Metagame Impact #1 – Called by The Grave

On March 19, 2018 by Soner Güngör

Called by the Grave

Dear community, we are Dario Sender and Steffen Eichelberger. We are both intern members of Team United Gosus. In this article we are going to discuss the card “Called by the Grave”, which will be released this upcoming thursday. By discussing how the card affects the decks in the format, we will show you if and how the card will impact the meta.

First of all, we will discuss the card. ‘Called by the Grave’ is a quickplay spell card, which has the following effect:

Target 1 monster in your opponent’s GY; banish it, and if you do, until the end of the next turn, its effects are negated, as well as the activated effects and effects on the field of monsters with the same original name.

At first glance, the effect doesn’t seem that special and can be compared to D.D Crow, which has a slightly similar effect.

But there is a small difference which does change the usefulness of each card. Lets take a look at the effect of D.D Crow:

(Quick Effect): You can discard this card to the GY, then target 1 card in your opponent’s GY; banish that target. The difference should be clear now.

Called by the grave doesnt only banish the card, but it also negates the effect of the banished card until the next turn.

If we refer to the current metagame, we can see that the card brings a couple of Pros and Cons. We are going to discuss the cards uses for every meta deck. We’re taking the list of the current meta decks from YCS Bochum. The decks are: True Draco, Pendulum Magician, Trickstar, 60 Card Lightsworn and Invoked Mekk Knight

True Draco

Against this deck, the card doesn’t have much merit. True Draco doesn’t play any cards you want to target to negate in the graveyard. Also they are not running any hand traps, so the card is even worse vs them.

Overall, the card is more or less completely dead in this matchup.

Trickstar

The card doesn’t have use against the Trickstar engine itself. But the deck often runs a lot of hand traps, which influence your own turn massively. By having Called by the Grave you can play around the hand traps and the dangerous Reincarnation/Lockbird combo.

Overall the card seems promising in this matchup, due to its ability to combat the hand traps that make Trickstar powerful.

Pendulum Magician

Pendulum Magician doesnt run many, if any hand traps. We would say that the card is mediocre at best against that match up. You can negate the effects of pendulum monsters like Purple Poison Magician or Black Fang Magician, but only when they hit the grave and that is too situational to want the card in that matchup.

You never want this card vs pendulum magician, it will have little/no utility.

Invoked Mekk-Knight

The card is pretty decent against this deck. Like Trickstar, Invoked is running a lot of hand traps to interrupt your plays. Against the Invoked engine itself, its not good.

Again, this card can combat hand traps, which makes it somewhat effective against this deck.

60-card-Lightsworn

Against this deck the card is really strong. The deck plays hand traps and they play cards like Shiranui Solitaire and Lonefire Blossom, which can be negated by Called by the Grave.

This card is amazing vs Lightsworn, you definitely would want to use it in this matchup.

Summarize:

Called by the grave is a huge impact into the current metagame where hand-traps flying everywhere like beer at football stadiums. It will be a staple card in nearly all Side Decks. Many people will also main this card just to safely combo off like scary FTK decks (Gem-Knight or Pendulum), Dino Decks (to resolve Double-Evolution Pill), Pendulum Decks (to resolve Heavy-Metalfoes Electrumite) or Lightsworns/ 60 card decks (to resolve Left-Arm Offering/ That grass looks greener). The biggest target for this card will probably be Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring which just got a reprint in the Legendary Collection Kaiba, because Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring can negate important key cards.

In decks like True Draco it won’t be that needed. You have better options like Amano Iwato, which also let your plays go through and won’t interrupt your own plays.

Side Note: Called by the grave can’t negate PSY-Framegear Gamma which also got his Reprint in the extreme force special edition and many people will finally have cheap access to it.