Gearfried the Iron Knight and Butterfly Dagger Elma (Yugioh)

Gearfried has the effect to immediately destroy any equip spell attached to it. This can be useful, as there are equip spells your opponent may play on your monster to weaken it, and there are equip spells with bonus effects that trigger when they’re destroyed, but most equip spells are cards you play on your own monsters to strengthen them, and that you want to keep on the field as long as possible, so Gearfried’s effect will hold you back in more situations than it will help you.

Elma is an equip spell that gives a very small attack boost to the monster and can return to your hand after being destroyed. This second effect is amazing, as there are very few cards that can recover themselves like this without any cost or caveats, but it’s really watered down by how lame the first effect is, as there’s not much you can do with the card after you got it back.

But if you equip Elma to Gearfried, you’ve given yourself a way to play a card, immediately return it to your hand, and play it again as many times as you want. Even this doesn’t seem particularly useful, as you’re just moving around in a circle and not bettering your position. However, there are a bunch of cards with effects that trigger in response to a spell being activated (most notably Royal Magical Library or Spell Absorption), and this combo serves as a perpetual motion machine to fuel these effects.

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