Shell Dome - Kaijudo

Living in a living city.

Gatling Skyterror was an instance where an awesome card from Duel Masters was made mediocre. Today's card however is the exact opposite, a mediocre Duel Masters card made more awesome. Even the name of today's card is a complete reverse of it's original name, Dome Shell.

Now a resident of the Shell Dome.

Generic bug guy with keyword ability (power attacker) made into an entire mobile city. Why the smaller bug has more power than the supposedly bigger city is beyond me. Maybe the city is really to ant-scale. Another interesting thing is when you look at the arts, Shell Dome looks a bit wider than Dome Shell does. I can't tell if it's just a trick of the eyes, but I feel like they slightly stretched the art out to make it feel bigger and more vast. It somehow works in my opinion.

Gatling Skyterror - Kaijudo

"Red Three standing by."

This guy is a vanilla creature, Magic-speak for a creature that has no abilities. If this were Yu-Gi-Oh, this would be awful, but in Magic and Duel Masters, little generic guys still can have an impact on the game. That's not why I want to talk about this guy though. Following the theme, this card's name and art are originally from a Duel Masters card. What's the difference between the two? Look.

This is based on Magic. Dragons = BIG!

This guy was a huge, double breaking, gatling shooting monster. Yes, you were likely dead by the time you could cast it, but that would be offset by the experience of playing a freakin helidragon! So what do they do for the repackage? They make it worse. Much worse. They took away its abilities and dropped it down several sizes. Looking at the art with the new stats, it feels much smaller than it used to be, I think the cropping helps a bit with that. It feels less dragon sized now and more like a drake, essentially a flying lizard. Oddly enough, the flavor text remains the same.

Gigastand - Kaijudo

Before we begin, I know it sounds like I'm complaining about Kaijudo. On the contrary, I'm happy it's here. It's like a friend you haven't seen in years has returned all grown up. That said, some of the changes Wizards made while repackaging the game just baffle me. If anyone can explain, please do so. Anyway, onto the card.

So which part is doing the gazing?

This guy is creepy. He is a chimera, which makes sense with the art. You can see bits and pieces of flesh, various mouths, horns, sockets, and hair, all clumped together into a menacing form. Here's where things get confusing though. The stats and ability all line up to a real Duel Masters card. That card though isn't Gigastand. Instead, the card was called Horrid Worm. This is what the original Gigastand was.

"I'm feeling slightly bigger today."

The original Gigastand had a recursion ability, where it returns to your hand then you discard a card. The standard black undead thing. Why not just reprint the thing as Horrid Worm? Why slap the Gigastand name and art on this thing. My guesses are they either lost the rights to the Horrid Worm art, or they can no longer find Horrid Worm's art.

Frogzooka - Kaijudo

Insert your own frog pun.

Continuing our story of Kaijudo cards that are direct reprints or that pilfer the art from other Duel Masters cards. I've calmed though over Covering Fire, but I am still unsatisfied. Well, at least the Duel Masters art is good, and was actually meant to be on cards, so I'll be fine looking at it.

So, this guy is a direct reprint, the only changes being name, race, and keywording/flavoring some abilities. Here's the original.

Oh, and it's a fish.

While I ordinarily would be annoyed at the name change, how can you get mad a card named Frogzooka. It's a freakin' Frogzooka! The one complaint I will make involves the new race, Trench Hunter. This is very generic, kind of bland really. The original was a race called the Gel Fish. And the art makes more sense for a Gel Fish, their bodies being see-through, so you can see the cannons sitting in their stomachs.

Regardless, I'm much more happier with this card than the previous repackage.

Covering Fire - Kaijudo

Story time. Once there was a game called Duel Masters. It was very fun, even though it wasn't very original, the game essentially being Magic Jr. That said, I enjoyed it, and I collected it, and played two of the GameBoy Advance games. But then they stopped printing Duel Masters, at least in the US. I don't know what caused this decision. All this time though, the game has been alive and well in Japan, and is still being printed there. Also, some of the wackier mechanics, particularly double-sided cards, appeared in Duel Masters before they appeared in Magic the Gathering.

But recently Wizards decided to give Duel Masters in the states another shot, so they repackaged the game as Kaijudo. Why they couldn't simply reprint it as Duel Masters is beyond me, maybe they were afraid if they kept the old brand name it would scare away potential new players. I bring up this history lesson because of today's card.

"I've got your back Charlie!"

This card is fairly simple, make one of your guys unblockable for a turn. In Kaijudo and Duel Masters though, instead of untapped creatures being able to block, only untapped creatures with a blocker ability can block. So its value is lessened in that respect, but still, it's a nice trick.

What really bugs me about this card is the art though. Something seems rather familiar about it, I can't put my finger on...

"Gotta go fast!"

Wizards, come on, did you have to reuse the artwork here. I'm fine with you reprinting the older cards, but did you really have to use the same art for what's supposed to be a repackaged game. On the one hand, it does strike a bit of nostalgia, but on the other it makes you seem lazy that you just grabbed whatever art you had lying around and slapped it on. And when I see this, it makes me think of what the original card did as opposed to the new one. Oh, and they reduced the cost by 2.