Dragon Horn Hunter – A Yu-Gi-Oh ARC-V Card Review

by Phoenix Desertsong, Old School Duelist

The first of the Yu-Gi-Oh ARC-V expansion sets, Duelist Alliance, introduced a brand new card type to the card game: Pendulum Monsters. After players were introduced to the Pendulum Summoning mechanic with the  Space Time Showdown Super Starter Deck, we got to see the mechanic in full force in the Duelist Alliance set. Here we’ll take a look at the Sneak Peek Participation Promo, Dragon Horn Hunter. It would turn out to actually be a decent monster!

What’s particularly interesting about Dragon Horn Hunter is the fact that he’s a normal Monster, a Level 6 DARK-Attribute Warrior with 2300 ATK and 1000 DEF. These stats are nothing special. However, as a Pendulum Monster, when he lives in one of your two Pendulum Zones he has a Pendulum Scale of 3 and gains this effect: “All Normal Monsters gain 200 ATK. You take no battle damage from battles involving Normal Monsters you control.” That’s a very good effect.

Dragon Horn Hunter really pushes you to play Normal Monsters. As it turns out, there’s an easy way to search out this card: Summoner’s Art from Tactical Evolution. Also, being a DARK-type monster is good, as it can provide the necessary DARK component for many other cards. It also means that playing classic Normal Monsters such as Summoned Skull - also a potential target for Summoner’s Art - becomes far more plausible.

The greatest con to this card is obviously the fact that he relies quite heavily on the Pendulum mechanic. You’re going to need to push out high-level Normal Monsters to simply overpower your opponent if this guy is going to make much of a difference. The ATK boost he gives isn’t much, but taking no battle damage from battles involving your Normal Monsters could make a Normal Monster based Pendulum Summoning deck a realistic option.

As it turned out, Pendulum decks with Normal Pendulum Monsters would turn out to be competitive. As we saw with the Space Time Showdown Starter Deck, Normal Monsters were being pushed with the advent of the Pendulum Summoning mechanic. In 2016, this card was good enough to appear in some competitive Pendulum Magicians decks at a single copy.

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While it didn’t stay relevant in competitive play for long, as it would become outclassed with future sets, there were a couple of lists that took full advantage of this creature’s power. Overall, Dragon Horn Hunter was a good role player for a time in some builds of Pendulum Magicians, a deck that would go on to evolve into one of the better deck archetypes in all of Yu-Gi-Oh! For a Sneak Peek promo, that was a pretty good time in the spotlight.