Gladiator Beast

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Gladiator Beast

Japanese

剣闘獣(グラディアルビースト)

Japanese (ruby)

グラディアル・ビースト

Japanese (base text)

剣闘獣

Japanese (translated)

Gladial Beast

Appears in (sets)

The Gladiator Beasts are a series of cards released in Gladiator's Assault, themed after the famed ancient Roman Colosseum slave-warriors, and consist of many different Attributes and Types, (though Beasts, Beast-Warriors and Winged Beasts are the most prominent). With few exceptions, the Gladiator Beasts all have the effect to return to the Deck during the end of a Battle Phase if it battled, and then Special Summon another Gladiator Beast Monster to replace it, with most gaining new effects when Summoned in this manner. Because of this, and the fact that many Gladiator Beast Monsters are fairly weak, most of their support cards are designed to either protect them during battle (thus ensuring they can return to the Deck to Special Summon another Gladiator Beast Monster) or return unwanted Gladiator Beast cards in the player's Hand or Graveyard to the Deck, where they can be brought out more readily by the battle effects of the others. To fuse Gladiator Beasts, the key monster and any other Gladiator Beasts must be on the field to Special Summon the monster. Fusions between Gladiator Beasts do not require Polymerization. Also, nearly every card in the archetype is capable of being returned to the Hand, Field, or Deck from the Graveyard. Since nearly every card in this Archetype can be accessed at will by the user or recycled in some way, a Gladiator Beast Deck is probably the most flexible one can make, even more so than a Hero Deck, for while a Duelist may be able to fuse almost any combination of Heroes, he must still rely on acquiring a fusion card to conduct it. The Gladiator Beasts are a mix of destruction, aggro, and toolbox tactics, making them very aggressive, strategic and fast paced in a themed Deck. It is this versatility which landed this deck as one top decks in Shonen Jump Circuit. However, with the March 2009 Lists coming into effect, and Gladiator Beast Bestiari becoming Limited, this deck will slow down considerably, like the Teleport Dark Armed deck, maybe even so much that keeping up with the Lightsworns may be very difficult; but with the new Gladiator Beast Samnite combined with Rescue Cat and Test Tiger, Gladiator Beasts may even be faster than Lightsworn.

Optional Support Cards

  • Witch Doctor of Sparta - The effect of this card works well in Gladiator Beasts deck since each time a Gladiator Beast is Special Summoned from the deck, the opponent will lose 500 LP.
  • Shield Warrior - This card is good to get the effects on the Gladiator beast to work.
  • Hedge Guard - This card is a slightly harder defense for the opponent to anticipate
  • Waboku - This card is almost identical to Defensive Tactics, but unlike Defensive Tactics, it can be activated if you control no face-up monsters, or no monsters at all, so you can use it if you play a weak Gladiator Beast in face-down Defense Position, trigger it when the opponent declares an attack, then summon a Gladiator Beast afterwards.
  • Divine Wrath will intercept any monster effect by negating a monster effect and destroy the monster. This is useful as the few ways a opponent can fight a Gladiator deck is with monster effects.
  • Cold Wave - While a Gladiator Beast Deck relies heavily on its Spells and Traps, it can easily build up advantage using monsters only. When used at the right moment, this card can offer you the edge you need to win. It can prevent your opponent from using destructive cards like Mirror Force, Torrential Tribute, Bottomless Trap Hole and Lightning Vortex to destroy your Gladiator Beasts, while you keep gaining advantage with their effects. It is significantly less effective against other Effect Monster centered Decks, however, so be careful.
  • Shrink and Rush Recklessly - Instead of using Waboku or Defensive Tactics, these cards can turn the tables on an attacking opponent, letting you destroy their monster and/or summon another Gladiator Beast. They're also Spells, not Traps, so an opponent using Jinzo or Royal Decree won't be able to stop them.
  • Pot of Generosity - In any case where you have a Gladiator Beast in your hand that you want to Special Summon, use this card to return it to your Deck.
  • Wild Nature's Release - While there are many different eqiup cards for Gladiator Beasts, this card turn the tables on even the higher ATK based monsters, and better yet, won't destroy yours because they return to the deck at the end of the battle phase rather than have them destroyed at the end phase. Gladiator Beast Dimacari, is a very good choice for this card because he has rounded ATK and DEF stats, plus the ability to attack twice, making him a very difficult enemy to deal with.
  • Enraged Battle Ox - This card makes most Gladiator Beasts do Piercing damage just by being on the field. If you already have several Gladiator Beasts out, this can result in a rapid win against a defending opponent. This is a more viable option for granting Piercing damage than an Equip Spell Card like Fairy Meteor Crush since Gladiator Beasts are constantly swapping in and out and Fairy Meteor Crush would be destroyed after one turn.
  • Kaiser Colosseum is effective if you want to restrict the number of monsters your opponent can have because a gladiator beast deck is focused on switching Gladiator Beasts.
  • Summoner Monk can you discard 1 Spell card and summon a level 4 monster from your Deck.
  • Prideful Roar is effective when your opponent attacks your Gladiator Beast with a monster with a higher attack. When the ATK of your battling monster is lower than the ATK of your opponent's, and pay Life Points equal to the difference in ATK. Your monster gains ATK equal to that difference +300 during damage calculation only.

Weaknesses and Counter-Strategies

Gladiator Beast monsters and support are spread over six booster packs evenly, making them more difficult to get.

Gladiator Beasts are currently one of the most tournament-competitive deck types, due to their incredible flexibility. However, they are not invincible. Some good ways to overcome a Gladiator Beast user follow:

  • Destroy on Summoning - "Trap Hole","Bottomless Trap Hole" and especially "Mirror of Oaths" can take down the opponent's cards before they even have a chance to attack your own cards. Also in the newest set "Swallow Flip" will greatly hurt any gladiator beast deck when special summoning using the Gladiator Beasts effect.
  • Effect Canceling - Cards such as Skill Drain or Angel 07 can prevent your monsters from tagging out or negate the effects of the ones that are Summoned leaving your monsters defenseless against some of the more powerful ATK monsters. G.B. Hunter is exclusively designed to stop the Gladiator Beasts to come back to the deck.
  • Attack Negation/Prevention - You can only "tag out" a Gladiator Beast for another if the first Gladiator Beast "attacked or was attacked". Unlike most card effects with a similar activation requirement, the battle must "go through", ie. instead of just declaring an attack or being targeted as the target of an attack, the battle has to go into and apply Damage Calculation (even if the damage for that battle would be 0. Therefore, any Spell, Trap, or Monster Effect that lets you negate a monster attack would prevent the opponent from tagging out their Gladiator Beasts.

A very strong card that will prevent a Gladiator Beast deck from functioning is the card 'Transmigration Break'. This card causes all cards that go back to the deck to be removed from play. Becuase Gladiator Beasts rely on this effect, this deck would be screwed up and lose the duel. Another card that works the same way is G.B. Hunter.


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