Yugioh: Battle of Chaos Booster Pack

Battle of Chaos was the first set released in 2022 and it is the seventh set in the OCG’s 11th series, following Burst of Destiny and preceding Dimension Force. This deck was released around the 20th anniversary of the Trading Card Game and the 25th anniversary of the Manga thus Konami decided to celebrate the event by focusing on two very classic archetypes from the Duel Monsters era: Dark Magician and Blue-Eyes.

The main focus of this collection is for sure the Dark Magician archetype with the release of a new alternate artwork for the Dark Magician himself. Interestingly, this card has been released in this set just as Ultra Rare that should make reasonably feasible to pull a copy if you open a box or enough booster packs. Moreover, this very collectible card will take the space of a common card in the booster pack instead of the one of a foil, which is a very nice choice from Konami.

Battle of Chaos also includes a nice range of new cards to support this archetype, with a lot of interesting mechanics. “Magikuriboh” for example could be sent from hand to the graveyard during the turn player took damage to Special Summon a Dark Magician or Dark Magician Girl directly from the Deck or graveyard. This little cute monster also returns from the graveyard to your hand if a Spellcaster you control is destroyed by battle or opponent’s card effect creating an interesting loop.

Another interesting new monster is “Master of Chaos”. This Lv8 Dark Spellcaster can be Fusion Summoned using Dark Magician and any Chaos/ Black Luster Soldier Ritual Monster. As first effect, once in play, Master of Chaos allows a player to bring back to the field any Light or Dark monster from the graveyard. In addition, this monster allows the player to tribute 1 Light and 1 Dark monster to banish all cards the opponent controls. Finally, if this master spellcaster is destroyed by battle or card effect, it allows the player to add a Spell from graveyard to the hand.

The second main archetype of this collection, Blue-Eyes, also gets a few good new cards. “Blue-Eyes Tyrant Dragon”, for example, is a Level 8 Light Dragon Fusion with 3400 ATK that must be Fusion Summoned or Special Summoned from the Extra Deck by tributing a Blue-Eyes White Dragon equipped with a Fusion Monster. Once summoned, this monster will not only be unaffected by Trap Cards or effects but it will also be able to can attack all monsters the opponent controls once each. If this would not be enough, every turn this monster battles, players can set a Trap directly from their graveyard.

To help bring out the ultimate destructive power of this archetype, the Quick-Play spell “Ultimate Fusion” will let Fusion Summon any Fusion monster that lists Blue-Eyes White Dragon or Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon as material by shuffling the materials from your hand, field, and/or graveyard into the Deck. It also allows players to destroy face-up cards the opponent controls for each Blue-Eyes White Dragon or Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon used as material during the summoning,

Battle of chaos also introduces the “Dinomorphia” archetype and features support for Icejade, Vampire, Ghostrick, Aesir, Kuriboh, D/D/D, Swordsoul, Nordic and Nordic Relic archetypes.

The newer one, “Dinomorphia”, is Dinosaur-themes Deck full of Trap Cards and Fusion Monsters. The main trait of this archetype is to have Fusion monsters that are more effective the lower player life points are. To support this risky strategy, all trap cards of this archetype require players to sacrifice half of their life points in order to activate their effect.

While all Dinomorphia non-fusion monsters have 0 ATK and 0 DEF, they can all Special Summon a different Dinomorphia monster from the GY when they are destroyed. The two main monsters of this deck engine are “Dinomorphia Therizia” and “Dinomorphia Diplos”. Dinomorphia Therizia allow the player to set a Trap directly from the Deck and it is very important to prepare to fusion summons the bosses of this Archetype. Dinomorphia Diplos, on the other hand, allows a player to send a Dinomorphia card from Deck to the GY that will come in hand to trigger some of the effects of other Dinomorphia monsters.

Right Out Of The Booster Pack

Each Battle of Chaos booster pack contains 9 cards of which 1 is a Foil card and the other 6 are Rare cards. Each Battle of Chaos box includes 24 booster packs for a total of 216 cards.

Overall, this collection is composed of 100 cards: 10 Secret Rares, 14 Ultra Rares, 26 Super Rares, 50 Commons. All the cards but 1 are new cards and the only reprint is the Starlight Rare version of “The Dark Magician”.

Among the Secret Rares, 5 cards will be available as Starlight Rares with the usual average pull rate of 1 card every 2 boxes (0.2%):

• “Blue-Eyes Jet Dragon” (Lv8 Effect Monster)
• “Dinomorphia Therizia” (Lv4 Effect Monster)
• “Illusion of Chaos” (Lv7 Ritual Monster)
• “The Dark Magicians” (Lv8 Fusion Monster)
• “Dharc the Dark Charmer, Gloomy” (Link-2 Link Monster)

Why You May Want The Set

As you can imagine, the best cards to pull from this set are obviously the five Starlight Rare. These cards are for sure very desirable cards from a pure monetary value considering the high rarity and the fact that they are usually never reprinted in this format,.

On the gameplay side, Battle of Chaos is a great source of good cards to boost your decks if you are looking to use Dark Magician or Blue Eyes archetypes. In addition to the cards I have already mentioned in the summary section, the other cards that stand out for me are:

Guardian Chimera (Lv9 Dark Fusion monster) needs 3 monsters with different names to be summoned. If this monster is Fusion Summoned by a Spell Card or effect, players can draw a number of cards AND destroy cards the opponent controls equal to the number of materials used. Although not easy to be summoned, if used in combination with other Spell cards (for example Future Fusion) this monster could be extremely devastating…

Blue-Eyes Jet Dragon (Lv8 Effect Monster) is not only a good monster to have on the field for its 3000 ATK but also because it prevents all cards you control to be destroyed by card effects. In addition, if “Blue-Eyes White Dragon” is on your field or in your GY, Jet Dragon could be summoned from the Graveyard (or hand) if one of your cards is destroyed by a card effect.

The Zombie Vampire (Lv8 XyZ Monster) will require 2 Lv8 monsters to be summoned but once in play this monster will become a real killing machine with its 3000 ATK and 2800 DEF. Zombie Vampire will also be protected by all effects of Special Summoned monsters making it a very good asset for your deck. Detaching one of its material will force both players to send the top 4 cards of the deck to the Graveyard but monster will not stay there for long as the player controlling the Vampire could Special summon any of them back to the player field.

Final Thoughts

As for many new core sets, Battle of chaos has received mixed feedbacks since its release. Overall I think the value of this collection is reasonably good. The value of this set is clearly higher for those players that are using or looking to use any of the two main archetypes featured in this collection.

Among the other cards, Guardian Chimera is a favourite of mine and can be added to almost any deck. It went for sure straight into my deck the moment I pulled it and it think we will start to see it more often in competitive decks. Zombie Vampire is another good card that could easily be added to any Zombie and Vampire decks.

On the other end, I personally don’t think the potential of Dinomorphia archetype is too high but we will need to see how much support it will get in the future.

Overall, Battle of Chaos does not add impressive new strategies or amazing cards. It is although a very solid source of good cards for nostalgic decks based on Yugi’s and Seto’s monsters and, at least for this reason, I think this set has a very good value for all the Anime and Manga series.