Duelist Pack: Rivals of the Pharaoh features new cards used or inspired by some of the Pharaoh’s greatest foes. Usually, “foes” refer to enemies or other bad guys, but the Pharaoh’s final foe was none other than Yugi himself! In that Duel, Yugi used the “Silent Swordsman” series of cards along with a Spell Card that manipulated time to cause his monsters to rapidly grow in power. These effects have never been recreated on real cards...until now!

Silent Swordsman is Special Summoned by Tributing any Warrior-Type monster and begins as a 1000 ATK and DEF monster. During each Standby Phase, he grows by 500 ATK permanently and during each turn he can negate one Spell Card's activation. These effects make destroying Silent Swordsman before he can grow too much a priority, but doing so lets him Summon a different version of himself from the hand or Deck, ignoring any Summoning conditions. So you can go from a small 1500 ATK monster that negates one Spell per turn straight to Silent Swordsman LV7, a 2800 ATK monster that negates every Spell that’s played.

You can jump ahead three turns and give any “Silent Swordsman” monster a permanent 1500 ATK and DEF bonus with the new Quick-Play Spell Card Silent Sword Slash! Silent Sword Slash also makes the “Silent Swordsman” monster you target immune to your opponent’s card effects for the rest of the turn, and if it’s in the Graveyard, you can banish it to search out a “Silent Swordsman” monster from your Deck to your hand. Even if you’ve drawn it without a “Silent Swordsman” monster, you can always discard it to activate a powerful card like Twin Twisters or Phoenix Wing Wind Blast and then immediately recoup your discard by searching for Silent Swordsman.

Not only are these cards strong and fun to play with, they’re also well-suited for competition! The Phantom Knights are a strong pick right now, and they’re all Warrior-Type monsters. They also excel at sending cards straight to the Graveyard using Dante, Traveler of the Burning Abyss, another Warrior-Type monster. Their Trap Cards help to power up and protect monsters while giving you the ability to Summon even more monsters, so an early Silent Swordsman can grow much faster and survive longer in a Phantom Knight Deck than in many other strategies.

Silent Swordsman also works well in Decks with and against Decks with Pendulum Monsters! Duelists have been looking for a reliable way to load Satellarknight Zefrathuban into their Extra Deck for repeated Pendulum Summons, but because 'tellarknights are primarily an Xyz Summoning Deck, it was hard to actually make it happen. Tributing Satellarknight Zefrathuban for Silent Swordsman and then backing it up with many powerful Trap Cards is another great strategy for using it.

You can find Silent Swordsman and Silent Sword Slash in Duelist Pack: Rivals of the Pharaoh , available now!