The NetherThreeGiants

The Nether Three Giants (冥府三巨頭 ; meifu sankyotou) are series of cards introduced in BS19. All three of them are Purple and are in the Zombie family. The archetype itself is also part of the bigger archetype Nether. Despite the name, they are not in the Giant archetype, due to different spellings in Japanese.

In the card lore, they are powerful beings who once led armies during the Sword Eyes era, and also made a move against the Ultimates in the era after. Judging from their flavor texts, they retreated from the world's activity, but were then woken up to be recruited by The Grandwalker Dionysus. Even against the Grandwalkers, they held a very prideful attitude.

Their names are wordplays that derived from French wine brands.

List of the NetherThreeGiants cards

• The NetherThreeGiants Baroque-Bordeaux (BS19) - Bordeaux Wine
• The NetherThreeGiants Zainde-Milion (BS22) - St Emillion Wine
• The NetherThreeGiants Queen-Merduk (BS24) - Medoc Wine

All three cards also received a revival version in BS51.

Play style

Despite being related, during their time of release, the three cards did not share the same decks. Zainde-Million was part of a Purple spam deck, while Queen-Merduk formed a Dark Snake deck with The DoubleHeadedDragonKing Bi-Jaou, and Baroque-Bordeaux was almost forgotten by the players.

In the Purple spam deck, Million served the role of making blocking hard for the opponent and also summoning more Spirits from the trash. The deck essentially used a crash-and-burn tactic, by also utilising Immortality and The Dark Sacred Sword to centralise the cost. With Million on the field, the opponent would be forced to either destroy their own Spirits to block, which could end up with more Spirits on Million's side; or not block and take life. This deck was also especially useful against the Purple/White Rush deck, the then top meta deck, as Spirits with Purple Armor would be completely locked by Million, essentially making the Zombie Spirits unblockable at all. As Million's effect is changing the game rules on blocking, it results in forcing the opponent to block with Spirits. As such, in Ultimate era, with the decrease of Spirits in Ultimate-oriented decks, Million remained as a threat. Million being high cost also hindered opposing Ultimate-Trigger effects. This spam deck held its place throughout both Sword Eyes era and Ultimate era, but gradually retreated itself from the meta in Burning Soul era due to the increase of counters against Spirits with multiple symbols (e.g. Flame Slash), and also an increase in other good Purple decks.

Meanwhile, Merduk was also showing its advantages in its own deck. Different to The CurseHero Chaotic-Seimei, Merduk's Destructive Curse can activate already at Lv1, encouraging a more active strategy. While Destructive Curse could be dealt with through depletion and bounce, Merduk could pair with The Floating Island on the Mercury Sea to gain immunity against those effects. It could also brave to the low BP The SnakeAstralWhip Sabik, targeting attacking opposing Spirits/Ultimates with higher BP to force activate Destructive Curse. During the opposing turn, it was able to convert all the Curse keywords on its side to Destructive Curse, forming a wall of indestructible Spirits, especially effective if the Spirits with Curse are also at low BP. Taking advantage of this effect, one could also combo with Bi-Jaou to give every Dark Snake Spirit Curse, which would then be converted to Destructive Curse. Being both in the Zombie and Dark Snake families, Merduk also benefited from many resurrection effects. Two notable examples were using Phase Change or Scapegoat during the opposing turn to make a surprise summon.

Last but not least, while Bordeaux had a unique effect of straight destroying an opposing Spirit with an easy condition, the impact it created was simply not enough to prove itself useful. Being a Cost 8 also meant that it could not be summoned by Million, unless a Cost 9 or higher Spirit was destroyed for it, which the strategy in itself was already inefficient; and certainly it could not gain any benefits from being with Merduk. Having facedown cards, it also became an easy target for Poison Blade decks. The only upgrade which Bordeaux got prior to its revival version was the rule change on facedown cards in 2019, in which the player could check the contents of the facedown cards.

As mentioned before, all three giants were revived in BS51, along with a whole new Zombie deck led by Dionysus. For more details, please check the Nether archetype.

Also see

• List of "NetherThreeGiants"-named supports