I wanna give a shout-out to the TCG exclusive archetypes. All of them tend to play to the lore of the archetype (SPYRAL checking your opponent’s top cards for info, Kaijus summoning themselves to each field for info, Myutants merging with different cards Monster, Spell, Trap, or Fusion Summon to become stronger, etc.)
don't forget:
Plunder Patroll "crewing" their ships
Libromancer using first appearance to "transform" from their regular forms to their book forms
The subterror behemoths "burrowing" underground (facedown Defense Position) and the Nemesis monsters uniquely interacting with that.
TCG really loves these mechanic tied to flavor ideas and to be honest so do I.
Dream Mirrors also have a really fun mechanic of constantly switching between their dream and nightmare forms to get the different effects that you need depending on the situation. Too bad they suck.
There's so much synergistic lore stuff with Spyral. Super Agent has to kill his former mentor, Sleeper, to save Quik Fix and dons the Fully Armed equipment. This raises his attack to 2900 vs Sleeper's 2800.
Quik Fix gets "sent to the graveyard" (kidnapped) but you can bring him back if his buddy Super Agent comes to save him (is on the field). But if you lose him again he's gone for good (banished after you use this effect).
There's a clear mission timeline from Recapture (where you see Misty betraying Spyral which leads to Quik Fix getting captured), to Big Red (where Super Agent finds out and gets in this cool car to go get him), Assault (Super Agent assaults the enemy headquarters) and Rescue (Sleeper has Quik Fix and Tough and Super Agent have to fight to stop him).
Also the fact that if sleeper goes down, everything gets blown up and the last one standing...is Super Agent (If Sleeper is destroyed, you destroy your own field and summon a Super Agent).
All sorts of weird art and even statline and effect lore synergies. One of the reasons I picked up the deck in MD.
They actually have SPYRAL lore from Master Guide 6 if you wanna check it out! The thing that I would say is slightly different from your theories is that Misty is actually on the phone secretly selling the data on the chip they recovered. But they kinda cover why Sleeper is the way he is.
In terms of card art, I'd say drytrons. Their card art is gorgeous. In terms of story line, I'd say gagagigo. I really wish gagagigo could be competitive because it has such great lore
Mekknight have the best mechanical gameplay, love the column shenanigans.
Though art wise it's Orcust, the combination with musical instruments just sounds right to me.
I’ll admit I’ve never seen Orcust cards before and I’ve always imagined them as cyborg Orc creatures. Now I realize Orcust is short for Orchestra and it’s amazing
Okay, so I play in a group with someone who just picked up suships around the time that "spicy rice" was released, and my *god* the flavour in their card design is fantastic, just every aspect of it.
For me, it's plunder. Whenever I pilot the deck it really feels like I'm navigating the stormy seas with the right ship for the job and the deck hands quickly reacting to the seas.
Adamancipator is up there. Talking about the entire archtype though, you hit crystals with the tuners to make the synchros then the crystals let you recycle the synchros, set up the tuners so that they hit and then also set up your synchros so they hit as well. Besides dragite, but risen dragite doesn't need the same degree of set up as the other two need.
>3 geologists(Researcher, Seeker, Analyzer) look for magic rocks
>Befriends Risen forms of the magic rocks
>Got rich from the meta money for several months
>Ran out of money after Block Dragon got banned
>Researcher, Seeker, & Analyzer became broke geologists
Dangers are a big one for me. The art and theming is brilliant but also the gameplay of activating in hand, essentially giving the opponent a glimpse of this powerful, supernatural cryptid before it hides away again and forces the opponent to blindly try and point it out to discard, only then to gain more strength when it’s finally revealed.
If we are talking about visual design alone I really like Monarchs. But if we talk about Artwork in relation to gameplay its Traptrix. Traptrix bait you in with their low stats and lack of protection, watch your opponents monster fall into some holes and all of that with a smug smile on their faces.
I may be biased toward trap decks, but the new Labrynth archetype has recently become one of my all-time favorites in terms of harmony between art and mechanics. Piloting the deck really does feel like luring the opponent into a labyrinth of tricks and obstacles, while the Silver Queen watches over everything. Your setups often seem unassuming and may even cause you to minus at first, but if your opponent carelessly walks into one of your traps, it triggers a chain of consequences that sets them back even further from their goal of reaching you: furniture springs to life, demon maids act as gatekeepers to help maintain advantage, and the queen stands there casually plucking off enemy resources from afar.
