Hey guys! So, I’ve been wanting to trial something for a while, so this week I decided to start a new segment called the Archetype Appraisal, where I take a look at a YuGiOh! archetype that’s either getting new support or is being released soon, which has caught my interest. For this first entry, I’ll be taking a look at the Simorgh archetype from the most recently released core booster set, Rising Rampage – an archetype designed to expand on the existing Simorgh monsters, the first of which being released way back in the Structure Deck: Lord of the Storm in 2006. Without further ado, let’s jump right into it!
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Deck
Strengths
This deck offers a high aggression strategy that allows you to quickly swarm the field and, under the right strategies, OTK your opponent with the greatest of ease. Most of your strategies will revolve around continuous Tribute Summoning of the Big Lv7/ Lv8 Birds while swarming the field with the Little Birds. Certain builds can accommodate the use of “Dark Simorgh” alongside “Anti-Spell Fragrance” to prevent your opponent from accessing Spell and Trap cards, thus limiting their options. Others will be able to place greater emphasis on bringing the new Big Birds “Simorgh of Darkness” and “Simorgh, Lord of the Storms” and then negating your opponent’s plays alongside the use of hand traps before pushing for game.
Weaknesses
Despite the pretty picture I’ve painted of this archetype, it does come with some significant limitations. Hand traps like “Ash Blossom and Joyous Spring” will hit the deck hard, with searching via “Simorgh, Bird of Bringing” and “Simorgh Onslaught” being essential to the overall game plan, meaning that an appropriately timed hand trap can end a turn then and there. Additionally, many of the cards have steep activation costs such as discarding or banishing, meaning you can easily burn through what little resources you possess. This deck is also heavily reliant on its Normal Summons, meaning that if this deck doesn’t manage its Normal Summons appropriately, it can be left with only the Little Birds to defend itself – something you definitely do NOT want to do! Due to the limited searching capabilities and reliance on specific cards in the archetype, this deck can brick quite spectacularly, meaning that without “Simorgh, Bird of Bringing”, “Simorgh Onslaught” or “Elborz, the Sacred Lands of Simorgh” in the opening hand, this deck can struggle to build field presence, leaving players fairly defenceless. Finally, the deck also lacks inherent removal, relying more on bouncing cards than on destroying them, which, while useful, allows opponents to re-activate cards on their next turn and also has little to no access to any meaningful in-archetype negation. Combined, this lack of removal or negation means that opponents can play with practically no hindrance from the deck, which can easily spell doom for this fanciful flock of birds.
Cards That Support the Deck/ Strategy
Thanks to the deck being made entirely of Winged Beasts, and primarily WIND monsters, much of the support for both can be used here to great effect. The most obvious cards that immediately spring to mind are “Icarus Attack” and “Swallow’s Nest”, offering invaluable removal options and the ability to avoid negative effects or increase the overall damage output respectively. “Called by the Grave” also offers invaluable defence in the face of hand traps such as “Ash Blossom and Joyous Spring”, allowing the deck to play through such annoyances and accomplish its main strategies. The final and most important support that this deck can receive comes from the beloved Harpie archetype, with “Harpie Conductor” and “Harpie’s Feather Storm”. “Feather Storm” allows you to negate all of your opponent’s monster effects for one turn as long as you have a WIND Winged Beast monster on your field. “Harpie Conductor” is a LINK 2 monster that, while useful for her link markers, provides greater utility thanks to the secondary effect of “Harpie’s Feather Storm”, which allows players to activate the trap directly from the hand, further boosting the deck’s overall potency while protecting this valuable trap from interference or removal.
Final Thoughts
While the deck overall lacks the potency and potential to enter the big leagues of meta play, it does offer a fun play style and the potential for experimentation. The deck also comes with the benefit of being printed in mainly low rarity, thus offering a great budget option for players of all levels and wallet sizes. Despite this, the myriad of weaknesses that the deck possesses, including its relatively poor defences, limited recovery options and mediocre consistency, means that, despite how much I may want to rate it higher, I can only award the deck a 3/5 overall – making it a fun but flawed deck.
If you’d like some more in-depth information regarding the cards in the archetype we discussed today, including my opinion on each card in the archetype, then please check out the information below. Apart from that, that’s all we have for you this time on the Archetype Appraisal. I hope you enjoyed and I hope to see you again real soon. Until next time, keep it weeby everyone!
