Dragunities, The new Zombies!!??? ( article )

The Dragunity archetype gained new support and were to be completed by the release of their own structure deck. The archetype immediately caused a lot of discussion on how to run the deck, different variants, the perfect extra deck for it and so on. This reminds me of the rather old Zombies back in the September 2009 –March 2010 format, in which Zombies and Twilight decks reigned supreme. I say this not only because I personally believe the deck holds lots of potential in becoming a Tier 1 deck but also because half the Yu-Gi-Oh! world is toying around with them, and we all know when a certain archetype has that much commotion it is bound to be used a lot. But the question as to why the deck will be used a lot is rather easy to answer; the deck is fast, aggressive and can bring out any level 8 synchro monster on their first turn if you open with a decent opening hand. Note that I said decent and not a good opening hand, since if you would open with a good opening hand there are no limits to the opening field you could set-up.

Now I hear people say; “Ok Dutch, but how do we get such a field?”, pay close attention to what this article is going to teach you about Dragunities and you will know exactly how to just do that.
Let me begin with explaining some of their key-cards, and what card is better to speak off than Dragon Ravine;

Effect

:

Once per turn, during your Main Phase, you can discard 1 card to activate 1 of these effects:
● Add 1 Level 4 or lower "Dragunity" monster from your Deck to your hand.
● Send 1 Dragon-Type monster from your Deck to the Graveyard.

This card is the main engine in the deck and actually the card to keep on the field if you are using Dragunities and the card to get rid of if your opponent uses them. But why is this card so important is as followed;

• It is a Foolish burial
• It is a Reinforcements of the Army for Dragunities

This combination of effects allows the user to always have the cards needed to make big plays in their hand or graveyard. Besides this awesome combination of effects, Dragon Ravine holds 1 important ruling; “ The effects of Dragon Ravine do not target”. Therefore it allows you, the user of Dragon Ravine for safer plays with it and thus assuring your moves to be consistent and successful.

Besides this awesome cards, the entire Dragunity archetype is designed to support each other like Blackwings and Zombie do. This allows the user of them to have consistent big plays ready at any time in the duel and plan their moves far ahead. Planning their moves far ahead is done in a combination of their Field spell card; Dragon Ravine and their monsters mainly being Dragunity Dux, Dragunity Legionnaire, Dragunity Phalanx and Dragunity Aklys. I will go over them 1 by 1 so that you fully understand the greatness of these cards.




Dux has an awesome combination with Phalanx, due to Dux’s effect Phalanx can be equipped to Dux and thereby special summoned due to Phalanx’s own effect. This way you can synchro for any level 6 Synchro in the game that doesn’t have specific summoning requirements that cannot be met with Dux and Phalanx. The main target to synchro for is: Dragunity Knight-Vajrayana because this Dragon is the Dragon that allows you to fetch Phalanx or any other level 3 or lower Dragunity dragon-type monster from your grave and equip it to this card. And by fetching Phalanx from your graveyard you can then once more synchro only now into a level 8 synchro monster of your choice, mainly Stardust Dragon though, for that protection Dragunities need to proceed with doing more rather big plays if not the OTK play. As promised above I will also be talking about Dragunity Legionnaire;

Effect: When this card is Normal Summoned, you can select 1 Level 3 or lower "Dragunity" Dragon-Type monster in your Graveyard, and equip it to this card as an Equip Card. You can send 1 "Dragunity" card from your Spell & Trap Card Zone to the Graveyard to select 1 face-up monster your opponent controls, and destroy it.

With Legionnaire I like to go for Aklys to gain more field advantage and thereby more advantage in the long run. How to do that you ask; You fetch Aklys from the graveyard with the effect of Legionnaire and use Legionnaire’s effect to destroy Aklys and you are nor destroying 1 monster on your opponents side of the field, then right after that Aklys’s effect resolves and you can now pop another card on your opponents field. This means you just got a free +1 while maintaining field advantage and you have 1200 attack monster on your side of the field that can be used for all sort of means, for example; Dragunity Arma Mystletainn.

Effect: You can Special Summon this card from your hand by sending 1 face-up "Dragunity" monster you control to the Graveyard. When this card is Normal or Special Summoned from the hand, you can select 1 Dragon-Type "Dragunity" monster in your Graveyard, and equip it to this card.

