Mind Master – #TDGS-EN016
You can pay 800 Life Points and Tribute 1 Psychic-Type monster, except “Mind Master”, to Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower Psychic-Type monster from your Deck in face-up Attack Position.
Date Reviewed: October 30th, 2025
Rating: 4.33
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,
Mind Master is one of the more powerful Psychic monsters out there…had it not been banned, and is our Throwback Thursday choice this week.
Level 1 Psychic Tuner that can be either Normal Summoned or Special Summoned out through a variety of ways like One for One and Emergency Teleport. Paying 800LP and tributing a Psychic monster you’ve got to Special Summon any Level 4 or lower Psychic monster from your Deck is hardly a cost when you can pay it upwards of nine times before losing, and if you’ve got Brain Reserach Lab or Telekenetic Charging Cell out there you are able to do it infinitely.
Depending on where you were running Mind Master, you either were going for an FTK/OTK burning your opponent to death by launching the monster with Catapult Turtle or Cannon Soldier, burning with Witch Doctor of Sparta, or nowadays you could throw this into any Psychic archetype like Kozmo, Daigusto, PUNK, its own Mind archetype, Virtual World, or the Ritual/Spiritual Beast archetypes. Even using it just once gets you another monster that will likely get you advantage with their Special Summon and, like mentioned before, if you are negating the cost you can cycle through all options in your Deck as long as you have another Psychic monster to tribute to start the loop.
Not much really to ramble on about: Mind Master was broken then, and it would be worse now. Yes, there’s far-more counters now, but there’s strong Psychic archetypes out there that could utilize Mind Master to add more speed to their archetype. The worst you end up with is an Extra Deck opportunity from Mind Master with it and another Psychic monster. Paying the cost didn’t deter players from using it then and it wouldn’t today.
Advanced- 4/5
Art- 3.5/5
Until Next Time,
KingofLullaby
Crunch$G
While Emergency Teleport is an easy call for Throwback Thursday this week, instead we’ll go with a card that hasn’t been reviewed since 2008, especially since it was banned in 2011: Mind Master.
Mind Master is a Level 1 LIGHT Psychic Tuner with 100 ATK and 200 DEF. Stats are bad like with every other Level 1, but it’s a great Emergency Teleport target. The only effect this has is to let you pay 800 LP and tribute a Psychic monster to summon any Level 4 or lowe Psychic from the Deck. Note the lack of any once per turn clause, even a soft once per turn like Lonefire Blossom. This card was easy to cycle through your Deck for the Psychics you needed to make your plays, especially under Brain Research Lab to make this infinite, just hope nothing happens to your Research Lab otherwise you take a ton of burn. The power of this card is clearly very high with all it can do summoning what will be an ever increasing pool of Psychics, so we were lucky it was banned early. I imagine it gets an errata with a once per turn clause if it ever does return, which is fair. In its current state it’s too dangerous to allow.
In Genesys, this being only 1 point is hilarious, with Brain Research Lab instead taking the 100 points towards it. This should allow Psychics to play better in that format since a playset of this shouldn’t interfere with the 2 Emergency Teleports you can afford, just comes down to whatever else you’d want.
Advanced Rating: 5/5
Genesys Rating: 4.5/5
Art: 3.5/5 Nice brain.
Mighty
Vee
Throwback Thursday gives us the first banned Psychic monster ever, the legendary Mind Master, a level 1 LIGHT Psychic Tuner monster. You already know it’s a prime target for Emergency Teleport, and if it somehow came back, Parallel Teleport and Serene Psychic Girl can search it as well. Weirdly enough, various Blue-Eyes cards can also search it since it’s a level 1 LIGHT Tuner, though that’s not very helpful. Predictably, its stats are pretty terrible, with only 100 attack and 200 defense, but it won’t need stats with what it’s about to do.
Mind Master has a single non-once per turn (yep, you already know what’s coming) effect to pay 800 Life Points and Tribute any Psychic monster except for a Mind Master (post-errata, anyway) to Special Summon any level 4 or lower Psychic monster from your deck in Attack Position. This card was way before my time, but the fact that it can Special Summon from the deck multiple times should already give you an idea of how it was abused. Mind Master can effectively vomit out Psychic monsters from your entire deck, and if you manage to field Brain Research Lab, you are basically free! Weirdly enough, despite the correct assertion that Mind Master was banned for enabling loops, it’s difficult to find the decks and combos that actually got it banned, especially with Yugiohtopdecks unfortunately being sunsetted as of this review. Perhaps the most obvious and well-documented is the Psi-Blocker loop; once it’s established, you can repeatedly summon Psi-Blocker and repeat the process until you call every card in the game, effectively skipping your opponent’s turn. When your own turn rolls back around, you could easily OTK with beaters like Reinforced Human Psychic Cyborg, Power Injector, and Psychic Snail (bet you never thought those guys were meta, huh?). Another degenerate build was a Gusto build that used Caam, Serenity of Gusto to draw through your entire deck until you drew all 5 Exodia pieces; Mind Master helped by cycling through Gusto monsters and filling your Graveyard with fodder for Caam. Perhaps less notably, you could flood the board with EARTH Psychic monsters to field both Naturia Barkion and Naturia Beast, a board that would have been virtually unstoppable for the time. Even after the errata to prevent you from Tributing Mind Master itself or other Mind Masters, it was apparently still too much for Jerome, and Mind Master was deservedly banned. Could it come back? Maybe– Morphtronic Telefon is a textbook example of how “loopslop” really hasn’t aged well in modern Yugioh, especially when you’re contending with Hand Traps and an increasingly shrinking number of FTK enablers. Of course, with P.U.N.K. and the new Psychic cards, Mind Master could definitely see some rogue tops with its new toys. I don’t want it back, if only because Psi-Blocker loops would likely tank YCS attendance, but there’s no reason to scream for the hills if it ever comes back. Is it any wonder it only costs 1 point in Genesys? Granted, Psi-Blocker is 67 points, but…
+Incredible combo potential due to a non-once per turn Special Summon from deck
+Highly accessible through modern Psychic support
-Requires setup and is vulnerable to Hand Traps
-Practically requires Life Point recovery to avoid killing yourself
Advanced: 4/5 (5/5 pre-errata)
Genesys: 4.25/5
Art: 3/5 I used to think it was kind of cute because it looks like it has a face, but to my shock, its “face” is actually light bulbs.
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