Tessera the Primal Squire – #DUAD-EN018
You can reveal 1 “Monarch” Spell/Trap in your hand; Special Summon this card from your hand. During your Main Phase, you can: Immediately after this effect resolves, Tribute Summon 1 monster. If this card is sent to the GY: You can Special Summon 1 monster with 800 ATK/1000 DEF from your Deck, also you cannot Special Summon from the Extra Deck for the rest of this turn. You can only use each effect of “Tessera the Primal Squire” once per turn.
Date Reviewed: November 3rd, 2025
Rating: 3.83
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,
Tessera the Primal Squire starts up the first week of November and our look at some Monarch support.
Level 1 Warrior and LIGHT Attribute have a lot going for Tessera already. With the 800/1000 ATK/DEF stat is pairs up with the Edea and Eidos and, is a RoTA target like Edea. Unlike the first two, Tessera is an extender by revealing a Monarch Spell/Trap. No discard, no activate it first, just reveal something you plan on playing that turn and you’ve got your free Special Summon. While the previous two mentioned could be splashed into Tribute-heavy archetypes, Tessera is sticking with Monarchs. You can Tribute Summon immediately after this effect resolves, but I think it might be better to use this card as a setup to get your full Tribute Summon potential. There is an abundance of Monarch Spell/Traps to choose from and while there’s a few that will always be played, depending on what is in your hand will dictate how you proceed off Tessera’s Special Summon. The First Monarch and The Prime Monarch are traps that you will be setting and need setup at least for The Prime Monarch. Return of the Monarchs is your searcher, as well as The Monarchs Revolt, and of course Domain of the Monarchs is your lockout card against the opponent when you’ve got your Tribute Summon on the field.
Being sent to the grave (which covers the being tributed thing as well) gets you to Eidos or Edea, and it being a Special Summon won’t affect their effects going off, netting you more advantage (another Special Summon of an 800/1000 monster from Edea, Eidos granting another Tribute Summon that turn). Both effects can be used once per turn, so you’ll get the most out of Tessera immediately as long as you can send them to the grave. Of course, when it comes to the Monarchs, they don’t like the Extra Deck, so depending on your build, you have just them and no Extra Deck to back you up.
Good Special Summon extender that the archetype needed as they didn’t have anything in-house to Special Summon. Works with the tribute-theme of the archetype and with both effects able to be activated once per turn, Tessera is good at making sure you don’t lose advantage.
Advanced- 3.5/5
Art- 3.5/5
Until Next Time,
KingofLullaby
Crunch$G
We see a big return for Monarchs, getting a decent wave of support for the first time since the Structure Deck at the start of 2016, starting the week off with a brand new Squire to help summon your Monarchs: Tessera the Primal Squire.
Tessera is a Level 1 LIGHT Warrior with 800 ATK and 1000 DEF. Stats are important for synergy with the Monarch cards, and being a LIGHT Warrior is good. First effect lets you reveal a Monarch Spell/Trap in your hand to Special Summon this card. Simple summoning condition in a Deck where you play a ton of the Monarch backrow, giving you the easy tribute fodder to summon your Monarch. Speaking of which, during your Main Phase, immediately after this effect resolves, you can Tribute Summon a monster, so you don’t have to even take up your proper Normal Summon for the turn off this card. Finally, if this card is sent to the graveyard, you can summon a monster with 800 ATK and 1000 DEF directly from the Deck, but you cannot summon from the Extra Deck for the rest of the turn, meaning you can summon Edea from the Deck and then get to Eidos to help summon even more Monarchs to your field. The Extra Deck lock is standard for Monarch cards, and it’s fine if you are using Domain of the True Monarchs or The Monarchs Erupt to lock the opponent out from playing the game, though an Extra Deck version of Monarchs still exists. HOPT on all three effects, of course. Tessera is great, being a Squire that won’t take your Normal Summon and even give you an extra one to summon as many Monarchs as possible. Even after you use it as tribute fodder, it’ll access even more fodder through the other Squires as well, plus it’s a RotA and One for One target alongside Edea. For sure run this in Monarchs.
As for Genesys, Monarchs are still decent, even when Domain and Erupt take up 50 points each while Vanity’s Fiend and Majesty’s Fiend take up 100 points each, but you can either improve the consistency of the Deck with 3 Pot of Greed in the format or dedicate your points towards the lockout cards since they are searchable.
Advanced Rating: 4/5
Genesys Rating: 4/5
Art: 4/5 That’s a lot of Monarch energy.
Mighty
Vee
November starts our coverage with the fan-favorite Monarch support from Duelist’s Advance, which managed to take a surprise top at the Rochester WCQ Regional. The first card of the week is a new squire, Tessera the Primal Squire, a level 1 LIGHT Warrior monster. Reinforcement of the Army and One for One can access it directly, but you’re much more likely to summon it with Edea the Heavenly Squire or, more importantly, search it or dump it with The Monarchs Revolt, thanks to its classical Squire stat spread of 800 attack and 1000 defense.
Tessera has 3 hard once per turn effects, as expected of a bombshell combo piece in this day and age. You’ll be able to Special Summon it from your hand by revealing any Monarch Spell or Trap; obviously, this is great for saving your Normal Summon to Tribute Summon a Monarch, though it’s a bit redundant thanks to Tessera’s second effect, letting you immediately Tribute Summon any monster. This is mostly as backup in case you were forced to Normal Summon Tessera so that you’re not completely boned after using up your Normal Summon. The main effect we want to see is Tessera’s final effect, triggering if it’s sent to the Graveyard to let you Special Summon any monster with 800 attack and 1000 defense (IE a Squire) from your deck, locking you out of Special Summoning from the Extra Deck in the process. That’s to be expected with many of the more effective Monarch cards locking you out of the Extra Deck, so you might as well forget about it! This effect is meant to pair with Revolt, since revealing 3 Tesseras will guarantee you’ll search one and another will be sent to the Graveyard, letting you bring out Edea and then Eidos the Underworld Squire to set up your combos. You don’t need to worry too much about opening Tessera either, thanks to Revolt conveniently giving you a discard to dump it if necessary. The only real problem with Tessera is its combo ability isn’t too great by itself and mostly depends on accessing Revolt. Needless to say, you’ll want to play 3 copies for Revolt alone to guarantee getting one to the Graveyard. As a general statement on Genesys Monarch, they’re surprisingly free, but you’ll unfortunately lose a lot of points from running Domain of the True Monarchs or The Monarchs Erupt.
+Great combo piece that enables a lot of combo lines
+Can fix combos in a pinch by Special Summoning itself and gaining another Tribute Summon
-Poor combo ability on its own
-Extra Deck lock makes hybrid builds almost entirely pointless
Advanced: 4/5
Genesys: 3.75/5
Art: 3.5/5 Tessera? Tesseract?
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