Blackwings (2010)

Blackwings are a very simple but effective theme of cards to use in the 5DS era. A lot of people also found their art concept cool and stylish and when you combine that with a lot of great cards it's no wonder they were one of the most popular decks of the era. I would dare say Blackwings were indeed the most popular deck of the 5DS era, especially in the 2009-2010 period. You can build a Blackwing deck in all kinds of way thanks to all the different cards they can utilize but the version I have here is what I like to address as a "standard" Blackwing deck from the March 2010 format, popularly referred to as Edison now. It's a great deck for a beginner to try as well.

Notes and strategy: One of the obvious but noteworthy aspects about Blackwings is that they're all dark attribute winged beast monsters. So many of the awesome cards from Phantom Darkness can work very well for them. Dark Armed Dragon was commonly used with Balckwings from the start but one of my favourite boss monsters to have here is The Dark Creator. Another underrated card that I like exploiting in this format is Dark Eruption. Gale was rightfully limited thanks to all the great assets it shared on 1 card. Dark Eruption was a nice way to try and recycle it, especially since Gale could be special summoned with its own effect for free if you had another Blackwing monster down. This interaction is sweet enough as it is but the card gains even more value when you can also recover Kalut back in your hand for reuse AND recover Blizzard too. Playing 2-3 copies is a must in my opinion here.

All of the synchro monsters should be pretty self-explanatory here but I know many players probably wouldn't max out on the Blackwing Synchros either. I do since it's my deck being showcased here but I understand why other players wouldn't. Blackwings in 2010 don't have many ways to generate card advantage so utilizing Black Whirlwind in a game can be the difference between winning or losing. Semi-Limited is just right for the card if you ask me but it's still in our best interest to see at least one copy early. Allure might help in that and that's why I also run 2 Upstarts.

While this is not Blackwing/Vayu Turbo deck a single copy of Vayu is pretty handy still, particularly because we don't really have many great Blackwing monsters to special summon from the deck with Shura when Gale is limited to 1. It's a pretty big waste to special summon Kalut, although this is where the sweetness of Dark Eruption shows again. When Vayu is summoned through Shura you can go for a decent level 5 synchro summon and then eventually get a free Blackwing Synchro with Vayu's effect from the grave. Worse comes to worse it's an easy card to sacrifice for Allure if you have it in hand and also the perfect monster to set and tribute with Icarus Attack. Speaking of Icarus Attack, I think most Blackwing players would use 2 or even 3 copies of this card but it is ultimately a 2 for 2 so I was never the biggest fan of it. Not to mention it also has the downside of triggering Starlight Road too.

March 2010 Format

This finishes my little deck article here on Blackwings. It's one of the stand-out decks of the March 2010 format for a reason and it really is possibly the best choice for a deck in the format if you don't know where to begin and you're new in the format. Blackwings in general are a deck that any hardcore yugioh fan should try at least once in my opinion! Thanks to everyone for reading and I'll see you on the next post!