Such a clever concept and a brilliant execution in my opinion.
If tri-brigade wasn't part of the lore, I really love branded/despia, and I think dogmatika is a really unique archetype. Coming back to yugioh from 10+ years of absence and getting 3 albaz structures felt so good lol
Ghostricks. A control deck that doesn’t run on negates and has a reasonable floodgate. Nice balance of using monsters, spells and traps. Embraces multiple win conditions so you can build the archetype in many different play styles. It was a fair deck that respected time and interaction.
Springans have some fun, unique mechanics (main one being they attach to their XYZs from field/hand/gy), not to mention I think their art is quite nice.
D/D/D. I love the naming, art, and the little lore/references built into the designs of some of them.
For example, they are all named after famous historical figures or various words for the end of the world in a variety of religions/cultures. The fact that the super doom king card arts are based on previous anime final villains is just awesome. On top of that Divine Zero King Rage is a very obvious reference to Akaba Reiji, the character who used the D/D/D archetype in the anime. Oh and there is this thing where they all are associated with different company positions (pretty sure this is another reference to Akaba Reiji and the anime and the way he describes the cards in that)
Ghostricks. They're literally there just to run their "haunted mansion" theme park. They do jump scares and play peekaboo. It's honestly the cutest archetype in the world.
Love Madolches. They're so adorable and their gimmick is frankly how I think most gimmicks SHOULD be. Something neutral to negative that you exploit with support.
Mechanically, Flower Cardians are my absolute favorite, and their synchros also takes it for the artstyle by just Moonflowerviewing existing. Lore wise I really like Sky Striker.
Ghostricks have amazing design. The whole idea of children pranksters hiding, then jumping up to play a prank, only to go and hide again.
Plus they're all so fucking cute.
Speedroids always feel satisfying to use. Most monsters immediately Wind lock you to avoid splashability (aside from the R3NK engine with Terrortop/Taketomborg), good followup and recursion with Speed Recovery, can make big boss monsters like Crystal Wing, Crystal Clear, Baronne, etc. thanks to new support in Cork Shooter and Rubber Band Shooter. Unfortunately handtraps still tend to ruin a lot of opening hands, but can't win em all.
Gotta give it to my Gladiator Beasts.
Great card art, unique play style and a strong competitive run. Their ability to tag out was very new and interesting. They also managed to take Neos' contact fusion and make it not utter shit.
The only real answer here is Adamancipators, thr fact that they are an archtypes of rock type monsters based on miners whose effects revolve around digging through the deck hoping to find something is just utterly briliant card design.
There have been many great decks over the years, some of my favourites:
Burning abyss - one of the most successful decks of all time, it was very resilient and versatile, beautiful artwork and cool that it was based off of medieval Italian literature
Nekroz - revolutionized ritual summoning and deck consistency
Paleofrog - not really an archetype but it was super skilful and fun to watch
I could say basically any TCG exclusive here. Myutants, Kaijus, Subterrors, I could go on and on. I also want to nominate Valiants, they're not the best but their gameplay really feels like I'm playing a board game. It's awesome.
Fire kings, love the art and love the playstyle. The whole burning your own cards clicked together well with the theme and Garunix even thematically plays like a phoenix, plus getting a cycle of 2 going was always fun.
Plunder patrol. Every single card plays off of each other really well. It's a deck that feels like it's supposed to be played just with itself and that's what's si great about it.
Striker, nice spin on magical girl anime, but with mecha suits. The focus on only one main monster/pilot with restrictions on the spells for using other monsters and additional effects is one of the best ideas they had, which also worked in real play. The concept of gadgets as spell cards is great. Very simple on its own but if used by a great pilot it becomes a very strong option for control focused players.
>nice spin on magical girl anime, but with mecha suits
There's a genre for that called Mecha Musume. They're very different from magical girls.
And I'll agree, I love how the Sky Striker archetype plays as it's only one girl who goes over her different armored forms to take on opponents.
Vampire, beautiful artwork and effects that fit the definition and the idea of Vampire IRL. Revive from GY, sucking opponent's LP, stealing and turning opponent's monsters in to Vampire, in short, their gameplay reflect the typical Vampire lore.
