Light and Darkness Dragon Guide

Is the card which probably belongs to the top 10 ten Yu-Gi-Oh cards that cause problems list. This itself wouldn’t be problem if we all knew that problems and the correct rulings on Light and Darkness Dragon, since I believe a lot of people do not toy around with this card since it might cause problems while you are dueling. And problems aren’t fun in a game nor in normal life for that matter, so for that purpose alone I present you the Light and Darkness Dragon guide.

This guide will be broken down into the following subjects:

• The 3 different effects of Light and Darkness Dragon
• Advanced plays with Light and Darkness Dragon




This card cannot be Special Summoned. While this card is face-up on the field, its Attribute is also treated as DARK. When a Spell or Trap Card is activated, or the effect of an Effect Monster is activated, that activation is negated and this card loses 500 ATK and DEF. When this card is destroyed and sent to the Graveyard, select 1 monster in your Graveyard. Then destroy all cards you control, and Special Summon that monster.

Light and Darkness Dragon effects:


As the effect might give away Light and Darkness Dragon is also a dark attributed monster while being face-up on the field. This itself does not produce problems but certain situations do, for example:


Questions that are asked a lot have to do with the cards listed above. In the case of Ally of Justice – Catastor it is actually not that hard to see the answer this question; “ Does the effect of Ally of Justice Catastor work on Light and Darkness Dragon? “, the effect of Ally of Justice – Catastor will activate while battling Light and Darkness Dragon, needless to say that Light and Darkness Dragon will negate it or at least attempt to negate it. That brings us on to Deck Devastation Virus and the question that realms over Light and Darkness Dragon; “ Can you tribute Light and Darkness dragon for Deck Devastation Virus? ”, yes you can. Regarding the question; “ Does Light and Darkness Dragon get the boost from Mystic Plasma Zone? “, once more the answer is, yes it does.
Of course these are just the simple questions but they still illustrate the answers for all questions regarding his first effect in all scenario’s.

2.When a Spell or Trap Card is activated, or the effect of an Effect Monster is activated, that activation is negated and this card loses 500 ATK and DEF.

This is Light and Darkness Dragon most confusing effect and thus brings the most problems along with it. So let me explain how this part of Light and Darkness Dragon effect works:
“Light and Darkness Dragon's” second effect that negates the activation of Spell, Trap, and the effects of Effect Monsters is a Quick Effect. “Light and Darkness Dragon” loses 500 ATK and DEF when its effect is resolved, after negating the activation of the Spell, Trap, or effect of the Effect Monster. This effect can be activated during the Damage Step.

For those unfamiliar with the term Quick Effect/Multi -Trigger Effect click the term Quick effect above and get familiar with it. For those that are familiar with that term lets continue.
This part of Light and Darkness Dragon virtually negates everything you wish to activate and use and upon resolution Light and Darkness Dragon losses 500 ATK and DEF points, meaning it is not a cost for Light and Darkness Dragon to pay but part of its effect. This effect can also only activate once per chain, why you ask; if Light and Darkness Dragon could negate multiple Links on a Chain, he would perpetually negate himself as soon as he activated, causing an infinite loop.


This part of his full effect makes it broken in my humble opinion and certainly worth the effort of having him in your deck. Since Light and Darkness Dragon makes sure your opponent has to use up some very good resources to get Light and Darkness Dragon lowered down to an ATK height, so that it can be destroyed in battle easily or they have to negate its summoning completely, by paying half their life points by activating Solemn Judgment or Solemn Warning and paying 2000 life points, for you to get a monster out of your graveyard and start swarming. Now I hear people think; “ But if the Summoning of Light and Darkness Dragon was negated by Solemn Warning or Solemn Judgment, how can you still get to use its last effect?”. The answer is as followed:

Light and Darkness Dragons last effect clearly states the following: “When this card is destroyed and sent to the Graveyard” but it doesn’t say it had to Summoned successfully or where it has to be destroyed in order to gain access to its last effect. Meaning if Light and Darkness Dragon gets negated and destroyed sent to the graveyard you get his last effect to work even if Light and Darkness Dragon was destroyed in your hand by card effects like the effect of Crush Card Virus.

Now that the different parts of Light and Darkness Dragons effect are explained to you let us proceed to the advanced plays you can do with Light and Darkness Dragon.

Advanced Plays:

I will explain some plays and tricks with duel situations, so let’s go on to the first Duel Situation.

Duel Situation #1:

Player A controls a face-up Gale the Whirl Wind and a face-down Bottomless trap Hole. Player B controls a face-down Totem Dragon and has a set Deck Devastation Virus. Player B knows that the opponent is holding 2 copies of Kalut and a Blizzard in his/her hand while having no other cards in his/her and plenty of targets for Blizzard in his/her graveyard. Player B only has 1 card it his/her hand being Light and Darkness Dragon. Both players life points are at 2100.The Turn player is Player B ( you ).

How do you ( being Player B ) handle this situation..?

