Astral's Advent Observations: The Kuriquel - DAY 6!

Welcome back to Astral's Advent Observations: The Kuriquel, where we're ringing in the holidays with trading cards. It's not your typical yuletide celebration, but we like it.

The door to Day 6 reveals...

...probably the most unexpected card yet! It's Sabatiel - The Philosopher's Stone!

General Observation:

Sabatiel is an interesting card, both because its only Kuriboh connection is that you need a "Winged Kuriboh"-related Monster in your graveyard in order to activate its first effect and because you won't receive its full benefits unless you have three copies of it in your deck. 

Normally, a single copy of Sabatiel allows you to pay half of your life points to add a Fusion support card (such as Polymerization or Fusion Recovery) to your hand, so very handy for Fusion-heavy decks like Elemental Heroes and Cyber Dragons. However, if there are THREE copies of it in your graveyard, you can banish all three to increase the ATK of one Monster on the field by the same amount as the total ATK of the Monster in play with the HIGHEST ATK until the end of the turn, so this could potentially be quite the game changer. 

You may think it risky to stack your grave with copies of Sabatiel due to the LP cost of each one, but you can easily save your points by sending them there in another fashion, such as the hand cost to activate cards like Tribute to the Doomed and Spell Reproduction.

Trivia Observation:

Sabatiel - The Philosopher's Stone was first printed in the TCG set Dragons of Legend. (A set that was most noteworthy for finally bringing a lot of formerly anime-exclusive cards to print including the Legendary Dragons of Atlantis and their related cards.) 

Sabatiel made its anime debut in Episodes 48 and 49 of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX as essentially a deus ex machina provided to Jaden Yuki by Professor Banner to use in his climactic battle against Duel Academy's power-hungry superintendent (yes really) Kagemaru. 

Unlike a lot of anime cards, Sabatiel's effect was essentially the same as what eventually saw print with the exception of it being a single magical card that could be used four times rather than requiring multiple copies in the grave and it multiplying the ATK of one Monster by the number of Monsters on your opponent's field rather than by a single value. (Resulting in the ridiculous 14500 ATK for Electrum above.)

Personal Observation:

This one definitely took me by surprise! Interested to see if there are any other cards in this box with smaller connections to Kuriboh that I've forgotten about.

Day 6 has come to an end, but come back tomorrow for the conclusion of the first week of Astral's Advent Observations: The Kuriquel!