Horus the Black Flame Dragon LV8 – #DL17-EN002
Cannot be Normal Summoned/Set. Must be Special Summoned by “Horus the Black Flame Dragon LV6”, and cannot be Special Summoned by other ways. During either player’s turn, when a Spell Card is activated: You can negate the activation, and if you do, destroy it. You must control this face-up card to activate and to resolve this effect.
Date Reviewed: January 4th, 2024
Rating: 3.75
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,
Horus the Black Flame Dragon LV8 is an oldie but a goldie and is our Throwback Thursday choice.
Once a fierce monster within the meta believe it or not, Horus LV8 won’t likely ever see play ever in the meta, even with its sons present now. Unable to be Special Summoned in any other way other than through Horus LV6, Horus LV8 has top-tier ATK/DEF and being able to negate any Spell multiple times per turn cost-free made it such a hard monster to out in the early days of Yu-Gi-Oh! Level Modulation was the only way to “fast-track” Horus LV8 out and that way was absolutely awful: giving your opponent two draws and having your level monster stuck as a non-attacking vanilla for the turn. If they wanted to do all that they should’ve made it a trap so you could trigger it in the End Phase to reduce the damage. To play this card you had to also play LV6, which wasn’t a bad thing. Horus LV6 wasn’t affected by Spell Cards, so you could Dark Hole the field and hit for 2300ATK, however you had to destroy a monster with Horus LV6 to get to LV8, but that happened in the End Phase of the turn, so it was by far the easiest and best chain of level monsters there was and likely still is (sorry Armed Dragon).
If you got Horus LV8 out you likely were going to win in those days. No Change of Heart, Dark Hole, Snatch Steal, or Raigeki were going to be able to stop it, and with it out you shut down all spells. Combined with Royal Decree you took away 2/3 of the game for your opponent and monster effects were not like they are now back in the days of Soul of The Duelist, it was 2004, some of you weren’t even in grade school yet. It had its time and unless Konami wants to revisit level monsters it will not see any play again, even with it being considered a “Horus” monster with the new Sons of Horus. He does have a retrain in Phantom Nightmare, though that version traded amazing Spell negation for all monsters board-wipe ability and in-hand 1-for-1 on the field send to the grave…not as good but has potential in the Sons of Horus archetype.
Advanced- 4/5 Art- 5/5
Until Next Time,
KingofLullaby
Crunch$G
Throwback Thursday this week brings us to the monster I would of thought of before when I heard the name “Horus”, and that is Horus the Black Flame Dragon LV8.
Horus LV8 is a Level 8 (of course) FIRE Dragon with 3000 ATK and 1800 DEF. A great ATK stat, FIRE is popular right now, and it’s always great to be a Dragon. It cannot be Normal Summoned or Set and must be Special Summoned by the effect of Horus the Black Flame Dragon LV6, who summons this at the end of the turn it destroyed a monster in battle. Not that hard to summon since Horus LV6 does have a decent 2300 ATK to run over a lot of monsters, so triggering that effect to get this out shouldn’t be that difficult in an era where Battle Traps aren’t really ran anymore. The lone effect is a Quick Effect upon the activation of any Spell Card, letting you negate the activation and destroy that card, but this must be face-up on the field to activate and to resolve. An optional negate for all Spells is pretty strong, considering this basically means you can use Spells freely while negating all the ones the opponent might throw at you. This has always been the best LV monster under the old ways the mechanic worked, considering how strong infinite Spell negation is. Imperial Order is banned, even with an errata, for a reason. It can be worth building an old Horus Deck trying to get this out, cause the effect is powerful enough to win games, especially alongside its 3000 ATK. I would of loved legacy support to help get out Horus the Black Flame Dragon, or a retrain that is similar to the old line of Dragons. If Armed Dragon can get that legacy support, so can this. Always going to love this card.
Advanced Rating: 4.25/5
Art: 5/5 What a sick looking Dragon. Was a perfect cover card for Soul of the Duelist.
Mighty
Vee
A card that I was always begging for as a kid is now the subject of this week’s Throwback Thursday; Horus the Black Flame Dragon Lv 8 is a level 8 (duh) FIRE Dragon monster part of the Horus archetype (though not necessarily playable in this form) and the Lv sub-archetype. It won’t truly be searchable until Horus’s next wave in Phantom Nightmare, but even then playing Horus is questionable for obvious reasons that we’ll get to. Horus’s stat spread is decent, with a solid 3000 attack which was still really good for its time, though 1800 defense leaves room for improvement; fortunately, Horus isn’t bothered by Lightning Storm anyway.
Horus, like all high-level Lv monsters, can’t be Normal Summoned or Set, forcing you to Special Summon it through either the effect of Horus the Black Flame Dragon Lv 6 or using Level Up! on it accordingly. This aspect alone makes most Lv monsters completely unplayable in the modern era, as Lv 6 needs to destroy a monster by battle to even trigger its level up effect. The easiest way to summon it in Horus decks is probably to use one of the Horus monsters as Tribute fodder for Lv 6 then activating Level Up!, but it’s an inconsistent play that isn’t worth it at all. Horus itself has a single non-once per turn Quick Effect, letting you negate a Spell Card activation and destroy it, though only while Horus is face-up on the field. While it won’t stop Spell effects (which is thankfully a relatively fringe scenario and only comes up with Continuous and Field Spells), Horus is still a huge lock against Spell Cards, and can cheese many matchups by itself. Many decks still rely on Spell Cards as either consistency boosters or playmakers, with common cards in this meta like Pot of Prosperity, Original Sinful Spoils – Snake-Eye, EMERGENCY!, Purrely Sleepy Memory, Chimera Fusion, and more. Unfortunately, Horus’s usefulness hasn’t aged very well; much like it’s easier-to-summon cousin, Naturia Beast, popular boardbreakers like Forbidden Droplet and Dark Ruler No More can’t be negated by monsters, letting them toss around Horus like a salad. Your opponent can even simply use Infinite Impermanence to shut down Horus. It’s still not a bad monster in a vacuum even with these weaknesses, but factoring in how impossible it is to summon in the modern era, it’s just not worth it for meta decks at the moment. Still, if there’s ever a way to summon it alongside other disruptions, go nuts!
+Powerful non-once per turn Spell negate can still obliterate decks
-Awkward and impractical to summon even in today’s metagame
-Falls quickly to modern boardbreaker Spells
Advanced: 3/5
Art: 4.5/5 Who wouldn’t have wanted a metal bird dragon as a kid?
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