Put Your Hands Up And Shout!

 

Hello again, Yu-Gi-Oh fans.

 

It appears, to tide us over for another month or so until Justice Hunters releases, Konami has favored us by giving us something to whet our appetites for the next Deck Build Pack, “Phantom Revengers”: The Hecatoncheires.

 

Now, I can read a little Japanese, and I saw something really cool right off the bat.  All of the Main Deck Hecatoncheire monsters have their names written in the Japanese kanji and characters for “Unseen Hand”, and the Extra Deck monsters have their names written in the characters for “Unseen God.”  On top of that, I Search Engined the names for the two Trap Cards “Ipt Al Hecatoncheire” and “Yad Al Hecatoncheire”, and they roughly translate to “Beginning of” and “Hand of”, respectively.

 

You can’t tell me that’s not cool.  (Unless, of course, you aren’t a language and culture weenie like me.)

 

Now, as a kid, I read my fair share of Greek mythology, but these guys must have been buried too deep for watercolor picture books to bring up.  Apparently, the Hecatoncheire were a group of lesser gods with 100 hands and 50 heads who helped the Greek gods rise up and seize Mount Olympus from the Titans.

 

(And, if Rick Riordan did not use them in his little Percy Jackson novels, then he was missing out.)

 

Though, I guess we probably should have guessed something like that from the initial image of Hecatoncheire Jawza that we were first gifted with.

 

As to how they actually play, these things are downright diabolical.  Think along the lines of the Graydles, except that you can steal much more from your opponent than just their monsters, and you can deal some actual damage with them, to boot.

 

They are a mix of Dark and Light-Attribute Illusion-Type monsters, which I will admit that I have almost no experience using or understanding of.  I mean, every one I’ve seen seems to be indestructible in battle, which hardly seems fair, but whatever.

 

Starting off, we have Hecatoncheire Breus.  He’s a Level 7 Dark Attribute Illusion-Type Effect Monster with 2800 ATK and 1300 DEF, and, if it battles a monster, then neither one of them can be destroyed by that battle.  It also has the handy effect where, if your opponent draws a card outside of their Draw Phase, you can automatically Special Summon it from your hand.

 

I can see that effect combo-ing together well with something like Gift of Greed.

 

But its most unique effect is that, during your Main Phase, you can look through your opponent’s hand and select one random card, and, if that card happens to be a Monster card, then you automatically get so Special Summon it to your side of the field.

 

Next up we have Hecatoncheire Goddus, another monster that can neither destroy or be destroyed in battle.  It is slightly weaker than Breus, with only 2300 ATK, but it has 2000 DEF on the flip side.  Aside from that, its Level, Typing and Attribute remain the same.  It even shares the Special Summon from the hand effect with Breus, but its stealing effect, as I like to call it, is different.  Once per turn, during your opponent’s Main Phase, Goddus lets you steal a monster from your opponent’s Graveyard and summon it to your side of the field, provided that it gets banished when it’s destroyed.

 

I could see someone using this card to deprive their opponent of a monster that they needed in their Graveyard, whether it be a Lightsworn to forestall Judgment Dragon’s summoning or simply something like Necro Gardna or Bacon Saver.

 

One card I can see being a bit of a problem for this Deck would be the oft-overlooked Continuous Trap from Magicians Force “Remove Brainwashing”.  Bet there are gonna be a ton of people shuffling through their binders and pulling this card out of the woodwork when the Hecatoncheires drop proper.

 

Moving on to the first defensive-based Hecatoncheire, Gygas shares the same Level, Typing, Attribute and non-destruction/Special Summon effect of the other two, but with a higher DEF of 2800 and a lower ATK of only 1200.  But, during your Main Phase, you get to excavate (that is, reveal) three cards from your opponent’s Deck and Special Summon any one monster that you find and shuffle the rest.

 

Now, the final two Hecatoncheires are a bit of a departure from the usual.  Hecatoncheire Ibel and Hecatoncheire Yadel are both Level 6 Light-Attribute Illusion-Type Effect Monsters.  They both also have lower ATK and DEF values.  And, interestingly, those two values are exact mirrors of each other.

 

More and more interesting things I find out about this archetype, the further and further I deep-dive.

 

First of all, Hecatoncheire Ibel has 1600 ATK, 2100 DEF and the standard non-destruction effect common to most, if not all, Illusion-Type monsters.  Here is where we get into the first of the actual Hecatoncheire support cards (God, I just love writing and seeing and saying that name!).  By revealing your Ibel, you can shuffle it back into your Deck in order to summon any other Hecatoncheire monster (except itself).  And, if Ibel is ever sent to the Graveyard, you get to Special Summon any other Hecatoncheire monster from there to take its place.

