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The Tour Guide Engine: Is it Just Hype?
Michael Kohanim
8/30/2011 12:25:00 PM  Lots of Duelists are predicting that Tour Guide From the Underworld will be a defining card of the September 2011 format, and its current price tag is in accord with that prediction. Others are claiming that Tour Guide From the Underworld is overhyped, and not worth the price it now holds on the secondary market. In this article, I'll be explaining why Tour Guide From the Underworld really is going to be a defining card of the format, and why I think that it will achieve staple or near-staple status in just about every competitive Deck.How Does the Tour Guide Engine Work? In order to make effective use of Tour Guide From the Underworld, you'll want to run, at the bare minimum, 3 copies of Tour Guide and a Sangan in your Deck. These are the bare bones of the Tour Guide engine that can be splashed into just about any Deck. With just those 4 cards in your Deck, your Tour Guide engine is up and running! You can use your first Tour Guide to Special Summon Sangan from your Deck, and then use Sangan's effect to search your Deck for another Tour Guide to add to your hand after Sangan is sent to the Graveyard. On your next turn, you can Summon the Tour Guide you searched for with Sangan, and use her effect to Special Summon the final Tour Guide from your Deck. That'll set you up for a Rank 3 Xyz Summon by using your 2 Tour Guides. Currently in the TCG, cards with effects that that activate when they're sent from the field to the Graveyard, will also activate when they're sent to the Graveyard as an Xyz Material. So when Sangan is used as an Xyz Material to Summon Number 17: Leviathan Dragon or Leviair the Sea Dragon, you can detach Sangan to instantly activate its effect and search your Deck for a monster with 1500 or less ATK to add to your hand. Decks using a variety of monsters that can be searched for with Sangan's effect will make the best use of the Tour Guide / Sangan combo, but even a Deck running only the set of Tour Guides to search for with Sangan's effect, can justify making this play.
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Why is the Tour Guide Engine so Strong? It really takes a lot for a card to achieve staple or near-staple status. It needs to be splashable in nearly every Deck, it needs to generate a significant amount of advantage on its own, and it should infrequently or never be a dead draw. Take a look at everything Tour Guide From the Underworld can do, and try to draw the line to discover at which point you'd no longer be able to resist playing Tour Guide From the Underworld in your Deck.
The bottom line is that Leviathan Dragon can destroy some of the strongest monsters in battle, including Stardust Dragon, Chaos Sorcerer, Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier, and T.G. Hyper Librarian. No matter what Deck you're running, Leviathan Dragon can bail you out against a tough field. To begin Summoning Leviathan Dragon, all you need to do is Normal Summon Tour Guide From the Underworld and activate her effect.
But Leviair's effect can help out just about any Deck. Low-level monsters are constantly banished by cards like Bottomless Trap Hole and Dimensional Prison, and the effect of Leviair can rescue those monsters. You can also use Leviair's effect to steal an opponent's banished monster, whether your opponent banished it on his own, or you used the effect of a card like Gladiator Beast Retiari or Caius the Shadow Monarch to banish it. If Leviair were simply a low-Level monster with the power to Special Summon a banished Level 4 or lower monster once per turn, it would be played in a lot of Main Decks. It would be an asset to Decks that manipulate Graveyards and have strong control over which cards get banished from the field. It certainly wouldn't go in everything, but I can confidently say that it would be played in a lot of Decks.
I'd go so far as to say that a monster that can do either one of them would achieve near-staple status and find its place in just about every Deck. It can come to the field to start slaying the opponent's threats when you need a big monster, or it can open up a string of powerful plays that begin with the Special Summon of a banished monster. Normal Summoning Tour Guide From the Underworld will let you Xyz Summon either of these monsters, as long as you have Sangan or another Tour Guide in your Deck or hand.
You can also use your Sangan search to take splashable cards that will disrupt an opponent's play, including an Effect Veiler that can negate the effect of an opponent's Tour Guide, or a D.D. Crow that can banish a key card from your opponent's Graveyard. Alternatively, you can search your Deck for another copy of Tour Guide From the Underworld. By Summoning her next turn, you can Special Summon the last Tour Guide from your Deck and Xyz Summon another Leviathan Dragon or Leviair. You won't get another free search if you've already used Sangan, but it's still an incredible play, and was the product of a long-lasting advantage generated by the Normal Summon of a single Tour Guide. The ability to enable these plays is what, in my opinion, makes Tour Guide From the Underworld a near-staple. (Yes, I even play Tour Guide From the Underworld in both of my Gladiator Beast Decks - Prismadiators with A Hero Lives and Tigerless Gladiators.) To my understanding, in the OCG, Sangan won't get its effect when it's detached from an Xyz Monster. Even without the free search, it's arguable that Tour Guide From the Underworld, if it weren't a TCG exclusive and were legal in OCG territories, would still be played in most Decks in the OCG. Duelists would be able to use Tour Guide's effect to search for Sangan, and then choose not to use Sangan in an Xyz Summon in order to make sure they'd get the Sangan search. Before the release of Xyz Monsters, lots of Duelists used Tour Guide just to Special Summon Sangan from their Decks, and took that play to the top of several YCS tournaments. Now, there's the added option of Summoning Number 17: Leviathan Dragon or Leviair the Sea Dragon instead, and foregoing the use of Tour Guide to get a search with Sangan's effect. As discussed earlier, turning a Normal Summon into a 2500 ATK monster or an 1800 ATK monster that can Special Summon banished monsters is a powerful play on its own, even if it doesn't let you search your Deck for a free card to add to your hand.