Assuming you previously did the combination of Legionnaire + Aklys and cleared your opponents field of any threats, while you have Dragunity Arma Mystletainn in your hand. By Dragunity Arma Mystletainn’s own effect you can now summon it and bring out a previously send to the grave Phalanx to synchro into a level 8 synchro monster of your choice and gain even more advantage. Dragunity Arma Mystletainn also allows you to recycle your field in meaning the previously quipped Aklys could also be re-equipped only now onto Dragunity Arma Mystletainn and with a previously summoned Scrap Dragon you can now go on for even more advantage and game ending moves. An important side note is; That if you bring out Dragunity Arma Mystletainn by the effect of Aklys your opponents Bottomless Trap Hole, Torrential Tribute and cards of that nature will miss their timing due to that Aklys’s equipping effect has to resolve and because of that the last thing to happen is Aklys being equipped to Dragunity Arma Mystletainn and not the summon of Dragunity Arma Mystletainn, also a different interesting side note is that you yourself lose the ability to respond to Dragunity Arma Mystletainn for the same reason your opponent losses it., so be sure to keep that in mind. This also counts for Dragunity Arma Leyvaten, and even more important I might say; the effects of both Dragunity Arma Mystletainn and Dragunity Arma Leyvaten will not be able to resolve as well, also due to the effect of Aklys. Since I humbly mentioned Dragunity Arma Leyvaten, let us look into it a little bit more shall we.

Effect: You can Special Summon this card from your hand or your Graveyard by removing from play 1 face-up monster you control equipped with a "Dragunity" card(s). When this card is Normal or Special Summoned, you can select 1 Dragon-Type monster in your Graveyard, except "Dragunity Arma Leyvaten", and equip it to this card. When this card is sent to the Graveyard by your opponent's card effect, you can select 1 of the monsters that were equipped to this card when it was sent to the Graveyard, and Special Summon that monster from the Graveyard.

As you might be able to see, the effects of Dragunity Arma Leyvaten and Dragunity Arma Mystletainn look alike, but they differ from each other a lot as well. And that difference makes all the difference in the world, since it allows you to use certain combinations that can even be considered as loops. The difference lies within the being able to fetch a Dragon-Type monster and a Dragunity Dragon-type monster. Dragunity Arma Lyvaten is able to equip any Dragon-type monster you have in the graveyard at the time of his summon ( unless he is summoned by the effect of Aklys which I previously explained ). This allows the controller of Dragunity Arma Lyvaten to have so many different possibilities a few of them being;


Now most of you have heard about the Light and Darkness Dragon combination before and I have even explained a bit of it in my previous article; “ What to look out for this Format”. But today you will learn all about it;


You can make a loop with Dragunity Arma Lyvaten and "Light and Darkness Dragon". When you summon Dragunity Arma Lyvaten, equip "Light and Darkness Dragon" to it. Whenever Leyvaten is destroyed, your field will be cleared by the effect of "Light and Darkness Dragon". Then, use "Light and Darkness Dragon's" other effect to Special Summon "Leyvaten" from your graveyard, re-equip "Light and Darkness Dragon" to it, and repeat. The only weakness in this loop is cards that can remove the two monsters from play, or send them back to the hand or deck. This way you keep having Dragunity Arma Lyvaten and thereby a 2600 attack powerhouse, which is always a nice thing.

Now there is 1 card I have briefly mentioned, but deserves its own special place while talking about Dragunities and you might have guessed it already…….. Dragunity Knight – Vajrayana.

Effect: 1 Dragon-Type Tuner + 1 or more non-Tuner Winged Beast-Type monster(s).

When this card is Synchro Summoned, you can select 1 Level 3 or lower Dragon-Type "Dragunity" monster in your Graveyard and equip it to this card as an Equip Card. Once per turn, you can send 1 Equip Card equipped to this card to the Graveyard to double this card's ATK until the End Phase.

This card is the main Synchro Monster Dragunity decks will go for, why?, because of its ability to or become a 3800 Beater for 1 turn, but mostly because it’s ability to abuse Phalanx and synchro into level 8 Synchro Monster of your choice. This card will mainly be synchro’d for while using Dux and Phalanx. Thus meaning you go from a lonely level 4 monster into a level 8 synchro monster while only summoning it, and of course with the amazing effect of Dragunity Knight – Vajrayana.