 

As for Yadel, he possesses 2100 ATK, 1600 DEF and the standard non-destruction effect common to most, if not all, Illusion-Type monsters.  But, while Ibel supports the Hecatoncheire monsters, Yadel supports their Spell/Trap Cards.  Revealing Ibel shuffles it back into your Deck in exchange for adding a Hecatoncheire Spell/Trap to your hand, and sending it to the Graveyard lets you set one from your Graveyard to take its place.

 

The Hecatoncheires even have some unusual support, in only a single Quick-Play Spell Card and only two Counter Traps.

 

Their Quick-Play Spell “Hecatoncheire Tararus” has two different effects that you can choose between, but with the caveat that you can only use each effect once per turn.  Which is weird, because you can only use most non-Continuous Spells once per turn anyway.  Maybe it’s to prevent you from playing two copies in one turn, or something?

 

Anyway, the first effect is to bounce a Spell/Trap Card your opponent controls, if you happen to control a Hecatoncheire monster.  And the second is to Fusion Summon a Hecatoncheire Fusion Monster by banishing its Fusion Materials from the hand/Graveyard.  This would be okay enough on its own, but, if you control an opponent’s monster, it can be treated as a Hecatoncheire monster.  And, since their boss monster, Hecatoncheire Xeno, requires three Hecatoncheire monsters as its Fusion Materials, this can be a godsend.

 

Though, maybe some other cards that can change their names might be a good idea when running Xeno, as well.

 

And both of their Counter Traps, Ipt al Hecatoncheire and Yad al Hecatoncheire counter a specific action (Monster effects and Spell/Trap Cards, respectively), while stealing the offender to your side of the field afterwards.

 

Now, I usually go in alphabetical order, both for efficiency’s sake and because that’s how Yugipedia does it, but, with Xeno having been talked up recently in the “Hecatoncheire Tartarus” section, I figured we’d go there first.

 

Hecatoncheire Xeno, the boss monster of the archetype whose name translates to something like “outsider”, is a Level 9 Dark Attribute Illusion-Type Fusion Effect Monster with 3400 ATK and 3500 DEF that requires 3 Hecatoncheire monsters as Fusion Materials.  And, yes, it shares the non-destruction effect of Illusion-Type monsters, but it has a few other effects that really set it apart.  The first one is to let you steal any one random monster from your opponent’s Extra Deck during the Main Phase.  But the most evil part of it is that, should Xeno be destroyed by a card effect, you can seize control of ANY NUMBER of monsters they control!

 

With one card, your opponent can be forced to lose their entire field and give it all to you!  How evil is that?!

 

Though I have to wonder how effective stealing an Xyz monster with no Overlay Units can turn out to be.

 

And, last but not least, is the Fusion Monster that we first saw in the initial single-card previews, the face-card of the archetype that gets to be showcased on the front of every pack: Hecatoncheire Jawza.

 

Even the name is cool, because it’s just so out there when you see it written in Japanese and Romanized: Jauzaa.

 

It is a Level 8 Light Attribute Illusion-Type Fusion Effect Monster with 2400 ATK and 2500 DEF.  A tad lack-luster in stats, but let’s just take a look at its special abilities.

 

Its Fusion Materials are 1 Hecatoncheire monster and 1 Illusion-Type monster, and you can Special Summon it either via standard Fusion Summoning, or by Tributing 1 Illusion-Type monster and 1 monster of your opponent’s that you control.  It has the standard Illusion-Type non-destruction effect, and also the ability to add any 1 Hecatoncheire card from your Deck or Graveyard to your hand once per turn.

 

Meh, maybe he should have been counted as the least, after all.

 

I have to admit, given everything we’ve seen and learned about these cards, I think I can actually see myself playing them one day.  I haven’t felt this impressed/intrigued and interested in an archetype since the Yummies that are coming in Justice Hunters.

 

(God, I hope they change their name.)

 

And this isn’t even getting into their designs.  Granted, a few of them lean more toward the standard generic monster design, but just take a look closer.  Each of them shares a distinct hand motif, whether it be that they just possess a few extra arms and hands (XX), their bodies seem to be made of hands and fingers (XX, which also has the creepy effect of making them look like evil angels made of worms) or even, in the case of Xeno, having their head at the center of a splayed-open hand with a rim of clawed fingers.

 

Everybody get set to get your hands on them when they release!

 

…

 

I’ll see myself out…