Yu-Gi-Oh! Darkwing Blast – Booster Box

Darkwing Blast is the 10th Core Booster set in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Official Card Game (OCG) and Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game, following Power of the Elements. Released in October 2022, this collection is largely focused in providing new support for years-old archetypes together with releasing two new archetypes.

Interestingly, this set provides a very consistent amount of powerful support for some among the most competitive strategies (Tearlaments and Sprights for example). It also includes new support for older archetypes and decks that have been released in the past 10 years including “Blackwing” (obviously), “Amazoness”, “Dracoslayer”, “Dracoverlord”, “Ghoti”, “Naturia”, “Sprights”, “Tearlaments” and “Tri-Brigade”. In total, there are 24 archetypes represented in Darkwing Blast together with some very good generic cards that can fit into lots of different decks.

In addition, Darkwing Blast also includes two new archetypes. The first one,”Bystial”, is an archetype of light and dark Dragon monsters named after mythological figures and kings of Britain.

Most of the Lv6 monsters of this archetype can be special summoned from your hand by banishing one monster from your graveyard. They all also have a second special effect aimed to disrupt any opponent’s strategy by negating card effect, summoning or even destroying cards in play. “The Bystial Alba Los”, the highest level monster of this archetype, can for example negate the effects of any face-up Ritual, Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, or Link monster on the field with the additional effect to banish all cards from each player’s Extra Deck face-up if it leaves the field by a card effect. This last effect only last one turn but could block all the most common strategies based on Link and Synchro summoning.

“Kashtira”, the second one, is an archetype made of Lv7 Psychic monsters named after mythological creatures. Most of the monsters of this archetype can special summon themselves if the player controls no cards and they are also specialized in banishing opponent face-down cards. In some cases, this second effect is also triggered when an opponent activates a monster effect or attacks. “Kashtira Riseheart”, for example, is a Lv4 fire warrior monster that can be special summoned if your control another Kashira monster and that is able to banish the top 3 cards of the opponent’s Deck by sacrificing another monster from your deck.

Right Out Of The Booster Pack

Each booster pack of Darkwing Blast contains 9 cards while each booster box comes with 24 packs per box for a total of 216 cards. Overall this collection includes 100 cards: 10 Secret Rare, 14 Ultra Rare, 26 Super Rare and 50 Commons.

5 cards of the set are also available as Starlight Rare: “Mitsu the Insect Ninja”, “”Black-Winged Dragon”, “Blazing Cartesia, the Virtuous”, “Lady Labrynth of the Silver Castle” and “Tearlaments Rulkallos”. Pull rates of this set are very standard with 1 Starlight rare expected every two boxes (0.2%).

Rare Cards To Look After

As mentioned at the beginning, Darkwing blast set includes a lot of interesting cards that can provide great support to a lot of different deck types. Picking just a few to discuss here has been really challenging but my personal choice goes to the below:

Laughing Puffin (Lv4 Dark Effect Monster; ATK 1000, DEF 1700) can be special summoned directly from your hand if a face-up Spell/Trap is on the field. In addition, a player can tribute 1 Winged Beast monster to return 1 face-up Spell/Trap from the field to the hand. Interestingly, this is a quick effect if all the monsters a player controls are Winged Beast monsters.

The Bystial Lubellion (Lv8 Light Effect Monster; ATK 2500, DEF 3000) is quite a strong monster that can only be special summoned (from your hand or graveyard) by tributing 1 Level 6 or higher DARK Dragon monster. Although this is an interesting mechanics, the most important effect of this card is the ability to send it to the graveyard from your hand to search for a “Bystial” monster from your Deck to be added to your hand. In addition, during the main phase a player can place 1 “Branded” Continuous Spell/Trap from the Deck directly face-up on the field opening the door to many good strategy including triggering a branded fusion spell card.

Spellbound (Quick Action Spell card) allows to block your opponent strategy by preventing them to use any of their face-up monsters as tribute or as a material for fusion, synchro, xyz, or link Summon. A lot of strong strategies these days rely on those type of monster to work and losing a turn can make a big difference in particular if you are starting second.

Is This Set Worth Buying? Final Thoughts

All Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelists are used to see a new core booster set released every 3 to 4 months and to get in each and every one of them some new archetypes and a few cards to support some recent strategies and decks. Interestingly, Darkwing Blast has been built differently and with a keen eye to provide support to lifelong fans of the game (and not just to those using Dark magician or Blue-Eyes White Dragon….). Personally, I liked the wide support provided with this booster set and I know a few players that were quite pleased by some of the newly released cards.

In addition to the support provided to old decks, the two new archetypes are also quite good and they could easily fit other deck engines. For example, Bystials can be added to any deck using light and dark monsters, especially if they are Dragons. Kashtira may not look too much right now but as soon as Photon Hypernova releases in January 2023 this archetype will become much more interesting. A very good number of generic support cards are also quite useful.

Overall, the impression is that Darkwing Blast is definitely a good set and probably one of the most interesting released recently.