[GB03] Gate Ruler Broadcast Station #12

News
For September 16th's Gate Ruler Broadcast Station, new Darkness support was revealed!

First was the ★★★ from Volnar, Dark Knight Vamel, which was first teased back in July when 15. O - Overlord was first revealed.

The other reveal is a new Abyssal Concerto boss card, a new form of Vastorus Rex, this time as an ATLAS ★★★★, Full Armor Vastorus Rex!

(Source)

Analysis

As promised back in July, Dark Knight Vamel is a generically valuable card for hand decks, as direct damage reduction that doesn't eat resources and comes directly out of hand. Its biggest weakness is being costed by Damage Reversal, which means Hand Ruler decks that are using DR elsewhere may be tight on space. Vamel also makes a very valuable addition to Overlord, fulfilling a similar function to Alice, Wonderland Avenger, without eating any of your slots. Within Darkness specifically, being a Level 1 is very valuable, as Level 1s have consistently been the hardest part of Viola Furiosa, Raging Fell Dragon's condition to fulfill.

Our other reveal is the big new Abyssal Concerto boss of the set, this time in ATLAS, Full Armor Vastorus Rex! An armored version of Vastorus that has been foreshadowed in flavor texts for the past two sets, Full Armor manages to avoid creeping Vastorus by focusing on specific niches that it does better, while Vastorus remains stronger for general use. Full Armor has a more specific Concerto condition, and cannot touch units or fields, but gives you a full wipe of your opponent's sets and has Defender to really abuse his 7 HP in your defense zone.

While the set removal is of course powerful, there is a lot of set removal in this set, so there's both a likelihood of decks heavy on sets becoming less common, but also decks adopting Volatile Space Mimic to punish abilities like this and those that destroy all sets except one chosen by the opponent. That said, even in an environment where heavy set decks are uncommon, Full Armor will still be very good for being a 7/7/2 Defender that heals 1 on summon, its just likely to be played in tandem with the original Vastorus, and not a replacement.