EX-03 is a small expansion set filled with enhancements for the dragon archetype. With all 74 cards in this set fully revealed today, let's take a look at the new additions!
A new "black" Imperialdramon line!
Bandai is giving us an exciting new lineup of red/purple Veemon and Wormmon moving into an all new Imperialdramon. This new lineup can digivolve very quickly (into Imperialdramon and Fighter Mode) with just a rookie and 3 starting memory.
[EX3-004] Veemon
Effect 1: [On Play] By Trashing 1 [Free] card or 1 card with [Imperialdramon] in its name from your hand, draw 2 cards.
Inheritable: [Your Turn] While you have a Purple Digimon in play, this Digimon gets +2000 DP.
[EX3-008] Flamedramon
Effect: [When Digivolved] Activate 1 of the following:
-You may digivolve 1 of your other Digimon into a Purple LV4 [Free] Digimon from your Trash, paying its cost.
-You may Jogress digivolve this Digimon with your other Digimon into a Digimon card in your hand, paying its Jogress cost.
Inherited effect: [End of Your Turn] This Digimon and your other Digimon can Jogress digivolve into a Digimon card in your hand by paying its Jogress digivolution cost.
-You may digivolve 1 of your other Digimon into a red LV4 [Free] Digimon from your Trash, paying its cost.
-You may Jogress digivolve this Digimon with your other Digimon into a Digimon card in your hand, paying its Jogress cost.
Inherited effect: [End of Your Turn] This Digimon and your other Digimon can Jogress digivolve into a Digimon card in your hand by paying its Jogress digivolution cost.
Both LV3 Veemon and Wormmon have decent draw/search [On Play] effects, and their LV4s Flamedramon/Shadramon have similar effects.
[EX3-010] Paildramon
Jogress: Red LV4 + Purple LV4 at 0 cost
Effect 1: [When Digivolving] If Jogress digivolved, you may play 1 [Dinobeemon] from your trash without paying its cost.
Effect 2: [On Deletion] You may play 1 [Veemon] from your trash without paying its cost.
Inheritable: [Your Turn] While this Digimon has [Imperialdramon] in its name, gain [SecurityAttack+1].
[EX3-061] Dinobeemon
Jogress: Purple LV4 + Red LV4 at 0 cost
Effect 1: [When Digivolved] If this Digimon is Jogress digivolved, you may play 1 [Paildramon] from your trash without paying its memory cost.
Effect 2: [On Deletion] You may play 1 [Wormmon] from your trash without paying its memory cost.
Inherited: [Your Turn] While this Digimon has [Imperialdramon] in its name, this Digimon may also attack your opponent’s unsuspended Digimon.
The new LV5 Paildramon/Dinobeemon also has similar effects, allowing you to play the other from trash to facilitate a Jogress digivolution.
[EX3-063] Imperialdramon: Dragon Mode
Jogress: Purple LV5 + Red LV5 at 0 cost
Effect 1: [When Digivolving] If Jogress digivolved, your opponent chooses 1 of their Digimon. Delete all of their other Digimon. Then, [Blitz].
Effect 2: [When Attacking][One Per Turn] This Digimon gains +2000 DP for the turn. Then, you may digivolve this Digimon into a [Imperialdramon: Fighter Mode] from your hand by paying its cost.
With a starting memory of 3 and a rookie Veemon/Wormmon pushed into the battle area from nursery, a ramp digivolution into LV7 can happen in the following sequence:
1. Play a LV3 Veemon/Wormmon for 3 cost. Search/trash the appropriate LV4 or LV5 Digimon as needed. (You will have at least 2 LV3 Digimons in your battle area and 0 memory)
2. Digivolve 1 of your Digimons into LV4 Flamedramon/Shadramon, activating its effect to digivolve your other LV3 into LV4 Flamedramon/Shadramon from trash, which activates its effect to Jogress into LV5 Paildramon/Dinobeemon at the end of turn. (you will be at -4 memory)
3. Jogress digivolve both your LV4 Digimons into Paildramon/Dinobeemon, resolving its effect to play the other LV5 from trash. (you will still be at -4 memory)
4. Jogress digivolve both your LV5 Digimons into Imperialdramon, activating its [Blitz] effect and then its [When Attacking] effect to subsequently digivolve into Fighter Mode. (you will be at -6 memory)
With this combo, Imperialdramon would leave your opponent with only 1 Digimon, and Fighter Mode attacking that remaining Digimon (suspended or not) piercing 2 of your opponent's security while nullifying their security effects, at 17000 DP!
Examon Looms
The final Royal Knight and the Dragon Emperor [Examon] has finally been revealed today as a LV7 Digimon, and boy isn't he formidable!
Slayerdramon has a formidable new effect that forces your opponent's Digimon to immediately attack during the start of their main phase, introducing board control and utterly destroying OTK decks such as Grankuwagamon or Alphamon archetypes. Breakdramon meanwhile trashes your opponent's security whenever their Digimon is deleted in battle against yours, introducing a passive aggression.
The strengths of these 2 Digimons can be merged into Examon, and when coupled with their LV3 and LV4 inheritable effects (granting [Blocker] and [Evade]) make this a very interesting new archetype that may destroy most OTK decks but may be weak against some specific hybrid blue or hybrid yellow decks that returns Digimons to hand/deck, DP-reduction, or attack/block-freezing.
Remark: [Evade] is a new effect text that allows your Digimon to suspend itself in order to prevent deletion.
The 4 Great Dragons
A new option card [Trial of the Four Great Dragons] facilitate this a new megazoo-like archetype. LV6 [4 Great Dragons] Digimons can be played for free using this option card, and when those LV6 Digimons are deleted at the end of your opponent's turn they will play new copies of [Trial] for free, until Goddramon arrives to deal sick damage to your opponent's security.
