Raidraptor - Call

[Ultimagamer]

This is a card that seems to have gone somewhat under the radar in terms of Raidraptor builds under Master Rule 4 with the introduction of their new Link Monster, Wise Strix 

 

[spoiler=Raidraptor - Call]

 

Effect: Target 1 "Raidraptor" Monster you control; Special Summon 1 Monster with the same name as the Monster on the field from your hand or Deck in Defense Position. You can only activate 1 "Raidraptor - Call" per turn. You cannot Special Summon Monsters during the turn you activate this card, except "Raidraptor" Monsters. 

 

 

 

This card seems like a good 1-2 of in builds, especially now that they have their own dedicated Link Monster to summon. The only big downsides I see with this restriction is that is limits you down to Raidraptors, meaning you can't go for Infinity with Soul Shave Force, or go for generic Link Monsters, but setting up for Nest easier and more swarming for more plays seems like a good compromise for the archetype.  

 

Is this card a good card to play? It seems like it would, now that they have their own Link Monster to go into after you use it. 

[Blake]

Why would you play this?

This card gets worse with Master Rule 4 as a whole, because being able to play cards that don't lock you into Xenophobia is pretty key. Even Fuzzy Lanius isn't really good enough, so why would you play a generally worse card?

 

Focusing on a more diverse Extra Deck is just generally better than forcing yourself into Ruris.

[The Highlander]

It reliably copies Vanishing Lanius via Wise Strix.

That should be good, considering Vanishing Lanius is not opt restricted.

And you can get a second Mimicry Lanius via Wise Strix, so you can get out the 2 material Rank 5 to summon Arsenal Falcon and use it as Link 3 material to get any Raidraptor Xyz with 1 attached material.

[BlackBeartic]

I'm literally split down the center with this.

On one hand you can unbrick those awkward one bird hands (which first turn isn't too bad) which is why I would say no more than 1 of these if you DO run it. I feel like the Link may have made the card a bit better.

On the other hand, I gotta also agree with Black because past turn 1 (or 2 depending on if you win the Dice Roll/RPS) you don't want to be locking yourself into solely RRs especially when you could go into stuff like Borreload/Sword instead.


Idk, I've been testing 1 copy and it seems to do ok. Could easily drop it for something like Raigeki or a different card all together though. Probably will end up doing just that.

[vla1ne]

Xenobirds isn't too big of a flaw really. Call gives you extra consistency in pure builds, and with the new link birb, you can now (when the card gets over to the states) play the deck pure and not completely lock yourself out of the ED. yeah you don't get the borrel, but revolution falcon and ultimate falcon are massive threats in their own right. The main monster i personally wouldn't like losing out on is zerofyne, as it handles most effects that would give you trouble, but running two calls doesn't hurt that too badly, since if you can't go zerofyne without call, call will now at the very least let you go into wise strix, and mimicry can search it for extensions and thinning anyways.

[Blake]

Wise Strix’s optimal target is generally BW zephyros.

 

That alone is a pretty prime example of why you don’t want Xenophobia, even before considering the ED.

[vla1ne]

Wise Strix’s optimal target is generally BW zephyros.

 

That alone is a pretty prime example of why you don’t want Xenophobia, even before considering the ED.

Fuzzy searches itself when it hits grave, mimicry searches just about any card in the archetype. All three of them make good plays on detach. Zephyros is damn good, but the deck does not lack for optimal plays without it.

 

The hybrid variant has different abilities and monsters to go into, but the pure variant is by no means short on options either. all you need most of the time is to toss out an Ice beast zerofyne, or a rank up spell to break big boards with relative ease in the purer build call doesn't enable zerofyne, but it does enable rank up plays. The deck doesn't lack at all for recurrence or protection so long as you don't try to vomit out massive boards yourself. The rank 7 bird isn't here yet unfortunately, but it is one of the linchpins of the pure build, and it makes the hybrid build less necessary, as it removes the constant dead end that is having rank up magic that isn't skip force, with a revolution on board.

 

Not saying the hybrid build is better or worse, but that both builds have their own styles and options. saying this from experience, i run both builds, and while hybrid build has more flavors, the pure build has better defenses, equal consistency, and lower damage output, which should change with the arrival of the R7 and link monster respectively.

[Blake]

Fuzzy searches itself when it hits grave, mimicry searches just about any card in the archetype. All three of them make good plays on detach. Zephyros is damn good, but the deck does not lack for optimal plays without it.

