Yu-Gi-Oh! Ancient Guardians – Booster Box

YuGiOh Ancient Guardians is a set released in Europe in April 2021 that introduced three new Archetypes: “Ursarctic”, “Ogdoadic” and “Solfachord”. The Ogdoadic archetype is the biggest focus of this collection and it is designed to support a graveyard-based Reptile strategy built around “Snake Rain”, a rare reprint from 2007.

The potential engine for this deck starts with “Nunu, the Ogdoadic Remnant” or “Nauya, the Ogdoadic Remnant”. Both monsters can send themself from your hand to the graveyard together with another Reptile from your deck. Nunu can then Special Summon itself from the grave if you control no monsters or only Ogdoadic monsters while Nauya can send a Ogdoadic Spell or Trap from your deck to the graveyard.

The magic cards “Snake Rain” and “Ogdoadic Water Lily” will work in tandem to send 4 more monsters from the deck to the graveyard just to special summon them back using the second of these two magic cards.  Once your graveyard is filled with Snake monsters,  “Aron, the Ogdoadic King” or “Ogdoabyss, the Ogdoadic Overlord” could be summoned. These two monsters can trigger devastating effects including destroying all monsters on the field except the ones that were Special Summoned from the graveyard.

The other new interesting Archetype, Ursarctic, is a Beast and Warrior-based theme including mainly level seven or higher monsters. All these monsters can be Special Summoned from the hand by sending another level 7 monster from your hand to the graveyard. The Field Spell “Ursarctic Big Dipper” will also allow you to keep special summoning more monsters by banishing your level 7 monsters from the graveyard instead of tributing them from your hand.

The big hitters of this deck are “Ursarctic Polari” and “Ursarctic Septentrion”. One allows a player to activate the field spell mentioned above directly from their deck. The other will instead negate the effects of all monsters specially summoned from the extra deck and will provide monsters directly from the deck when an opponent Special Summons a monster.

Right out of the Booster pack: what will you get and what could you find?

Each ancient Guardians booster contains 7 cards of which 1 is a Foil card and the other 6 are Rare cards. Overall, this set contains “only” 60 cards in total: 10 Ultra-Rare, 15 Super Rares, 35 Rares.

In addition, 15 cards in this set are available as Collector’s Rare (9 Ultra Rares, 1 Super Rares and 5 Rares). The collector’s Rare cards included in the deck are:

• “Vennominaga the Deity of Poisonous Snakes” (Effect Monster, reprint)
• “Skull Meister” (Effect Monster, Reprint)
• “Dinowrestler Pankratops”     (Effect Monster, Reprint)
• “Snake Rain”  (Normal Spell, Reprint)
• “Trade-In” (Normal Spell, Reprint)
• “SolSolfachord Gracia” (Effect Pendulum Monster,  New)
• “Aron, the Ogdoadic King” (Effect Monster, New)
• “Amunessia, the Ogdoadic Queen” (Effect Monster, New)
• “Ogdoabyss, the Ogdoadic Overlord” (Effect Monster, New)
• “FaSolfachord Fancia” (Effect Pendulum Monster, New)
• “TiSolfachord Beautia” (Effect Pendulum Monster,  New)
• “DoSolfachord Coolia” (Effect Pendulum Monster,  New)
• “Ursarctic Polari” (Effect Synchro Monster,  New)
• “Ursarctic Septentrion” (Effect Synchro Monster, New)
• “Ursarctic Grand Chariot” (Effect Synchro Monster, New)

Among the cards featured in this collection, the large majority are completely new cards while only 21 cards are reprints from older sets.

Why you may want this set: Rare cards to look after

Considering that YuGiOh Ancient Guardians features a lot of new cards and new Archetypes, there are a lot of cards that look interesting and that have a lot of potential.  I would like to point out a few of them:

Ogdoabyss, the Ogdoadic Overlord (Effect Monster Lv10) is one of the most powerful monsters of the Ogdoadic archetype with 3100 ATK and 2200 DEF. Whenever this card is in the graveyard, players could tribute 3 monsters to special summon it directly.  Once Ogdoabyss enter the field,  it then forces all monsters in the field to go to the Graveyard, unless they have been specially summoned from the graveyard.

DoSolfachord Coolia (Pendulum Monster lv8) is probably the most interesting Solfachord card in this set. As a start, players can Special Summon this card from their hand by Tributing 2 Pendulum Monsters. Once the pendulum is summoned, this card will then prevent your opponent to activate a Spell/Trap Card, or monster effect. Every turn this monster will also allow you to negate the effects of 1 or 2 opponents’ cards or to destroy a monster with ATK equal to or lower than the highest Pendulum Scale multiplied by 300 if it tries to use an effect.

Snake Rain (Normal spell card) has a pretty neat effect as it allows players to discard 1 card and then select 4 Reptile-Type monsters from their Deck to send to the GY. Considering you choose the cards to send to the graveyard from your deck, this spell card opens up a lot of interesting strategies. For example, you could send “Reptilianne Nyami”, and “Yamorimori” to activate their Graveyard effects. In other cases, you could use it to power up “Vennominon the King of Poisonous Snakes” or “Vennominaga the Deity of Poisonous Snakes”. Furthermore, if you discard a DARK Reptile and then send 4 DARK Reptiles to the Graveyard, you can Special Summon “The Dark Creator” or “Umbramirage the Elemental Lord”. It is not a surprise that this card reached a very high price on the market before its reprint in this set.

Is this set worth buying? Final thoughts

As a big Yu-Gi-Oh fan, you are pretty used to having a quarterly release of a new set and, to be honest, most of them are structured the same way: around 100 cards, some new cards, a few reprints, a new archetype and support to some older ones etc. YuGiOh Ancient Guardians set is a bit different as you have three completely new themes and a lot of Rare cards. Also, this set features a good fraction of Collector’s Rares that we don’t see very often.

All three new themes look interesting and they seem to have a lot of potential. Although not immediately competitive at the time this set was released, the themes have since then received some good support in subsequent sets. For example, the Dawn of Majesty set contained a few new cards for Solfachord while Battle of Chaos and Burst of Destiny provided support cards and new members for the other two.

Overall, the set is definitely interesting in terms of composition and potential. It provides a good amount of options for future decks but at the same time it should be seen as an investment as most of these cards will not be very competitive for a while.