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Even Better! Tour Guide From the Underworld isn't quite as simple as I've been making it sound - it's actually better! It invokes a network of cards, since it causes the Special Summons of a bunch of different monsters. That makes it capable of creating a bunch of other advantages and plays in the new format of the TCG. For one thing, Tour Guide From the Underworld makes it extremely easy to Summon Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning. Tour Guide From the Underworld is a DARK monster, and so is the Sangan that she can Special Summon with her effect. When your Sangan, Special Summoned by Tour Guide, is sent to the Graveyard, you can search your Deck for a LIGHT monster like Effect Veiler. With the Summon of a single monster, you have a DARK monster in your Graveyard and a LIGHT monster ready to be discarded from your hand. You're all ready to conjure up the forces of chaos and Summon Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning! Effect Veiler makes it very easy to incorporate a "Chaos Engine" into the Tour Guide Engine, and splash Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning in a variety of Decks that are not primarily focused on LIGHT and DARK monsters. Tour Guide From the Underworld also thins the Deck when she's Summoned, by Special Summoning a Level 3 Fiend from it. If you Special Summon Sangan and use Sangan's effect, you'll thin the Deck by another card when you get your Sangan search. If you take a Tour Guide and use it to Special Summon another Tour Guide from your Deck, you'll be thinning your Deck by a third card. Although thinning the Deck by a couple of cards in the course of a Duel doesn't usually make a tremendous difference to drastically improve your odds of drawing the cards you need, I think that it'll be more relevant in the new format than it was in the previous format. There's a lot of "power cards" that you'll want to get as quickly as possible in this format. Heavy Storm, Dark Hole, Monster Reborn, Black Luster Soldier - Envoy of the Beginning, and Pot of Avarice are all Limited, and drawing 1 of them can be the difference between victory and defeat. Pot of Avarice is especially potent in Decks using Tour Guide From the Underworld, since it's easy to activate when your Level 3 Fiends and your Xyz Monsters quickly swarm into the Graveyard. Pot of Avarice can also be used to Recycle your Tour Guide engine and gain a second shot at the advantage generated by those cards. Are There Any Drawbacks to Using the Tour Guide Engine? The Tour Guide engine is powerful, but it does have a couple of drawbacks. If you draw Sangan in your opening hand, you won't be able to Special Summon it from your Deck with Tour Guide's effect. But even if this happens, you'll still have plenty of plays with your Tour Guides. If you draw Sangan and Tour Guide in the same hand, you can use Tour Guide's effect to Special Summon Sangan from your hand. You won't get the +1 card advantage that comes with Special Summoning Sangan from your Deck, but you'll replace the Sangan in your hand with a monster of your choice, and bring a powerful Xyz Monster to the field. This is a strong play, even though it isn't as strong as it would've been if you hadn't drawn Sangan. It's also possible to run out of Level 3 Fiends in your Deck, so that Tour Guide can only Special Summon monsters from your hand. This is very unlikely, however, and even if it does happen, it'll still allow your Tour Guide to create a 2-card power play that Summons a Rank 3 Xyz Monster. In the worst scenario, you'll draw a Tour Guide with no other Level 3 Fiends in your hand or Deck. This is also very unlikely, and if it does happen, you can take solace in the fact that you probably amassed a decent amount of advantage with your previous Tour Guides, in order to end up in that position. Players may use Maxx "C" or Effect Veiler to mitigate the damage that Tour Guide From the Underworld does to them, but these cards don't provide a reliable or effective answer. It's hard to count on having these cards to stop Tour Guide, without using your own Tour Guide / Sangan combo to search them out. Moreover, these cards provide nothing more than a counter to Tour Guide. It'll stop an opponent's power play if he was counting on using his Tour Guide to turn a Duel around, but using Effect Veiler or Maxx "C" against Tour Guide won't turn the tables and put you in the lead if you were behind. I'm hard-pressed to find a Deck in the TCG that I wouldn't use Tour Guide From the Underworld in. Decks that don't do battle, like Chain Burn and certain stall Decks, come to mind, but Tour Guide From the Underworld's versatility makes it an exceptional card that fits into just about anything. Expect to see a lot of action involving Tour Guide From the Underworld in upcoming YCS tournaments! -Michael Kohanim 
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this card!
