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Pojo's Yu-Gi-Oh Card of the Day

Gravekeeper's Spear Soldier
Common

Spellcaster / Effect Monster
When this card attacks with an ATK that is higher than the DEF of your opponent’s Defense Position monster, inflict the difference as Battle Damage to your opponent’s Life Points.

Type - Dark / 4 / 1500 / 1000
Card Number
- PGD-062

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale 1 being 
the worst.  3 ... average.  5 is the highest rating

Date Reviewed - 9.10.04

Tranorix Gravekeeper's Spear Soldier

Meh...this isn't a good Friday card. And Fridays actually mean something now that school's back in session. Anyway, today we review Gravekeeper's Spear Soldier, another solid Gravekeeper. Being 1500/1000, he's searchable by Witch, Sangan, Tomato, and Spy; the stats obviously improve with Necrovalley.

He's a trampler. Attack something in Defense Position and he'll still do damage to it. It's nice, simple, and effective. A 2000 ATK monster with the trample effect is definitely nothing to scoff at; it will usually spell a lot of damage for your opponent unless he can get rid of Spear Soldier quickly. While swarming with a bunch of other Gravekeepers, Spear Soldier is extremely effective. If you're running Gravekeepers, you should definitely run a Spear Soldier or two.

Typical tournament deck: 3/5
Gravekeeper deck: 4.5/5
OVERALL RATING: 3.7/5 
ExMinion OfDarkness Friday:
Gravekeeper's Spear Soldier

If I would have seen this list of 5 cards be last week's list of CotDs I would have been a lot more enthusiastic from the start. Another great card with Necro.

1,500 and trample on its own is decent -- it beats out the Control world (but still only ties Don's defense and still loses 100 to DDWL's DEF.) 2,000 trample with Necro out is just sick and wrong. Usually when you're doing that much base damage with trample, your monster is either switching to DEF (Spear), required a Tribute (Airknight), or required an Equip (Big Bang Shot/Fairy Meteor Crush.)

It's searchable by the Spy (everything we've done this week except for Chief has been searchable by Spy.) Cannonholder and Curse from last week are as well, so the deck has more searchablility than those with Sangan and Witch, actually (just something to mention not pertaining to Spear Soldier.)

There's not much more to say about a Trampler -- it does damage when you normally wouldn't do damage.


Final note for GK week 2: This deck is actually a solid build. If I wasn't so dead-set on seeing the cookie-cutter deck win and taking the best possible chance at winning even in "fun" games, I would have built myself a GK deck. It's cheap to build, the best card it exclusively uses being a super. It's a great answer to Chaos. It's something your metagame most likely hasn't seen up-close, giving you that one-time advantage of suprise. (That is until tournament reports get posted, your list goes up, and they all copy it :P)

Anyone who is sick of removing Lights and Darks from their graveyard every single day, or sick of their opponents doing the same should seriously build this deck. You could probably trade for every single card this deck needs with just one Mirror Force, or Chaos monster, or the like.

4.5/5 
Otaku

Welcome to the last day of Gravekeeper’s Beatdown Week.  I originally wanted to do one Week Gravekeeper’s Burn and the other Gravekeeper’s Beatdown, but between okaying the idea and actually sending in the lists, college started. :-P It made things pretty hectic.  I am writing this intro since I noticed that some of the CotD staff members were annoyed again.  I just view the CotDs differently, I guess.  I try for theme weeks, and I normally like to end Fridays with a “fun” card, or the least relevant card to the week’s theme, since this way I built up a combo, and give people more time to contemplate the serious stuff, before they head out to weekend tournaments.  It’s a lot easier to look for a card over five days instead of over one.

As I said, I had some order issues these last two weeks; in retrospect, Gravekeeper’s Spy could have been last week, or the Chief, and moved Royal Tribute, a useful, but not “staple” card of either deck.  There were two pairs of cards that I did not want to split though: Gravekeeper’s Cannon Holder and Curse (the “Burn Brothers”), and Gravekeeper’s Assailant and Spear Soldier (the “Beatdown Brothers”).  Interestingly enough, you’ll note that a lot of the Gravekeeper’s Monsters form nice little duos: Guard and Spy (Defensive Dynamos), Chief and Spy (Sultans of Swarm), Guard and Assailant (Control Freaks, or Killer Control if you want to continue with alliteration)… this is what the game needs more of, monsters that are incredible when combined, but pretty useless on their own.  Have you noticed that the biggest enemy of a diverse environment is several diverse, powerful cards… that can be used together without any problems?  You take the best Spells with the Best Traps with the best beatsticks with the best supporters… and so on until you have one mean deck.  Oh, it does take skill to build said decks to their fullest, but the difficulty curve is almost flat.  Also, as of now, this game rewards such decks while punishing the theme decks (Tribe Infecting Virus, in addition to the obvious benefit of cards for which combos are an afterthought).  Okay, enough of a rant, it’s time for me to do my job, eh?

Stats: Gravekeeper’s Spear Soldier continues the tradition of being a Dark/Spellcaster, and like 2/3s of Gravekeeper’s Monsters, is a Level 4.  This means that he has the same solid foundation as those cards: Chaos Food (and other Dark support), and Spellcaster-love… now that I look, I can’t find any that directly helps the one’s we looked at this week.  I only had time for the most cursory of checks though.  Moving on, we come to an ATK of 1500, which is serviceable (if the monster has a useful effect), and a paltry DEF of 1000.  These stats mean that this monster can be searched and brought out of your deck into hand by both Sangan and Witch of the Black Forest, or searched out from your deck and Special Summoned by Mystic Tomato and Gravekeeper’s Spy.  Like all Gravekeeper’s this card has an effect, so let’s move on to it.

