Yu-Gi-Oh! Rogue Report: Spright Fur Hire
Names in Yugioh are often a contentious aspect of its design; players become attached to certain titles of boss monsters, or archetypes, before they receive official names by Konami of America. Abhyss became Ogdoadic, and True King of All Calamities is still referred to as VFD. But no localized name has stuck out like a beloved, quirky, sore thumb, like our favorite band of sky-pirates, the monsters Fur Hire. Being the first to use the nomenclature of their name following the term ‘monster’, they were made the laughingstock of the TCG, and essentially faded into irrelevance, with the exception of a playable version in Duel Links. That said, with new support coming in Darkwing Blast, Fur Hire are primed to actually see some degree of play, splashed with a variety of other engines, and centered around their new pride & joy: Rex, Cargo Fur Hire.
Put bluntly, Rex is everything that Fur Hire needs to see the light of day in the current game, and coupled with the existing support cards Fur Hire has, alongside another Link-2 to assist it, this adorable dino may very well be the harbinger of a terrifying board-breaking strategy. For some history, Fur Hire saw a stint of rogue playability during the testing phase of Tri-Brigade. In order to find out what the archetype best paired with, it was discovered that while getting draws off of Folgo, Justice Fur Hire was neat, the deck just barely lost out to Pure Tri-Brigade, and “Bird Up”, aka Lyrilusc Tri-Brigade.
Crucially, however, both of the new support pieces for Fur Hire share a common trait: They’re Level/Link 2. Obviously, this was intentional, as testing for even a few games with a Spright-boosted variant of the strategy shows immense promise! So, let’s talk about what the Fur Hires can do, with the introduction of both Rex, and Dona, Dagger Fur Hire.
First and foremost, Rex has a variety of features beyond his effect that work well together; he is as mentioned, Level 2, but also a Dinosaur monster, which makes it a target for Fossil Dig, a currently-unlimited search spell. More so, the cards that it can search, especially the pair of Rookie Fur Hire & Mayhem Fur Hire help give purpose to its stats. Normal Summoning it, searching Mayhem, and Linking it off for Salamangreat Almiraj is a reasonable way to get two differently-typed monsters for Dona, or a quick line of Rex into Rookie finds your searching monster, Beat, Bladesman Fur Hire. As an aside, Tributing a leftover Almiraj via Dona also accrues two Fur Hires, as the Link monster doesn’t have to be a Fur Hire, or even a Link-2!
Beyond that, Rex also has a GY effect that acts, in essence, like a card we’re already itching to end on: Spright Elf. Being a way to Quick Effect Summon back a Fur Hire, this portion of his effect is threefold: It can extend on your turn, help recur a broken board during your opponent’s turn, or most crucially, trigger any number of Fur Hire effects a Chain Late, which can allow for some interesting means of interaction. Speaking of interaction, the two Fur Hires known for removal, being Donpa, Marksman Fur Hire and Recon, Scout Fur Hire both happen to be Level 2, meaning they possess value as bodies for our initial Spright lines via Gigantic Spright. This also means they posses pieces of a reactive endboard that can deal with format-dependent issues. As an example, traditional Spright often has trouble dealing with the loss of their initial Level 2 body, preventing extension via their effects in hand; Donpa can sit on board, and be triggered by a revive provided by either Elf, or Rex, stopping plays before they start.
Where the Spright core of Spright Blue, Spright Jet, and of course Spright Starter fill in the gaps as a means of extension and consistency, the Fur Hire portion of the strategy likewise assists in providing an easily-accessible toolbox of options. Cards like Dyna, Hero Fur Hire and Filo, Messenger Fur Hire are both ways to win certain matchups: Dyna of course deals with Tear, due to how Chains work with priority (Rules Reminder: During your opponent’s turn, their optional effects have the opportunity to activate before yours, so Dyna will always be the last Chain Link if summoned in response to a Tearlament milling effect), and Filo helps rebuild boards against decks that have plentiful removal, like the rising rogue option, Labrynth. Not all of the Fur Hire effects are necessarily useful all the time, but because there are so many ways to cheat them out, at worst they’re bodies for Link Climbing, or discards for Rafale, Champion Fur Hire (Your standard Summon off of Folgo).
It’s worth noting that Darkwing Blast, coming to the TCG on October 20th of this year, will also of course have a meta-impacting piece of Spright support, not just toys for Fur Hire. Spright Sprind is of course, a ludicrous card, being able to both bin your Level 2s (in this Deck, often Rex), but also act as non-destruction removal, so long as you keep an Xyz on the field. Crucially, this card does not boost pure Spright’s power level by that much, on the assumption that part of the Frog engine gets hit on the upcoming Forbidden & Limited list, but it does certainly have a massive impact to this build specifically, given that a Rex in the GY can be a gamechanger.
I want to be clear to duelists looking at this list: Knowing whether you’re going to go into the Folgo Line before you actually do so is a huge learning point for the strategy. Failing to play properly, as though you are or aren’t seeing him, is vital. Openers often begin with a way to find Rex, before cycling through Donpa & Recon, ending often on a way to get a Quick Effect pop of both a face-up and face-down card. If your opponent’s failed to open a hand-trap, or you open anything below the deck’s minimum-power hands however, you’re also looking at Rafale’s negation, bouncing with Sprind, or, going second, an impressive amount of board-breaking. The Spright lock, as anyone who’s played any variant of the deck knows, is something that you only need to worry about once you need to extend, so playing with your Fur Hire toolbox until it’s absolutely necessary to lock yourself tends to be the play pattern you’re trying to follow.
It remains to be seen what will happen to Spright in the coming Forbidden & Limited List; as of writing this, it could occur nearly any day now. Picking up the pieces of a competitive archetype, following any banlist, is tough, however the tools presented by Darkwing Blast’s Fur Hire support certainly seem promising! That set also contains the second wave of support for my beloved Ghoti archetype, and I’ll be sure to cover developments in that strategy, once new cards emerge from the depths.
So that’s that! Thank you so much for reading my guide to playing Spright Fur Hire after the release of their support in Darkwing Blast! Rex is simply beyond anything they could have given the archetype, and it’s going to end up making waves in one way or another, and I’d love to hear what spicy Fur Hire decklists you’re all cooking up, with the new support!
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