Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist Alliance – Pendulum Monsters, SatellarKnights, and Shaddolls

Two weeks ago Konami released the newest Yu-Gi-Oh! set Duelist Alliance. This heavily changed the game in a matter of time and includes new monsters, deck types and more Pendulum monsters. You’ll engage the newest method of summoning Pendulum, which allows you to special summon monsters from your hands (you’ll need the correct requirements).

In Japan the Shaddoll deck has been one of the top decks played, and players have been excited to use this deck since it focuses heavily on flip effects and fusion summoning. Artifacts also get two supports with cards which can be great to splash on any deck.

So after opening 12 packs of Duelist Alliance, I pulled 1 ultra and 5 supers. The ultra was a brand new lightsworn monster, “Felis, Lightsworn Archer,” who is a level 4 tuner. Her ability allows her to destroy a monster on the opponent’s field, and after three cards are sent to the graveyard. She can only be special summoned by sending her to the graveyard by a monster effect, which is pretty much every lightsworn. The Yang Zing monsters have some interesting abilities which allow them to special summon each other, and after Synchro Summoning them your synchro monster gets an added effect.

Pendulum Back is a pretty good card to hold onto for future decks since it allows you to return two cards from your graveyard if you have two Pendulum monsters on your Pendulum Zone. Since it’s one per turn, you can Pendulum Summon as many cards as you can. It add two extra monsters to summon.

There are quite a few cards in this set that players are really looking for, especially after a recent ARG tournament which includes the Satellarknight archtype (can special summon multiple monsters and swarm the field quickly.) It’s a very fast and powerful deck that allows you to summon from your hand and graveyard with the right monsters. A key card for the deck is Satellarknight Deneb, who lets you add any Satellarknight card from your deck to your hand when it is summoned. It works great when he is special summoned by Satellarknight Altair, who can summon any Satellarknight monster in the graveyard, leading to having an extra card in your hand and a XYZ on that turn.

There are quite a few cards in this set I think are great. Face-Off negates cards that activate in the damage step like Honest, Bujingi Crane, Forbidden Lance and destroys them, thus giving you the chance to stop your opponent’s attack. (They might be activating something to increase their attacks and destroy your monsters.) Chain Dispel is an interesting card to side deck. You chain it to a spell or trap cards being activated, and it will destroy all cards with the same name. The first card will activate and resolve, but if your opponent has any more copies of that card, you won’t have to worry.

Another deck to keep an eye out for is the Burning Abyss cards, which have the ability to keep coming as well as being able to special summon from the graveyard and deck if they are sent to the graveyard. Cards like Tour Guide from the Underworld and Crane Crane can really make good use of these cards, creating XYZ monsters to swarm the field. With an ace card like Dante Traveler of the Burning Abyss, the deck can only get better with more support. 

Duelist Alliance does change the face of the game, and with the release on the Mega-Tins this Friday, the game is only getting better for every duelist.