The Creator
Light, Level 8, [Thunder/Effect]
ATK: 2300, DEF: 3000
EEN-ENSE2, Limited Edition Secret Rare (Elemental Energy Special Edition Variant)

Select 1 monster from your Graveyard. Send 1 card from your hand to the Graveyard to Special Summon the selected monster. You can only use this effect once per turn. This card cannot be Special Summoned from the Graveyard.

Happy New Years! To celebrate, the Yu-Gi-Oh! Corner is reviewing a brand new promo release from the Elemental Energy Special Edition box, The Creator, as well as its most important support card, The Creator Incarnate. All of the promo cards in this Special Edition release are great, and it's also very nice to see the return of high-rarity promos, in this case Secret Rare. Opening a box and finding a Super or Ultra Rare style card just doesn't feel very special to me and seems plain cheap :P

The Creator is a very interesting card almost exclusively due to its effect. Bring back anything that can be resurrected from your Graveyard at the price of one card. If the card you discard is a monster, it can also be brought back the next turn. Could this card be the single biggest reason why Sinister Serpent is now banned in Advanced? I think it definitely contributed, because in the newest build of my traditional Chaos deck I'm running this card, and when I use it with Sinister Serpent, it's completely broken. I've tricked several people into simultaneously giving me Sinister and dumping Jinzo with Painful Choice only to summon The Creator and then use the Serpent as Tribute to call back Jinzo. That's pure evil!

However, The Creator leaves some things to be desired no matter what deck he's played in. This is mainly due to his 2300 ATK, ridiculously low for what is normally a two-tribute monster. This will die to Monarchs, Jinzo, Cyber Dragon, and anything else that's considered respectable these days. 3000 DEF is wonderful, but to get him in Defense Position on a Normal Summon requires him to be set face-down, leaving him vulnerable to Nobleman of Crossout. But it doesn't end there either, for once he's in face-up defense, he'll fall quickly to the ubiquitous Ninja Grandmaster Sasuke, who scoffs at ANY defense stat. Thus, keeping The Creator on the field for very long in either play format can be problematic. This makes it necessary to make full use of his effect as quickly as possible after he has been summoned in order to gain momentum. Jinzo is a good grab almost all the time, and any of the other monsters I mentioned above would be as well. Of course, the biggest kicker for Chaos decks is that, aside from being a Light monster himself, this guy can bring back both CED and BLS for a second round of mayhem.

The biggest thing that hurts this card is the inability to summon it from the Graveyard, clearly meant to prevent recursion between multiple Creators. I think it would have been far better for them to limit this card to one straight off and allow it to be resurrected. While we have cards to deal with this problem now, they're not that playable ultimately. Even if I owned a copy of Monster Reincarnation, I have no earthly idea what I'd scrouge out of my already-too-large deck to make room for it. That would definitely only be worth using in a dedicated Creator deck. Anybody else is stuck with a Creator that is gone for good once he's dead.

And that will wrap it up for this review. In the bonus review for today, I'll discuss The Creator Incarnate, a little guy who makes this one infinitely more playable, and I'll discuss how The Creator can work as a deck theme unto himself. I give The Creator a Great classification, but I think just barely. His pathetic ATK absolutely demands some type of protection or enhancement and can be a real liability. United We Stand is not out of the question here at all ;)