Now that I have pretty much covered all monsters I consider to be a staple in every Dragunity deck it is time to show you a skeleton monster line-up for your Dragunity deck:



Now that you have a skeleton of the monsters for a pure Dragunity deck let me continue with the spells needed for the deck. As explained previously, you just need to have 3 copies of Dragon Ravine, it allows you to create so many plays for yourself that is it just a must have and pretty much the most important card in your deck. To ensure you will have a Dragon Ravine on your opening turn you also include 3 copies of Terraforming in your deck, to search out your Dragon Ravine. With a Field spell heavy format you just need to have 3 copies of Terraforming, some examples of decks that run Field Spells; Gravekeeper’s, other Dragunity decks, some Six Samurai builds, Geartown Demise, Wetland beat down decks and many more. But are 3 copies of Terraforming enough to ensure yourself of having a Dragon Ravine in your opening hand even though you have a 44.7% chance of having it already in your opening hand.
For those unfamiliar with the math behind this I advise you to pay close attention to the following paragraph:

We have 40 cards in the deck to make sure we have the highest possible rate of getting it in our opening hand.
nCr(copies of card, # in starting hand) x nCr(cards in deck - copies of card), (cards being drawn - # in starting hand))

nCr(3,1) x nCr(40-3,6-1) + nCr(3,2) x nCr(40-3,6-2) + nCr(3,3) x nCr(40-3,6-3) = 1,513,596

That determines the possibility of drawing one, two, or three copies of the card in your starting hand. So, we just take that and divide by the total number of hands to get:
1,513,596 / 3,383,380 = 0.447 or 44.7%

And we have our answer. Of course you not only have the 3 copies of Dragon Ravine itself since we also have 3 copies of Terraforming ( which actually can be considered 3 extra Dragon Ravine copies ) and thus raising our chances of having it, the chance being: 64.96%

But that is not enough as well, that is why we have a draw engine designed to serve both the purposes of having more speed in the deck but also having a Phalanx or an Aklys in the grave for your Dux or Legionnaire. It being; Cards of Consonance.

Effect: Discard 1 Dragon-Type Tuner monster with 1000 or less ATK to draw 2 cards.

Meaning it pitches your Dragunity Phalanx and your Dragunity Aklys in the graveyard for 2 new fresh draws. This is important for the speed and thereby tempo of the deck. By increasing the tempo of the deck itself you increases the chances of opening with a Dragon Ravine. Many people are arguing about how many copies should be ran in a Dragunity build, while I myself have already a number in mind, it being 2. In my humble opinion 2 copies is all you need because you also ditch your Tuners for the effect of Dragon Ravine to get a Dux or Legionnaire from your deck. So 2 copies of it is my personal preference while many others believe 3 copies of Cards of Consonance is the better approach.

With this being explained I will let you see my personal spells and traps from my own Dragunity deck:



Now I think it should be a good time to explain the title of the article. Zombies in their prime-time ( in my opinion it was in the September 2009 –March 2010 format ) is because Dragunities highly abuse the graveyard, support each other in the meaning of “re-summoning” each other from the grave and abusing their effects, are capable of swarming the field with Synchro Monsters in 1 turn and are used all over the world within many different concept builds such as;



As for the Light and Darkness Dragunity variant out there, they focus on getting the set-up with Dragunity Arma Leyvaten and Light and Darkness Dragon to keep putting pressure on their opponents with a constant 2600 attack beater, while still performing their usual synchro summons and control plays. This sure is a deck to keep in mind, when you hear people say; “He, he is playing Dragunities but I don’t know what type”. There are several good ways to let the set-up fail, mainly Effect Veiler is the card I would try and use versus that set-up due to it being a staple in nearly every deck these days, and thereby a common answer/out to the situation.


Hopeless Dragunity decks are way more aggressive then the Light and Darkness dragon variant. They have the Future Fusion, Red-eyes Wyverns and Red-eyes darkness Metal Dragon to keep forcing their opponent back by summoning tons of powerhouses onto their side of the field, and control the duel from there on out. Even if they open with like 1x Red-eyes Wyvern and a Red-eyes Darkness Metal Dragon is not a problem, due to the awesome effect of Dragon Ravine. They just pitch them in to the graveyard and abuse the Wyvern and Darkness Metal from there. Here is a deck list to give you a good impression on how this variant looks like:


Assault Mode Dragunity decks on the other hand are still inconsistent since not that many people are trying to play this variant. In my opinion we shouldn’t, the normal Dragunity decks provide you with enough swarming and possible plays each turn. Of course Stardust Dragon Assault Mode is able to negate anything in your path, but I don’t think it is needed. Yet I will show you a deck list that should give you a good insight in that specific deck that a few people like to run.