Loplop x
The Original Simorgh Monsters
Simorgh, Bird of Divinity
WIND, LV7, Winged Beast, Effect Monster
ATK: 2700, DEF: 1000
Effect: This card cannot be Special Summoned. If you Tribute Summon this card, all Tributes must be WIND. Each player takes 1000 damage during each of their End Phases, while this card remains face-up on the field. This damage is decreased by 500 for each Spell/Trap Card the player controls.
The first Simorgh ever created and, arguably, the least usable in today’s game due to the restrictive summoning conditions of this card and an effect that can backfire spectacularly on the player under the wrong circumstances. Sadly, it is likely that this card will remain a relic of the past – but it was thanks to this beloved monster that an archetype was spawned.
Simorgh, Bird of Ancestry
WIND, LV8, Winged Beast, Effect Monster
ATK: 2900, DEF: 2000
Effect: Both players Tribute Summon WIND monsters with 1 less Tribute than required. If you Tribute Summon this card by Tributing only WIND monsters, return up to 2 cards your opponent controls to their owner’s hand. This card is treated as a Normal Monster while in your hand.
A significant improvement over the original Simorgh, this monster holds a great amount of potential for the deck, if operating under the right circumstances. Due to the deck’s reliance on the Normal Summon, reducing the number of required materials by one is invaluable. The added utility of bouncing your opponent’s cards back to their hand without targeting is a nice bonus, and so this card could be a potential option for certain builds of the deck.
Dark Simorgh
DARK, LV7, Winged Beast, Effect Monster
ATK: 2700, DEF: 1000
Effect: While face-up on the field, this card is also WIND-Attribute. You can banish 1 DARK monster and 1 WIND monster from your Graveyard; Special Summon this card from your hand. You can banish 1 DARK monster and 1 WIND monster from your hand; Special Summon this card from your Graveyard. Your opponent cannot Set any cards on the field.
This is the dark alternative to the original “Simorgh, Bird of Divinity”, only it’s sooo much more useful. This is the first card in the archetype to offer an inherent Special Summon condition, speeding up the card significantly if given the proper setup. It additionally prevents your opponent from setting cards to their field – a move that can prove invaluable, shutting down certain decks like Altergeist and Paleozoic all together! Given the effects found in many of the new support cards and the overall play style of the deck (both of which I’ll be covering shortly), “Dark Simorgh” will inevitably find itself the focus of many Simorgh decks. Finally, by combining “Dark Simorgh” with “Anti-Spell Fragrance”, this deck can potentially dominate Spell- and Trap-focused strategies with incredible ease.
The New Support (Rising Rampage)
Simorgh, Bird of Beginning
WIND, LV1, Winged Beast, Effect Monster
ATK: 0, DEF: 1600
Effect: When this card is Normal Summoned: You can activate this effect; during your Main Phase this turn, you can Normal Summon 1 “Simorgh” monster in addition to your Normal Summon/Set. (You can only gain this effect once per turn.) If this card is in your GY and your opponent controls no cards in their Spell & Trap Zone: You can Special Summon this card in Defense Position, but banish it when it leaves the field, also you cannot Special Summon monsters for the rest of this turn, except Winged Beast monsters. You can only use each effect of “Simorgh, Bird of Beginning” once per turn.
Not only is this card absolutely adorable, it offers a first glimpse into what the new support means for the future of Simorgh. Firstly, this card, as you’ll see in all of the other Little Birds, has the ability to summon itself from the graveyard once as long as your opponent has no cards in their Spell and Trap zones. Luckily, this doesn’t include field spells, so you can still bring this little one back, with the only limitation being that you’re restricted to summoning Winged Beasts for the rest of the turn, which is hardly a limitation in this deck. Secondly, “Simorgh, Bird of Beginning” allows the player to conduct an additional Normal Summon of a Simorgh monster, which, considering this deck’s reliance on the Normal Summon, will prove invaluable in the overall strategy.
Simorgh, Bird of Bringing
WIND, LV2, Winged Beast, Effect Monster
ATK: 1000, DEF: 1000
Effect: When this card is Normal Summoned: You can add 1 “Simorgh” card from your Deck to your hand, except “Simorgh, Bird of Bringing”. If this card is in your GY and your opponent controls no cards in their Spell & Trap Zone: You can Special Summon this card in Defense Position, but banish it when it leaves the field, also you cannot Special Summon monsters for the rest of this turn, except Winged Beast monsters. You can only use each effect of “Simorgh, Bird of Bringing” once per turn.
