Send 1 face-up non-Effect monster you control to the Graveyard to draw 2 cards.
White Elephant's Gift, along with Heat Wave (discussed in an earlier post on Kauai Kine Duels), adds to the ever-growing support that exists for Normal Monsters, and is the second draw card specifically designed for non-Effect monsters (the first is Common Charity, from Tactical Evolution). The obvious implications of this card are simple: If you want to replenish your hand, and you're running Geminis or Normal Monster Beat, you can send them to the Graveyard for a fresh draw, netting you a +1 to hand and a -1 to the field.
This card does come with a few drawbacks, however. The first is that, according to the card's language, you must "send a Non-Effect monster to the Graveyard"; this excludes Tokens and, to my knowledge, Trap Monsters, meaning you cannot combine this card with Dandylion, Fires of Doomsday, Phantom Skyblaster or Scapegoat to net you easy advantage, and you cannot use this with Embodiment of Apophis to get around the hassles of Normal Summoning a Normal Monster. The second is that, as a Normal Spell Card, this card has no place being chained to anything, and thus won't be replacing Gemini Spark in Hero Beat decks any time soon; if you Normal Summon Elemental Hero Neos Alius and your opponent chains Bottomless, you can chain Gemini Spark for the pop and draw one by Tributing your Gemini, but you cannot chain White Elephant's Gift. In spite of these drawbacks, however, the card, along with others, has enabled a few devastating engines, which we will discuss here.
One engine that White Elephant's gift has done a handy job of enabling is the Cloudian engine, which revolves around the Special Summoning of Cloudian - Smoke Ball:
Smoke Balls are newly born Cloudians. They fear being alone, and would rather swing and sway in the sky with their friends.
D'AWWWWW! Cloudian - Smoke Ball is so adorable! Even its flavor text makes the most hardened criminal want to pick it up and hug it! How could anybody consider this card dangerous in any meta?
Not so fast! Introducing the engine's core components, Cloudian - Turbulence and Fog Control:
Cloudian - Turbulence places a Fog Counter upon itself when it is Normal Summoned, which you can then remove to Special Summon a "Cloudian - Smoke Ball" from your Deck or from either player's Graveyard. You can then activate Fog Control, Tributing your Cloudian - Smoke Ball to put three Fog Counters on Cloudian - Turbulence, which then lets you Special Summon three copies of "Cloudian - Smoke Ball" (two from your Deck, and the third, which you Tributed for Fog Control, from your Graveyard) to the field! Now, for the cost of two cards, you can meet the activation requirement of Lucky Cloud and drop Destiny Hero - Plasma from your hand essentially for free, right?
But hold on! Don't forget the elephant in the room: White Elephant's Gift can be used on any of your copies of Cloudian - Smoke Ball from here. This means that, theoretically, if you were to have three copies of White Elephant's Gift in your hand, you could send all three Smoke Balls to the Graveyard to draw six cards, all for just a two-card setup! Certainly, it can't always be that easy, right? After all, just how likely are you to wind up with three copies of White Elephant's Gift in your hand, anyway?
Enter Fishborg Blaster:
If you control a face-up level 3 or lower WATER monster, you can discard 1 card to Special Summon this card from your Graveyard. If this card is used as a Synchro Material Monster, the other Synchro Material Monsters must all be WATER monsters.
Fishborg Blaster is a Tuner that has proven itself time and time again, from the Frog and Fish Synchros of last format to the Formula Monarchs of this format (which we will be discussing later), and he plays an important role here as well: Remember that, despite the fact that Cloudians are Fairy-Type, they are also mostly WATER monsters, meaning that you can use Cloudian - Smoke Ball to fulfill the Special Summon requirement of Fishborg Blaster, and then tune the two together for Formula Synchron! To do this, you can get Fishborg Blaster in the Graveyard using any number of effects (in keeping with the spirit of draw power, it might be wise to use Hand Destruction or Card Destruction to smooth out the engine, or One for One it directly to the field); from here, you can discard to Special Summon Fishborg Blaster, then Tune it with a Cloudian - Smoke Ball to summon Formula Synchron for the fresh draw (essentially turning any dead cards in your hand into Upstart Goblin without the Life Point gain for your opponent), and repeat. If you are able to draw into a second (or third!) copy of Fog Control, you can activate it on your last remaining Cloudian - Smoke Ball to generate three more Fog Counters on Cloudian - Turbulence, allowing you to Special Summon three more Smoke Balls. Using this method, it is possible to activate two White Elephant's Gifts and Synchro Summon for Formula Synchron three times with only two copies of Fog Control (a third copy would allow you to use a third White Elephant's Gift and leave two unused Smoke Balls on the field), for a total of seven freshly drawn cards off the Smoke Ball aspect of the engine alone! From here, you can then Synchro Summon into Shooting Star Dragon (by building up to a level 6 with the first Formula Synchron; Stardust Dragon with the second; and finally Shooting Star Dragon with the third), activate Pot of Avarice (to further complement your hand advantage), and annihilate your opponent with your advantage-backed behemoth as you please!
The Cloudian engine may be able to drop a powerful boss monster on the opening turn without expending hand advantage, but the next engine is able to generate even greater hand advantage and even win on the first turn!
For the Fairy engine, we must first look at Mystical Shine Ball:
A soul of light covered by mystical shine. When you see its beautiful shape, your dream will come true.
Again, fairly benign; a level 2 Normal monster with mediocre stats. Aside from The Law of the Normal OTK and the occasional Honest shenanigans, nobody would dare run it, right?
Enter The Agent of Creation - Venus:
Pay 500 Life Points, select 1 "Mystical Shine Ball" from your hand or Deck, and Special Summon it to your side of the field.
