EARTH
3Hedge Guard
ATK:
0
DEF:
2100
View:
3530
During damage calculation, in either player's turn, when a monster you control attacks or is attacked: You can send this card from your hand to the Graveyard; halve the ATK of that monster you control until the end of this turn, but that monster cannot be destroyed by this battle.
Hedge Guard — Power Evaluation
Final Score: 46 ± 8 · Confidence: Medium
- Intrinsic: 44 · Deck: 47 · Meta: provisional
- Primary role: Utility
Why it scores here
Hedge Guard is a hand-only battle trick: it costs itself to stop one of your own monsters from being destroyed in battle, at the price of halving that monster's ATK. It converts nothing into board presence or card advantage and has no combo evidence, so its score rests on being a cheap, portable one-copy defensive option that 18 recent decks, across 8 archetypes, actually run. High DEF and a clean Level 3 body earn little, since the body is not the card's function and the rubric gives no credit for stats.
Axis scores
| Axis | Score | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Accessibility | 40 | Hand-only with no searcher or second-card route in the evidence, but it is live whenever drawn and appears in 18 decks (verified deck count; route inferred from text). |
| Combo & Conversion | 15 | No recorded boards and no combo examples, so there is no observed conversion; the text only protects a monster and builds nothing (verified: combos total 0, text-based inference). |
| Resource Economy | 20 | Costs the card from hand (sent to Graveyard) and returns nothing, with the ATK halving as a further cost to the protected monster (verified from text). |
| Effect & Interaction | 40 | No negation or removal of opponent cards; the only interaction is preventing battle destruction for one attack, which is soft (verified text, inference on strength). |
| Material Utility | 30 | Level 3 Earth Plant body is an ordinary material, but the evidence shows no material use and the effect does not depend on the body (inference; no combo stat). |
| Resilience & Flexibility | 45 | Hand location makes it hard to remove from play except by hand disruption, but it has one use per battle at most and no redundancy beyond copies (inference from text; no timing clause stated). |
| Deck-Building Efficiency | 60 | Played at 1 copy in the majority of decks (9 of 18 with 1 copy, average 1.67), with no garnet or lock restriction in the evidence (observed from decks). |
Calculation
Weight profile: Utility / no clear role (default); no secondary role blended. Intrinsic ≈ 44, Deck ≈ 47, Meta = provisional. Modifiers: none. Final formula: 0.40*Intrinsic + 0.60*Deck
Strengths
- Cheap, hand-only battle protection that needs no board presence
- Portable: appears across 8 distinct archetypes in the 18-deck sample
- Typically run at one copy, so it fits a crowded build without displacing key cards
- Protects a monster from battle destruction without requiring a negation
Weaknesses
- Dead in hand outside battle windows (text-based inference)
- Costs a card and gives no advantage back
- Halves the ATK of the monster it protects, reducing its own attack or defence value
- Does not stop opponent card effects, so it is weak against non-battle removal
Counters / choke points
- Hand disruption or discard before the battle step
- Effects that destroy or banish the monster outside battle
- Attacking through the protected monster's ATK reduction
Best use
Defensive battle protection from hand. Decks: Gladiator Beast, Crimson Dragon, Synchron, Rose Dragon. Suggested copies: 1.
Evidence & gaps
- Verified: Card text: hand-activated during damage calculation on own monster's attack or attack, costs itself to the Graveyard, halves that monster's ATK, and prevents destruction in battle; 18 recent decks; 8 distinct archetypes; 15 of 18 in gameplay type 7; Copies per deck: avg 1.67, max 3; 9 of 18 decks run 1 copy
- Observed: Mystical Space Typhoon co-occurs in 77.8% of sampled decks; Black Rose Dragon co-occurs in 72.2% of sampled decks; Dust Tornado co-occurs in 61.1% of sampled decks
- Inferred: Primary role is defensive battle protection, not negation or removal; Opponent interaction is limited to battle protection; no card-advantage or board value; Hand-only access means live only when drawn
- Data gaps: no combos supplied; combo conversion is text-only inference no guides supplied no usage statistics (StatisticsCard); archetype inclusion inferred from the deck sample only no once-per-turn or timing ruling beyond the card text legal copies is given only for DuelLinks; limits in other formats are unknown format ids (7, 4) are unlabeled in the evidence