Effect(s): This card can trample.  For those unfamiliar with the term, it means that when it attacks a monster in DEF mode whose DEF is less than this cards ATK, the difference is inflicted as Battle Damage to the opponent’s Life Points, just like it would if this monster attacked a monster in ATK mode whose ATK was lower than its own ATK.  Trample has been a solid effect.

Uses/Combinations: When this card came out, this effect was in high demand, possessed by Airknight Parshath, Cyclon Laser, Dragons (if Dragon’s Rage was in play), Fairy Meteor Crush-equipped monsters, Mad Sword Beast, and Spear Dragon.  Sounds like a lot, but only Mad Sword Beast and Spear Dragon were Level 4 “beatsticks”.  So this (Super-Short Print?) Common was pretty nice for some side-decks.  If you need a Dark Trampler, this is your monster.  If you need a Spellcaster Trampler, this is your monster.  Of course, not too many decks need those, but at least it has its own small niche.

Oh yeah, this is a Gravekeeper!  Yes, I left this until the end to explain why this was probably the best Gravekeeper, overall.  See, it has a decent use on its own.  Used with Necrovalley, it can be pretty sick, giving you an otherwise draw-back free Level 4 2000 ATK super-searchable Trampler!  Combined with its brother in Beatdown, Gravekeeper’s Assailant, and things get even better.  You more or less choose how your opponent’s monsters die, usually in a manner to maximize the damage.  If there is a single monster, then yes, it can be a bit less effective, or if they are all incredibly good with stats at 2000/2000 plus.  Anyway, by manipulating the two, you can usually get at least one of Assailant or Spear Soldier inflicting damage.  Say they have two Archfiend Soldiers in play.  Assailant can attack one, switch the other into DEF mode, and do 100 damage.  Then Spear Soldier can hit the other for 500 damage.  “Big deal, that’s only a 400 increase” some might say.  Try changing one Archfiend to The End of Anubis.  Now, in a situation where two Spear Soldiers would have lost field control and two Assailants would be able to gain it, but only inflict 100 damage, instead you just gained field control and inflicted 2100 damage.  Against Scape Goat, they are just hilarious.

Ratings

Just a quick reminder, these scores are for use in an actual Necrovalley deck.  Again, this goes against how I used to rate cards, or else I wouldn’t even mention it.

Casual: 4/5, 4.25/5 with bans, 4.5/5 with October 1st bans.  You can make people pay for setting weak effect monsters here, as well as Spear Dragon and Goblin Attack Force use.

Tournament: 3.75/5, 4/5 with bans, 4.25/5 with October 1st bans.  You see less of Spear and GAF here, as well as less weak effect monsters being set.  Also, higher ATK scores on beatsticks are more common.

Limited: 3.5/5-A solid attacker in this format and it will do trample.  That can be vital, since it makes it harder for your opponent to set up chump stallers… like Spirit Reaper, who is in this set.

Summary

Note, this is probably the best of the Gravekeepers, even though the scores don’t automatically reflect that-unlike the others, this can help just about any deck, although there are better options available in most cases (Enraged Battle Ox or Spear Dragon).  Since I didn’t use general scores, I didn’t want this to be overlooked.  If you need more proof, this was the next to last obvious card I got for my Gravekeeper’s deck, and when I compared prices, it was second only to Gravekeeper’s Chief/Necrovalley (they were the same) in price.

JAELOVE

Friday: Gravekeeper’s Spear Soldier

Rated For: Gravekeeper Deck

We conclude the week with another card featuring fabulous artwork. This one’s name is the Spear Soldier, and he will bring the pain to your opponent’s defensive schemes. Trample damage is a powerful element of the game that remains available to only Beasts, Dragons, and Gravekeepers. The goal is to take advantage of such power.

Advantage F/H: He gets the same score as yesterday’s Assailant because he too becomes a 2000 attack powerhouse. And he will increase your life point lead by his trample effect. While the effect is not as great as Assailant’s with Necrovalley on the field, he does not rely upon it to receive his effect. This sort of balances out his score on the system with GK Assailant’s.                        8/10.

Best Draw for the Situation: Many of the monsters your opponent plays in defense position (sinister serpent, sangan, magical scientist, spirit reaper, magician of faith, to name a few) are open to the overflow damage of the GKSS. The fact is that this card is effective without Necrovalley. In fact, it’s one of the few GK cards that can function well without the shield of the field spell. It’s quite solid all around to draw into.   8/10.

Attributes/Effect: While he is a trample monster almost on par with Enraged Battle Ox, his effect loses a bit of its luster compared to the Necrovalley enhanced Assailant. They both share identical 2000 attack points, but trample doesn’t quite compare to position change. However, since he keeps his effect without Necrovalley, the two nearly balance out. In this case, Spear Soldier receives another solid              8/10.

Dependability: The system will reward GKSS’s ability to function without Necrovalley. While the 500 attack bonus would be nice, it’s not truly necessary to the Spear Soldier’s efficacy. Since he does not depend on anything to be effective, he gets a solid 9/10.

The Bottom Line: Probably the best all-around attack force you’re going to have.

A BAD Score:      33/40=                      83/100

Cards it functions with:    GK support, already listed numerous times.

 

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