Card Spotlight: Building Decks with Sakitama

The Card Itself

is a new spirit monster from Cyberstorm Access. Like most spirit monsters, it cannot be special summoned and returns to the hand during the end phase of the turn it was normal summoned or flipped face up. In addition, it has two very useful effects: It can reveal itself in hand to normal summon a spirit monster, including itself, and when tributed, it can add a spirit monster from your graveyard to your hand.

At first, Sakitama doesn't seem significantly better than a card like , which can also summon itself and is a level four light monster. Unlike Photon Thrasher, however, Sakitama has a few key advantages that make it a far better and potentially meta-relevant card. First, it normal summons itself rather than special summoning itself. This allows it to act as an extender even through special summoning restrictions that are common in certain archetypes.

Second, , a spirit monster released all the way back in Shadow Specters, is a level four monster that searches another spirit monster when it is normal summoned. This means, in conjunction with Sakitama, Aratama is a one-card rank four xyz, a powerful niche. There are a few decks that can take advantage of Sakitama's unique properties, so let's start with the deck that uses the card potentially the most effectively.

Blasphemous Cooperation

Exosisters are a notoriously difficult deck to add engines and tech cards to as full-turn special summon lock makes many cards conflict with Exosister's core game plan. Now, with the introduction of , Exosister finally has a new powerful engine it can use. Because all the Exosister xyz monsters are generic and only need to use one Exosister monster as material to gain their beneficial additional effects, Sakitama works as an excellent extender that does not conflict with Martha.

On top of Sakitama being a powerful independent extender, is now a one-card combo for the deck. Using Aratama to add Sakitama and then Sakitama to normal summon itself, you can xyz summon with both spirits. Afterward, Kaspitell can use its effect to add Exosister Martha to your hand. Because you control only xyz monsters, Martha can special summon herself from the hand and from the deck before using both to make . Mikailis can add any of your powerful Exosister spells and traps, such as , from your deck to your hand. Finally, Kaspitell and Mikailis can be turned into .

Sakitama and Aratama also have a notable impact on Exosister deckbuilding. Because the deck now has an increased number of starters and extenders, it can cut back on some of the more subpar cards it was forced to run before, such as multiple copies of and , which could create awkward and clogged hands in the deck.

You Can Teach a New Dog Old Tricks

Mathmech has been a meta contender for most of its lifespan since the release of Power of the Elements, which gave them perhaps one of the strongest cards ever printed for an archetype: . While and its ever-present sibling aren't cyberse monsters to help climb through powerful links, they are, as we've established, an easy way to make rank four xyz monsters. Luckily, Mathmech has an incredibly powerful xyz in . By using Aratama and Sakitama to make Alembertian, Mathmech can access Circular through the spirits as an additional way to start their plays and extend through disruption.

Similar to Exosister, the nature of how Sakitama and Aratama start, play, and extend is also important. One of Mathmech's greatest tools is being able to ladder through and to summon for streamlined and effective one-turn kills. Both of the former monsters, however, have cyberse special summon locks on them: Splash Mage for the rest of the turn and Transcode Talker for the entire turn. Sakitama and Aratama bypass this, allowing them to be played risk-free with Mathmech.

It is also worth talking about the quality of Sakitama and Aratama as an engine beyond how they bypass special summon locks. Both Aratama and Sakitama are good to draw, require no additional cards in hand or set-up to work, and are good at all points in the game. These are huge improvements to previous rank four xyz enablers like (which required multiple normal monsters that you didn't want to draw), (which required you to summon a link monster first), and with (which became unusable for non-Madolche decks after the first turn). Mathmech shows this off particularly well. While other rank four engines could be utilized on the first turn when you were unlikely to use Transcode Talker's effect, none except Parallel eXceed were worth considering until Sakitama was released.

Home, Sweet Home

Although the deck may not be as viable as Exosister or Mathmech, we can't talk about a new spirit monster without at least mentioning their home in Shino. Shino is a ritual spirit archetype that utilizes two particularly strong ritual monsters, and , to break the opponent's board. fits well into the existing Shino deck, both as a way to turn —a card the deck already ran as a searcher for the Shino —into a rank four xyz or link two, and as a way to produce repeatable tribute fodder for your ritual summons thanks to its second effect to add a spirit from your graveyard back to your hand.

Sakitama's statline also pairs particularly well with a few options Shino has. Because it's a level four monster, it can be used as the entire tribute requirement for ritual summoning , an interesting card the deck can play that allows it to go first and use the Shino monsters as disruption on the opponent's turn. In addition, it's a light fairy, which means it's searchable via , a consistently excellent card in ritual decks. Finally, it can be used as an extender with to make , which gives the deck better boardbreaking and insulation.

Other Options

While these are some of the most apparent uses for Sakitama, there are plenty of other decks it's worth including in. Because it summons itself and adds itself back when tributed, it may be worth running in tribute summon-focused decks like Monarch and Floowandereeze. and are, of course, an incredibly effective rank four engine, and can be used in any deck that doesn't need its normal summon and would appreciate the help making a rank four, such as Springans and Tellar. Finally, other ritual decks, such as Drytron and Libromancer, may want to explore Sakitama as a searchable level four extender and tribute fodder thanks to .

Regardless of what you're using it for, Sakitama is an excellent card with a wide range of applications. Look out for it when picking up cards from Cyberstorm Access!

---

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, not of Cardmarket.