Card monsters Alliance

Duelist Alliance doesn’t launch until August 15th, but it has so many great cards that we have to start talking about them now if we want to stand any chance of getting through them all before the kicks off! While the brand new Pendulum Monsters, like Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon, are sure to be a hot commodity right out of the gates, most of the speculation about Duelist Alliance has been about the other “hot” cards – the ones based on Dante Alighieri’s Inferno!

The number 3 has great importance in this monolithic work of literature. Inferno itself is one of 3 parts of an overarching work, the Divine Comedy. Each part is further divided into 33 smaller segments. Even the rhyme scheme of the poem is done in groups of 3 lines, where the first and third lines rhyme, and the odd line out rhymes with the first and third lines of the next group. The entire Divine Comedy is over 14000 lines total. Can you even imagine keeping up such a rhyme scheme for that long, with only a break in between each of the three parts of the story?

Similarly, the number 3 became the focal point for the Malebranche, the diabolical basic monsters of the new Burning Abyss theme! Here’s the first of them, Scarm, Malebranche of the Burning Abyss!

You can see right away that Scarm is Level 3. All of the Malebranche are, and there are 3 of them in Duelist Alliance. Each Malebranche has 3 effects: one that self-destructs it if you control a monster that isn’t a “Burning Abyss” monster, one that allows you to Special Summon it if you control no Spells or Traps, and one that triggers when it is sent to the Graveyard, or in this case in the End Phase of the turn it’s sent to the Graveyard, at which time Scarm grabs a Level 3 DARK Fiend from your Deck.

Also, all Malebranche are themselves Level 3 DARK Fiend-Type monsters, so you can see that Scarm here can go fetch whichever Malebranche you might need for the upcoming turn… or Tour Guide from the Underworld, who is certainly no Virgil, but is more than capable of filling your Underworld Guidance Needs. She can also negate that self-destruction effect, making her incredibly valuable in a “Burning Abyss” Deck. You can also use Hate Buster, which you’ll be able to pick up in Battle Pack 3: Monster League, as monster removal, burn damage, and the ability to trigger your effects all in one! In fact, there are a lot of cards that already exist that can help your Burning Abyss Deck – and to be clear, you’ll be able to build a Burning Abyss Deck right out of the gate because there are 5 “Burning Abyss” cards in Duelist Alliance!

But even if you don’t want to build a Burning Abyss Deck, you shouldn’t just ignore the Burning Abyss cards! Dante, Traveler of the Burning Abyss is a “Burning Abyss” Xyz Monster, but he can fit into anyone’s Extra Deck and make an immediate contribution on a number of different fronts.