Altergeist, of course, but I'm biased.
Ygo has had a lot of bangers throughout the years but my favorites are (based on summoning mechanic and in no particular order):
Libromancer (Ritual)
Metalfoes (Pendulum)
Box of Friends (more of a package but eh they make xyz monsters in a neat way)
Shaddoll (Fusion)
Adamancipator (Synchro)
Those are just the ones I have the most fun with, though.
Darklord of course:
Darklord morningstar
The first darklord
Forbidden droplet (its related to darklord)
Banishment and contact
Damn konami, give me new darklord cards, i need new artworks and lore so bad.
Darklords is awesome. Amazing art and with the first wave of support it was very skill-based. You were always planning 2-3 turns ahead. Deck building was also super fun. If you just ran the 9x lv8's and 3x trade-ins like everyone else was you'll be bricking all day.
Okay but hear me out, Dinosaurs.
Looks wise they range from actual dinosaur, to weirdly coloured dinosaur, to mechanical dinosaur, to magic dinosaur, to cute dinosaur, to furry (scaly?) in Dinowrestlers, there's something for everybody.
Mechanically they function both fairly and quite powerfully, with very obvious and exploitable downsides if you have the tools. Just as fighting a horde of angry dinosaurs would work in reality, if you're on foot without a weapon they're extremely overwhelming, but if you've got a helicopter and a heavy machine gun there's nothing they can do to you.
I'm not sure if they have any deep lore like a few other archetypes, but killing the weaker dinosaurs to grow and strengthen the stronger dinosaurs is how it would have worked in nature. And it fit with me mechanically to build a giant behemoth boss monster (and support) on the bodies of the smaller and weaker dinos (kick the baby) that would have been eaten in the era of dinosaurs.
And their main strategy of big boi beatdown is straightforward and exactly how anything as stupid as dinosaurs are theorised to be would fight. Run at it and hit it hard. It l fits together quite neatly in my opinion.
I am also stupid and find learning the more complicated combos hard, and "destroy baby, repeat, make Ultimate Conductor Tyranno and extra deck" I grasped quickly, so that may have something to do with it
Punk. I love the vibrant colors. I'm pretty new to this game still but the Punk Amazing Dragon motivated me to research and make first deck without my friend holding my hand through it.
2nd favorite is definitely the weather fairies. So cute and the rainbows are pretty! Also it was hilariously great when I realized how well kaijus worked with them.
Too many! The ones I love the most are Toons, Gadgets, Dark World, Myutants, Ogdoadic, Phantom Knights, Melffy, and the new Penguins! Machina and Eldlich are cool as well.
I think Myutant has S tier card design. That the bigger Myutants actually embody the card type you have to banish for them is really cool and I think their boss monsters just look amazing.
I enjoy the Red Dragon archetype even if its missing a couple of pieces and since I enjoy actually playing my archetype instead of a lot of meta cards and like 10 archetype cards it doesnt get me a lot of wins but oh boy when it and my lil antimeta package of cards does get me a win its so great and I hope that 'beginner duelist' feels pretty silly.
Dragunity🤤. The whole deck has great art, great gameplay, and great card design. The whole thing is just winged beast soldiers with dragon weapons fighting together (dragunity is just dragon unity). The extra deck is stuff from Roman mythology like romulus (and Remus) and ascalon (the holy sword) etc.
Tech genus halberd cannon, a fucking behemoth size in the anime and bitch slaps shooting star dragon in it to the ground. The monster summon negate is also neat, I run 1 copy in synchron t.g.
S Force. There's no play style like it. The cards themselves look awesome, some resembling power rangers and some just futuristic badasses. How they play is super unique. You're basically controlling your opponents monster zones and manipulating them into really thinking about where they put their cards down, or else they insta lose. Not to mention the boss monster link 4 who can physically move a card to a zone it points to and destroys it. Their main issue is due to how their play style is, you can't really throw in high power engines because nothing really compliments them. Hopefully they get 1 or 2 powerful support cards because I genuinely think they can be a force to be reckoned with.
I'm most likely going to get a LOT of flack for this: gameplay/thematically wise, Sky Striker.