Look familiar? That's because The Agent of Creation - Venus has an effect very similar to Cloudian - Turbulence; in fact, it would not surprise me if this card was the inspiration for Turbulence's effect.
Again, a card that would seem relatively benign. It is more consistent in that, unlike Turbulence, it does not require any extra cards to set up. Because of this, it has been known to make the most consistent Destiny Hero - Plasma drop ever, outside of Scapegoat (which is another one-card method of Special Summoning Plasma), because all you need to fulfill Plasma's requirements are this card on the field and at least 1000 Life Points (1500 if you wish to keep it on the field). Why is this such a problem then? Once again, we look at White Elephant's Gift for the answer; White Elephant's Gift allows you to capitalize on the free field advantage by translating it directly to hand advantage. Without the outside influence of any other cards, Venus and three copies of White Elephant's Gift thin your deck out by nine: One for each Mystical Shine Ball Special Summoned, and two for each White Elephant's Gift activated. What Venus has that Turbulence doesn't that enables the FTK is a Life Point cost: the deck can easily cycle through Mystical Shine Ball summons as well as Volcanic Shell tutoring, which allows you to accrue enough difference in Life Points between you and your opponent to activate Life Equalizer, followed by Magical Explosion for the FTK!
The way in which the FTK itself works is a bit complicated, so in order to help us understand how this can be done, we will look at a test hand of a Fairy Draw FTK build made up by the user Hino from Pojo. For this hand, I opened up with:
The Agent of Creation - Venus
Thunder Dragon
Broken Bamboo Sword
White Elephant's Gift
Into the Void
I draw; the draw card is Magical Mallet.
Normal Summon The Agent of Creation - Venus.
Activate The Agent of Creation - Venus' effect three times, Special Summoning three "Mystical Shine Ball" cards from my Deck (Life Point difference: 1500).
Activate the effect of Thunder Dragon, discarding it to add two Thunder Dragons from my deck to my hand.
Activate Into the Void, drawing Dark World Dealings.
Activate Dark World Dealings, drawing Volcanic Shell, and discarding Volcanic Shell.
Activate Volcanic Shell's effect, paying 500 Life Points to add Volcanic Shell from my deck to my hand (Life Point difference: 2000).
Activate White Elephant's Gift, sending Mystical Shine Ball to the Graveyard to draw Hand Destruction and Upstart Goblin.
Activate Upstart Goblin, drawing Pot of Avarice (Life Point difference: 3000).
Activate Hand Destruction, discarding Thunder Dragon and Volcanic Shell and drawing Hand Destruction and White Elephant's Gift.
Activate Volcanic Shell's effect, paying 500 Life Points to add Volcanic Shell from your Deck to your hand (Life Point difference: 3500).
Activate Hand Destruction, discarding Volcanic Shell and Thunder Dragon and drawing The Agent of Creation - Venus and Golden Bamboo Sword.
Equip Broken Bamboo Sword to The Agent of Creation - Venus.
Activate Golden Bamboo Sword, drawing Upstart Goblin and Life Equalizer.
Activate White Elephant's Gift, sending Mystical Shine Ball to the Graveyard to draw Dark World Dealings and Card Destruction.
Activate Upstart Goblin, drawing Into the Void (Life Point difference: 4500).
Activate Into the Void, drawing Golden Bamboo Sword.
Activate Golden Bamboo Sword, drawing Broken Bamboo Sword and White Elephant's Gift.
Activate White Elephant's Gift, sending Mystical Shine Ball to the Graveyard to draw Magical Explosion and Magical Mallet.
Activate Pot of Avarice, returning three copies of Mystical Shine Ball and two copies of Volcanic Shell to the Deck to draw Mystical Shine Ball and Pot of Avarice.
Activate the effect of The Agent of Creation - Venus three times, Special Summoning two "Mystical Shine Ball" from your Deck, and the third from your hand (Life Point difference: 6000).
Activate Volcanic Shell's effect, paying 500 Life Points to add Volcanic Shell from my Deck to my hand (Life Point difference: 6500)
Activate Dark World Dealings, drawing Hand Destruction and discarding Volcanic Shell.
Activate Volcanic Shell's effect, paying 500 Life Points to add Volcanic Shell from my Deck to my hand (Life Point difference: 7000)
Activate Hand Destruction, discarding Volcanic Shell and Broken Bamboo Sword and drawing Into the Void and The Agent of Creation - Venus.
Activate Into the Void, drawing Upstart Goblin.
Activate Upstart Goblin, drawing Magical Mallet (Life Point difference: 8000)
Set Life Equalizer and Magical Explosion and end your turn.
At the start of your End Phase, your hand should look like this (at the end of your End Phase, it will be empty, as Into the Void requires you discard your whole hand):
Magical Mallet
Magical Mallet
Magical Mallet
The Agent of Creation - Venus
The Agent of Creation - Venus
Pot of Avarice
Card Destruction
Your deck size should be two (the third copy of Golden Bamboo Sword and Dark World Dealings are all that remain).
Your field should consist of:
The Agent of Creation - Venus
Mystical Shine Ball
Mystical Shine Ball
Mystical Shine Ball
Broken Bamboo Sword
Your Graveyard should contain the remaining 24 cards, 18 of which are Spell Cards. By your opponent's Draw Phase, this number will be 31, with 23 of the cards in your Graveyard being Spell Cards.
On your opponent's Draw Phase, activate Life Equalizer. Since your Life Point difference is 8000 (specifically, your opponent is at 11,000 and you are at 3000), both you and your opponent's Life Points become 3000. Then, activate Magical Explosion, burning your opponent for 4600 damage and the game!
By utilizing the raw card advantage generated from The Agent of Creation - Venus and Cloudian - Turbulence and translating them into hand advantage with White Elephant's Gift, you can unlock a wide arsenal of useful strategies to deliver unto yourself the victory!
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