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Ryu Kokki
Invasion of Chaos
Common
[ZOMBIE / EFFECT]
If a monster that battles with this monster is a Warrior or Spellcaster-Type monster, destroy that monster at the end of the Damage Step.
ATK/2400 DEF/2000
This card has a lot to offer. It is the weapon of choice for Zombie decks these days and can really boost a beginner's deck. When I say beginners deck I mean those little decks that the 7-8 year olds play with, with the 7-colored fish and so on. I'm not calling them noobs, because that's not true, I'm just going to call them beginners because they just started playing. Anyway, the main point of today's article is to look at the underrated-ness of Ryu Kokki, a common from Invasion of Chaos.
Firstly, let's look at the stats. It's a 6 star, with a mighty 2400ATK, which is pretty much the standard these days. Other good 6 stars, beside the most obvious include Kaiser Glider and Summoned Skull. They really do stop at 2500ATK, and leave the higher stats to the LV7-8 monsters. The only thing that can take down Ryu Kokki that are used a lot on the modern meta-game without the use of equip cards would be The End of Anubis, Serpent's personal "rip-it-up-when-you-see-it" card. Now, it's a useful DARK Type, which makes it superb for DARK decks or Chaos Decks. It's also a Zombie - which is what we're going to talk about in today's review. Being a Zombie, it fits perfectly into the Zombie deck, a deck that is quite popular among players, and should see more tournament play. It's all about field control with your trusty Vampire Lord out along with a few Ryu Kokkis, or Regenerating Mummies and Spirit Reapers for defence. Combine Zombie with Beatdown, or Zombie with Control, or even Zombie with Chaos (add in a few D.D. Warrior Ladies, and a Black Luster Soldier), and the Zombie deck is instantly certified for higher level tournament play. A key player supporting Ryu Kokki would be Pyramid Turtle, a monster in PGD that can summon any Zombie with 2000DEF or less when it is destroyed in battle. Originally, it was designed for Vampire Lord, but now you can summon quite a lot of cards with it. These include Vampire Lord himself, Spirit Reaper and ofcourse, Ryu Kokki, whom just fits into the Pyramid Turtle criteria, with 2000 DEF. By the way, 2000 DEF is definitely not bad. So Ryu Kokki was mainly designed for good field swarming.
When we have a closer look at it's effect, we discover that Ryu Kokki was much more than we bargained for. This thing was also designed to stop two of the biggest types of monsters out there - Spellcasters and Warriors. Now when we say Spellcaster we mean Injection Fairy Lilly - used a lot in the Earth/Last Will deck, and when we say Warrior we mean anything along the lines of Black Luster Solider - Envoy of the Beginning. Those two are the most commonly used things that Ryu Kokki should be able to stop, but I found that you hardly will ever be using the effect in case of absolute emergency. But that is OK, because we'll know that it is always THERE, if we need it.
Ryu Kokki is quite underlooked by other players, but you never know when you'll be needing it.
Advanced: 2.5/5
Traditional: 2/5
Zombie+Control: 4/5
Zombie+Beatdown/Field Control: 5/5
Zombie+Chaos: 4.5/5
Zombie: 4/5
Limited: 3/5
Artwork: 4/5 - I love this art, very zombie like.
Rulings by NetRep.
If "Ryu Kokki" battles with "Dark Magician of Chaos", "Ryu Kokki" is destroyed and removed from play by "Dark Magician of Chaos"' effect, and "Dark Magician of Chaos" is removed from play because it is destroyed by "Ryu Kokki"'s effect and removed by its own effect.