 

The hybrid variant has different abilities and monsters to go into, but the pure variant is by no means short on options either. all you need most of the time is to toss out an Ice beast zerofyne, or a rank up spell to break big boards with relative ease in the purer build call doesn't enable zerofyne, but it does enable rank up plays. The deck doesn't lack at all for recurrence or protection so long as you don't try to vomit out massive boards yourself. The rank 7 bird isn't here yet unfortunately, but it is one of the linchpins of the pure build, and it makes the hybrid build less necessary, as it removes the constant dead end that is having rank up magic that isn't skip force, with a revolution on board.

 

Not saying the hybrid build is better or worse, but that both builds have their own styles and options. saying this from experience, i run both builds, and while hybrid build has more flavors, the pure build has better defenses, equal consistency, and lower damage output, which should change with the arrival of the R7 and link monster respectively.

You should have already been milling Mimicry, because you want to be fielding Tribute all the time, considering it's your best card by miles. Zephyros gives you the cheap +1 to carry you through the game, and there are a number of strong options for him to enable. It's not hybridizing to include a few off-theme cards.

 

The Xenophobia restriction on Fuzzy hurts it. Bad. The deck has always suffered due to a heavy focus on self-contained Ranking up, and Wise fixes half of that on its own. The other half, Xenophobia, can now be ignored by virtue of the generic nature of YGO in 2018.

 

With Vanishing, Pain, and others, you have enough cards that field themselves or others.

 

Playing "pure" means giving up actual quality options, such as Cyber Dragon Infinity or Beatrice, in exchange for a few memes. Memes that don't even require the Xenophobia to work.

 

When the Xenophobia is mostly limited to Fuzzy and Call, the argument is not "can we do without them", it becomes "why do we need them". Which, you don't. Tribute Lanius is an insane card, and if you can field just 1 additional monster with it, you're sitting pretty. Vanishing + Tribute has a large number of busted plays now, some even resulting in FTKing, so it's beyond me why you would run Call... Especially considering Call was never really good, and Link format just makes it weaker.

[vla1ne]

Infinity, and beatrice are strong, but zerofyne (who may as well be a RR considering it's the main deck that uses it) does just as much work for less cost most of the time. Revolution/ultimate are by no means memes. they are legit threats to any board when fielded. I get your point on xenopohobia hurting the options, but just by using zerofyne, the deck really won't lack for cards that can answer opposing boards. Big monsters fall hard to either ultimate or revolution or the real meme card, rise falcon. Most backrow that can't be answered by dropping zerofyne or satellite will beat or prevent beatrice and infinity as well, and readiness softens the threat of OTKs coming at you. Throwing fuzzy out with wise strix doesn't actually lock you out of alternate ED plays, and placing it under an Xyz monster means if that monster dies on the opponent's turn you get to search another one with no harm done. as for zephyros, i agree that splashing it doesn't hurt the deck in the least, but call, at 1 doesn't kill your zephyros plays. it's a searchable playmaker that you can toss out to build your board under pressure. I prefer cattle call/ swallows nest myself for fixing any one birb hands, but i wouldn't discourage testing out call, since you can still make most of your resource (aka strix and nest) plays the turn you use it.

[Blake]

Zerofyne only serves to prove my point, why would you even cite it. That's an example of Xenophobia locking a card out.

 

Ultimate is, and has been, a meme. Revolution is in no way consistent enough a gamewinner to be counted as a point for why Xenophobia is fine, especially when he's perfectly playable without the Xenophobia. You're making citations in regards to playing aggressively, but you're ignoring the more defensive parts of play, which is where the Xenophobia causes the most harm.

 

Call at 1 is inconsistent and pointless. It's searchable, but the card it can be searched by is better off searching Nest, Pain, or Singing, so you want to draw it... but you don't want to run a single copy of a card you want to draw. That's just poor deckbuilding. 

 

You want to make the most out of more generic Links than this. There's even a build incorporating Dragon's Ravine, because this deck has the best access to the Dragunity link. Fuzzy is on the fence, call is a no, and you need a reason to play them, not a reason to cut them.

[Ultimagamer]

I guess in the end I gotta agree with Jevil on this one. Call doesn't seem too consistent for Raidraptor builds. 

 

I do like fuzzy lanius though, special summoning himself for free and searching a copy of himself to do it again next turn seems pretty decent, as it gives you good rank 4 options and swarming. 

 

( Also, is Ultimate Falcon really just a meme? It's a pretty legit boss monster, and I've seen plenty of people who play it as a waking the dragon target. Just kinda curious on your reasoning here )

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

Even though ultimate falcon is piss-easy to summon and relatively difficult to kill, it does nothing else beyond that.

 

Towers was alright because normal summoning it set you up for a huge pendulum swing the next turn, and even it is terrible in this day and age.

