Overview
Zeus, Thunderbringer of Olympus
“Someone’s gotta die today, and you have got the final say. You? Or your crew?”
HUAD-EN026
Effect Monster
Level 8 WIND Fairy
3000 ATK / 2800 DEF
Development: Apr 2025 – May 2025
You can only activate effect ② of “Zeus, Thunderbringer of Olympus” once per turn. ① If a monster you control is destroyed: You can Special Summon this card from your hand. ② If this card is Summoned while you control “The Sanctuary in the Sky”: You can target any number of monsters your opponent controls; your opponent chooses 1 of these effects for you to apply.
- Destroy those targets.
- Destroy all monsters your opponent controls, except those targets.
When Zeus shows up in Thunderbringer after his crew kills one of Helios’s cows, he forces Odysseus to choose between sacrificing himself or his crew as punishment. To me, that screamed of a board wipe card effect, but choosing between 1 card and everything else didn’t seem like a great choice unless your opponent had 1 very powerful monster out that was worth all the rest. Then I remembered Mark Rosewater describing a Spike-y (i.e. competitive player-oriented) Magic: The Gathering card that let you put your opponent’s cards into 2 piles and they then had to choose which pile to send to the graveyard. That seemed like a perfect way to represent Zeus’s ultimatum, so I replicated that effect with Yu-Gi-Oh!‘s syntax for Zeus. I tied that effect to The Sanctuary in the Sky, which is basically Yu-Gi-Oh!‘s rendition of Olympus, to prevent Zeus from being splashed into just any deck for his board wipe effect, and gave it a hard once per turn restriction to prevent The Sanctuary in the Sky decks from looping Zeus to abuse the effect. To round out the card, I gave him an effect to Summon himself when one of your monsters (i.e. Helios’s cows) is destroyed.
Zeus, Thunderbringer of Olympus’s art is Brotherhood of the Fire Fist – Eagle’s artwork horizontally reflected and outlined, with his eagle head and cloak tinted yellow, Eagle’s hammer replaced by a lightning spear comprised of lightning bolts from Lightning Vortex, and the background replaced with the horizontally reflected art for Raigeki.
Poseidon, Tideshaker of Olympus
“Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves.”
HUAD-EN027
Effect Monster
Level 8 WATER Fairy
2800 ATK / 3000 DEF
Development: Apr 2025 – May 2025
You can only activate effect ② of “Poseidon, Tideshaker of Olympus” once per turn. ① If a monster you control battles an opponent’s monster: You can Special Summon this card from your hand. ② If this card is Summoned while you control “The Sanctuary in the Sky”: You can activate 1 of these effects.
- Your opponent shuffles their hand into their Deck, then they draw the same number of cards.
- Destroy all Spell/Trap Cards your opponent controls.
Poseidon is more of a major character in EPIC than Zeus, slaughtering the bulk of Odysseus’s crew in Ruthlessness as retribution for blinding Polyphemus, and confronting Odysseus again in Get in the Water and Six Hundred Strike. That didn’t make brainstorming any easier for Poseidon, as my first impulse would be another board wipe effect, but Zeus already had that covered. At least, for monsters. With Poseidon using storms to interfere with Odysseus and his crew’s return to Ithaca and storm-themed in Yu-Gi-Oh! often destroying Spell/Trap cards, I opted to give Poseidon a Spell/Trap board wipe effect, also tied to The Sanctuary in the Sky. However, with modern Yu-Gi-Oh!‘s focus on hand traps and actual Trap cards being powercrept into oblivion, I figured giving Poseidon the option of resetting the opponent’s hand might be a reasonable alternative. Since he entered EPIC‘s story after Odysseus fought Polyphemus, I opted to let him Summon himself if another monster battled first.
Poseidon, Tideshaker of Olympus’s art is Mermail Abyssgaios’s artwork horizontally reflected and outlined, with the background replaced with the horizontally reflected art for Torrential Tribute.
Hades, Underworld Adjudicator of Olympus
“Your past is always close behind. Down in the Underworld.”
HUAD-EN028
Effect Monster
Level 8 DARK Fairy
2900 ATK / 2900 DEF
Development: Apr 2025 – May 2025
① If your opponent sends a monster they control to the GY (Quick Effect): You can discard this card. ② If this card is sent from your Deck to the GY, add it to your hand instead. ③ While this card is in your GY, if you control “The Sanctuary in the Sky”, apply these effects.
- This card can attack and be targeted for attacks while in your GY, but if it would be destroyed, banish it instead.
- Each time a monster(s) is sent to or leaves your opponent’s GY, inflict 300 damage to your opponent.
Unlike Zeus and Poseidon, Hades does not appear in EPIC: The Musical, so my design for him is based on my general knowledge of Hades from Greek mythology. As the lord of the underworld that generally stays in his domain, I figured that he would prefer to operate from his domain, so I gave him the effect of being able to battle while The Sanctuary in the Sky is on the field. Inflicting damage for each monster that goes to the graveyard also seemed appropriate. I don’t think Hades would be too happy about people who are supposed to be in the underworld escaping it as a general rule, so I made that effect apply when monsters left the graveyard as well. Since he wants to be in the graveyard to manage the dead, I made his Summoning condition discard him instead when your opponent sends a monster to the graveyard. To prevent you from just bypassing his “Summoning requirements” with cards like Foolish Burial, I also added the effect to add Hades to your hand instead if he’s milled.
Hades, Underworld Adjudicator of Olympus’s art is Erebus the Underworld Monarch’s artwork horizontally reflected and outlined, with the background replaced with the horizontally reflected art for Call of the Haunted, and the background of its art in turn replaced with the art for Magic Jammer recoloured purple.
Sam Huffer 