Quick Article #6: Just What Do You Plan on Doing with that Scientist, Eh?

If I needed to name but a single card in the Traditional Format that was infinitely versatile, amazingly powerful, easily splashable, but also more often than not atrociously misused and misunderstood, I would choose without a second’s thought Magical Scientist; it’s a card that I see included in the vast majority of decks posted on internet forums, Youtube channels and the like, and discussed by those people including it in such decks, but is almost always done incorrectly, with very little regard for its true potential. Of course, there is the possibility, as everybody well knows, to use Magical Scientist to Special Summon Fusion Monsters with amazing effects, such as Thousand-Eyes Restrict, Dark Balter the Terrible, Ryu Senshi and so on, but this is only a rather shallow representation of the enormous well of opportunity it grants. In this article, therefore, I want to briefly go over the two major uses for Magical Scientist, the one’s which seem to be either unknown or simply overlooked.

 

·         Synchro Summoning: the first of these is the ability to utilize the Fusion Monsters as Synchro Materials. Where the Advanced Format has almost entirely shied away from Synchro Monsters, owing to the limited possibility to successfully include Tuners in the majority of the top decks, no such occurrence has befallen Traditional; with Plaguespreader Zombie, Glow-up Bulb and Spore (to name but a few) all being viable choices thanks to cards alike to Painful Choice and Graceful Charity, Synchro Summoning remains a potent strategy here. Magical Scientist, as we know, can Special Summon any number of Fusions with any number of Levels below 7, offering a unique single-card toolbox for creating various required non-Tuners. Granted, this will most often revolve around the Dark Strike Fighter One-Turn/First-Turn-Knockout, but this is neither the only option available nor the one always indicated by the gamestate. Other powerful options, such as Stardust Dragon, Scrap Dragon, Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier and Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier, are all potential plays, and access to enough Tuners can result in multiples of such.

 

·         Exceed Summing: the second way in which one might employ the Fusion Monsters brought to the field by Magical Scientist, quite clearly, is Exceed Summoning. Again, owing to the variability across Levels, there is a wealth of possibilities to be found in this route, and, it must be said, a wealth of possibilities that are simpler to execute: two Level 3 Fusions can make Number 17: Leviathan Dragon, Leviair the Sea Dragon, Wind-Up Zenmaines and many other powerful Rank 3 options; two Level 4s can be overlayed into Number 39: Utopia, Steelswarm Roach or Maestroke the Symphony Djinn; two Level 5 Fusions can Exceed Summon powerful Rank 5s such as Tiras, Keeper of Genesis or Adreus, Keeper of Armageddon; and, finally, a pair of Level 6s will be able to form Photon Strike Bounzer or Inzektor Exa-Beetle. In addition, the lack of a necessity for a specific Tuner Monster, as in Synchro Summoning, means that one can Exceed Summon as many times as one has the Monster Zones, Fusion Monsters and Life Points to allow, easily creating a full field at a moment’s notice.

 

The only problem arising from the utilization of Magical Scientist, that I can see anyway, is the limit on the number of Extra Deck cards; fifteen is far from being a substantial amount, meaning every card needs to be chosen with absolute precision (re: On Skill). Other, lesser uses, such as Summoning two or three Fusion Monsters to tribute for Destiny Hero – Plasma, bypass this, but don’t offer anywhere near the same level of power and versatility, so this is where the aspect of skill arises in using such a straightforward, immensely powerful card – in the construction of the Extra Deck. That precision which is required when piecing together a perfect set of cards is still something that takes months, even years of practice and devotion to learn how to do properly, and Magical Scientist makes that task even harder.