Arguably the most important card in the deck and the main searcher for the entire archetype, this card possesses the same effect as the other Little Birds, while simultaneously allowing players to search ANY Simorgh card from their deck to their hand. Most of the time, you’ll likely be searching either the Field Spell “Elborz, the Sacred Lands of Simorgh” or “Simorgh Onslaught” with this card, but it does offer invaluable flexibility, allowing players to adapt to any given situation, be that offensive or defensive. A must-run card at 3 copies that will be the most welcome sight in any opening hand.
Simorgh, Bird of Calamity
WIND, LV3, Winged Beast, Effect Monster
ATK: 1500, DEF: 200
Effect: When this card is Normal Summoned: You can send 1 “Simorgh” card from your Deck to the GY, except “Simorgh, Bird of Calamity”. If this card is in your GY and your opponent controls no cards in their Spell & Trap Zone: You can Special Summon this card in Defense Position, but banish it when it leaves the field, also you cannot Special Summon monsters for the rest of this turn, except Winged Beast monsters. You can only use each effect of “Simorgh, Bird of Calamity” once per turn.
Another useful tool in the Simorgh arsenal, “Bird of Calamity” offers a “Foolish Burial”/ “Foolish Burial Goods” for the archetype, allowing you to send any Simorgh card from your deck to the graveyard. As the Little Birds (including this card) have a revival effect, this can provide tribute fodder for your Big Birds, while the Spell and Trap line-up offer a set of abilities that facilitate you swarming the field, meaning that this card can permit you to make the most of whatever situation you find yourself in thanks to its amazing utility.
Simorgh, Bird of Protection
WIND, LV4, Winged Beast, Effect Monster
ATK: 1400, DEF: 1000
Effect: When this card is Normal Summoned: You can target 1 card in your opponent’s Spell & Trap Zone; return it to the hand. If this card is in your GY and your opponent controls no cards in their Spell & Trap Zone: You can Special Summon this card in Defense Position, but banish it when it leaves the field, also you cannot Special Summon monsters for the rest of this turn, except Winged Beast monsters. You can only use each effect of “Simorgh, Bird of Protection” once per turn.
The most lacklustre of the monster line-up, this card offers the same revival effect as the other Little Birds, only without the impressive additional effect. This card provides some minor Spell- and Trap-removal thanks to its ability to bounce a single Spell or Trap back to the opponent’s hand. This watered-down “Giant Trunade” does very little for the strategy, however, as there is a Spell card in the archetype (“Simorgh Repulsion”) that does much more than this card. While it may prove useful under the right conditions, I can’t see this one being a key player in the deck.
Simorgh, Lord of the Storm
WIND, LV8, Winged Beast, Effect Monster
ATK: 2900, DEF: 2000
Effect: Your opponent cannot target this Tribute Summoned card with Spell/Trap Cards or effects. You can only use each of the following effects of “Simorgh, Lord of the Storm” once per turn.
● When a Spell/Trap Card or effect is activated (Quick Effect): You can Tribute 1 WIND Winged Beast monster, then target 1 card your opponent controls; shuffle it into the Deck.
● When a Winged Beast monster you control is destroyed by battle while this card is in your GY: You can add this card to your hand.
The first of the two Big Birds, this card has a decent body with its 2900 ATK, is immune to Spell and Trap effects when Tribute Summoned and offers some incredible negation with its ability to spin a card back to the deck once per turn, one of the most powerful removal effects in YuGiOh! However, the fact that this card lacks an inherent Special Summoning method and has a Graveyard-recovery effect that can be easily avoided by opponents, puts this Boss Bird just below its dark counterpart with regards to its utility but, with its protection and its ability to spin cards back to the deck, presents itself as a key player in both the offence and defence of this deck.
Simorgh of Darkness
DARK, LV8, Winged Beast, Effect Monster
ATK: 2900, DEF: 2000
Effect: While face-up on the field, this card is also WIND-Attribute. You can only use each of the following effects of “Simorgh of Darkness” once per turn.
● If you Tribute Summon a DARK or WIND monster: You can Special Summon this card from the GY (if it was there when the monster was Tribute Summoned) or hand (even if not).
● When a Spell/Trap Card or effect is activated (Quick Effect): You can Tribute 1 WIND Winged Beast monster; negate the activation, and if you do, destroy that card.
