Night Assailant – #HAC1-EN009
FLIP: Target 1 monster your opponent controls; destroy that target.
If this card is sent from the hand to the GY: Target 1 Flip monster in your GY, except “Night Assailant”; add that target to your hand.
Date Reviewed: June 23rd, 2022
Rating: 1.85
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,
Night Assailant is a heck of a Throwback Thursday choice, debuting back in 2004…makes me feel even older.
The text on this card has changed over the years to simplify the effects, but two things have always remained true: Flip it to destroy a monster your opponent has, or use it to get a Flip monster back from the grave to your hand. Recently unlimited because of the wording on the card, you can’t now loop Night Assailant with another in your grave, effectively not losing advantage. Night Assailant is one of those great cards that doesn’t care if it is used as cost, it will still give you a Flip monster if you discard it to pay for something, which I love…if only Dark World had been that way. The flip to destroy a monster on your opponent’s side of the field is slow, but a good defensive mechanism that was great back when the game was much slower.
The retrieval of a Flip monster works great with Krawler, Shaddoll, and Gravekeeper decks. Long ago, you’d use Night Assailant to get the holy grail of Flip monsters back: Fiber Jar, Cyber Jar, Magician of Faith. Now you can go after MoF still, and there’s Morphing Jar as well, but as previously mentioned, the game is fast-paced, bigger card pools to dip into, and this effect is to be used as a last resort.
Night Assailant back at three is something Shaddoll like to see I’m sure, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it in something running a few Flip monster as part of a gimmick-style deck, but it being used in any real competitive way may not be seen unless there is an even better Flip-based deck than Shaddoll.
Advanced-2/5 Art-4.5/5
Until Next Time
KingofLullaby
Crunch$G
Let’s continue with the recent F/L List for Throwback Thursday and look at a card that went from 1 to 3 with a new errata to solve the problems it used to cause: Night Assailant.
Night Assailant is a Level 3 DARK Fiend Flip monster with 200 ATK and 500 DEF. Abysmal stats, but DARK and Fiend on Level 3 makes it a Tour Guide target that likely wasn’t really considered ever since Sangan’s ban in 2012. First effect is the standard FLIP effect, letting you target a monster the opponent controls and destroy it, which is literally Man-Eater Bug, and it’s still very outdated, even when this was released. The main effect was the second effect upon being sent from the hand to the graveyard, which used to let you target any other FLIP monster in the graveyard and add it to your hand, which could be another copy of Night Assailant for infinite discard fodder, hence the limit to this. Now you straight up can’t add any copies of Night Assailant with this, ending the loops once and for all, which honestly is all this card would of had going for it if it was at 3 without the errata. Now it feels completely outdated, but the errata was at least logical and solved the loops.
Advanced Rating: 2/5
Art: 5/5 He’s so sick looking, at least he has some past format viability still.
Alex
Searcy
Night Assailant, believe it or not, was quite the card…oh 15 years ago or so, and worked fantastically at 2 or more copies, and for a long time, we only had 1 available…of course, this is when Flip Effects were much more prevalent and relevant to the game. Being able to ditch itself to retrieve another copy of itself was a great thing (again, this is when things like Magician of Faith or Mask of Darkness even were more potent in the game). The card finally saw an errata where it can no longer fetch itself with this Effect, meaning 3 or 3000 of these don’t really have much of an impact anymore. Sure, there’s a couple Themes out there that do like to Flip for Effects, but as a whole, this guy has no power at all, and that’s even without comparatively speaking. It does still benefit from being Dark, as well as a Fiend, and the Man Eater Bug Flip destruction is…something…but Night Assailant seems to have Assailed itself, and lives (or dies?) in obscurity.
Rating: 1.75/5
Art: 4.5/5 This picture is just cool enough to not be creepy lol
Mighty
Vee
Just like last week, today’s Throwback Thursday is yet another card that was given freedom on the banlist, only this time with an errata to minimize abuse. Night Assailant is a level 3 DARK Fiend Flip monster from way back in 2005, infamous for an loop we’ll get to later. DARK Fiends are never surprising to see, though its abominably bad stat spread of 200 attack and 500 defense are appalling even for a level 3 monster. Still, as a Flip monster, its destiny is usually to be set and destroyed by your opponent anyway, so it doesn’t really need to battle.
Night Assailant’s Flip effect is simple, allowing you to target and destroy one of your opponent’s monsters. While getting rid of a monster is nice, the effect is very outdated considering you need to flip it first, and being destroyed beforehand won’t make it happen. Night Assailant’s true claim to fame is (or rather, was) its other effect, which allows you to target a Flip monster in your Graveyard that isn’t another Night Assailant and add it back to your hand if Night Assailant is sent to the Graveyard from the hand. Funnily enough, this effect still isn’t once per turn, but there’s hardly a way to abuse it considering how bad most Flip monsters are. Prior to its errata, Night Assailant could recycle ITSELF, so you could retrieve another Night Assailant and essentially keep discarding them for infinite discard fodder, hence the card’s ban. Nowadays, many of the combos that could abuse this loop have either been rendered obsolete or are banned themselves, though having the errata just in case is still a good idea, I think. Overall, a perfectly fair but now otherwise unremarkable monster; no real reason to use it outside of gimmicky Flip decks.
Advanced: 1.5/5
Art: 3.5/5 Fun fact, this is apparently Gravekeeper’s Assailant after the events of Royal Tribute (pretty creepy).
Last week’s Throwback Thursday card saw a change in its status on the Forbidden/Limited List and today’s review is just the same.
Night Assailant is no longer restricted in any way – which is perfectly fair considering he recently received an errata, preventing him from creating infinite loops. As fun as it was to keep cycling back Night Assailant after Night Assailant turn after turn back in the day, I gotta admit, this was one errata from Konami that I actually like. I consider Night Assailant as one of the original degenerate cards in YuGiOh’s history.
Not only was this errata perfectly fair…it also perfectly relegated Night Assailant into obscurity. It’s funny to me how truly broken the game of YuGiOh is when you consider that changing a card so subtly completely changes its status from broken and banned to unlimited and unplayable.
For those who don’t know / can’t read (in that case, how are you even reading this review?) Night Assailant is a FLIP monster who can pop a monster. Simple enough. This is far too slow of an effect to have any real impact in today’s game.
NA’s other effect is to add back a FLIP monster from your Grave whenever he’s discarded. He used to be able to pick up another copy of himself, but alas it must be a different-named card now. This helps to offset the cost of some cards like Twin Twisters or get extra value off effects like Card Destruction.
So the question becomes: “are there any good FLIP monsters to retrieve?” Well the only relevant ones I can think of are Shaddolls, an archetype that is still competitively relevant.
Overall, I like this card a lot. It would have aged beautifully in its original state (it would have been practically ageless). But now it’s completely dead, in terms of playability.
Advanced Rating – 1/5
Art – 2.5/5
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