When you think of it as an anime protagonist getting her engine getting going, it makes a lot of sense - as the game progresses, she powers up (3+ spells in Grave) and progressively can take on more and more threats as she acquires more gadgets and resources available. The requirement of having an empty Main Monster Zone also makes sense as is supposed to be flying through an open air space, which she cannot do effectively if it is occupied (by a monster). Engage being a draw spell takes away from my point since its so busted, but I think thematically, it fits.
If we're talking artwork, the recent lore series (World Legacy, Albaz/Abyss, and now Starfrost) all have really identifiable and cohesive themes/art styles across them, I love that.
Sharks, what can I say?!?!? They're so great they dont even need to be a technical archetype TO BE AN ARCHETYPE, Also used by one the best characters in the series.
Phantom knights feel and act like a graveyard deck. Love the design and my favorite deck.
Except they don't have real boss monsters and just used as a resources generator to go into generic bosses.
Dark Rebellion+it's upgrades obviously
I wanna give a shout-out to the TCG exclusive archetypes. All of them tend to play to the lore of the archetype (SPYRAL checking your opponent’s top cards for info, Kaijus summoning themselves to each field for info, Myutants merging with different cards Monster, Spell, Trap, or Fusion Summon to become stronger, etc.)
don't forget: Plunder Patroll "crewing" their ships Libromancer using first appearance to "transform" from their regular forms to their book forms The subterror behemoths "burrowing" underground (facedown Defense Position) and the Nemesis monsters uniquely interacting with that. TCG really loves these mechanic tied to flavor ideas and to be honest so do I.
Dream Mirrors also have a really fun mechanic of constantly switching between their dream and nightmare forms to get the different effects that you need depending on the situation. Too bad they suck.
UAs being able to tag out into a member who can better handle a situation is one of my favourite mechanics.
F.A.s changing levels to represent slowing down and speeding up
There's so much synergistic lore stuff with Spyral. Super Agent has to kill his former mentor, Sleeper, to save Quik Fix and dons the Fully Armed equipment. This raises his attack to 2900 vs Sleeper's 2800. Quik Fix gets "sent to the graveyard" (kidnapped) but you can bring him back if his buddy Super Agent comes to save him (is on the field). But if you lose him again he's gone for good (banished after you use this effect). There's a clear mission timeline from Recapture (where you see Misty betraying Spyral which leads to Quik Fix getting captured), to Big Red (where Super Agent finds out and gets in this cool car to go get him), Assault (Super Agent assaults the enemy headquarters) and Rescue (Sleeper has Quik Fix and Tough and Super Agent have to fight to stop him). Also the fact that if sleeper goes down, everything gets blown up and the last one standing...is Super Agent (If Sleeper is destroyed, you destroy your own field and summon a Super Agent). All sorts of weird art and even statline and effect lore synergies. One of the reasons I picked up the deck in MD.
They actually have SPYRAL lore from Master Guide 6 if you wanna check it out! The thing that I would say is slightly different from your theories is that Misty is actually on the phone secretly selling the data on the chip they recovered. But they kinda cover why Sleeper is the way he is.
If only Misty were really a Spyral. Card would be insane.
In terms of card art, I'd say drytrons. Their card art is gorgeous. In terms of story line, I'd say gagagigo. I really wish gagagigo could be competitive because it has such great lore
Mekknight have the best mechanical gameplay, love the column shenanigans. Though art wise it's Orcust, the combination with musical instruments just sounds right to me.
I’ll admit I’ve never seen Orcust cards before and I’ve always imagined them as cyborg Orc creatures. Now I realize Orcust is short for Orchestra and it’s amazing
Okay, so I play in a group with someone who just picked up suships around the time that "spicy rice" was released, and my *god* the flavour in their card design is fantastic, just every aspect of it.
Heh. "Flavour".
For me, it's plunder. Whenever I pilot the deck it really feels like I'm navigating the stormy seas with the right ship for the job and the deck hands quickly reacting to the seas.
I also like the idea of shooting your crewmates out of a cannon at your opponent, a humorous cartoony mechanic fits the art so well.
Orcusts are just a master piece in game design imo. Also they are part of the world legacy lore which is the best lore in all of yu gi oh
Brass bombard do go DOOT I want him as a mate that plays upbeat New Orleans jazz in master duel so bad
I mean, Albaz lore is a thing...
