Thought Ruler Archfiend - Viable?

"Thought Ruler Archfiend"

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, today I will be talking about a card that has seen very little play in the past few formats. If you haven't guessed what it is, it's "Thought Ruler Archfiend", or TRA for short.

For those of you who don't know what it is or what it does, I have provided the effect below.

Thought Ruler Archfiend
✪✪✪✪✪✪✪✪ DARK
Psychic / Synchro / Effect
1 Tuner + 1 or more non-Tuners
When this card destroys a monster by battle and sends it to the Graveyard, gain Life Points equal to that monster's original ATK. You can pay 1000 Life Points to negate the activation of a Spell or Trap Card that targets 1 Psychic-Type monster, and destroy it.
ATK 2700 DEF 2300

Previously, TRA had a terrible habit of being stolen by Goyo Guardian. The March 2011 ban list took care of that, considerably boosting TRA's playability. With that threat gone, the only remaining threats to this card are Solemn Warning and Thunder King Rai-Oh.

Most people find this card somewhat inadequate, however, there are many reasons to use this card once more. First and foremost, this card is pretty hard to stop, almost more so than the infamous Stardust Dragon. Full immunity to Compulsory Evacuation Device, Forbidden Lance and Enemy Controller is nothing to ignore, especially considering Book of Moon is now limited.

In addition, this card's life boosting effect is massive. Normally, life point increase is trivial, but when you're gaining 2000 or more life points at a time, it quickly makes you very hard to kill. Additionally, it helps late game. Most of the threats to this card will most likely have been used against its comrades, allowing this card to wreak a path of destruction unopposed. It will quickly restore your life and make your Solemn Warnings active again. This can most certainly spell disaster for your opponent and assure you victory.

I'm sure you can see why I like this card so much. In tandem with Solemn Warning, a card that is prolific in today's metagame, this card becomes a very powerful force.

Speaking of metagame, Psychics will most likely surge in use with the advent of Extreme Victory, which adds to this card's potency. Having a field of very hard to kill monsters backed by a back row of very powerful spell and trap cards seems like a very hard match up to me. That said, we will need to see how successful Psychics will be before we start to get ahead of ourselves.

Have fun trying this guy out again. You may find yourself pleasantly surprised.

~Valafar123