Card of the Month: Necrovalley

With the dominance of 2 powers in the current YGO in the meta, we are forced to main our side deck cards such as Soul & Mental Drain, Imperial Iron Wall, Droll & Lock, and others as well. Well, this month, I chose a card that can also slow down one of the ruling archetypes in the game. It is the main card of one of the oldest archetypes and one of the YGO's history of best anti-meta choice during its time. The crippling card of Marik's blood, the Gravekeepers' field, the Necrovalley.

Necrovalley

Spell / Field

All "Gravekeeper's" monsters gain 500 ATK and DEF. Cards in either player's Graveyard cannot be banished. Negate any card effect that would move a card in the Graveyard, other than itself, to a different place.

Necrovalley has been around for a long time and the only decks that I saw used it are GKs and SinGearValley. It prevents any cards in the graveyard to be special summoned or return to hand and/or deck except by their own card effect causing major setbacks to decks like zombies, Vayu-graveyard, psychics, Dark Armed Dragon, and other grave dependent decks and cards.

So how does this old card stops the dragons? Well, it prevents them from banishing the other dragons in the grave only letting them banish from the hand to special summon themselves. Although do note that they can still summon themselves back to the field from the grave if you use the dragons in hand and they will still activate from the banished zone so still be wary. You might think it's just a minor setback for them but that minor setback can stack up for you to win the game specially if they don't have any outs.

So, what now? You think GKs have a fighting chance? Maybe, but they're still slow and puny so still give it some thought (although one of the top 16 of our last major tourney is a GK deck). Instead, you can use a faster deck that would not be majorly affected by Necrovalley like something like, I don't know, maybe Gadgets?(which is also one of the top 16 with his Necrovalleys and Macro in main) I'm seriously using this NecroGadget deck right now since I have no budget and it works wonders.

But dragons aren't the only ones affected. Magicals can have a minor, minor, minor set back because they can't use Junon and Spellbook Goethe's effects since they can't banish from the grave. Verz Kerykeion can't also pay his cost due to no banish rule of Necrovalley.

Also, think of this. A first turn Royal Tribute will cripple the living hell out of those dragons since all the dragons will be sent to the grave and they can't be banished, this will leave your opponent with nothing in hand since Incarnate decks have a high monster, so there will be a high probability that your opponent will draw a monster. If it's an Incarnate, it's stuck in his hand since it takes two dragons to tango and he can't banish the dragons in his grave. He will have to wait for next turn and hope it is an Incarnate so he can summon a monster.

I will not add a Notable Friend section since Necrovalley has no friends because it is a selfish, clingy bastard that hugs all the cards in the grave not wanting to share them to the field or hand.