re-used.  I can’t decide whether the requirement the Tuner be exactly Level 3 or that said Tuner’s effect(s) are negated is the greatest of the remaining restrictions.  None cripple the card. 

Dark Bug is a Level 1 Monster.  With a Level 1 Monster as your Normal Summon and a Level 3 Tuner in play, you can get out Armory Arm and (theoretically) any other Synchro Monster without contradictory summoning restrictions.  If Dark Bug was a Level 2 or 3 would have made it a safer top deck (and anything over 4 would have ruined the card).  Unless a later Stat ruins this, we should really consider this for a Synchro focused deck. 

Being Dark is never bad, and is quite good here.  Dark decks love to toss stuff into the Graveyard for the three R’s:  

• Reducing your deck size
• Reviving to the field
• Removing from play to fuel effect costs.

Dark Bug thus becomes a reasonable choice for a Dark/Synchro themed deck.  The measly 100 ATK and DEF rarely matters: use it for a Synchro Summon.  A higher ATK wouldn’t have hurt: 1500 would still make it a viable target for Sangan and Dark Eruption.  Pity the DEF wasn’t 0 so we could recycle it with Recurring Nightmare. 

Dark Bug is an Insect as befits its name.  Unfortunately this does it little good: if you need to focus on Insects, you might want Insect Tuners (which are in short supply) and Insect Synchro Monsters (which don’t exist).  So going pure Insect isn’t an option and if you’re going to run non-Insect Monsters, Dark Bug now has to compete against the Tuners it needs to be useful. 

So overall, this seems like a solid card: unless I’ve missed something it won’t be seeing play in most decks, but might be worth the space and effort in Dark and/or Synchro focused deck-types.  The following scores are still for general use due to the abundance of useful Level 3 Tuners. 

Scores 

Traditional: 1.5/5 

Advanced: 2.5/5 

-Otaku