In any card game, whether it’s MetaZoo, Magic: The Gathering or Yu-Gi-Oh, one of the biggest advantages a player can have on their side is card advantage. Whether it’s the ability to draw extra cards at the start of your turn or the ability to take a peek at the top of your deck, being able to have extra access to your deck outside of typical gameplay is such a great advantage to have – especially when that effect is on a card that remains in play.
The Pink Mess of Goose Creek Lagoon is an Earth type beastie from Wilderness that offers just the kind of card advantage I was talking about. Although it’s one of the few cheap Earth beasties in MetaZoo – which is surprising considering its ability – don’t let that cost trick you into thinking it doesn’t have much to offer. For if you take a look at its arena effect, this beastie allows its owner to play with their deck face up! This means you get to see which card you’re about to draw next and therefore can make future plans for stronger plays.
Aside from giving you foresight to your deck, this beastie also allows you to contract any Terra cards that happen to be on top as if they were part of your hand. This is extremely beneficial in MetaZoo as the majority of beasties in the game use Terra for some kind of boost on their attacks, abilities and/or life points. In fact, there are some beasties and artifacts that benefit from having multiple Terra types (i.e. the Sigils, Napa Rebobs) or multiple copies of the same type in play (i.e. Star Person). Pink Mess helps you to activate those Terra boosts faster and can even help slightly thin out your deck so that when you don’t need Terra anymore but one is sitting on top, you can contract it so that you’re guaranteed not to draw one during your next draw phase.
If at some point you see a card on top that you want to draw but isn’t a Terra, you can use a card like Bookmark, which will allow you to draw any card on top of your deck. And on the flipside, if you see a card on top you don’t want to draw, you know to save your Bookmarks for later and can chance getting rid of Pink Mess in order to flip your deck upside down in the hopes that something better is lying on the opposite side.
As for beasties that could benefit from Pink Mess, aside from the wide variety of beasties that have double Terra bonuses, I could see this beastie pairing well with cosmic type beasties like Little Green Men and Dark Watchers. Little Green Men has a power that’s the perfect companion for Pink Mess for if you need a Terra page, you can use LGM’s power to tutor one to the top and contract it thanks to Pink Mess. LGM’s attack also benefits greatly from this as well as it deals more damage based on the number of different Terra in the arena.
Referring back to Dark Watchers, these beastie aliens have a power that lets you look at the top three cards of your deck and draw a Terra or Aura card. You can use Dark Watchers to stack your deck so that, for example, say if you draw two Terra cards, you draw your first Terra using their ability and then you can place the second Terra on top of your deck so that you can immediately contract that in the same turn as well. Or if you draw both an Aura and Terra card, you can contract the Aura using Dark Watchers and then place the Terra on top so you can contract that as well thanks to Pink Mess.
Referring back to the first line of text in its arena effect, another cosmic beastie I could see pairing well with Pink Mess is Air Rods, who is a beastie that lets you reactivate a fatigued cosmic beastie if there’s a cosmic beastie on top of your deck. Normally you would have to take a chance with fatiguing Air Rods, but with Pink Mess in play, you don’t have to worry about the risk. This would also pair well with the Dark Watchers move I just mentioned, as you can place a cosmic beastie directly underneath that second Terra so that when you contract it, you’re already set up for Air Rods power.
Now even though Pink Mess is an Earth type, its arena effect isn’t limited to only benefiting Earth cards, so I could honestly see this beastie popping up in decks of any type, especially thanks to its extremely cheap Aura cost. However, if it’s in a deck playing Swamp Terra, you get the additional advantage of being able to activate Burrow, which is a trait that prevents a beastie from being targeted by anything except potions, effects and beasties with Burrow themselves. This essentially means that your incredible card advantage has some super-sweet, built-in protection that will be incredibly hard for your opponent to take out, especially when paired with the tanky 80 life points I mentioned earlier.
To add some balance to Pink Mess, it does unfortunately have downsides starting with the obvious in that even though you’ll know which card you’re about to draw, so will your opponent. This gives them the opportunity to potentially prepare for whatever it is you’re about to do next. However, I would argue that this disadvantage isn’t all that much of a hindrance, because even though you’re also giving your opponent that knowledge, your opponent won’t know exactly when you’re going to be playing those cards. They’ll only know that you have those cards in hand and will be playing them at some point.
Another downside to Pink Mess is that you’re only allowed to have one of these in your deck at a time, which means you can’t build a deck relying on having its ability to function. Lastly, its attack is kind of lacking in that it can only deal 20 damage max, but honestly that’s not an issue at all considering you’re not going to be using this guy to attack anyways unless you have to. It’s more so a very helpful tool with built-in protection that can especially come in handy if you’re lucky to draw at the right time.
