Friday

Jewels of the Valiant closes the week, another not so spectacular Magic card. Now this card has some potential, it can do some great things in certain Decks. It's most definitely a combo card. If exactly one Monster is removed from play, from your Graveyard, except during the Damage Step, you can send a Monster from your Deck to your Graveyard of an attribute different than the Monster removed. Some Decks really like and can make use of Monsters being in the Graveyard, my problem being, do those Decks have room or even require this card? Probably not, I guess it can add some speed, but it's still one of the better cards we've looked at this week.

Ratings:

Traditional: 2/5
Advanced: 3/5
Art: 4.5/5

Hey, guys. Today we are going t be doing Jewels of the Valiant. This card is pretty cool and has some potential out there somewhere in some type of deck. (I know seems to vague). To put this cards in the best category it could be, it would get better with time as new decks come out that can abuse this card. For right now the only thing I can think of is Elemental Dragons, but lets think together do they really need this card? They have Dragon's Ravine which is less situational, easier to search and helps with Super Rejuv so it really can't be the better choice at the moment. Overall like I said, this card has potential, just not right now.
 
Trad/1/5
Adv 2/5

Three weeks ago, we had a three-part segment of Evilswarm Kerykeion, Constellar Sombres, and Noble Arms of Destiny. I felt it was better to have Jewels of the Valiant instead of Destiny, since Kerykeion + Sombres + Jewels kinda go together, but it was already too late to change it, so to compensate, I put together a Noble Week with Jewels at the end.
Due to the way Jewels is worded, there are a lot of ways to trip the effect. You can do it by cost or by effect, but the two primary limitations are that you must banish exactly one monster (the main victims here are Black Luster Soldier, Chaos Sorcerer, Lightpulsar Dragon, Darkflare Dragon, the four Dragon Lords) and that the monster you mill needs to be a different Attribute than the banished one. Of course, you can only activate this effect once per turn.
 
I think the part about differing Attributes is the biggest limitation. There are tons of cards that banish from your Graveyard, and a high number that can banish just a single monster. What makes it hard is that in the Decks where you use such cards, they don’t always function well in multiple-Attribute Decks. For example, there are at least eight monsters that say they can Special Summon themselves from the hand if you banish a certain Attribute from your Graveyard, but in the Decks where you would actually run these monsters, you need to ask yourself two questions when considering adding Jewels: One, are you using a good mix of Attributes in your Deck and two, is it actually worth using a Continuous Spell to send one of them straight to the Grave every so often? If you want more specific examples, archetypes that do a lot of Graveyard banishing include Archfiend, Phantom Beast, Dark World, Infernity, Gusto, Laval, Constellar, and lswarm. All eight of these Decks enjoy sending monsters to their Graveyard, but they can’t really use Jewels because they focus only really using their own Attributes. Sure, you can splash in other Attributes such as Necro Gardna or Wulf Lightsworn Beast, but that doesn’t always mean they’re compatible with the banishing combos you’re doing in the first place and/or you’re going out of your way just to use fancy monsters.
 
Jewels is a Continuous Spell that cannot actually give you cards; all it does is throw monsters in the Graveyard! For your Deck to actually appreciate this card, it needs the following plans:
1.     Ways to RELIABLY banish monsters from the Grave, one at a time.
2.     For the monsters to have a mixture of Attributes.
3.     There is an actual point to dumping a whole bunch of your monsters into the Graveyard (and they better not be monsters that you threw in for the sake of it).

Lemme tell you a story: Earlier this year, I met a kid and I was giving him tips on how to be a better player. As an example, I designed a Deck based around Light and Darkness Dragon. I still have that Deck, and when Jewels was first revealed, I immediately tried out one copy in my Deck. I had five different cards that could activate it: Dark Armed Dragon, Collaserpent the Ebony Dragon, Wyburstar the Ivory Dragon. Dark Armed Dragon banishes a Dark from my Grave to destroy any card I want, and having out Jewels let me send Eclipse Wyvern straight to the Graveyard, and Wyvern’s effect activated. Collaserpent and Wyburstar are a Dark/Light pair; I can summon it by banishing its opposite Attribute and when it goes to the Graveyard, I can grab its twin from the Deck. Since my Deck is almost entirely Light and Dark, they cycle very well. Together, these three Dragons can activate Jewels quite often, but sometimes I would draw Jewels when I didn’t need it and then it would just be a dead card in my hand. About a month later, I kicked out DAD because I didn’t summon it all that often and there was no point in keeping Jewels just for my yin-yang dragons. It’s a little ironic, how Dragons are one of Jewels’ best users yet they have their own special cards that do the job better: Dragon’s Ravine, Dragon Shrine, the original Foolish Burial.

Don’t get me wrong, Collaserpent and Wyburstar are great cards that can be used in a lot of decks, and with Jewels they can easily help you push a monster from the Deck to the Grave every turn (assuming Jewels doesn’t get destroyed). Light and Dark monsters especially love this kind of thing, and Zombies might get a kick out of it too, since I know at least three monsters that can banish a Zombie (actually themselves) from the Graveyard. Also, in a Plant Deck, both Black Rose Dragon and Phoenxian Cluster Amaryllis have effects that constantly banish from the Graveyard, and Jewels can help here. The only time I played against this card was when it was combined with Gaia Plate, and it was used to send a whole bunch of different Rock monsters to the Graveyard. These are just a few examples for a strictly complex combo card. If you know of cards that can banish from the Graveyard, give this card a thought, but remember the three guidelines I gave in my previous paragraph.
 
Trad: 1/5 (could theoretically be useful but it works too slowly when this format is all go-go-go and also I can’t think of any important cards that can set this off)
Adv: 2.9/5 (it’s neat, just really tricky to get an advantage off it)
Aesthetics: 4.9/5 Angered at all the warring in the Duel Terminal world, Sophia, the Goddess of Creation, moves to reset the entire world. She was our goddess of wisdom, but now she threatens our very existence. We have Constellar Sombres and Evilswarm Kerykeion leading the front lines of the resistance force. (Incidentally, both have effects that banish from the Graveyard, but I don't particularly recommend actually using Jewels with them.) Here they are on top of the jewel of Sophia's head, preparing a combination attack. Can they do it??? CAN THEY DO IT!!!
 
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