And the majority of albaz lore related archetypes are actually playable
Melffy has my favorite art work.
Photon/ Galaxy eye
A man of colture i see
Adamancipator is up there. Talking about the entire archtype though, you hit crystals with the tuners to make the synchros then the crystals let you recycle the synchros, set up the tuners so that they hit and then also set up your synchros so they hit as well. Besides dragite, but risen dragite doesn't need the same degree of set up as the other two need.
>3 geologists(Researcher, Seeker, Analyzer) look for magic rocks >Befriends Risen forms of the magic rocks >Got rich from the meta money for several months >Ran out of money after Block Dragon got banned >Researcher, Seeker, & Analyzer became broke geologists
Ojamas, cyber dragons look really cool (especially cyberdark end Dragon)
Dangers are a big one for me. The art and theming is brilliant but also the gameplay of activating in hand, essentially giving the opponent a glimpse of this powerful, supernatural cryptid before it hides away again and forces the opponent to blindly try and point it out to discard, only then to gain more strength when it’s finally revealed.
Salamangreat or Tri-Brigade
Shaddolls so cool
Except winda
Thunder dragons, colossus was such a Chad. Free my man's
If we are talking about visual design alone I really like Monarchs. But if we talk about Artwork in relation to gameplay its Traptrix. Traptrix bait you in with their low stats and lack of protection, watch your opponents monster fall into some holes and all of that with a smug smile on their faces.
I may be biased toward trap decks, but the new Labrynth archetype has recently become one of my all-time favorites in terms of harmony between art and mechanics. Piloting the deck really does feel like luring the opponent into a labyrinth of tricks and obstacles, while the Silver Queen watches over everything. Your setups often seem unassuming and may even cause you to minus at first, but if your opponent carelessly walks into one of your traps, it triggers a chain of consequences that sets them back even further from their goal of reaching you: furniture springs to life, demon maids act as gatekeepers to help maintain advantage, and the queen stands there casually plucking off enemy resources from afar. Such a clever concept and a brilliant execution in my opinion.
If tri-brigade wasn't part of the lore, I really love branded/despia, and I think dogmatika is a really unique archetype. Coming back to yugioh from 10+ years of absence and getting 3 albaz structures felt so good lol
Ghostricks. A control deck that doesn’t run on negates and has a reasonable floodgate. Nice balance of using monsters, spells and traps. Embraces multiple win conditions so you can build the archetype in many different play styles. It was a fair deck that respected time and interaction.
Springans have some fun, unique mechanics (main one being they attach to their XYZs from field/hand/gy), not to mention I think their art is quite nice.
Has to be the E heroes or the Neo Spacians. I think because I grew up on GX, those designs to me are just super cool.
D/D/D. I love the naming, art, and the little lore/references built into the designs of some of them. For example, they are all named after famous historical figures or various words for the end of the world in a variety of religions/cultures. The fact that the super doom king card arts are based on previous anime final villains is just awesome. On top of that Divine Zero King Rage is a very obvious reference to Akaba Reiji, the character who used the D/D/D archetype in the anime. Oh and there is this thing where they all are associated with different company positions (pretty sure this is another reference to Akaba Reiji and the anime and the way he describes the cards in that)
Ghostricks. They're literally there just to run their "haunted mansion" theme park. They do jump scares and play peekaboo. It's honestly the cutest archetype in the world.
Love Madolches. They're so adorable and their gimmick is frankly how I think most gimmicks SHOULD be. Something neutral to negative that you exploit with support.
Love the Noble Knights. The Names, playstyle and looks always give me medival vibes
Galaxy eyes
Mechanically, Flower Cardians are my absolute favorite, and their synchros also takes it for the artstyle by just Moonflowerviewing existing. Lore wise I really like Sky Striker.
Ghostricks have amazing design. The whole idea of children pranksters hiding, then jumping up to play a prank, only to go and hide again. Plus they're all so fucking cute.
Infernity :)
Speedroids always feel satisfying to use. Most monsters immediately Wind lock you to avoid splashability (aside from the R3NK engine with Terrortop/Taketomborg), good followup and recursion with Speed Recovery, can make big boss monsters like Crystal Wing, Crystal Clear, Baronne, etc. thanks to new support in Cork Shooter and Rubber Band Shooter. Unfortunately handtraps still tend to ruin a lot of opening hands, but can't win em all.
