Nightmare Apprentice – #LEDE-EN029
You can Special Summon this card (from your hand) by discarding 1 card. You can only Special Summon “Nightmare Apprentice” once per turn this way. If this card battles a monster, neither can be destroyed by that battle. If this card is Normal or Special Summoned: You can add 1 Illusion monster from your Deck to your hand, except “Nightmare Apprentice”. You can only use this effect of “Nightmare Apprentice” once per turn.
Date Reviewed: April 29th, 2024
Rating: 4.25
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,
Nightmare Apprentice starts our week off looking at more Legacy of Destruction cards, and is one of two Illusion cards we’ll take a look at.
Apprentice Illusion Magician for Illusion Monsters, Nightmare Apprentice is an easy extender, costing you a discard for her Special Summon. You can set up the grave with that discard or just get rid of a dead card in your hand. With Mirage Mirror Force available for Illusion Monsters, you can always bring that monster back later while protecting yourself at the same time. Standard no destruction by battle for Nightmare Apprentice, like all Illusion Monsters. When she’s summoned she searches out an Illusion Monster from the Deck to the hand like Apprentice Illusion Magician does for Dark Magician.
Great search power for Illusion Monsters even if it costs you a card. The extender ability, the fact that she is the only Illusion-Type monster that needs no interaction with your opponent to trigger a Special Summon ability is even bigger. She gets an Illusion monster on the field while searching another, which can get things going for the Illusion archetype that needs to battle opponent’s monsters to gain certain abilities. Master Tao the Chanter can be sent to the grave to Special Summon an Illusion-Type monster while Nightmare Apprentice searches another Illusion monster, getting you a break even and setting up a summon of Nightmare Magician if you searched it.
I see Nightmare Apprentice being added into the Chimera archetype. She can be used to get to your other Fusion piece and enables quicker Fusion Summons for the archetype, as well as gives them another attacker on board. This, along with Vouiburial, the Dragon Undertaker will help Illusion monsters, but for now it is centered around Chimera.
Advanced- 4/5 Art- 4.5/5
Until Next Time,
KingofLullaby
Crunch$G
Nothing released between Phantom Nightmare and Legacy of Destruction besides a reprint Speed Duel set, so we can get straight to the new core set the week after release with the standard “best-of” generic-ish cards, starting with some of the first decent Illusion support in a while: Nightmare Apprentice.
Nightmare Apprentice is a Level 6 DARK Illusion with 2000 ATK and 1700 DEF. Fine-ish stats for a Level 6, but DARK is great and I’m sure we’ll keep getting Illusion support until it’s on par with other types. First effect lets you Special Summon this card from the hand by discarding a card, which is literally Apprentice Illusion Magician for Dark Magician, including the HOPT in summoning it this way. The similarities continue, as Normal or Special Summoning this lets you search for any Illusion monster from the Deck that isn’t another Nightmare Apprentice. Having a searcher for a whole typing is always nice, especially in this case since you are getting a body on field that doesn’t eat up your Normal Summon. It’s great for Chimera at least to search for your Mirror Swordknight or Cornfield Coatl to get Chimera plays going, or tech Illusion monsters like Master-Tao the Chanter or Talons of Shurilane. You can even search for the new Diabellze the Original Sinkeeper for your Sinful Spoils goodstuff. Decent search targets for this card so far, which I assume the pool will continue to grow with each set. HOPT on this search effect as well, which is fine. Also can’t leave out monsters not being able to be destroyed in battles involving this card, something we see on most Illusion monsters, but not all of them anymore. Nightmare Apprentice is a great card for this brand new type to have, giving you generic access to any monster with said typing with great ease. She’ll be an Illusion staple, especially as it continues to grow as a type.
Advanced Rating: 4.5/5
Art: 5/5 Basically Dark Magician Girl, but enough here to have her own identity.
Mighty
Vee
What? Legacy of Destruction already?! Well, we’re leaving Phantom Nightmare behind us as we jump right into Legacy of Destruction, which launched in the TCG just last Friday. This week we’re covering the one-off free agent cards, starting with Nightmare Apprentice, a level 6 DARK Illusion monster. An analogue of Apprentice Illusion Magician (and by extension Dark Magician Girl), Nightmare Apprentice fittingly shares its parameters down to the 2000 attack and 1700 defense, with the only difference being that it’s an Illusion monster rather than a Spellcaster. Apprentice can be searched by Gazelle the King of Mythical Claws if you want, though as we’ll see, Apprentice will be the one doing the searching most of the time.
Like most Illusion monsters so far, Apprentice shares the Illusion battle protection, preventing it from destroying or being destroyed by battle to enable Chimera’s multi-attacking gimmick. Funnily enough, Apprentice also shares Apprentice Illusion Magician’s summoning condition, allowing you to Special Summon it from your hand once per turn by discarding one card. Having an extra body is pretty helpful in Chimera to get more attacks with Chimera the Illusion Beast, but I do have just one small nitpick I’ll get to later. Finally, Apprentice’s main effect is a hard once per turn effect that triggers if it’s Normal or Special Summoned, searching any Illusion monster. If you’ve played Chimera before, this essentially reads “search Mirror Swordknight”, and you’d be right! Another three copies of Mirror Swordknight is extremely helpful, and for now is pretty much Apprentice’s main purpose since we don’t really have any other proper Illusion decks. As-is, Apprentice is still a staple 3-of in Chimera just for consistency, but future Illusion decks will likely rely on it as well. My only complaint is that it has to summon itself to search, making you slightly more vulnerable to the increasingly-powerful Nibiru, but honestly I only said that because it’s hard to find cons for this card.
+Illusion ROTA that will only get better with more Illusion decks
+Can provide another body for Chimera the Illusion Beast
-Discard is slightly annoying
Advanced: 4.25/5
Art: 4.5/5 Yet another Dark Magician Girl clone, but at least they all look good!
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