This variant of Dragunities has been popular in the beginning of the Dragunity structure deck release and are still seen a lot. They are known for their fast combo plays just like normal Dragunities but with Falcon out they just have an additional 2000 attack beater which can just keep on returning Dragon Ravine to your hand. But for the better plays you could also return a “dead” Dragunity monster on your field back to hand and pitch it for Dragon Ravine and get out a new one that is alive, this way you have lost nothing and gained the possibility of getting your play done plus Falcon being able to attack. This deck highly focuses on being aggressive and getting the damage o the board. Of course you wouldn’t need to fear it, but you surely should keep in mind and to get a better impression of what you might face in several events here is a deck list that will grand you that insight.



The Falcon builds out there could tech a lot of different cards in their builds such as; Swords of Revealing Light, Fiendish Chain, Call of the Haunted and even Royal Oppression like I did in the above deck list. Just keep on returning those to get your own plays done, set Royal Oppression again and stop your opponents plays.


In the past we have seen a lot of decks trying to fuse the Black Salvo part in their normal decks to create a powerful Hybrid deck an example of that being Salvo Sworn. And the Cyber dark Dragunities are no different from abusing Black Salvo’s effect for a lot of things like; nuking the field with a Black Rose dragon if needed, bringing out good level 7 synchro monsters, getting a fodder for the effects of monsters like Scrap Dragon a Trident Dragion yet to be summoned etc. So here is a deck list of a Cyber Dark Dragunity deck;


The deck functions the same as the pure Dragunity decks out there. Search ravine pitch a “dead” card from your hand and fetch a better one from your deck. But with the additional powerhouse Dark Simorgh in this build, you would like to have a Stardust Dragon and Dark Simorgh out on your opening turn. With these 2 out your opponent will have a serious hard time dealing with that set-up and thus it allows to open up a few more plays yourself.


Last but not least the Dragunity Primus Pilus OTK deck. This deck is known for its awesome but rather easy one turn kill play. The OTK play resolves around cards like Primus Pilus, Brandistock and Swallow’s Nest. A rather easy set-up but as like any other OTK deck out there is also requires some luck but most of all a good, well-balanced main deck. So to give you a good example of a Primus Pilus OTK deck here is a deck list of a Primus Pilus OTK I would go with;

Monsters: 16
3x Dragunity Primus Pilus
3x Dragunity Brandistock
3x Dragunity Phalanx
3x Dragunity Dux
1x Dragunity Arma Mystletainn
1x Dragunity Aklys
2x Dragunity Legionnaire




How does this deck OTK you ask, well its rather simple actually. You summon a Dragunity Primus Pilus and equip a Dragunity Brandistock onto it and gain an extra attack by doing so. When you have fired of two rounds of the OTK gun you activate Swallow’s Nest from your hand or when you had it set and summon a new Primus Pilus from your deck and repeat the process until you can say good game sir. So basically when you have a Brandistock in the grave you only need 2 cards in your hand it being Primus Pilus and a Swallow’s Nest. Of course Ravine helps you get Brandistock in the grave along Cards of Consonance but that doesn’t count for Primus Pilus, to get him you have Pot of Duality and the usual deck thinning plus the revival option of Monster Reborn. Royal Decree itself is my personal preference for this deck, due to a lot of traps can mess up the OTK play and Royal Decree is just awesome in negating them.

With these deck list being published I’m eager to see which Dragunity deck(s) you come up with. So let’s get to it and show us your Dragunity decks with some awesome new found idea’s to abuse them like we all could do with Zombies. I hope you all enjoyed reading this article and gained some new interest in this amazing archetype.

I wanted an article about Dragunities, thanks a bunch TDP :)
+1 for this. I think you should have mentioned the tridient dragon OTK as well . Either way it's awesome , KIU

Very nice article TDP!
The article by itself is enough to convince players to try out this deck and it certainly offers a lot of options, most of which could prove lethal when performed in a duel.

The only problems I noticed in your article were:
1) you included 5x Assault Beast in the Assault build (misstype I guess)
2) the primus pilus list is not alligned in the center
But of course those are minimal ;)

So...as for the Dragunity deck ideas, I already had an idea since the support was annoucned, but, as always, my ideas are for fun decks.
I've been meaning to build a Malefic deck and the Dragunity support offers speed and makes the deck a little more reliable. I've, of course, not concluded in a build, but
Ravine - Dux/Legi - Mal Stardust/Mal Blue Eyes
is definately an OTK that couldn't be ignored.

And if it wasn't for the Veiler and Crow, I'm almost sure Dragunity decks would top.

Pretty nice Job TDP ;)
The article is verry interesting ! the Only thing I dont like is that you used Zombies to compare this deck :( Zombies were Better than that, They won the World Championship ;) but still +1 for you !

