Long Have We Waited - New Gladiator Beast Support!
With the new Duel Island Gladiator event comes some highly anticipated Gladiator Beast support! The archetype has received five new cards. This support is excellent for the archetype since it fixes one of its past problems. However, none of this support allows the deck to compete with the dominant decks of the format. Let's take a look at the cards:
Darius was a key card to the Gladiator Beasts deck in the TCG but his strengths here are somewhat removed since Duel Links operates without a main phase two. Darius was important for making devastating plays such as allowing the player to summon Loading...
from a Loading...
tag out. In Duel Links I see Darius seeing play with future support such as Loading...
to activate his ability in main phase one, because of this I recommend farming until you have at least two copies. It is worth noting that Darius only negates the Gladiator Beast’s effect if he is face up on the field on resolution. You can activate a card such as Loading...
to tribute Darius and get the effect of the Gladiator you summoned! Note that Darius is a Beast Warrior so works well with support in the [Burning Nova](/box-reviews/burning-nova/) main box.
This is a fantastic card and is the best of the new Gladiator Beasts we have received. Equeste is notable for been able to recycle our monsters which have been destroyed and for recycling "Gladiator Beast" spell and trap cards. Unfortunately we do not have any spell or traps worth recycling. Despite this, the ability to add a fallen Gladiator to our hand is a huge bonus and affords us the option of running cards like Loading...
without losing card advantage and offers the deck a much needed recovery option. This is a card you should be looking to pick up at least two copies for future Gladiator Beast support.
This card puzzles me since it cannot be used as fusion material and cannot tag out through battle. It doesn’t even generate card advantage when summoned. One thing it can do is discard Gladiator Beast cards to recycle with Loading...
or summon with Loading...
to swarm the field. But then you have swarmed the field with a monster which cannot be used as material for Loading...
or Loading...
. This card is really poor and has a lot of negative synergy with the archetype.
Where was this little guy six months ago? Retairi banishes a card from your opponent’s graveyard when tagged in. This is actually an amazing card for the deck in the right meta for it. We are not in that meta now but in past metagames such as [Red Eyes Zombies](/tier-list/deck-types/red-eyes-zombies/) and [Sylvans](/tier-list/deck-types/sylvans/) we could have got value out of Retiari. Now Retiari is useful for banishing Destiny Hero monsters and Loading...
. His value may increase in future metagames focused around the graveyard.
If only this card was called Gladiator Beast Training... This is one of those cards created with mirror matches in mind. In the mirror match, this is a card which will win you games outright since it is essentially a free Loading...