Utopic Zexal and Future Rank Up Support

[Ultimagamer]

This is something I've wanted to talk about for a while. With the banlist possibly coming up soon this would be an intersting thing to consider. 

 

Does Number S0: Utopic Zexal limit the future potential of Rank-Up-Magic support? 

 

[spoiler=Number S0: Utopic Zexal]

Number S0: Utopic Zexal 

Light / Warrior / Xyz / Effect 

Rank 0 

ATK: ? / DEF: ? 

Xyz Materials: 3 "Number Xyz Monsters with the same Rank 

 

( This card's original Rank is always treated as 1. )

You can also Xyz Summon this card by discard 1 "Rank-Up-Magic" Normal Spell Card, then using a "Utopia" monster you control as the Xyz Material. (Transfer its Xyz Materials to this card.) This card's Xyz Summon cannot be negated. When Xyz Summoned, your opponent's cards and effects cannot be activated. Gains 1000 ATK and DEF for each Xyz Material attached to it. Once per opponent's turn (Quick Effect): You can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card; your opponent's cards and effects cannot be activated this turn. 

 

 

 

The card is pretty ridiculous just as a stand-alone card. It's summon cannot be negated, you can use any 2 level 4 monsters plus a rank up spell to summon it, it prevents all of your opponents cards from activating for 3-4 turns, and is usually a 4000 to 3000 attacker turn 1. 

 

With all this in mind, does the generic nature of this card impact the way konami designs generic rank up support? I think it does. Konami really hasn't given us any good ways to search rank up spell cards. It is understandable why they wouldn't want to, given that Utopic Zexal is so generic and has such a good lockdown effect that making the card required to summon it more searchable would lead to more degenerate decks appearing more often trying to turbo him out. 

 

A card of this nature doesn't exist for fusion monsters. There isn't a really crazy generic fusion monster whose summoning condition is something along the lines of "any 2 monsters of the same level, also discard a fusion spell card to summon this card with a strong lockdown effect". As a result, konami has been more generous with the way they've printed fusion support cards. Fusion Sage and King of the swamp directly and not once per turn search polymerization, and there are several cards in the game that can search for any fusion card. This isn't really the case with rank up cards though. There isn't a card like fusion sage that just directly searches one of the rank up spells, or good generic cards that can search any rank up spell. 

 

On one of the more recent banlists, we saw the banning of Argent Chaos Force, a card that was used in a Deck designed to search it out with it's effect ( if you summon a rank 5 of higher monster while it's in your graveyard, you can add it to your hand once per duel ) then go into Utopic Zexal for a ridiculous lockdown. Even though Argent Chaos Force wasn't really considered too powerful of a card before then, it was promptly banned after Zefra were able to take advantage of it's effects. 

 

I would say that is the big reason I think Utopic Zexal holds back rank up support. It's a really degenerate card on it's own, and when konami prints good rank up support it gets used in turbo decks designed to lock the opponent out of playing. 

 

For the next banlist, it would be neat to see Utopic Zexal get banned, and Argent Chaos Force to come back to 3. Argent Chaos Force by itself is a fine card, and helps in high level rank up decks. Utopic Zexal is a ridicuous card that holds back rank up support from being really good. For these reasons I think the card should be banned. 

[Sleepy]

Konami has given an icon distinction to Rank-Up Magic Spells. All the ones from the ZeXal/Xyz era are Normal Spells, and all the ones from the Arc V/Pendulum era are Quick-Play Spells. On top of the Arc V ones being mostly exclusively Raid Raptor cards so they wouldn't have much utility anyways. The next time they present them, they might make Continuous, Equips, or even Fields (making allusion to the "Sphere Field" from the anime).

 

They also could give us the same mechanic as Rank-Up Magic Spells, but without naming them "Rank-Up Magic".There are probably more ways out there to get around any issues, other than self ranking-up monsters like Utopia the Lightning or Number 77.

 

Though yeah, Utopic ZeXal is a variation of Shock Master's effect. That's pretty big. I don't think I've really seen this card in a Master Rule 4 duel, but wouldn't surprise me if there was a consistent combo that ended with it on the field. Is there anything else that could have been problematic with Argent Chaos Force or is this the only potential problem?

I recall Chaos Force being used to turn Utopia Roots into Utopic Dragons in multiples back in the day.

[I Hate Snatch Steal]

I completely agree. Its better to hit this card then every rank-up-magic that could enable it.

 

Off topic: It also messes with created card formats where RUMs can actually be good. I think what holds it back in those is that its obscure.