Incarnate

Incarnate (新生; shinsei) is a family premiered in SD19 and SD20. Most of them are Ultimate cards, coming in all six colors, but there are some Spirits which also possess the family. It is also the family to introduce the keywords Ultimate Trigger, Critical Hit, Double Ultimate Trigger, Double Hit, and Cross Ultimate Trigger. When the Contract era came and gave a new wave of support to the family, now there are also some Nexus and Magic cards which possess the Incarnate family.
All Ultimate cards with this family indicate that said Ultimate cards used to have a Spirit version. For example, Ultimate-Siegfried has the Incarnate family because it also had a Spirit version released before it, which is The DragonEmperor Siegfried. However, it is unknown whether the Ultimates have any relations to their Spirit counterparts in lore, or they just happen to be similar creatures from two similar worlds.
== History ==
During the Ultimate era, which was when the Incarnate family was debuted, Ultimates in the family have little to no relation to each other in terms of effects. Some Ultimates may share similar effects (such as how in SD19 all Ultimates have the effect roughly generalised as "when opposing Spirits block, reduce an opposing Life"), so to give hints that they are supposed to be used together. However, most Ultimate cards, especially those of the X-Rare rarity, are often used as the lone Ultimate in the deck. One example is Ultimate-Da-Gon, which was the only Ultimate card needed in its deck to achieve the deck out win condition, thus leading to a limitation of one copy per deck.
As the anime series during the same time progressed, the characters Mugen, Ian, and Chocola evolved to become some of the most iconic Ultimate cards. While all of them still possess the Incarnate family, they lean towards to supporting their own family, Ultimate Dragon. In the same time, the anime also introduced the Tri-Dragon Deities, which were three specific powerful Ultimates representing the key cards of the previous anime protagonists, being Saviour, Siegwurm-Nova, and Sagitto-Apollodragon.
After the Ultimate era, the support of the Incarnate family came to a halt. Even with the re-introduction of Ultimates in God-King era, most of them did not possess the Incarnate family, and instead introduced the Evil God family. Then in God Advent era, the Ultimate decks even abandoned the Ultimates' unique families, and were only given appropriate families to their respective decks. There were still one or two new Incarnate family cards, but they provided no great impact to the game environment.
Bandai had a specific release schedule, in which besides releasing new cards, old cards were re-released with new effects to match the current era. When Contract era came, it was time for cards of the Ultimate era to be revived. Instead of simply stamping the "Revival" tag on the older cards, the official also introduced brand new Incarnate decks, featuring the aforementioned characters Mugen, Ian, and Chocola. These were also the first Spirit-oriented Incarnate decks, which Spirit cards of the Incarnate family were encouraged instead of Ultimate cards (though some of their effects still supported Ultimates). The three characters were given new evolutions, in which Mugendragon-the-First-Star was usually the preferred finisher due to easier supports in the Red color. However, with the release of Mugendragon-the-Trinity-Star in BS61, players were further encouraged to mix all three characters (hence the three colors: Red, Yellow, and Blue) into one deck for maximum potential.
When it comes to Contract Era: Realm, the family receives another wave of support being one of the two 15th anniversary focuses along with Bashin Toppa. The family is chosen for that it is also the 10th anniversary for the anime, Saikyo Ginga Ultimate Zero Battle Spirits. This time, it is a proper upgrade of the Ultimate era style of Incarnate deck, mixing both Spirits and Ultimates, and with Ultimates being the bosses of the deck. The deck also revolves around Ultimate Triggers like it was in the psat. While SD64 in Contract era focused on reviving Red cards used by Rei, SD67 focuses on reviving all the other colors used by Rei as well. New Incarnate Ultimates that are remake of the key Ultimates of Rei, like Ultimate-Beelzebeat-Eques and Ultimate-Odin-Striker, are introduced, while Ultimates like Ultimate-Siegfried and Ultimate-Alexander have received Revival in the SD and the booster set that comes next, BS66. Parallel to the revival of the Incarnate family, two new families: Extreme Contract and Holies appeared. In the lore, Holies seems to be Incarnate family Ultimates that are forced to retreat and displace after being defeated by the Evil Gods thousands of years after Mugen's era. The literal pronunciation of the two families in Japanese are also exactly the same (真聖 & 新生). With their special relationship, the two families share supporting cards, and Extreme Contract serves as the common Contract family between the two card pool, despite being two different decks in nature. 
== Trivia ==
* The family includes Ultimate-Gai-Asura, the first card to have Lv6, and having the highest BP among all legitimate cards, 50000 BP.
==Also see:==
* List of Incarnates family cards
Category:Family
Category:Incarnate