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Dawn of Majesty is the fifth set in the OCG's 11th series, following Lightning Overdrive and followed by Burst of Destiny. Released in August 2021 in Europe, this set introduced the new archetypes "Despia", "Magikey", "Gunkan", "Swordsoul" and "Beetrooper" and provides a lot of cards to support previously released archetypes and series. The collection also includes a few useful generic cards to support any deck as usual.
Among the new ones, “Despia” is a competitive archetype deeply connected with the Dogmatika, Tri-Brigade and Albaz Dragon archetypes. Despia-based decks focus on fusion summoning high level monsters while triggering the special effects of the monsters used as materials. For example, when used as summoning material “Ad Libitum of Despia”, can Special Summon a level 8 or higher Fusion monster, or any Despia monster.
Other cards of this archetype offer interesting effects to disrupt the opponent strategy like “Despian Comedy” that could be discarded from your hand to negate an effect.
Finally, this archetype includes a great favourite of most, “Fallen of Albaz”, a Lv4 effect monster that allows the player to perform a Fusion summon once this card is normal or Special Summoned. As a bonus effect, the fusion summoning could be performed by sacrificing both the Fallen and a monster controlled by the opponent.
The second good Archetype of this set is the new “Magikey”, a strongly thematic deck based around demons and demonology. The main strategy of this archetype is to summon fusion and ritual monsters from the extra deck using two main monsters as the core of the deck. The first one, “Clavis, the Magikey Skyblaster”, is designed to be a solid good hitter. “Greater Magikey – Mafteahl”, the second one, could be revealed to provide an extra Normal Summon. In addition, when Mafteahl is normal summoned, the player has the chance to bring back any Lv4 monster from the graveyard.
The peculiarity of the monsters of this Archetype is to have special effects based on having normal monsters with different attributes in the graveyard. The Magikey-based deck therefore can use any normal monster from any set to boost the main strategy and create strong combinations.
One last archetype worth mentioning is the "Gunkan" one, whose cards are inspired by a style of sushi made by wrapping a strip of nori around a rice ball with a topping. Gunkan literally means "warboat" and all monsters of this archetypes are designed as warship with different toppings of sushi. Perhaps this is not the most competitive of the decks but is a full 10/10 in terms of thematic.
What Will You Get, What Could You Find?
Each booster pack of Dawn of Majesty contains 9 cards while each booster box comes with 24 packs per box for a total of 216 cards.
Overall this collection includes 101 cards: 10 Secret Rare, 14 Ultra Rare, 26 Super Rare and 50 Commons. 5 cards of the set are also available as Starlight Rare: “Stardust Dragon” (only available as Starlight Rare), “Shooting Majestic Star Dragon”, “Protecting Spirit Loagaeth”, “The Iris Swordsoul”, and “Antihuman Intelligence”.
Pull rates of this set are very standard with 1 Starlight rare expected every two boxes (0.2%).
Rare Cards
Personally, I think there are a lot on interesting cards to pull in Dawn of Majesty. Starlight Rare cards are good as usual but with all the new archetypes there is a bit for everyone. Best three I would look after are:
Antihuman Intelligence ME-PSY-YA (0,0 Pendulum Monster) is a reasonably good competitive cards. This monster has few different effects which can disrupt the opponent strategy. The two main one that make this monster a good option are the ability to send to the graveyard any monster that is normal or special summoned while this card is on the field. In addition, once ME-PSY-YA is in play all cards other than monsters sent to the graveyard are banished instead. It would have been great to banish also monsters but this second effect is particularly useful against some spell and trap cards that have a tendency to get back into play easily....
Aluber the Jester of Despia (Lv4 Effect Monster) is a pretty decent card to have if you are basing your strategy on strong Fusion Monster. In fact, its first effect allows a player to search for 1 “Branded” Spell or Trap cards from their hand that is always a good thing. Most importantly the Jester could be brough back from the graveyard to also negate one effect Monster the opponent controls if any of the player fusion Monster leaves the field while this card is in their GY. This last effect could prove quite good to re-balance the field in case your opponent gets the upper hand.
Starlight Rare Stardust Dragon (Lv8 Synchro Monster) is THE most rare card of the set and a very good one to have, not only for its value. As a monster, the Stardust Dragon is pretty decent with 2500 ATK and 2000 DEF and could be easily summoned using 1 Tuner and 1 non-Tuner monsters. Its main role is in fact to negate and destroy any card when an effect is activated by tributing this monster. Fun fact: if you use this ability of the Stardust Dragon in a turn, this monster could be also special summoned from the graveyard during the same turn.
Overall, this is a very flexible card that could play a good role in turning the tide of a turn and disrupt your opponent strategy.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I quite like this set and I think there is a good potential in Dawn of Majesty. First, there are actually some very decent cards to be used in meta deck including those of the Despia archetype. This is not always the case and we have seen quite a number of sets released in the same year with low or null real competitive value.
In addition, this set includes a lot of interesting and flexibly generic cards that can be used to boost pretty much any deck. The Spell cards in particular are quite interesting and provide a wide range of support to any summoning strategy. Last but not least, all the new archetype of this set seems to have a good potential and they may develop into something interesting depending on how much support they will receive.
Now, let me get to order a few more pack from Zatu as I have not yet pulled any Starlight rare....