This one is actually not that hard apart from you have to know that Light and Darkness dragon can be tribute for Deck Devastation Virus. As you have read earlier in this guide Light and Darkness dragon can be tribute for Deck Devastation Virus. The reason why is; Light and Darkness Dragon is tributed as a cost for Deck Devastation Virus. So here goes the chain link again:


Chain link resolves backwards and Deck Devastation Virus cannot be negated by Light and Darkness since Light and Darkness Dragon can only use its effect once per chain. So Deck Devastation Virus Tributes Light and Darkness Dragon, leaving Bottomless Trap hole useless on the field. Because of the Deck Devastation Virus you used Player A loses their 2 copies of Kalut, their Blizzard and Gale on the field.

As I said this one was rather easy, if you had kept in mind that Light and Darkness Dragon can be used for your Deck Devastation Virus. So let’s get down to a more advanced situation.

Duel situation #2:

Player A controls a Stardust Dragon.
Player B controls a Light and Darkness at 1800 attack and has a face-down Book of Moon and face-down Mirror Force. Player A's turn begins and he/she goes right into the battle phase and attacks Light and Darkness Dragon, in the hopes of destroying it so that Player B loses Light and Darkness Dragon and his 2 back-row cards. How do you ( being Player B ) respond to this situation ..?
You could see right away that if the attack goes trough you lose 3 cards, and thus not being the smartest thing to do regardless of what lies in your graveyard. So the following course of action is the one you should take in my opinion:

At the attack declaration of Stardust you activate Mirror Force, Light and Darkness Dragon will take on the task to attempt to negate Mirror Force leaving Stardust Dragon out to polish his wings, you ask for a response on Light and Darkness Dragon ( it being a Book of Moon, Divine Wrath or anything that can be chained to Light and Darkness at that time ), Player A does not have a response and that is the time you chain Book of Moon on your Light and Darkness Dragon. Light and Darkness Dragon is flipped face-down, Mirror Force is left untouched ( since Light and Darkness Dragon is face-down ) and Stardust Dragon dies at the hands of Mirror Force since it misses its timing. To explain this in the layout of a chain link:

Light and Darkness Dragon mandatorily responds to the first Chain Link. So it would work like this:


Chain resolves backwards, Light and Darkness Dragon is no longer face-up to reduce ATK/DEF upon resolution and thus does not negate Mirror Force, since Stardust can only negate a destruction effect at activation it loses its timing.

This way you have destroyed your opponents Stardust Dragon and saved your Light and Darkness dragon and made it gain his original attack point back while you flip him back up again, by just 2 cards.

As you might have noticed yourself, the same principle applies in both the situations; Light and Darkness Dragon cannot use its negating ability more than once per chain. And you can get advantage out of that knowledge by manipulating that to your own advantage. But of course an experienced player as your opponent also knows this about Light and Darkness and Dragon and will try to turn the table around by manipulating the same thing you are trying to do. So therefore another duel situation to explain how you can avoid that problem.

Duel Situation #3:

Player A controls a face-up Thunder King Raioh and 2 back-row cards being Mirror Force and Dimensional Prison. Player B controls a face-up Light and Darkness Dragon with its attack points at 2300 a Book of Moon in the his/her hand.
Player B enters his turn and goes straight into his/her Battle Phase and declares an attack on Player A’s Thunder King Raioh. Player A activates Mirror Force and chains Dimensional Prison right after that. What do you do ( being Player B )..?

Of course you are activating your Book of Moon from your hand to flip your light and Darkness Dragon face-down and avoid the effect of Dimensional Prison. If we would place this onto a chain link it would look like this:


And once more you manipulated the effect Light and Darkness Dragon to your advantage. Now you have only used 1 card being Book of Moon to get rid of 2 backrow cards of your opponent and since light and Darkness Dragon is flipped face-down you get to flip it back up in your upcoming turn to have it back at its full power. And in this case it might even be more important to say that Light and Darkness defense points are also back to 2400 and Thunder King Raioh cannot get over your Light and Darkness Dragon.

Now that you have seen how to manipulate your own Light and Darkness in several situations it is time for you to get your game on and try Light and Darkness Dragon out for yourself. But remember Light and Darkness Dragon is my favorite card, so don’t make it your own.

Hope all of the readers of this guide have learned something or at least some of their knowledge was refreshed while reading this guide, but most importantly enjoyed reading it.

Kind Regards,

I really liked this guide! I am one of the players who had a rough time understanding LaDD's effect (when I got back to the game after years) and this guide explains it easily and with three examples, making it fully understood. +1 from me.

Nice guide dude! :)

+1

Ah, TDP and your awesome articles. What would we do without you? Gj as always

Pro article is pro.

Pro spam post is pro ;/
~sin

Shut up :/
~vem

Mokuba xD
~sin

Thanks guys for the warm and nice comments regarding this article. It is really appreciated.

Hope you also learned a few things or at least got a refreshment out of it.