Monarchs (2010)

Monarchs wouldn't start being treated as a theme officially till the Zexal era but even so, had found so much success even before the GX era. Their on tribute summon effects have always been handy after all so even with no specific spell and trap cards tailored to them yet there were other ways to build decks revolving around them. In the March 2010 format (essentially the middle of the 5DS era) more than enough cards existed now that granted easy bodies to tribute summon and this just but one of the many deck variants you can try that focus on easy special summons to tribute summon Monarchs.

Notes and strategy: Out of the classic Monarchs the strongest ones for on field removal are Raiza and Caius since they both do more than just destroy a card the old fashioned way. Raiza indirectly ruins your opponent's draw phase by putting the card on top of their deck and Caius removes cards from play while even dealing bonus damage if it's a dark attribute monster. This is way they are the main Monarchs we want to take advantage of here but their attribute combination also opens the door for us to utilize a BLS/DAD type boss monster; in this case Dark Simorgh. While not as overpowered as its role models, Dark Simorgh can still be useful as a 2700 attack monster and corner your opponent badly when they're unable to set monsters or spell and traps.

One of the biggest issues Monarchs always had (even after the got their broken structure deck in Arc-V) is not having a good way to grab Monarchs from the deck. I'm not a fan of Return of the Monarchs for various reasons and it isn't available in this format anyway. In the GX era Monarch decks used the D Hero engine for draw power and I'm doing something similar here using a full set of Cards of Consonance, Upstart Goblin and our 1 and valuable copy of Allure of Darkness of course. The goal here is to boost our consistency as much as possible and while it won't be perfect it can work very well a lot of the time to make it worthwhile. At this point in the format, variety for appropriate tuners to discard for Cards of Consonance was not abudant. Nevertheless, we have just about the monsters needed to get by. Debris Dragon is the best option; wind attribute monster, can get you a dragon synchro more often than you think and the 2000 defence isn't something to forget about either. It could also work out for you to set this monster and then tribute it next turn if your opponent couldn't kill it in battle. Dragunity Darkspear is also a tuner and while not offering as much as Debris it is the second best option from all the research I've done.

I also have a single copy of Thestalos and Jinzo as our only first turn tribute options. Unfortunately, the way I have this deck built gives it the weakness of not being able to do much when you play first. Besides tributing for these 2, your best other and literally only plays are just to set Marshmallon, Spirt Reaper or Sangan. The beauty of Monarchs is all the types of way you can build around them and for this version I'm forsaking all traps in favour of Gorz and other speed options. You can always just forget about Dark Simorgh and swap a Raiza for more Thestalos but even that has a drawback. If your opponent runs a lot of traps, play first and set everything then all of a sudden you can't reap the benefit of Thestalos. Battle Fader should be very self explanatory here, and many of the other chibi monsters here just special summon themselves for free for an easy tribute summon and are also dark attribute monsters fueling both Allure and Dark Simorgh. A lot of the small monsters chosen here can get revived with Debris and if you use your cards right you can even bring out level 8 dragon synchros not just level 7s.

March 2010 Format

This brings us to the end of this 2010 Monarch deck article. Dare I say, a very unique and creative version to go by but also a deck that's not only for show. I outlined some of its problems but it's also effective, particulrly against decks that can't summon multiple huge monsters at once. Well, I hope you enjoyed reading and learning about it and I'll see you guys on the next article!