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Would love to see Celtic guardian and Gaia the fierce knight!

I'll tackle the first of anonymous's requests here. This card is known here as "Celtic Guardian"- a name that's very fun to say. Though some out there render its original name as "Elf Knight" or "Elf Guardian", personally I tend to agree with those who call this card the "Elf Swordsman".

In terms of art: many of Yugi's Duelist Kingdom deck monsters suffer from having very small art boxes in the manga, which means their illustrations don't resize well. Though "Elf Swordsman"'s typical illustration (as seen in the top image) is better than most, the source art just lacks the kind of fine details that others have.

Luckily, this is not the only art of "Elf Swordsman" out there. The original full-color page for Chapter 95, found in the September 1998 issue of "Weekly Shonen Jump", contains a much higher-detail version of this illustration. Said illustration even has that card's original colorscheme! And so it gets a variant card of its own in my deck, as seen in the above image.

Kazuki Takahasi seems to favor it over the standard one. So much so that the official 2008 Anniversary card he illustrated draws a lot from that earlier '98 colorscheme:

This "Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Art" page 11 scan was done by @pharaoh-doll. The image is free to use and cropped here for the sake of presentation.

Secondly- I regret to inform you all that these two renditions of the card you see above are now outdated. Originally, I was under the impression that "Elf Swordsman" was a simple ability-less Monster Card, just like its official counterpart.

Many months after I printed these, I found out that, in the Japanese manga, this elf had a special ability all along!

Apparently, in the manga's original text for Chapter 62, "Countdown!!", Dark Yugi states that this card can't be affected by the illusions of Pegasus's "Illusionist No-Face". This was a line of dialogue that was changed in Viz's official translation to instead say, as their version puts it:

Dark Yugi: "The illusionist doesn't have any special advantage against this card!"

...Which means something a little different, I think!

The 2002 sourcebook "Yu-Gi-Oh! Character Guidebook: The Gospel of Truth" reinforces this, explicitly stating that "Elf Swordsman"'s special ability causes it to be immune to illusions. I tracked down a copy of this sourcebook and double-checked the line myself to be sure.

Thus it fell on me to translate this idea into something that makes sense as a game mechanic. I had to decide: in Magic & Wizards, what are 'illusions', and how can a card be immune to them?

It turns out that there are two aspects of M&W that fit this bill. First of all, per Chapter 62 there are subtypes of Magic-User-type monsters called "Illusionists". They're strong against "Black Magic" subtypes and weak against "Demon" subtypes. Often, these monsters have special abilities that affect other monsters. "Dark-Eyes Illusionist" is an example of an "Illusion" subtype Magic-User monster with such a special ability.

Additionally, there's an entire class of cards in the manga's Magic & Wizards game that the real-life official version doesn't have, called "Illusion Cards". We see one right in Chapter 62, a card called "Entrancing Eye" (the official game calls this card "Eye of Illusion"), and another one shows up in Chapter 97, "Mimic Illusionist" (which is called "Copycat" here).

My idea, then, is that "Elf Swordsman"'s on-card special ability should read something like this: "This monster cannot be affected by an Illusionist monster's special ability, or by an Illusion Card." That should cover the scope of it in a way that makes sense as a card game mechanic, I think.

The updated card is all ready to go, and I'll post an image of it here when I receive it later!

Whew, that was a technical one. Once again, hope you all enjoyed this! If there are any other Yugi manga cards you want to see, let me know and I'll post about them here!

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