[vla1ne]

Zerofyne only serves to prove my point, why would you even cite it. That's an example of Xenophobia locking a card out.

 

Ultimate is, and has been, a meme. Revolution is in no way consistent enough a gamewinner to be counted as a point for why Xenophobia is fine, especially when he's perfectly playable without the Xenophobia. You're making citations in regards to playing aggressively, but you're ignoring the more defensive parts of play, which is where the Xenophobia causes the most harm.

 

Call at 1 is inconsistent and pointless. It's searchable, but the card it can be searched by is better off searching Nest, Pain, or Singing, so you want to draw it... but you don't want to run a single copy of a card you want to draw. That's just poor deckbuilding. 

 

You want to make the most out of more generic Links than this. There's even a build incorporating Dragon's Ravine, because this deck has the best access to the Dragunity link. Fuzzy is on the fence, call is a no, and you need a reason to play them, not a reason to cut them.

I play the non xeno and the (mostly)xeno versions of RR, (alongside batteries and paleo it's one of my absolute favorite decks) they both have different ceilings and different specialties. The pure version, surprisingly has incredible defense and board breaking power. The main flaws it has are the lack of consistent ranking up, and the bridge jump from revolution to satellite. which the R7 and link solve easily. I prefer the non xeno version atm (by non xeno i mean running zerofyne/ zephyros/ a few good links) but even when running xeno cards (fuzzy in particular), the deck throws out zerofyne and the rest with no problem when you need them. I dropped call in the non xeno version, as it killed the power of that deck, but in the xeno version, it actually puts the deck up to the same level comparatively.

 

Ultimate freezes your opponent's board, deals big damage, and can be revived on later turns by using skip force, adressing a towers monster once is one thing, addressing it multiple times over multiple turns (assuming you dropped it using skip force) is an entirely different beast. it can grind down your opponent's best resources for minimal investment. I didn't say revolution is a game winner, I said it's a board breaker. It destroys special summon based boards. Unfortunately, the R7 isn't available to us over here, But i'm carrying on the discussion with the assumption that if we get the link over here, we'll get the R7 alongside it. and the R7 is the OTK power of the deck. after revolution kills the opponent's board of monsters, one rank up can give you 4-8K damage with ease. Both the link and the R7 fix the issues that the pure(er) deck faces.

 

From my time playing the deck, Pain and singing are easily searchable by using force strix EDIT: /nest instead of mimicry, Nest is searched first if you don't have it yet, readiness is the best second search (or first search if you have nest), and the rest come into play down the line. as for 1-of's being inconsistent, in the case of call, it's actually better to have just one or two in pure builds. it's not an absolute necessity, but it is still an extender. You don't need to rely on it, but when you have it, your available plays can change up. There was a guy about a year back who actually topped a decent sized regional running 1 call in a non xeno raptor build. i'm only applying it to the (mostly) xeno build. I personally agree that in non xeno build it has no place.

 

At the moment in the tcg, less pure builds are better, no question. If the R7 and link arrive though, pure builds will gain the two main things they wanted the most; Easy link access, and rank up bridging into potential OTK's. At that time, call really will need to be looked at again, to see if it has a place in the deck once more.

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

From my time playing the deck, Pain and singing are easily searchable by using force strix instead of mimicry

How reliable has it been for you to search pain lanius with force strix? It's a line of play I haven't seen before.

 

Frankly, I think that what it comes down to is that fuzzy lanous is the only truly powerful card that is lost by skipping out on the xenophobia, and it doesn't provide enough to justify losing all the other outside techs. These new cards do not only support a pure build, nor do they support it disproportionately over the logical mixed lists, so I don't think they should be considered as a factor for the two builds in comparison to each other.

 

At the end of the day, I'd argue that from a competitive (or at the very least attempting to use a given deck to the best of its capacity, which even many casual players strive for) standpoint, it doesn't matter if the new cards make a pure build less terrible, as it is still the objectively more effective way to build the deck.

[BlackBeartic]

So Jaden BR uploaded a RR Wise Strix video, and from that my suspicions came kind of true. You really don't need fuzzy even with the new link. I think it'll be appropriate to post it here since "Pure vs Non Pure" seems to be the debate at hand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWWrdy3wJUw

I feel like between my own testing and then seeing some hybrid builds like this, all I can really say is that hybrid seems like it has far more power plays (which makes sense for almost any hybrid build of a deck). I wouldn't say a "pure" build isn't worth it, but I do think that we shouldn't just shoot the idea of hybrid builds or small dark winged beast engines either. I'm going to be doing a lot more testing for sure though, so I don't really have a solid stance really. Gonna start trying some Dark WB engines however, like the Zephyros + the little Lv2 guy
 

[vla1ne]

How reliable has it been for you to search pain lanius with force strix? It's a line of play I haven't seen before.

