Yugioh: Legendary Duelists – Synchro Storm Booster Pack

“Legendary Duelists: Synchro Storm” is the 8th set released in the Legendary Duelists series. Published in October 2021, Synchro Storm comes just after “Rage of Ra” and it is followed by “Duels from the Deep”.

The collection focuses mainly on Wind monsters and in particular on the cards used by Yugo, Sherry LeBlanck, Yusei Fudo and Lulu Obsidian from 5D’s and Arc-V anime series. Overall, this collection includes new members, reprints and support for “Speedroid”, “Fleur” and “Lyrilusc” together with “Synchro Dragon”, “Clear Wing” and “Hi-Speedroid” archetypes.

The strategy of the first main Archetype, Speedroid, is mainly focused on special summoning to the field powerful Synchro monsters. Among the new cards of this archetype, “Clear Wing Rider” stands out as a Lv11 Syncro monster with 3500 ATK/2000 DEF. This powerful monster allows the player to roll a dice every turn to bring back wind monsters from the graveyard into the deck while destroying the same amount of their opponents cards. In addition, this card gains 500 ATK for each card destroyed with its main effect and it can be tributed to Special Summon two level 7 Synchro monsters.

The engine of the second main Archetype, Fleur, aims to disrupt your opponent strategy using Synchro Monsters like “Chevalier de Fleur” and “Baronne de Fleur”. The first one can negate the activation of one Spell/Trap Cards during player’s turn and destroy it, while the second monster can negate the activation of any type of card during both players’ turns. Baronne de Fleur can also be sent back to the Extra Deck to Special Summon a Level 9 or a lower monster from the GY that allows potentially to use the two cards in tandem to reset each other effects.

“Lyrilusc” is the last main archetype featured in this set and it is based on Lv1 female wind Winged Beast monsters named after semi-precious stones. For the fans of the anime, these monsters are those used by Lulu Obsidian in the Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V series and they rely on their swarming and searching effects to quickly summon the Fusion and Xyz Monsters of this archetype. “Lyrilusc – Assembled Nightingale” in particular is a focal point of this strategy as it gains additional attacks and 200 ATK for each material used to summon it. It also has the ability to prevent all your Lyrilusc monsters to be destroyed by monster or card effect for the whole turn by spending one of its materials. Lastly, the Assembled Nightingale can be used to fusion summon “Lyrilusc – Independent Nightingale”, that gains 500 ATK is directly dependent on the number of Xyz Materials attached to the Assembled. In addition, this monster gets a direct attack per turn to the opponent life points.

Right Out Of The Booster Pack

Each booster pack of Legendary Duelists: Synchro Storm contains 5 cards while each booster box comes with 24 packs per box for a total of 120 cards. Overall, this collection includes 56 cards: 1 Ghost Rare, 9 Ultra Rare, 8 Super Rare, 10 Rare and 29 Commons.

Crystal Clear Wing Synchro Dragon can be pulled either as Ultra Rare or as Ghost rare in this set. Finally, 21 of these cards (38%) are new while 35 are reprints of previously released cards.

Why You May Want This Set

As every set of the series “Legendary Duelists”, Synchro storm is designed around a specific type of monster and focus on famous deck that uses them. As such, these collections are quite useful if you are looking to exploit the strategies of these duelists or if you are using a deck based on the same type of monster featured in this set. In this case, Wind is the common element of the series and some good cards you may want to look for are:

Crystal Clear Wing Synchro Dragon (Lv10, Synchro monster) is the first obvious choice as it is the only Ghost Rare card of the set. The strength of this card rely on the possibility to negate one monster effect per opponent’s turn while gaining ATK equal to the one of your opponent monster. In addition, it can also negate and destroy a spell or trap card.

Sauge de Fleur (Lv8 Effect monster) can be special summoned directly by a player’s hand by destroying one monster they control and one card on the field. If this monster is then sent from the field to the graveyard, the player can shuffle a monster from the graveyard back into the Deck and then add one Lv1 Plant monster from deck or graveyard to their hand. At first sight, this card does not seem very useful but can be a good asset if you are looking to exploit the Fleur archetype engine.

Pennant of Revolution (Continuous Trap card) is a quite powerful card to have on the field. First, it allows a player to gain one “Liberty at Last!” from their Deck or graveyard if one of their card is destroyed by battle or card effect. In addition, if any Synchro Monster battles a monster, this card allows the player to destroy the opponent monster at the start of the Damage Step. Although both effects can be used once per turn, this card can still pack some small surprises for your opponent.

Final Thoughts

Personally, I think Synchro Storm set is a reasonably good collection with a good mix of generic cards that can be added to most of the decks and a few that can be played competitively. Among them Baronne de Fleur is probably the most notable as a great generic Synchro monster.

Most of the archetypes featured in this set are not among the most competitive or the most notable ones but they can be fun to use. In addition they have now a good amount of support with the cards released in the set.

Overall, the set is probably a good average one: it is not one of the most exciting collections but it is also better than a few we have seen in the last few years. The only real drawback of this set is that Crystal Clear Wing Synchro Dragon as a Ghost rare has not been a great choice. Clear Wing is not a bad card overall, of course, but there are much better equivalents around greatly affecting the value and collectability of this card.