Branded Sword – #SDAZ-EN031
Banish any number of “Branded” Spells/Traps from your GY; Special Summon that many “Iceblade Tokens” (Dragon/DARK/Level 8/ATK 2500/DEF 2000). You can banish this card from your GY, then target 1 of your banished monsters that is “Fallen of Albaz” or mentions it; add that monster to your hand. You can only use 1 “Branded Sword” effect per turn, and only once that turn.
Date Reviewed: June 1st, 2022
Rating: xx
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is awful. 3 is average. 5 is excellent.
Reviews Below:
King of
Lullaby
Hello Pojo Fans,
Branded Sword had to be a Trap to keep it from being too fast for its own good.
Banishing Spell/Trap to Special Summon tokens of any form would be too powerful as a Spell, but the tokens here are Dragon/DARK/Level 8/ATK 2500/DEF 2000! I don’t care if you have to banish “Branded” Spell/Trap cards, this is getting you beater tokens that have no restrictions going against them. You can attack with them, defend, tribute, use as effect fodder, or Link/Fusion Summon using them. They are DARK, Dragon, and Level 8, all of these are requirements somewhere on a Branded Fusion Monster. You will always go -1 off the first activation of this card, but can break even later when banishing Branded Sword to get back a monster to your hand that has “Fallen of Albaz” somewhere in the text or is Albaz. Even if you get back a Fusion Monster just to throw back into your Extra Deck the card has now evened itself out.
The real allure of this card is the token production. Sure, you need the Branded Spell/Trap cards in the grave, but once you have them, this card can be lethal. What is stopping someone from using a field clear and then getting three tokens on the field to wipe the opponent out? Raigeki and Dark Hole are at 3, so is Torrential, it isn’t far-fetched an idea. I want to see someone break this card.
Advanced-3.5/5 Art-4/5
Until Next Time
KingofLullaby
Crunch$G
Next up is probably one of the more underwhelming cards of the Structure Deck that isn’t the new Swordsoul card: Branded Sword.
Branded Sword is a Normal Trap that lets you banish any number of your Branded Spells/Traps from the grave to summon that many Iceblade Tokens (Dragon/DARK/Level 8/ATK 2500/DEF 2000). I mean, Link abuse I guess, but Branded is pretty restrictive to pushing you towards Fusions more than anything. You kinda want to keep your Branded Spells/Traps in grave most of the time because, while Kitt can retrieve them from the banished pile, Despian Tragedy and other cards specifically want you to get the cards back from the graveyard. Branded Opening is the only thing you really banish to protect your Fusions, but you rather banish for that than this. Second effect lets you banish this from the graveyard to target a banished Fallen of Albaz or any monster that mentions it and adds it to your hand, which recovery from using Albion the Branded Dragon is fine I guess, but I wish it reached the grave as well. One effect a turn, and only once that turn. I mean, it does look good on paper. Token generation for your Fusions or Links and recovery from the banished pile, I just think most of the time you’re fine without this.
Advanced Rating: 3/5
Art: 5/5 Again, the Spells and Traps for the Branded line are excellent in terms of artwork, so they’ll usually always have that going for them.
Alex
Searcy
This card umm…screams for Extra Deck abuse, no? Midweek brings us a Normal Trap in Branded Sword. Removing any number of your Branded Magic/Traps from play from your Graveyard nets you 1 Token per card removed…and these Tokens have some nice stats. Level 8, Dark/Dragon, 2500/2000) and again, that’s one Token per removal. So two gives you a Rank 8 XYZ, or Tribute Fodder for a Level 7+ Monster…or a Link 2 Monster…or beyond if you need more and had more to remove. This card can also be removed from your Grave to cycle a Monster removed back to your Hand…so long as it mentions that one card…Fallen of whoever. To include Fallen itself. Each Effect is once per Turn, and only one can be used a Turn at that. That one Turn should be more than enough to do about anything you need. Honestly, since more removals is more Tokens, this card only gains value as the game goes along.
