Ancient Guardians – What’s inside?

Musical Pendulums and Snakes and Space Bears, oh my!

Ancient Guardian’s releases soon (6 May 2021) and is the next in line of the Yu-Gi-Oh! deck building sets. Deck building sets usually include 3 distinct decks to build, and a few support cards that, bless their souls, Konami thinks will aid in deck building.

Ancient Guardians is the next such set, introducing the TCG to the “Ogdoadic“, “Solfachord“, and “Ursarctic” archetypes. Yes, those names have been translated to English.

So lets go over each of these Archetypes and see for Ancient Guardians, What’s Inside?

Ogdoadic – The watery snakes you love to 8.

Have you seen Anaconda? I was a kid when I first did, hidden behind the couch, the story of a huge, water snake devouring all in its path.

Ogdoadic (known as Abhyss in OCG – a far superior name) has the potential to do the same, except this time there are 8 of them!

Based on some Egyptian Snake deities I briefly glanced over the wiki of for this article, Ogdoadic are a Deck centered around sending their monsters to the Graveyard and Special Summoning them afterwards in a style reminiscent of Infernoids.

There are EIGHT in total, 4 pairs of two, each consisting of a Light and a Dark attribute in true chaotic fashion. The end goal for the deck being Ogdoabyss, the Ogdoadic Overlord, a quick effect-non destructive board wipe.

Decent.

One of the key cards reprinted in this set is Snake Rain, which came out 16 years ago. I can’t help but feel this archetype is the result of some Konami rep sitting on a pile of “Foolish Burial but times 4” since it’s release and making daily offerings to Cobra Commander.

Snake Rain is also available in super shiny, super expensive, Collectors Rare in Ancient Guardians.

Cobra Commander has accepted their offering.

Ursarctic – Bears in Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace.

Space. The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the Ursarctic, the new Synchro archetype featuring a bunch of Mecha-Space-Bears.

Synchro Summoning is the use of a Tuner monster and other monsters to summon a monster a level equal to the combined level of the Synchro materials. So when I see Ursarctic are all level 7 and 8 monsters, something doesn’t add up. Literally.

Ursarctic instead subtract the levels, resulting in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG’s first Level 1 Synchro monster.
8 minus 7 is 1, duh.

The absolute star (pun-intended) card for the archetype is their search spell, Ursarctic Departure. For a discard, you can add two Bears from your deck to your hand. Then you can banish the spell from your GY instead, if you would tribute monsters for an Ursarctic effect. Including their summoning effects.

During the Main Phase (Quick Effect): You can Tribute 1 other Level 7 or higher monster in your hand; Special Summon this card from your hand, also you cannot Special Summon monsters for the rest of this turn, except monsters that have a Level.

Will this set be an Ursa-Major hit? Or will it be a Big Dipper? The answer is in the stars.

Solfachord – So F’ing Cute.

What Yu-Gi-Oh! set is complete with out the obligatory “waifu” archetype?

Pulling at your heartstrings and your harp-strings, Solfachord are a musical themed, Victorian dress wearing Pendulum archetype.

With an ascending pendulum scale (1 to 8) paired with a descending level (8 to 1), Solfachord harmonise with each other to help create the perfect Pendulum melody.

The Link monster, Grandoremichord Musesea, goes as far to almost be a replacement for Heavy Metalfoes Electrumite (R.I.P). Requiring only 2 Pendulum Monsters, favourable Link arrows and a respectable 1900 attack, the Grand Solfachord Hotel allows you to swap Pendulum cards between your hand and face-up from the extra deck to help you set a scale that’s pitch perfect.

Will they fall flat? Solfachord having the ability to add “fix” your pendulum scales, and good support makes me believe they will join the chorus that is generic “Pendulum good stuff” deck these days.

Ancient Guardians released Thursday 6th May 2021.
More info: https://img.yugioh-card.com/oc/products/detail.php?id=angu