The second half of the Simorgh Big Birds, “Simorgh of Darkness” is most useful due to its inherent Special Summoning condition and its ability to negate Spells and Traps. Sadly, just like “Simorgh, Lord of the Storm”, this card also lacks any meaningful negation for monster effects, lowering its overall utility. But thanks to its stats, and other effects, “Simorgh of Darkness” will most definitely be played at 3 copies in practically every strategy.
Elborz, the Sacred Lands of Simorgh
Spell, Field
Effect: All WIND Winged Beast monsters on the field gain 300 ATK/DEF. You can only use each of the following effects of “Elborz, the Sacred Lands of Simorgh” once per turn.
● You can reveal 1 Level 5 or higher WIND Winged Beast monster in your hand; this turn, you can Normal Summon Winged Beast monsters for 1 less Tribute (even if this card leaves the field).
● If you control a WIND Winged Beast monster, you can: Immediately after this effect resolves, Normal Summon 1 Winged Beast monster.
The obligatory Field Spell for the archetype, this card also provides an essential additional Normal Summon of a Winged Beast monster once per turn. More than likely overlooked, the ability to reduce the number of required tributes can allow for some exceptional combinations, where cards such as “Dark Simorgh” can hit the field without the need for a tribute when combining this effect with “Simorgh Onslaught” and its Graveyard effect to reduce a monster’s level by 1. Powerful and integral to the strategy of the deck, “Elborz” is essential to the game plan and will likely necessitate that you run “Terraforming” to see it more often.
Simorgh Onslaught
Spell, Normal
Effect: Discard 1 Winged Beast monster; add 2 “Simorgh” monsters with different Attributes from your Deck to your hand. You can banish this card from your GY; reveal 1 Winged Beast monster in your hand, and if you do, reduce the Levels of monsters in your hand with that name by 1 for the rest of this turn (even after they are Summoned). You can only activate 1 “Simorgh Onslaught” per turn.
Seeing as I’ve mentioned this card time and again, it’ll come as no surprise that this is a key piece in the overall strategy of the deck. The search ability that this card offers is invaluable, simultaneously allowing you to load your Graveyard with a Little Bird for tribute fodder, or “Simorgh of Darkness” for an additional Beater, you can’t deny the utility of this card. The additional Graveyard utility of this card in reducing the levels of all monsters in your hand with a specific name can provide some unique opportunities as already mentioned, and makes this card an absolute standout in the overall archetype.
Simorgh Repulsion
Spell, Normal
Effect: Discard 1 Winged Beast monster; return all cards in your opponent’s Spell & Trap Zones to the hand. You can banish this card from your GY; reveal 1 Winged Beast monster in your hand, and if you do, reduce the Levels of monsters in your hand with that name by 1 for the rest of this turn (even after they are Summoned). You can only activate 1 “Simorgh Repulsion” per turn.
As I mentioned previously, this card offers a “Giant Trunade”-like effect for your opponent’s Spells and Traps for the cost of one Winged Beast monster. While more useful than “Bird of Protection”, it still only provides some niche usage overall and is highly match-up dependent. The level-reducing effect it shares with “Simorgh Onslaught” again provides the same potential for some interesting plays but, overall, is not a card that warrants running more than 1 or (at a push) 2 in the Main Deck. Although, you’d be better off running better removal options like “Mystical Space Typhoon” or “Twin Twisters”.
Simorgh Sky Battle
Trap, Continuous
Effect: Winged Beast monsters you control cannot be targeted by your opponent’s card effects, or their monsters’ attacks, except your Winged Beast monster(s) with the highest ATK. You can send to the GY, this card and 2 “Simorgh” monsters you control with different original Attributes whose original Levels are 7 or higher; return as many cards on the field to the hand as possible, and if you do, take 500 damage for each card returned to the hand, then inflict damage to your opponent equal to the damage you took. You can only use this effect of “Simorgh Sky Battle” once per turn
The only Trap card in the line-up, and a card that offers only mediocre protection and a “Ring of Destruction”-like burn effect. While you might want to use this to push for game, you’d probably find yourself better suited to keeping your Big Birds on field, and preparing to win on the next turn rather than burning through precious resources and leaving yourself defenceless in the face of your opponent should they survive the turn. Mediocre and, overall, a disappointing end to the archetypal line-up.
Down the Otaku Rabbit Hole! 