Bolmeteus Steel Dragon
By Christina Page
It REALLY Breaks Shields
There's one saving grace to losing your shields: the chance to activate a shield trigger. As your opponent marches closer to victory, he inevitably grants you ways to regain control of the duel. As a result of this dynamic, many duelists use deck strategies that break shields when the number of creatures in their battle zones outnumber their opponents' shields. Barring a devastating shield trigger spell like Burst Shot,, those strategies launch attacks without giving an opponent much opportunity to turn broken shields into productive plays. Stomp-a-Trons of Invincible Wrath gives duelists another weapon to minimize advantages acquired from the shield zone: Bolmeteus Steel Dragon.
For 7 mana you receive a 7000 power creature that can double break shields, which makes it evenly matched in power, cost, and ability with the amazing Twin-Cannon Skyterror. While Bolmeteus lacks Skyterror's speed, and is just a Death Smoke away from your wasting 7 mana, it compensates for its summoning sickness with its second ability. Whenever Bolmeteus Steel Dragon breaks a shield, your opponent puts that shield into his graveyard, instead of his hand. That's a chance to destroy one of your opponent’s most important resources, which can be devastating if he doesn't have any cards in hand!
Bolmeteus can unravel the resources your opponent spends manipulating his shield zone. Spells and creatures with the shield trigger ability can afford your opponent mana and card advantage when broken as shields, and Bolmeteus Steel Dragon can negate those advantages. It also reduces your opponent's ability to destroy it and your other creatures with destructive trigger spells. All these benefits contribute to great resource control.
The disadvantages to using Bolmeteus Steel Dragon are its summoning sickness and hefty cost. Your opponent can gain mana advantage simply by using cheaper cards like Spiral Gate to remove it. Luckily, Bolmeteus is synergistic with Cocco Lupia, a Fire Bird that makes Dragon creatures cost 2 less to summon (they can't cost less than 2). With two Cocco Lupia in play, Bolmeteus costs a mere 3 mana! As with any card, the sooner the Dragon enters your battle zone, the less likely your opponent can immediately respond to its presence. And should you manage to get multiples into play, your opponent will be hard pressed to deal with them all before at least one can attack.
With Cocco Lupia in your battle zone, suddenly you can start churning out plays like a turn four Bolzard Dragon, whose mana destruction effect nicely complements Steel Dragon's shield destruction. Not only can your opponent lose the ability to use his shields if Bolmeteus Steel Dragon breaks them, but he also can be denied chances to cast his cards if Bolzard Dragon destroys the right mana. Another wonderful Armored Dragon to include in the resource control equation is the speed attacking, double breaking Bazagazeal Dragon. It can unexpectedly destroy many untapped creatures with its 8000 power, or double break shields. Plus, Bazagazeal Dragon's return to the hand effect can make your opponent hesitate to play certain creatures for fear of losing them, giving you card advantage by not having to cast cards to counter his moves. You could also play Kip Chippotto and use that creature's effect to save Bolmeteus from destruction--you'll be much happier seeing Death Smoke counter a 3 mana investment as opposed to a 7 mana one.
Since summoning the Armored Dragons fairly quickly is important to their overall success, an Armored Dragon deck would do well to include Nature's mana acceleration and tutor support. In addition to summoning Bolmeteus quicker with the extra mana from cards like Faerie Life and Bronze-Arm Tribe, Cocco Lupia and Elf-X can save you 3 mana by reducing Bolmeteus Steel Dragon's cost to a very manageable number. Rumbling Terahorn or Charmilia, the Enticer can pluck copies of Bolmeteus from your deck, and allowing you to run as few as 2 copies to help decrease the chances of having a hand filled with cards that are too expensive to cast early in the game.
While a Fire/Nature deck focused on the Armored Dragons along with Cocco Lupia is an attractive way to use Bolmeteus Steel Dragon, the creature also shines in a Control strategy using cards from the Water and Darkness civilizations. Using Corile to slow the appearance of an opponent’s needed card will definitely hurt more when you deny him 2 cards from the shield zone as well. Horrid Worm, Locomotiver, and Lost Soul can knock useful cards from your opponent’s hand, and are very crippling plays when combined with Bolmeteus, because they all reduce the number of moves an opponent can make during the duel. Future Slash can take the cards you don't want your opponent to draw from his deck and put them into his graveyard, leaving him with even less ways to undo your plays or destroy Bolmeteus Steel Dragon.
In short, having better and more options than your opponent can translate into your controlling the duel, and Bolmeteus Steel Dragon can help you generate such options. With more mana acceleration, mana conservation, creature destruction, and draw selections available in the game than ever before, there’s little reason not to try out a strategy incorporating him.
