Phantom Nightmare Review: The Main Cards of Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG's New Set

From February 9th, 2024 onward, Phantom Nightmare, Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG's new set, will be legal. It brings excellent cards to the game, and direct support cards to the best decks nowadays. On the other side, it can also increase the game's power creep in the next format.

In this article, I'll analyze the main cards in the new set!

Beloved by the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX fans, Yubel got new support cards and some consistency, but it still doesn't have enough proactive interactions.

This archetype's main highlight is its fusion, which must be summoned using one of your Yubel monsters + 1 of your opponent's monsters, be it through your trap card or Super Polymerization.

Goblins are recurrent creatures in Yu-Gi-Oh! ever since this franchise's early days, but only now they got a proper, structured, archetype, and now have a design that is more modern, considering they use clothes that resemble motorcycle gangs - besides, of course, using domesticated beasts to travel around.

This deck's game style focuses on spamming level 3 monsters to summon xyz monsters and, even though this strategy isn't that great in the OCG, several TCG players think that it shows potential in this metagame.

Snake-Eyes Populus is one of the great cards in this set and supports decks that use the Sinful Spoils engine, particularly Fire King, considering it is another card that searches for Original Sinful Spoils - Snake-Eye. Like so, "Populus" can work both as a starter and as an extender, and makes this deck more resilient to interactions.

Horus the Black Flame Deity is the first Horus monster that has interaction effects that activate themselves from your hand. The first one of them is a proactive interaction and works as a board breaker, and the second is a reactive interaction, and works as a handtrap.

As for Stone Wall of the Imperial Tombs, it is a card that significantly improves the Horus strategy because, besides being a ROTA for Horus monsters, its name is "King's Sarcophagus" when it is on the board, which allows us to summon/activate its monsters.

Voiceless Voice is another archetype that shows potential in the new metagame, but it now focuses on ritual-summons.

This new archetype is linked to a few classic cards, and introduces new versions of them:

> Novox, the Voiceless Voice Disciple = Novox's Prayer.

> Saffira, the Wise Voiceless Voice Queen = Saffira, Queen of Dragons.

> Sauravis, the Sagely Voiceless Voice Dragon = Sauravis, the Ancient and Ascended.

> Skull Guardian, the Voiceless Voice Protector = Skull Guardian.

This deck basically focuses on summoning Skull Guardian, the Voiceless Voice Protector while it keeps Novox, the Voiceless Voice Disciple on your board (or graveyard), to double your boss monster's ATK points and give it an omni negate effect. Additionally, this deck is quite consistent and has space for techs, besides being able to take advantage of the Dogmatika engine, considering it doesn't depend on its extra deck.

Just like its artwork shows us, EM: P Gremeowde is directly related to I:P Masquerena, both because of its lore and because it has synergy with its effects, even though they don't form an archetype of their own. This card can be used well in any deck that can easily access link monsters, but I think it is way more efficient to use it in Spright, which has a lot of synergy with level 2 monsters, and can also access it easily.

Majespecter Orthrus - Nue is an incredibly strong and unexpected support card because this archetype is old. This card significantly improves this deck's consistency, and many see competitive potential in Majespecter after "Nue" is released. What can prevent this deck from being successful is its lack of resilience, considering your opponent will focus their interactions on this new monster, which will make its controller quite vulnerable.

Promethean Princess, Bestower of Flames is another support card released for Fire decks that can potentially dominate Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG's next format, and is considered by most players the best card in this set.

Through its first effect, "Promethean Princess" is an extender, and, while it is on the graveyard, it is an interaction that returns to the board, which also makes it a follow-up card. Like so, this card improves the resilience and also the power ceiling of this format's tier 1 decks after Phantom Nightmare is released.

Sebek's Sorcerer is another generic link-2 monster released to Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, however, contrary to other extremely powerful monsters which are also harmful to the game, "Sebek's" only has effects related to health points, and can increase them or lower them. Even though it isn't as powerful, this card can be relevant if used as a win condition in game 3, when your time to finish the game is running out.

Iron Thunderhammer is another excellent card from this set, and is a card that will "retire" Solemn Judgment, considering it is clearly an upgraded version of it, both because it denies monster effects and because of its interaction with cards in its column.

To sum up, "Swallow's Cowrie" is a ROTA for Winged Beasts, but with the small downside that you need to tribute a monster with the same level as this card. At first, it seems like a very specific card, but, if we analyze it well, this card has a lot of synergy with Floowandereeze, besides being quite similar to the ROTA in Floowandereeze and the Advent of Adventure's archetype itself. Like so, I believe players will test out "Swallow's Cowrie" to try and solve Floowandereeze's consistency issue.

To finish, we have Ashened, the newest exclusive Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG archetype based on the "Dark Souls" franchise. This new archetype stands out because of its beautiful artwork, and it includes Pyro-type, Dark-attribute monsters.

This archetype still doesn't have extra deck monsters, but its first package of cards seems promising. This deck's strategy seems to focus on its field spell, Obsidim, the Ashened City, which changes the opponent's monsters type into Pyro during your turn, but, for now, we still don't know how it will use it to its favor. Like so, the focus currently will be to add Veidos the Eruption Dragon of Extinction to your opponent's board to activate its trigger and destroy your opponent's monsters.

But so, what did you think of the Phantom Nightmare cards? Which of them will you buy? Tell us in the comment section.

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