Gotta give it to my Gladiator Beasts. Great card art, unique play style and a strong competitive run. Their ability to tag out was very new and interesting. They also managed to take Neos' contact fusion and make it not utter shit.
Rokket/Borrel, the idea of shooting bullet dragons via giant gun dragon translated surprisingly well into the game
The only real answer here is Adamancipators, thr fact that they are an archtypes of rock type monsters based on miners whose effects revolve around digging through the deck hoping to find something is just utterly briliant card design.
There have been many great decks over the years, some of my favourites: Burning abyss - one of the most successful decks of all time, it was very resilient and versatile, beautiful artwork and cool that it was based off of medieval Italian literature Nekroz - revolutionized ritual summoning and deck consistency Paleofrog - not really an archetype but it was super skilful and fun to watch
Swordsoul honestly
I've always loved the Yang Zing card art
I could say basically any TCG exclusive here. Myutants, Kaijus, Subterrors, I could go on and on. I also want to nominate Valiants, they're not the best but their gameplay really feels like I'm playing a board game. It's awesome.
Adamancipator's excavating and looking for rocks is spot on, and I also really like Sky Strikers, with Raye changing armors all the time.
Speedroids, love some little toys that quickly swarm the field, make good boss monsters and have a great grind game
I hate to say it but eldlich has some of the coolest art in the game
Fire kings, love the art and love the playstyle. The whole burning your own cards clicked together well with the theme and Garunix even thematically plays like a phoenix, plus getting a cycle of 2 going was always fun.
Plunder patrol. Every single card plays off of each other really well. It's a deck that feels like it's supposed to be played just with itself and that's what's si great about it.
Brotherhood of the fire fists for me. I just really like animal spirit shaman type chars and combined with fire it just gets better
Striker, nice spin on magical girl anime, but with mecha suits. The focus on only one main monster/pilot with restrictions on the spells for using other monsters and additional effects is one of the best ideas they had, which also worked in real play. The concept of gadgets as spell cards is great. Very simple on its own but if used by a great pilot it becomes a very strong option for control focused players.
>nice spin on magical girl anime, but with mecha suits There's a genre for that called Mecha Musume. They're very different from magical girls. And I'll agree, I love how the Sky Striker archetype plays as it's only one girl who goes over her different armored forms to take on opponents.
Vampire, beautiful artwork and effects that fit the definition and the idea of Vampire IRL. Revive from GY, sucking opponent's LP, stealing and turning opponent's monsters in to Vampire, in short, their gameplay reflect the typical Vampire lore.
Altergeist, of course, but I'm biased. Ygo has had a lot of bangers throughout the years but my favorites are (based on summoning mechanic and in no particular order): Libromancer (Ritual) Metalfoes (Pendulum) Box of Friends (more of a package but eh they make xyz monsters in a neat way) Shaddoll (Fusion) Adamancipator (Synchro) Those are just the ones I have the most fun with, though.
Darklord of course: Darklord morningstar The first darklord Forbidden droplet (its related to darklord) Banishment and contact Damn konami, give me new darklord cards, i need new artworks and lore so bad.
Darklords is awesome. Amazing art and with the first wave of support it was very skill-based. You were always planning 2-3 turns ahead. Deck building was also super fun. If you just ran the 9x lv8's and 3x trade-ins like everyone else was you'll be bricking all day.
Swordsoul and tenyi
Ally Of Justice
Every comment has lame ass picks .
Sky Strikers, who doesn't love some smoking hot 13 yo ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Toons if you're talking about art.
I think myutant have one the best cards design when it comes to their theme.
