The 10 best Yu-Gi-Oh! cards from legendary icons to game-changing powerhouses
Posted by Magic Madhouse on 18th Jun 2023
Yu-Gi-Oh! is one of the two greatest TCG franchises including video games, movies and anime and manga series. The aim of the game is to attack your opponent by summoning monsters while using spell and trap cards to create a variety of effects that can support either your attack or defence strategy.
The 10 best Yu-Gi-Oh! cards from legendary icons to game-changing powerhouses
Yu-Gi-Oh! is one of the two greatest TCG franchises including video games, movies and anime and manga series. The aim of the game is to attack your opponent by summoning monsters while using spell and trap cards to create a variety of effects that can support either your attack or defence strategy.
The two biggest peculiarities of this game are the lack of a resource system (mana/energy) and a wide range of mechanics to summon your monsters. Both of these aspects contributed to create a game with a lot of complexity and strategy that feels much different from the two other most popular TGC games.
While the game heads towards its 25th anniversary, it is nice to look back together to some of the best Yugioh cards that played a major role in the story of this game.
1. Dark Magician
“The ultimate wizard in terms of attack and defence”
Dark Magician is one of the two most iconic cards in Yu-Gi-Oh! and a great monster to have on the field due to its great attack and defence values. Although it does have not any special effect, Dark Magician's true strength lies on an impressive amount of dedicated support cards offering a wide range of strategies. Among them, two good staples recently reprinted are Magician's Rod and Magicians' Souls. The first searches for Dark Magician support cards while the other allows either to trade spell/trap cards or to bring to the field Dark Magician right away.
2. Blue-Eyes White Dragon
"My pride and my soul, my Blue-Eyes White Dragon!"
As all the fans know, Blue-Eyes White Dragon is the other most iconic card in Yu-Gi-Oh! with its 3000 ATK, it has been the strongest Normal monster in the game since its release. To best exploit its power, players can use cards like Dictator of D. or Sage with Eyes of Blue to bring out Blue-eyes quickly and Blue-Eyes Jet Dragon to then protect it. Adding Blue-Eyes Tyrant Dragon and Ultimate Fusion will also turn your dragons into a even more terrifying monster that can attack every monsters once each every turn. Best news, very good stables for Blue-Eyes has been recently reprinted in its structure deck and in Battle of Chaos.
3. Exodia The Forbidden One
“Exodia, obliterate!”
Exodia, The Forbidden One is among the best Yu-Gi-Oh! cards as the very first one providing instant win as far as a player manages to draw all five pieces of Exodia. In today competitions, each of the pieces are actually limited and pulling off the winning condition requires a very strong strategy. An option players can exploit is to also add to their deck Exodius, The Ultimate Forbidden Lord, a Lv10 monster that can attack only by sending a Normal monster to the graveyard. If all five different parts of Exodia are sent to the graveyard this way, the player still automatically wins the duel making this a good alternative to exploit Exodia cards.
4. Pot of Greed
“I will start my turn by playing Pot of Greed, which allows me to draw two more cards”
Pot of Greed is one of the very few cards that all Yu-Gi-Oh! Characters seem to have in their deck. This is mostly because this spell card can easily turn the tide of a match by allowing a player to draw 2 cards at no cost. Unfortunately this last aspect in particular forced Konami to ban this card in 2003 and to create a more balanced set of “pot” cards to fill the gap. Among them, the best one is for sure “Pot Of Avarice" that allows to shuffle 5 Monsters from the Graveyard into the Deck in order to draw 2 cards.
5. Yata-Garasu
“Oh, are you going to interfere with my plan too?”
Opening the structure deck “Battle of Legend: Crystal Revenge” you may have noticed Yata-Garasu, a spirit monster with 200 ATK that can force the opponent to skip their next draw phase if they took damage from it.
Although it does not seem so powerful, this cards has been brought back from the ban list after 17 years. In fact, its effect can win the match once combined with cards that can clear the board from monsters and spell/traps. Managing to also have your opponent to discard their hand partially or in full created in the past a perfect winning strategy that can be exploited now once again.
6. Cyber Dragon
“Cyberdark Dragon's effect activates!”
Mainly brought to fame by Zane Truesdale in the GX series, Cyber Dragon is a Lv5 Machine monster with 2100 ATK and 1600 DEF that can be special summoned if your opponent is the only only with monsters on field. This effect can not only bring a quick overturn your opponent card advantage but it also allows a Lv5 monster to be summoned without a sacrifice. Cyber Dragon is also the main material for incredibly powerful fusion and Synchro monsters including one that can reach potentially 11000 ATK and attack multiple times.
“Every monster he has with over 1500 ATK points will be diseased and useless”
Crush Card Virus is one of the classic anime cards used by Kaiba to cripple the opponent's deck by removing all their most powerful monsters. Although its power has been slightly reduced in TGC and reviving strategies are more common now than in the early years of the game, this card can still be quite disruptive for some decks that strongly rely on a very coordinated engine. Moreover, leaving the opponent with fewer cards in hand and no cheap material tokens may slow them down long enough to allow the player' strategy to kick-in and win the duel.
8. Maxx “C”
“Maxx C, again?!”
Maxx “C” is a very interesting card that allows a player to draw one card for each monster the opponent will special summon in their turn. Considering that competitive decks rely a lot on chains of special summoning from deck and graveyard, playing this card can be a very risky gamble as you can either get the cards you need to counteract the opponent strategy and you may risk to run out of cards very quickly. Interestingly, as players need to discard any card in excess of 6 at the end of their turn, if your deck is graveyard-based, Maxx “C” can be a great way to fuel your strategy quickly.
9. Legendary Six Samurai - Shi-En
"Destroy everything equally” (Oda Nobanaga)"
The introduction of Synchro monsters has strongly contributed in shaping the current competitive game. For example, you can turn a good competitive deck like "Six Samurai" into a really strong deck by just adding Legendary Six Samurai – Shi-En. Shi-En is not only a good Lv5 Synchro monster with 2500 ATK and 1200 DEF but it also has the ability to negate the activation and to destroy a spell/trap card per turn. Most important, it can prevent its deletion by sacrificing another six samurai monsters. As six samurai monsters are very easy and quick to summon, Shi-En is likely to enter the field very early providing a very good advantage to the player.
“Pendulum Summon!”
Once Pendulum strategies were at their finest, Konami released a very nice looking card, Performapal Monkeyboard, that went almost straight into the ban list after showing how good some pendulum monsters can be once combined with others. Monkeyboard is a Lv6 Scale 1 Pendulum monster with 1000 ATK and 2400 DEF. The key effect of this card is to allow a player to search for any Level 4 or lower Performapal from Deck. As this effect was not limited to “once per turn”, once players were able to easily fill the field with good Lv4 monsters in a very short time by combining Monkeyboard with “Performage Plushfire”.