Advanced Blocker Rulings & How To Use Them

Published 2 years ago by Rein Article Views 13,761 Estimated Reading Time 5 minutes

1. Introduction

Did you know that Blockers can set traps? Well, I’ve learned that they indeed can, and this article will guide you through the incredible niche benefits of ST5-14 Tai Kamiya.

2. ST5-14 Tai Kamiya

ST5-14 Tai Kamiya

First, let’s meet ST5-14 Tai Kamiya. ST5-14 Tai Kamiya is a Black Tamer card with a Play Cost of 2. His effect is: [Opponent’s Turn] When you use to suspend one of your Digimon, you may suspend this Tamer to unsuspend 1 of your Digimon. His Security effect is: [Security] Play this card without paying its memory cost.

Initially, this card didn’t seem particularly useful. It gets to treat even your big Level 6 Blockers as is if they exist an extra time for each Tai Kamiya on the Battle Area, sure. But its effect requiring your Digimon to be suspended by using Blocker prevents it from being able to be used as counter-tech for Green’s suspension control features.

However, a peculiar Blocker ruling has come to light recently. When chained with a previous Blocker ruling and ST5-14 Tai Kamiya, these rulings result in the ability to set some traps for unwitting opponents who are unaware of these rulings.

3. Blocking From Self

First thing’s first – the older discovery. Blockers may choose to suspend to Block attacks already being directed at them. Allow me to clarify. Suppose you have BT3-075 Craniamon in the Battle Area. It’s the opponent’s turn, and they are digivolving a Level 6 into BT4-090 Chaosmon. It’s [When Digivolving] effect is “Unsuspend this Digimon. Then, it can attack your opponent’s Digimon. This effect allows you to attack unsuspended Digimon as well.” Your opponent then uses this effect to have their BT4-090 Chaosmon attack your BT3-075 Craniamon, which has 2000 less DP, and will thus delete your BT3-075 Craniamon. Despite that this attack is already targeting your BT3-075 Craniamon, you may choose to suspend Craniamon in order to declare it a Blocker for the attack. This is the older ruling that was discovered. Until recently, this wasn’t a useful ruling. More on that coming up.

4. Chain Blocking

Next up is the recent ruling. You may choose to declare multiple Blockers during the reaction phase of a single attack! Only the final Digimon to declare Blocker will actually get to resolve, so it’s not like you can declare several Blockers, and have all of their combined DP add up to deal with the attack. This will be useful in the future should cards be released that trigger effects when you declare Blocker. But wait – at the start of this article, we mentioned one such card, didn’t we?

5. Putting It All Together

Welcome, ST5-14 Tai Kamiya. Using these two rulings, we have access to two unique powers.

The first power is to set traps. Suppose your board state is as follows. You attacked the opponent on your turn with BT3-075 Craniamon, leaving Craniamon suspended. ST5-14 Tai Kamiya is in your Battle Area. You end your turn by playing ST5-03 Agumon to be another Blocker for you during the opponent’s turn. Your opponent digivolves up to a BT2-065 WarGreymon. Seeing as your only available Blocker is ST5-03 Agumon, they decide to attack your Security, thinking they’ll either take your Security or delete your ST5-03 Agumon, then proceed to Reboot to be unsuspended for your next turn. A readily apparent win-win maneuver from their perspective. However! You begin your trap by suspending ST5-03 Agumon to Block the opponent’s BT2-065 WarGreymon. This allows you to suspend ST5-14 Tai Kamiya, which will allow you to unsuspend your BT3-075 Craniamon. Finally! You will suspend BT3-075 Craniamon to Block the opponent’s BT2-065 WarGreymon. Having fully deployed your trap, the BT2-065 WarGreymon deletes itself against your sudden BT3-075 Craniamon Blocker.

The second power is to save your better Digimon. Let’s look at that BT4-090 Chaosmon example again. The board state is as follows: You have a BT3-075 Craniamon in the Battle Area, unsuspended. You have an ST5-03 Agumon in the Battle Area. You attack the opponent’s Security with the ST5-03 Agumon, and are surprised when their Security doesn’t delete your ST5-03 Agumon, leaving it suspended for the opponent’s turn. You end your turn by playing ST5-14 Tai Kamiya to the Battle Area. Your opponent digivolves into BT4-090 Chaosmon, and uses its effect to attack your BT3-075 Craniamon. No matter what, you’re losing Security, but you can at least save your BT3-075 Craniamon. Here’s how you do it. You suspend BT3-075 Craniamon to Blocker the attack from BT4-090 Chaosmon that’s already coming at it. This will allow you to suspend ST5-14 Tai Kamiya in order to unsuspend your ST5-03 Agumon. Then, you will suspend ST5-03 Agumon to Block BT4-090 Chaosmon’s attack, instead of your BT3-075 Craniamon. ST5-03 Agumon will surely be deleted, and you will surely still lose a Security card due to BT4-090 Chaosmon’s Piercing trait, but you will have saved Craniamon in the course of this maneuver.

6. Conclusion

These are the two beneficial applications offered by these Advanced Blocker Rulings and ST5-14 Tai Kamiya. Currently, this is a fairly limited application that I wouldn’t attempt to use outside of a Black Blocker Control-focused deck. Additionally, this application of the rulings is so unusual that you’re highly likely to receive a Judge challenge. You’ll want to get the emails from Carddass on hand in order to present to the judge, but if it’s an offline tournament, the judge may be likely to rule the play as illegal anyways. The online judges are pretty well aware of the rulings, as it’s been in discussion in their circles as of late.

With these rulings, there are some things to look forward to in the future. Currently, BT5-062 Mekanorimon will help unsuspend other Digimon in your Battle Area, thanks to ST5-14 Tai Kamiya. Probably the best Digimon to run the trap strategy with. In the future, I’m hoping to see perhaps some Tamer that will grant +1 memory when you suspend by using Blocker. Perhaps there will be a card that will grant your Digimon +1000 DP whenever you suspend by using Blocker.

One last subject to touch on is that there is such thing as counter-plays for this. Within Red exists cards that will gain 3 memory whenever they are Blocked, and they will trigger in each case described here. So if you Block twice to save Craniamon, or Block twice to trap their Digimon, they can get 6 memory off of it.

Black has been in a sore spot in the meta for quite a long time, so any neat little tricks like this that Black can find are much appreciated. Much like desperately searching your couch cushions for even the slightest change.


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