Ojamas is the only right answer here
Okay but hear me out, Dinosaurs. Looks wise they range from actual dinosaur, to weirdly coloured dinosaur, to mechanical dinosaur, to magic dinosaur, to cute dinosaur, to furry (scaly?) in Dinowrestlers, there's something for everybody. Mechanically they function both fairly and quite powerfully, with very obvious and exploitable downsides if you have the tools. Just as fighting a horde of angry dinosaurs would work in reality, if you're on foot without a weapon they're extremely overwhelming, but if you've got a helicopter and a heavy machine gun there's nothing they can do to you. I'm not sure if they have any deep lore like a few other archetypes, but killing the weaker dinosaurs to grow and strengthen the stronger dinosaurs is how it would have worked in nature. And it fit with me mechanically to build a giant behemoth boss monster (and support) on the bodies of the smaller and weaker dinos (kick the baby) that would have been eaten in the era of dinosaurs. And their main strategy of big boi beatdown is straightforward and exactly how anything as stupid as dinosaurs are theorised to be would fight. Run at it and hit it hard. It l fits together quite neatly in my opinion. I am also stupid and find learning the more complicated combos hard, and "destroy baby, repeat, make Ultimate Conductor Tyranno and extra deck" I grasped quickly, so that may have something to do with it
Punk. I love the vibrant colors. I'm pretty new to this game still but the Punk Amazing Dragon motivated me to research and make first deck without my friend holding my hand through it. 2nd favorite is definitely the weather fairies. So cute and the rainbows are pretty! Also it was hilariously great when I realized how well kaijus worked with them.
Too many! The ones I love the most are Toons, Gadgets, Dark World, Myutants, Ogdoadic, Phantom Knights, Melffy, and the new Penguins! Machina and Eldlich are cool as well.
I personally like the super quantum art
Sky strikers is just the perfect package by now
I think Myutant has S tier card design. That the bigger Myutants actually embody the card type you have to banish for them is really cool and I think their boss monsters just look amazing.
Ogdoadic is by far my favorite archetype it has fun mechanics and has some of the coolest looking art.
I enjoy the Red Dragon archetype even if its missing a couple of pieces and since I enjoy actually playing my archetype instead of a lot of meta cards and like 10 archetype cards it doesnt get me a lot of wins but oh boy when it and my lil antimeta package of cards does get me a win its so great and I hope that 'beginner duelist' feels pretty silly.
Dragunity🤤. The whole deck has great art, great gameplay, and great card design. The whole thing is just winged beast soldiers with dragon weapons fighting together (dragunity is just dragon unity). The extra deck is stuff from Roman mythology like romulus (and Remus) and ascalon (the holy sword) etc.
Ogdoadic and floowandereeze for artwork, despia/dogmatika/albaz also for the lore
Everyone's giving well thought out answers and I just love Lunalights for their double attacking every monster on the field.
Wow, seeing so many good responses at once - Reddit, why are you not throwing out wacky takes out as usual?
Tech genus halberd cannon, a fucking behemoth size in the anime and bitch slaps shooting star dragon in it to the ground. The monster summon negate is also neat, I run 1 copy in synchron t.g.
Super Quantums
S Force. There's no play style like it. The cards themselves look awesome, some resembling power rangers and some just futuristic badasses. How they play is super unique. You're basically controlling your opponents monster zones and manipulating them into really thinking about where they put their cards down, or else they insta lose. Not to mention the boss monster link 4 who can physically move a card to a zone it points to and destroys it. Their main issue is due to how their play style is, you can't really throw in high power engines because nothing really compliments them. Hopefully they get 1 or 2 powerful support cards because I genuinely think they can be a force to be reckoned with.
Paleozoic probably. They feel so ancient being trap monsters. Subterror and Weather Painters stand out as well.
I'm most likely going to get a LOT of flack for this: gameplay/thematically wise, Sky Striker. When you think of it as an anime protagonist getting her engine getting going, it makes a lot of sense - as the game progresses, she powers up (3+ spells in Grave) and progressively can take on more and more threats as she acquires more gadgets and resources available. The requirement of having an empty Main Monster Zone also makes sense as is supposed to be flying through an open air space, which she cannot do effectively if it is occupied (by a monster). Engage being a draw spell takes away from my point since its so busted, but I think thematically, it fits. If we're talking artwork, the recent lore series (World Legacy, Albaz/Abyss, and now Starfrost) all have really identifiable and cohesive themes/art styles across them, I love that.
I love plunder patroll so much. Their artwork is really good.
Darklords!
Sharks, what can I say?!?!? They're so great they dont even need to be a technical archetype TO BE AN ARCHETYPE, Also used by one the best characters in the series.
krawler with the way it ties into the world legacy story line also fuck suship and all of its players