Effect 1: [Main] [Draw 1]. Then, place this card in your battle area.
Effect 2: [Main] [Delay]
⋅ Play 1 card with [Four Great Dragons] in its traits from your hand without paying its cost. Digimon played by this effect cannot digivolve to level 7, and is deleted at the end of your opponent’s turn.
Security: Place this card in the battle area.
[EX3-035] Goddramon
Effect 1: [When Digivolving] Add 1 card with [Four Great Dragons] in its traits from your trash to your hand.
Effect 2: [When Attacking] 1 of your opponent’s digimon gets -6000 DP for the turn. Then, by returning 1 [Holydramon], 1 [Azulongmon], and 1 [Megidramon] from your trash to the bottom of your deck, trash the top 2 cards of your opponent’s security stack.
[EX3-036] Holydramon
Effect 1: [On Play] All of your opponent’s Digimon gain [Security Attack -1] until the end of your opponent’s turn. If this card was played by the effect of [Trial of the Four Great Dragons], all of your opponent’s digimon gain [Security Attack -2] until the end of your opponent’s turn instead.
Effect 2: [On Deletion] If you don’t have [Trial of the Four Great Dragons] in your battle area, put 1 [Trial of the Four Great Dragons] from your hand in your battle area.
[EX3-025] Azulongmon
Effect 1: [On Play] [Draw 2]. Then, if this card was played by the effect of [Trial of the Four Great Dragons], Memory +2.
Effect 2: [On Deletion] If you don’t have a [Trial of the Four Great Dragons] in play, you may place 1 from your hand in your Battle Area.
[EX3-064] Megidramon
This card/Digimon is also treated as [ChaosGallantmon].
Effect 1: [On Play] Delete 1 opponent’s Lv.5 or lower Digimon. If this card was played by the effect of [Trial of the Four Great Dragons], increase the target LV of this effect by 1.
Effect 2: [On Deletion] If you don’t have a [Trial of the Four Great Dragons] in play, you can place 1 [Trial of the Four Great Dragons] from your hand into your battle area.
This archetype may open doors to deck building creativity in the coming meta, so it is definitely worth keeping an eye on!
And the Elemental Dragons
The single tamer card in this new set is [Kurihara Hina] from Digimon Links, and she synergizes a new elemental dragon archetype.
Hina will activate a Digimon's [On Play] effect during digivolution, as long as that Digimon belongs to either Rock, Earth, Machine, or Sky Dragon in traits.
These elemental dragon Digimons are also introduced in this set: Jazardmon and Jazarichmon (metal dragon), Metallicdramon (sky dragon), Lavorvomon and Lavogaritamon (rock dragon), and Volcanicdramon (earth dragon). These new Digimons have [On Play] effects that can be tapped by Hina, and works in cohesion to provide aggression (through the Volcanicdramon line) and defence (through the Metallicdramon line).
Remark: some older Digimon cards such as [BT2-018] Volcanicdramon will also work with this new archetype, but power-creep may have taken its toll on those cards.
Buffing some existing archetypes
Other than the archetypes above, some existing archetypes will also be blessed in EX-03.
[EX3-023] Plesiomon
Effect 1: [When Digivolving] You may play 1 blue level 3 Digimon card or 1 level 4 or lower Digimon card with [Aquatic] in one of its traits from 1 of your blue Digimon’s digivolution cards without paying its play cost. Then, you may place 1 blue Digimon card from your hand under this Digimon as its bottom digivolution card.
Inherited: [All Turns][Once Per Turn] When you play a Digimon from digivolution cards, return 1 of your opponent’s Digimon with a level equal to the played Digimon’s level to the bottom of its owner’s deck.
[EX3-026] Aegisdramon
Effect 1: [When DIgivolved] You may play 1 LV3 blue Digimon or Digimon with [Seadramon] in name or a [Aquatic] type Digimon from 1 of your blue Digimon without paying its cost.
Effect 2: [Opponent’s Turn][Once Per Turn] When your opponent plays a Digimon, you may trigger 1 of this Digimon’s [When Digivolved] effect.
The "play Digimon from digivolution cards" playstyle has gotten an upgrade through Plesiomon and Aegisdramon, but is this enough to put a dent to the coming meta remains to be seen.
Fans of D-brigade will also rejoice knowing that there is a new lineup of LV3 to LV6, with the new Darkdramon being awfully sick!
[EX3-045] Hydramon
Effect 1: [When Digivolved] You may suspend 1 of yours or your opponent's Digimon.
Effect 2: [Both Turns][Once Per Turn] When an opponent’s Digimon is suspended, gain +1 Memory for each of your other suspended [Plant] or [Fairy] type Digimon.
Effect 3: [End of Your Turn][Once Per Turn] If you have 2 or more suspended [Plant] or [Fairy] type Digimon, return 1 of your opponent's suspended Digimon to the bottom of their deck.
And vegetables is given an upgrade nobody is asking for, but this should do one for Bloomlord decks!
Summary
With dragons being in the focus, EX-03 was able to introduce a few small excitements into a slow-aging card game. Clearly with the dragon-theme, this set is not diverse enough to give Bandai the confidence of sales hence the decision to include a time-proven fan-favourite that is Imperialdramon as an all-new archetype.
And also a supposedly high-rarity pull of an alternate-art Imperialdramon should drive some collector value into this set, just in case everything else isn't quite enough.
EX-03 will not be missed by many non-dragon Digimon players, and Bandai's simultaneous release of One Piece Card Game's first booster set (in July) may garner this a weaker set overall.
Summary: 4/10
How rare is this card?
Really interested in the Four Great Dragons but I'm really clueless on how to build one. A standard build seems very mediocre. Any ideas?
Can't wait to build the Imperialdramon and the Digimon Links deck!