Friday Stride: Meteokaiser, Bustered

So next week sees the release of Clan Booster 3: More Mermaids, so before pop singers with fish tails take over this series for a few weeks let's go plug a gap and cover a clan that hasn't made it here. Thanks to me just dropping this blog for a few months, Nova Grappler's release in set 6 got completely bypassed. But rather than go look at that, let's go to our old standby for when a clan isn't in the newest pack to hit the streets and check out the latest Fighter's Collection instead. Checking in for the wrestling robots in this round of 'everyone gets one' we have more restanding - because that's what Nova Grapplers do, stand things up.

Introducing Meteokaiser, Bustered

He said he'd been to the year 3000...

Bustered comes from the more recent school of G units, which are permitted to flip up any card, but have effects which scale to the number of copies already face up. In comparison to those which demand a copy of themselves to be flipped for the cost, the newer ones are rather more flexible - four copies can be played over three turns, and can use tech G units you otherwise wouldn't need as the cost. For Bustered, on attack he can stand a unit for each copy of himself on the rear guard, at the cost of a counterblast and that flip. Then, if you have two copies of himself face-up and a full field, he can restand himself at the end of the battle, for a further counter blast and two discards, as well as a penalty of dropping to a single drive check.

So, he becomes a restanding vanguard - not exactly a rare thing for Nova Grapplers, who have no fewer than five grade 3's capable of restanding as vanguard, as well as ways for rear-guards to enable restands. They even have another restanding G unit in Meteokaiser, Victoplasma, which creates a problem for Bustered. Victoplasma has the same overall cost as a restanding vanguard - counter blast 2, discard 2, and a total of 4 drive checks - but requires no setup and doesn't care about the rear-guards, so why even bother with this new guy?

Well, first off, he stands rear-guards, which is most what Nova Grappler decks are aiming for. Although restanding as a vanguard is harder to pull off, he does actually give an extra rear-guard attack or two as well. With most Nova decks well placed to take advantage of those stands, he can facilitate a lot of damage, and even before his self-restand is active he's the only G unit that most Nova Decks can use with a restand not reliant on hitting.

Second is his interaction with the last Nova Fighter's Collection card.Ultimate Beast Deity, Ethics Buster Catastrophe functions in the same way as Bustered, flipping up anything for a skill, with an extra bonus for two copies of itself. With a Beast Deity heart, Ethics gains the ability to stand a rear-guard if a grade 1 or greater beast deity is revealed in a drive check. However the other copies G zone only give a flat 3000 power boost for two or more - nice to have, but not essential to rush for. Flip up a Bustered on an first stride Ethics, however, and your G zone is now primed to take advantage of whichever one you want next - simply flip up a copy of the same card for it's skill, and you have the two copies for the full effect, no matter which one you went with. This interaction gives Bustered a firm place in the G zone line up of Beast Deity decks, and with the potential of future G units to share this trait, it's possible more subclans will get to join in this party.

Finally, there's an interesting aspect to the skill's activation condition - it doesn't care what you attack, meaning even if you swing at a rear-guard you still get the effect. Firstly, this prevents the restand from being shut down by redirection into a rear guard (although since that's a Link Joker skill, Bustered still has problems here), but also gives an interesting manipulation of Exxtreme Battler Victor's stride skill.

Exxtreme Battler, Victor's on-stride skill gives the vanguard the ability to stand a rear-guard on attack, but due to the wording of once per turn abilities this has to be done on the first attack, or it's lost and can't be used at all. However, as that skill is the first attack against a vanguard, if Bustered attacks a rear-guard it won't trigger, allowing your vanguard to restand, attack a vanguard and then use Victor's skill. This doesn't seem like much, but a rear-guard could swing between those two vanguard attacks and this be restood by both skills. I can't advocate this as a good idea - your threatening triple drive attack is against a rear-guard and thus can't kill your opponent - but if you really want to stand Sazandara even more, or there's a rear-guard which just has to die right now it might just catch your opponent off guard.

Overall, a fun card - more of what Novas already do, but with just enough variety to be worth a look. Next week, we move on to another part of the entertainment industry, as we investigate a card which looks suspiciously similar to something I covered already.