Return of the Titans: The Yu-Gi-Oh! Legendary Dragon Decks Reprint

Following the recent reprint of Yugi's Legendary Decks and Legendary Decks II, Konami has just released an unlimited reprint of the third of the four Legendary Deck Yu-Gi-Oh sets, the “Legendary Dragon Decks”. Originally printed in October 2017, this very interesting Collection is focused on Dragon type Monsters and brings back to the TCG some very icon cards and decks from different Yu-Gi-Oh! eras.

In fact, the Legendary Dragon Decks Reprint includes a deck based on the Legendary Dragons of Atlantis used by Yugi, Kaiba, and Joey to fight against Dartz and The Seal of Orichalcos, the Cyber Dragon originally debuted in 2005’s Cybernetic Revolution and the Dimensional Dragons from the Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V series. All these sets feature very iconic Monsters and strategies that characterised their era in the anime as well as the gameplay in the Trading Card Game. For example, Cyber Dragon has been considered one of the most influential monster ever created for the game while the Odd-Eyes Dragon is a great example of the Pendulum Summoning mechanics introduced in 2014. Obviously, the set dedicated to the Dragon of Atlantis is also filled with nostalgia together with its beloved Dark Magician cards.

While fans of the TCG and the Anime can be interesting in this unlimited reprint for its emotional value, it should be important to consider also the collectible and the gameplay value of Legendary Dragon Decks. These two aspects are not easy to evaluate for any of the Legendary Decks as they are designed more as a collection of card of a certain Archetype instead of being strategy based as most of the Structure decks. To help deciding if this set is right for you, we put together a few key information that we think may be useful to consider.

Legendary Dragon Deck: Anatomy of the set

Legendary Dragon Decks set includes three pre-made decks for a total of 153 cards:

• A first deck based on Yugi, Kaiba, and Joey's "Legendary Dragon" archetype and their Fusion Monsters (40-card Main Deck plus 11-card Extra Deck);
• A second deck based on Zane Truesdale's "Cyber Dragon" archetype (40-card Main Deck plus11-card Extra Deck);
• A third deck based on Yuya Sakaki's "Odd-Eyes" archetype that also includes other Four Dimension Dragons (41-card Main Deck plus 10-card Extra Deck)

Each one of these decks includes 5 Ultra-Rare cards while the rest are all Common cards. “Cyber Repair Plant", "Cyber Network", "Chimeratech Rampage Dragon" and "Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon" are included both as Common and Ultra-Rare. Finally, the Legendary Dragon Decks set includes alternative art variants of “Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon”, “Dark Rebellion Xyz Dragon”, Clear Wing Synchro Dragon”, and “Starving Venom Fusion Dragon”. These alternative artworks in particular were specifically designed for the Legendary Dragon Deck and therefore can only be obtained from this set.

Game play and Collector Appeal

All three decks included in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Legendary Dragon decks have very different gameplay styles.

The Legendary Dragon deck is based on the dragon forms of the three "Legendary Knights" introduced in the “Waking the Dragons” arc of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Anime: “The Fang of Critias”, “The Claw of Hermos” and “The Eye of Timaeus Timaeus”. In the TCG, each of these Legendary Dragons is a Spell card that can Special Summon different Fusion Monsters depending on which other card is used for the summoning. For example, The Fang of Critias can summon “Mirror Force Dragon” from the Extra Deck using the Trap card “Mirror Force” or “Tyrant Burst Dragon” if the players instead used the “Tyrant Wing”. The deck also includes the Spell card “Legend of Heart” that allows the player to banish up to three Legendary Dragon Spell cards from Hand or Graveyard in order to summon the "Legendary Knight” version of the Dragons banished directly from the deck (or Hand or Graveyard).

Together with the Legendary Dragon engine, this deck also includes Yugi's favourite Dark Magician and Dark Magician Girl and their Dragon Knight versions. Although these last two cards do not hold a great value in terms of gameplay, they have only been reprinted a couple of times so far and therefore can be hard to collect. It is worth noticing that this deck also includes a copy of “Apprentice Illusion Magician”, a card that has always been quite hard to find and that has been re-printed only in three sets including this one.

The second Deck of this set, "Cyber Dragon" includes LIGHT Machine monsters that are also part of the "Cyber" archetype. Cyber Dragon, the key Monster of this Archetype, is a 2100/1600 Lv5 Monster that can be Special Summoned from the player hand if they don't have monsters in play while their opponent controls at least one Monster. The deck also includes a few other Cyber Dragon Monsters (“Zwei”, “Drei”, “Vier”, “Herz”, “Nachster” and “Sieger”) with effects and abilities that help the player swarming the board preparing for bringing out powerful Fusion Monsters. Interestingly, a key perk of the Monsters belonging to this Archetype is the ability to be used as materials for "Chimeratech" DARK Machine Fusion Monsters although these are not directly related to the “Cyber Dragon” Archetype. "Chimeratech Fortress Dragon" and “Chimeratech Rampage Dragon” are very commonly used Machine Monsters that can deal multiple powerful attacks per turn. The Xyz Monster "Cyber Dragon Infinity" has also been a great staple in Cyber Dragon Decks due to its ability to gain a new material every turn by taking any monster from the field and to use them to negate card abilities. In terms of rarity, all the Ultra-and Super-Rare cards included in this deck had very few reprints since their first release and therefore can be quite collectible.

Last but not least, Yuya Sakaki's “Odd-Eyes” deck, exploits to the maximum the different Special Summoning mechanics. The aim of the strategy is to bring out "Odd-Eyes Absolute Dragon" and use it to Special Summon the strongest "Odd-Eyes Vortex Dragon", Vortex Dragon has the ability to bounce a card once Special Summoned to the Field and, most important, can be revived from the Grave Yard to repeat this effect as many times as needed. The strategy of this deck also offers a lot of redundancies including the Search and Negate effects of most of most of Odd-Eyes Spell Cards including "Sky Iris" Field Spell and "Duelist Alliance". Among the three different decks, this last one is the closest to a modern competitive list at least in terms of build and mechanics.  

Legendary Dragon Deck: Final thoughts

The reprint of an historical set is always an interesting event in any Trading Card Game as it usually offers the opportunity to new and seasoned players to get their hands on products they may have missed and that made the history of their favourite game. This is absolutely the case for the unlimited reprint of the Legendary Dragon Decks disregarding the fact that the cards from this set are not really actual and they will likely not see much play in competitive events.

On the other hand, the three decks that come in the set are quite fun to play and they are very suitable for casual games. In addition, some of the rarest cards of this collection have a potential to retain some collectible value. At the time of writing, the value of these cards on the secondary market is not too high but this can change in the future in particular considering the alternative art cards included in this set and the limited number of reprints these cards had in the past.

In general, I think the price would be the biggest factor to consider when deciding if buying this set or not. For example, Legendary Dragon Deck is listed on Magic Madhouse with a 20% discount that is actually a pretty good deal considering that you get three very different decks that can be used to learn different Yu-Gi-Oh! mechanics or just to play with your friends.