Splendid Rose ...
 
Meh ... she aint bad. She's a non restrictive, level 6 Synchro monster ... Wind, which does nothin for her ... and Plant, which is a fairly good type to be ... she can essentially kill just about ANY monster in battle. By removing a plant type monster in your grave from play, much like the awesome Blackwing Gale, she can have the attack of an opponent's monster. So do the math - she's 2200 ATK, so your opponent would need something with the punch of a Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon, or stronger to outfight this thing ...
 
Although ... much different than Gale - this effect doesn't last. By the end of the turn, your opponent's monster gets it full ATK back. Lame. Plus Gale was a 3 star monster. The ease of getting it out makes it such a charm to play. U need a REAL special reason to even include Splendid Rose in your extra deck, taking away valuable real estate from other Synchros of similar level that do more for u ... Splendid Rose's 2nd effect is k ok ... and helps u kill Tokens or whatever ... but cutting HER ATK in half just to to attack twice?
 
meh.
 
Traditional: 2/5
Advanced: 2.5/5
 
- FREEZA

Today we look at a new Synchro Monster, Splendid Rose.  I confess I already want to like this card just because it strangely reminds me of one of my favorite Pokémon cards, Dark Vileplume.  Fortunately we are off to a decent start.  The Extra Deck is indeed crowded, but there is no denying the raw power of being a Synchro Monster: it is quite within reason to expect the metagame to allow most decks to run Synchro Monsters, perhaps even encourage them.  This is a Level 6 Synchro, making it fairly easy to get out: not too high or too low.  It is a Wind/Plant, a bit odd but not an unheard of combination.  I don’t think the Wind aspect will matter all that much, but Plant did finally get some great supporting cards.  The Synchro requirements are thankfully standard: one Tuner and one or more non-Tuner Monsters.  So as long as you are already running a few Tuners and of course can spare at least a slot for it, you can run it no problem.  The 2200 ATK is pretty low and makes it fairly simple for anything substantial to run it over in battle.  The 2000 DEF at least means smaller monsters don’t fair much better by forcing Splendid Rose to shift to Defense Position. 

The real meat of this card, pardon the pun, is of course the two effects.  Here is where I contradict my earlier statement: activating these two effects carries the cost of removing Plant Monsters from your Graveyard.  Just one each time an effect is activated, but that still means your deck has to run at least a few other plants for Splendid Rose to be worthwhile.  Fortunately we do have a few Plants common to significantly played deck types, chief among them being Dandylion.  Still, this really narrows down the decks that can use it.  For the hassle, you do get two good effects.  For the cost of removing a single Plant Monster from your Graveyard, you can halve an opponent’s face-up Monster’s ATK until the End Phase.  Broken?  Hardly.  Handy?  Definitely: it allows it to fell most Monsters in battle.  Well, at least when you’re on the offensive.  The second effect looks pretty handy to me.  You can only activate it during the Battle Phase, and again it requires removing a Plant Monster from your Graveyard.  Then you… halve your ATK until the End Phase.  Wait, why would you want to do that?  Oh, you also get to attack with Splendid Rose a second time.  Against an open field, that’s a nice 3300 damage.  In your normal Synchro oriented decks, you’re generally trying to clear the field and swarm, and that makes this a decent club to whack your opponent upside the head with.  Take note that if you activate the effect to allow you to attack again, but something happens to make you not want to attack, you don’t have to. 

Now, something I am starting to like is, another common theme that can be abused seems to be arising in Yu-Gi-Oh cards.  In this case, it takes the form of temporarily halving the ATK of a Monster to gain a bonus effect, and the wording expressing stating the ATK is reset to the base ATK at the end of the turn.  So in a Black Garden deck, you can summon this, halve its ATK, and then the effect will override the original halving of Black Garden! 

So all in all, this looks like a good card, but not something you’ll be running in every single deck.  Where you can afford its effects, it looks to be a good choice.  Scores assume you’re running it in a deck that can fuel the effect at least somewhat reliably. 

Ratings 

Traditional: 1/5 

Advanced: 3.25/5 

I’d also like to add I’ll be selling quite a bit of my soon-to-be-former possessions on eBay.  You can take a look here at my second auction if you’re interested in a Nintendo GameCube with some accessories and 17 games!  Just a reminder, Pojo is in no way responsible for this and was merely kind enough to let me mention the auction here. ;)