Sadly, I’ve been late getting my CotDs in recently, so if you think I missed anything this week or last week, check again as they should be up.

 

Batteryman C is a good example of how not to make a “stat booster”.  At least the old Metal Raider era elemental boosting cards boosted themselves as well.  Batteryman C boosts a fairly solid Monster Type, Machines, but since it isn’t a Machine it won’t help itself.  If it were a solid Monster in its own right, that wouldn’t be too bad, but this Level 2 Light/Thunder Monster has a 0/0 ATK/DEF split and no built in protection features.

 

There are some successful ATK boosters that are small Monsters.  First, the classic Metal Raider Monsters “Element ATK Boosters”  (EAB for short) may not be great, but they weren’t totally worthless: at least they were all small enough to be searched out by the various Attribute-based searchers that came in the next set (Spell Ruler a.k.a. Magic Ruler for those who don’t remember).  So yeah, it was possible to swarm them without bizarre combos: Witch’s Apprentice was never a brilliant card, but summoning one via Mystic Tomato meant you could drop another and both were 1550 Monsters.  If you managed all three, then you had an impressive trio of beatsticks (though not as impressive as yesterday’s Batteryman AA is in triplicate).  Still, they mostly would be for putting something else over the top while acting as bait for attacks and some older forms of removal (hello Fissure).  I can think of only one that is important to a deck: Milus Radiant which is needed for the Rescue Cat OTK deck.

 

This first generation also reduced an “opposing” Attribute’s ATK, but that never proved overly useful.  The reason was until the advent of Chaos, Attribute was an ignored characteristic.  Then with Chaos, only Light and Dark mattered, and even if either of those EABs had been found useful, they’d have clashed with half the deck.  A Legendary Ocean decks and Earth decks haven’t ever been CC, but they have had some success.  However, their elemental opposites rarely have seen a lot of play, though some Pyro/Burn (and thus Fire since so many Pyro Monsters are indeed Fire as well) do but don’t care if you lower their ATK scores.

 

The second generation of EABs are much less uniform than the old ones.  First, they don’t cover all Attributes: so far they only exist for Water and Wind (Nightmare Penguin and Harpy Lady 1, respectively.  Both effects were added to Monsters that could see play for other reasons: Nightmare Penguin has “bounce” effect that goes off when it is flipped (but isn’t an actual Flip Effect) and Harpy Lady 1 of course compatible with other Harpy themed cards.  While still remaining small enough to be searched out by multiple cards, Nightmare Penguin has a solid 1800 DEF score allowing it to also be a tiny “Wall” while Harpie Lady 1 pumps itself up to a respectable 1600 ATK with its effect.  Their actual boost is smaller than the older ones as well, but due to their much sturdier nature, they actual see some play (when people actually run the appropriate decks: a rare occurrence, I confess).

 

More successful has been Command Knight, who boost ATK by Type (Warrior) rather than Attribute.  Her success may be hard to mimic, though, since Warriors have such good support even without her.  Still, she is a better comparison for Batteryman C since he also boosts according to Type.  Command Knight, though her ATK boost is just a tad smaller, also has respectable stats (especially after boosting herself) and has a built in protection effect to make it hard to attack her.  Batteryman C has abysmal stats (0/0) and doesn’t boost itself nor does it possess any protection effect.  While there is some support just for it… said support in English currently consists of Battery Charger, which for 500 LP lets you Special Summon a Batteryman form the Graveyard.  This doesn’t make it worth running in Machine decks: I’ll just use Heavy Mech Support Platform: it may only boost one Monster, and becomes vulnerable to Spell/Trap removal doing it, but its got that wonderful “save the equipped Monster from destruction” effect as well, and has a few combos that work with other Machine deck candidates.

 

As for using it with Batteryman AA, the question is why?  You’d have to use DNA Surgery to make both Monsters into Machines, at which point even three Batteryman C aren’t really strong enough to defend themselves.  Now, if you don’t want to know about some upcoming cards stop reading here, and just go to the Ratings.  That’s right, this is a

 

SPOILER ALERT!

 

Yes, avoiding angry e-mails is worth me doing that.  For those still reading, you probably know what I am going to say, since if you don’t mind spoilers you’ve probably learned you have to read them in this game to avoid wasted money.  Batteryman D will protect Thunder-Types from being attacked by forcing the opponent to target itself.  While thankfully only a Level 1 Monster, it has 0 ATK and only 1900 DEF.  So while it’s nice it makes it hard to attack the other Batteryman Monsters and will almost certainly be the target hit by Smashing Ground, it’s pretty flimsy protection and prevents using DNA Surgery to make Batteryman C less worthless.  As for the upcoming Tribute Monster that gains extra abilities based on what Batteryman, if any, was offered as Tribute for its Normal Summoning, without a Batteryman it’s just a vanilla Light/Thunder Level 5 with 2400 ATK and 1000 DEF.  With Batteryman AA it’s a 3400 ATK Level 5 (not bad), with Batteryman D it’s immune to targeted Spells/Traps, and with Batteryman C it gets Trample.  Of course, it’s only getting one of those effects at a time, and after being summoned, only Batteryman D can sort of help it (not that it really needs to avoid being attacked most of the time).  At least Battery Charger keeps the Tribute cost from being a drag.  The main point is, though, that even with future support, Batteryman C has no useful role in Batteryman decks.

 

END SPOILER

 

Ratings

 

All Formats: 1/5 – It requires far too much effort for far too little gain.