PP6-004 GEMINI DEVIL Dark/Demon/4/1000/1000 When your opponent activates a card that includes the effect of discarding cards from your hand, you can put this card into your Cemetery from your hand to negate that activation and effect, destroy that card, then draw 1 card. ULTRA RARE

This week, we have an odd card that was recently released in Premium Pack 6, Gemini Devil. This card of the week was designed to answer more questions than review the card, but there IS a review of this card.

NOTE: At the time of this writing, this card has NOT been widely released as of yet. Premium Pack 6 has not been "officially" released yet. However, there were a number of packs that were sold early at the Jump Festa event in Japan. Premium Pack 6 is not due to be sold widely until March 2004.

Gemini Devil ("GD" for short) is one of the attempts by Konami to curb the overwhelming power of the discard deck archetype (also known as "hand destruction" or "hand-d"). Discard is still one of the supreme decks in Japan. Along with it are decks that exploited the Chaos Monsters -- Chaos Emperor Dragon and Chaos Soldier. With the restrictions in place, Chaos has been knocked down a slight notch, where you might consider discard to be just a touch above Chaos. Beatdown (or "Basic Attack" as it's sometimes known by in Japan) is still ranked below both of them, however.

So, enter the Gemini Devil to limit the effectiveness of those discarding cards. I'm not going to waste much of your time chatting about statistics of this card -- it's a 1000/1000, and not going to win many battles against some of the "average" power cards, such as Don Zaruug.

Playing the card is simple -- if your opponent activates a card effect that would cause you (yes, you) to discard cards from your hand, you can play this card from your hand to negate and destroy that effect and card. Then, if that card was destroyed, you get to draw one card from your deck to replace the GD that you just used. Yes, this card is a multi-trigger effect, so it can be played from your hand during your opponent's turn.

The one thing that I am confused about is that people keep e-mailing me to ask if GD can be used against CED's effect. The answer from me is always "no" in this respect. Why? CED's effect doesn't "discard" cards from your hand -- it "puts/places them into the Cemetery." This is a BIG difference. Yes, "discard" and "place in the Cemetery" DO the same thing, but since the wording is not the same, they are completely different. It's similar to how "putting a card into your hand from your deck" by the effect of a Witch is NOT the same thing as "drawing."

So, unless the effect says "discard," GD can't be used against it. Cards that say "destroy," such as [Deck Destruction Virus of Death] can't be stopped by GD, either. You can negate and destroy [Metamol Pot] and Monsters that force a discard from your hand.

Two incidental rulings from Puppiy's Japanese Expert Rules Page should be noted here, for your benefit.

Edo's Rating: 2 out of 5. GD isn't terribly worthwhile to put into your main deck. Its statistics are sub-par, and its effect is useful only against one type of card -- discard. However, it would be worth the effort to include one or two in your Side Deck, should the players in your area play with a lot of discard decks.