Card Of The Day #2 – Wind-Up Zenmaines

Continuing with this week’s theme of cards from Photon Shockwave today I will be talking about Wind Up Zenmaines.

Wind-Up Zenmaines
Fire / Machine / XYZ / Effect
Rank Three
ATK: 1500 DEF: 2100

2 Level 3 monsters
If this face-up card on the field would be destroyed, you can detach 1 Xyz Material from this card instead. Once per turn, during the End Phase, if this effect was used this turn: Target 1 card on the field; destroy it.



This is one of the best cards from Photon Shockwave, but that is mainly because of another card; Tour Guide From The Underworld. Tour Guide From The Underworld is arguable the best card in the game right now and Wind-Up Zenmaines is a great addition to its arsenal. Now on top of Tour Guide From The Underworld’s ability to go agro with Number 17: Leviathan Dragon or start comboing with Leviair The Sea Dragon you can wall up on them with Wind-Up Zenmaines. Aside from Tour Guide From The Underworld this combos very well with a number of other cards. One good example is a card that almost every deck plays; Scrap Dragon. You can destroy Wind-Up Zenmaines and one of your opponent’s cards with Scrap Dragon and then when Wind-Up Zenmaines would be destroyed you can destroy another one of your opponent’s cards instead. Another easy combo is using Limiter Removal to double its attack until the end of the turn and then when Limiter Removal would destroy it you destroy one of your opponent’s cards. Dealing with a card like this can be very difficult since you can’t waste cards on it like Dark Hole to Destroy it since it will just eat those up and then destroy your own cards. Instead you need to find ways to get around it. Such as using other forms or removal like Dimensional Prison or Compulsory Evacuation Device, nut not everyone plays those and even if you do you won’t always have them. Most of the time when this goes down you just have to wait for an answer to it or until you have enough monsters to run it over multiple times so it doesn’t get a chance to destroy anything.

Final Verdict:
This card stalls better than any other card in the relevant metagame. So long as Tour Guide From The Underworld is around this card will see plenty of play. Being able to just sit behind Wind-Up Zenmaines while waiting to draw into what you need is really powerful and not many other cards can let you do something like that especially in such a fast paced metagame.