I was actually looking for some dragunity info/guide. thnx a lot TDP u gotta +1 from me

Firstly I would like to thank you all for the appreciation shown for the article, since it does mean a lot to me. Secondly to comment on you all:

Vem123: A Trident Dragion OTK can be done with any of these Dragunity Builds since a Trident Dragion is a staple in your extra deck when using Dragunities. That is why i havent mentioned it like i did with the Primus OTK deck.

Sinakis: on the beast thingy you are correct, the 2x Best should be 1x Effect Veiler and 1x Dragunity Arma Mystletainn. Will fix that right away, thanks for poiting it out though. On the second issue, I have done that on purpose, because of the Primus+ Brandi+Swallows nest is a 3 image picture and imo it looks better when done the left>center>right coding for the monsters, spells and traps above that image instead of just centering the entire deck above it.

Scorpion: I know Zombies have won more than Dragunities in the past, but give them time and they will amaze you. On top of that if you look at the archetype like I do, you will see that the Zombies play style has a lot in common with that of Dragunity ( fetching, summoning from grave, synchro swarming, plenty of OTK options and lots of plays every turn ). That is why i compare them to zombies, as mentioned in the article though.

Frost: Consider it found .. lmao, thanks for the comment.

Quote :

The effects of Dragon Ravine do not target”. Therefore it allows you, the user of Dragon Ravine for safer plays with it and thus assuring your moves to be consistent and successful.

I don't understand :?: :?:

Sin: what do you mean it would top if it wasn't for crow and veiler? They already are topping WITH crow and veiler, and people are still trying to figure them out :P

good article as always tdp, thanks :). The mirror match is the weirdest thing ever haha. Fields are replaced every turn or two with the same field and you make the same exact plays even more than other mirror matches xD. Same sort of field madness vs gravekeepers, it kinda funny lol

e^ipi+1=0 wrote:

Quote :

The effects of Dragon Ravine do not target”. Therefore it allows you, the user of Dragon Ravine for safer plays with it and thus assuring your moves to be consistent and successful.

I don't understand :?: :?:

I mean by that, that cards that negate you from "targettting" a card in your deck cannot be used versus Dragon Ravine. Therefore it allows you to play your cards with more "secrurity". Since if you pitched a card to search a card to add to your hand or send to your graveyard, and you opponent chains or already has a card on the field that does not allow you to target anything in your deck it would mean you lost had a minus for your hand, which is important in Dragunities since you pretty much run trough your hand when you play the deck and hit off with Ravine ( which is a lot ).

Hope you understand now, if not PM me or hit me up on Ham and I will explain it more in detail to you.

Quote :

You can make a loop with Dragunity Arma Lyvaten and "Light and Darkness Dragon". When you summon Dragunity Arma Lyvaten, equip "Light and Darkness Dragon" to it. Whenever Leyvaten is destroyed, your field will be cleared by the effect of "Light and Darkness Dragon". Then, use "Light and Darkness Dragon's" other effect to Special Summon "Leyvaten" from your graveyard, re-equip "Light and Darkness Dragon" to it, and repeat. The only weakness in this loop is cards that can remove the two monsters from play, or send them back to the hand or deck. This way you keep having Dragunity Arma Lyvaten and thereby a 2600 attack powerhouse, which is always a nice thing.

Light and darkness dragon cant be special summoned.

^Light and Darkness Dragon can special summon Arma Leyvaten.

^^ I understand now, though, card in deck(and any other non-public-knowledge) can never be targeted, so there'll be no card that able to negate card that target in deck ^^v

ineedbettercards wrote:

Quote :

You can make a loop with Dragunity Arma Lyvaten and "Light and Darkness Dragon". When you summon Dragunity Arma Lyvaten, equip "Light and Darkness Dragon" to it. Whenever Leyvaten is destroyed, your field will be cleared by the effect of "Light and Darkness Dragon". Then, use "Light and Darkness Dragon's" other effect to Special Summon "Leyvaten" from your graveyard, re-equip "Light and Darkness Dragon" to it, and repeat. The only weakness in this loop is cards that can remove the two monsters from play, or send them back to the hand or deck. This way you keep having Dragunity Arma Lyvaten and thereby a 2600 attack powerhouse, which is always a nice thing.

Light and darkness dragon cant be special summoned.

He isnt special summoned in any point. Leviaten is special summmoned through ladd and ladd equips to him

Pro article TDP, as always.