Hey all, been a bit. I was just at my locals this past Saturday. Killing time I was thumbing through my binder for some new side deck material, and then I stumbled upon The Selection. I was immediately taken aback at the potential it has. Here's the wording so you don't have to look it up:

"Pay 1000 Life Points. Negate the summon of a monster that has the same type as a monster on the field, and destroy it."

While slightly situational, it has quite good utility in a lot of matchups. Blackwings, Six Samurai, and Gravekeepers can be stymied quite easily with it. To a lesser extent, Dragunity and Nordics are also kept in check. Its value increases leaps and bounds if you find yourself in a mirror. Have even one Samurai out, you can stop Grandmasters, Kagekis, you get the idea.

It is almost a poor man's Solemn Warning, but it's also much cheaper to pay 1000 instead of 2000.

Your thoughts?

It's not a "bad" card, but Warning simply hits a lot more and can be used virtually any time as opposed to Selection of Ark, which still can have various moments where it'll just end up sitting there. Either have to wait for Mirror Matches or hope the Deck the opponent is using a lot more focused on 1 Type than others where Warning doesn't have such a problem.

It's really more of a Side Deck card than anything.

Just to be clear I would never play The Selection or Solemn Warning on Grandmaster because both cards will trigger Grandmaster's effect and send it right back to your opponent's hands since they include the word destroy.

Yeah, sadly, that's all it takes for him work, any of your opponent's effects that "destroy" him regardless of where as long as he ends up in the Graveyard to snatch back in terms of just himself. Otherwise, still snatch back another Six Samurai monster.

That's why as great as Royal Oppression might be to slow down the majority of top decks it doesn't always help against Six Samurai.

Hmmm, that makes me wonder how Royal Oppression would work in Infernities after I've swarmed the field. But that's a topic for a different thread...

That's not to say I don't like the idea of The Selection as Side Deck material. Thanks for bringing it up CelticHunter, I'll have to give it some more thought.

Side Deck material is all I've really used it for most of the time since it came out in the OCG years back. (LE8, lol.) The upside being that it looks at the whole field for matching Types and not just you'rs or your opponent's hence, as said, mirror matches or Decks that are heavily focused on 1 Type; Infernity (Fiend), Gravekeeper's (Spellcaster), Black Feather (Winged Beast), Six Samurai (sans Grandmaster, Warrior).

Sadly, some of the other "better" ones are also more diverse in Types too, like Gladial Beast, X-Saber, and such.

I think Black Horn of Heaven may be slightly better.

On Special Summons anyway. The small bit with Selection of Ark being working on Normal and Flip Summons too, as rarer as they are.