Rating: 4.25/5 So much potential I think
Art: 4.5/5 See, this is plain, but pretty, and I like being able to distinctly see the sword. Not sure I could wield that though.
Mighty
Vee
We move from one of the most threatening new cards in the structure deck to one of the least threatening, Branded Sword, a normal trap with an incredibly strict hard once per turn, one effect per turn. Upon activating it, you banish as many Branded spells or traps as you want from your graveyard and special summon that number of Iceblade tokens to your field, which are level 8 DARK dragons with 2500 attack and 2000 defense. Furthermore, by banishing Branded Sword itself from your graveyard, you can add a banished Fallen of Albaz or monster that mentions it back to your hand. The premise of the first effect is pretty straightforward, you can use it to make meatshields to protect your life points or summon an army of beaters to go for an OTK (though you’ll have to wait since this is a trap card, after all). The second effect is a nice bonus, though considering Albaz and Despia cards have plenty of ways to recycle banished monsters (notably though Lubellion the Searing Dragon), there’s really no point in running something like Foolish Burial Goods to use it as an extender. Not much else to say about this card, there are much stronger Branded cards you want to run. It can lead to some funny OTKs in a pinch, and it’s not particularly difficult to fill the graveyard with Branded cards, but you’d much rather recycle them with Despian Tragedy or something than banish them for some tokens.
Advanced: 1.75/5
Art: 4.5/5 As much as I dislike this card gameplay-wise, the lore behind it is pretty sick; Albaz sure is about to go to town on Longyuan with those tokens. Also, anyone else find it weird that the tokens are dragon type even though Mirrorjade is a wyrm?
Therion
“Captain”
Tav
Hi everyone, next up for our Branded theme weeks is the normal trap card “Branded Sword”, a quite interesting card from the Albaz Strike precon that does some interesting things, so let’s get to it.
To activate Branded Sword, you must banish any number of “Branded” spells or traps from your graveyard as a cost, then special summon that many “Iceblade Tokens”, which are 2500 attack/2000 Defense DARK dragon normal monsters. A pretty straightforward way to recover your board after a few plays, but unfortunately, since this is a trap, it’s pretty slow to bolster your attack squad and the tokens are not strong enough to be a true brick wall to your opponent trying to break your board. Since tokens can’t be used as xyz summons and the Branded strategies don’t run tuners, synchro or link monsters, you cannot really use these tokens in other interesting ways, which is unfortunate.
As a lot of traps seem to do these days, Branded Sword also has a secondary effect that requires it to be banished from your graveyard. You can target and add one of your banished monsters that is “Fallen of Albaz” or mentions it and add it back to your hand. A neat way to recoup some card advantage and certainly useful whenever you can activate it!
Both of these effects have a hard once per-turn-restriction and cannot be used one after another, of course.
All in all, I am not too impressed with this. If you have a bunch of these spells, the game has already gone quite long and at that point, getting a few extra monsters on the field might not make a big difference. The second effect is quite nice, of course, but it’s also quite slow. If this was a spell card, it would be much more interesting, as that would help you facilitate one turn kills. But as is the inherent weakness of most trap cards, this is unfortunately too slow and too weak to have a big impact on the game and is vulnerable to a lot of things on top of that. This is a downside to the high-velocity gameplay of most modern Yugioh games, where the real endgame revolves around endlessly recycling or jumpstarting your engine again and gaining an advantage in longer games that don’t end quickly is less about relying on individually powerful cards or value cards like this one and more about getting an avalanche of card advantage through the back door.
Rating: 1,5/5
props:
can both rebuild your board with multiple monsters and recoup card advantage, thus getting you back into the game
slops:
needs the game to have gone long to get much use of, tokens not too useful in the Branded strategy, being a trap hinders it as a OTK enabler and makes it more vulnerable
Art: 3,5/5
I think the artwork on this one is pretty cool, it seems the Mirrorjade is attacking Longyuan! But where is the actual sword, and what does it all have to do with Mirrorjade’s Ice Blades?
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