 

Frankly, I think that what it comes down to is that fuzzy lanous is the only truly powerful card that is lost by skipping out on the xenophobia, and it doesn't provide enough to justify losing all the other outside techs. These new cards do not only support a pure build, nor do they support it disproportionately over the logical mixed lists, so I don't think they should be considered as a factor for the two builds in comparison to each other.

 

At the end of the day, I'd argue that from a competitive (or at the very least attempting to use a given deck to the best of its capacity, which even many casual players strive for) standpoint, it doesn't matter if the new cards make a pure build less terrible, as it is still the objectively more effective way to build the deck.

oof, Was thinking singing while typing pain lanius. Meant to say nest searches pain lanius. That was my bad.

 

The Link, while mostly triggering off of Xyz effects, doesn't need them to do crazy stuff. On the other hand, the R7 kinda thrives in the pure build. It doesn't restrict non pure builds, but ED space is really tight in the deck, so the more RR's you have in there, the bigger a threat the R7 becomes, as it can throw out the appropriate birb for the situation, and gains additional attacks based on it's RR materials, which the pure build would give it more often than any other build. which increases the OTK power it has, and allows it to do more both on field and in death.

 

I'm in agreement that non pure (or at least not absolutely pure) builds are better overall right now in the tcg. My point though, is that call is a stronger card the purer your build, and the two cards mentioned (wise and R7) make the pure build capable of being run with peak efficiency. Keep in mind, i'm discussing this in the context of a pure build, which, while arguably a more casual means of play, remains a form of deckbuilding that can indeed be perfected. Some people actually take pride in running decks as purely as possible, and making them competitive. I have this habit for some of my decks as well. In non pure builds call is pretty much not an option (except that one crazy bastard who topped a year or so back running call in his deck). but in pure builds, call is an incredible card, and is arguably essential in maxing out the power of the pure deck. Not trampling on hybrid builds or anything, just saying that RR-call has to be optimally considered if you plan on running it. Thus, the only build that it can be optimally considered in, is the pure build, where the restrictions don't limit it so much. You can use tools like allure to boost consistency anyways in either build.

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

Okay so I'm not saying that the effect of call is bad in every sense. It is a +0 summon, and those are obscenely strong right now.

 

However, the point I'm making is that RR is so full of +1 summons that the +0 really isn't needed. While this may help you field wise strix, force strix, or one of the 37 monsters ending in "falcon," any of these goals can be achieved either with an outside tech that will do so without locking you out of useful monsters like zephyros, zerofyne, or maybe even things that don't start with z, or hell, even without any real assistance. RR are really funking good at summoning 2-mat monsters, and they don't really need call or fuzzy to do so, as good as they (particularly fuzzy, which Jesus Christ is a powerhouse) may be.

 

Though call (and once again, moreso fuzzy lanius) do afford a boost to advancing plays, the cards they proclude are better at such, so unless there is something another wave of support, including enough powerful xenophobic cards to truly replace techs like zephyros, shade brigadine, destrudo, and whateverthefuck else, the mixed build will always remain superior, and by a wide margin.

 

Honestly though, it seems you've shifted from saying "pure builds are worthwhile" to saying "in admittedly suboptimal pure builds, call is strong" which I think would be hard to find someone to disagree with, so I'd consider this discussion a success overall.

[vla1ne]

Nah, the discussion is about call, and as such, i'm simply moving it back to call, who's main presence is in pure builds, because of the nature of the card. That said, i'm saying pure builds without the R7 and Wise Strix lack the power overall to compete with less pure builds. Pure builds with the addition of those two cards will be far more capable of matching up against non pure builds, making call more valuable to those playing RR, as they can test out pure build ratios and see how far they can take them (Disclaimer; I'm only applying this discussion to offline play, because i don't play online). Less pure builds run more things, but generic dark and winged-beast S/T support, and staples in general help bridge that gap as far as pure vs mixed builds. Pure builds hold a notable advantage in grind game ability as well since they can recur almost everything off of their S/T lineup. Mixed end boards don't get quite the level of protection that pure RR do, and ED monsters not named RR don't usually recur as easily as RR monsters, making the overall resources the deck has harder to toss out on repeat. The main thing pure was lacking was damage output and link potential, which wise and arsenal give it multiple times over. Call run at 2, is the best ratio in the pure build, since it has the hard OPT, and can easily be searched, leaving room for other generic things, and reducing the chance of the "2 HOPT with the same name in hand" scenario.