The new Fish, Sea Serpent, and Aqua-Type monsters in Generation Force have a lot of cool effects that involve banishing your own monsters to unlock some “splashy” abilities.  Better yet, banished sea-life can be used to fuel powerful Spells and Traps like Fish and Kicks, which banishes any card on the field; or Oh F!sh!, an awesome Counter Trap that’s similar toGladiator Beast War Chariot.

But sometimes, there’s just no replacement for raw muscle.  Piercing Moray is a Level 4 Fish-Type that gives ocean-loving Duelists a new heavy-hitter:

“Once per turn: You can Tribute 1 Fish, Sea Serpent, or Aqua-Type monster; this card gains 600 ATK. If this card attacks a Defense Position monster, inflict piercing Battle Damage to your opponent.”

Piercing Moray starts off at 1500 ATK, which means it combos with a lot of Fish and WATER support cards.  From there, you can boost it up to 2100 ATK by combining it with a number of different on-theme cards.  It never loses those 600 Attack Points: the boost’s permanent, so if you can keep Piercing Moray on the field you can get it up to 2700 ATK, 3300 ATK, or higher.  And remember, you can hammer all that attack straight through Defense Position Fluff Tokensand Formula Synchrons.

The best part?  It’s really easy to search Piercing Moray from your Deck, so you can bring it out whenever you need it.

Since Piercing Moray has 1500 ATK, you can search it from your Deck with Sangan’s effect.  You can Special Summon it straight from your Deck when Mother Grizzly is destroyed by battle, too.  Gold Sarcophagus lets you banish any card from your Deck and then add it to your hand 2 turns later. It’s a great way to set up your effects that need banished monsters, and it’s another way to get to Moray.

Once you’ve got a Moray on the field, you’ll want to feed it something convenient: you don’t want to give up a big attacker just to boost Moray’s ATK.  Treeborn Frog and Ronintoadin can both be Special Summoned from your Graveyard without using cards from your hand: you can revive Treeborn for free, and Moray will grow by 600 ATK each turn.

Wingtortoise works the same way.  Combo it with Airorca and you can destroy a face-up card every turn; banish Airorca to safety; and then Special Summon Wingtortoise from your Graveyard.  The tortoise has 1500 ATK, so if Airorca cleared the field you’ll want to attack with the Tortoise and the Moray together for maximum damage.  But once you hit Main Phase 2, go ahead and Tribute the Tortoise to buff up Moray.  That stops your opponent from just attacking the Tortoise next turn.

Since Piercing Moray is a WATER monster with 1500 ATK, you can fish it and another monster out of the Graveyard with Salvage.  If it’s banished, it’ll fuel the high-impact removal card Fish and Kicks, which banishes a card of your choice from the field.  A banished Piercing Moray can also power the new Oh F!ish! Counter Trap.  You Chain Oh F!sh! when an Effect Monster’s effect is activated: it shuffles 1 of your banished Fish, Sea Serpent, or Aqua-Type monsters back into your deck, to negate the monster effect and destroy the monster.  It’s like Gladiator Beast War Chariot, but you don’t have to have a monster on the field to play it.

Piercing Moray is a mix of combo potential and raw power, punishing Defense Position monsters while growing bigger and bigger each turn.  When your opponent takes it down, it helps you unleash some killer effects, too.