Do you see yourself less like Seto Kaiba or Yugi, and more like Joey Wheeler? If you answered yes to either of those, then a Red-Eyes deck may suit you perfectly. And if you’re not convinced just yet, then you might want to read through this list before you decide!
23. Dark Magician
You might be wondering why Dark Magician of all things would find a place on this list. This card is at the bottom because you won’t be using it to attack – but it is a vital material for one of the best Red-Eyes monsters (much further into this list). And on that basis alone, Dark Magician is a card you will almost certainly want to include in your deck.
22. Red-Eyes Black Dragon
Of course, Red-Eyes Black Dragon has to feature in this list too. Although lacking any effects and only sporting a modest 2400 ATK/2000 DEF, you can think of Red-Eyes Black Dragon as the glue that holds a Red-Eyes deck together. So many cards require it for material, or use the fact that it’s a ‘normal’ monster for effects. You’ll want to see this card a lot, so consider having 3 in your deck.
21. Red-Eyes Insight
Cards that let you search your deck are great, as they give draw power and make a deck more consistent. Red-Eyes Insight works just like that. And by sending a Red-Eyes monster to the Graveyard from your hand/deck, you can add a Red-Eyes card (either a spell or trap) into your hand from your deck. Who wouldn’t want that?
20. Dragon Shrine
Many cards in Red-Eyes decks draw from the graveyard. And this one is a great way to guarantee you always have some ready for when you need them the most. Dragon Shrine has a simple effect that lets you send a Dragon from your deck to the Graveyard, and if you sent a normal monster you can send one more Dragon monster too. This may not be the most exciting effect on the list. But it’s a card that can help the deck immensely.
19. Red-Eyes Wyvern
For many strong decks in Yu-Gi-Oh! the Graveyard is simply another place to draw resources from. And this card takes full advantage of that, by making sure any monster that gets destroyed is always a potential threat. If Red-Eyes Wyvern is in your Graveyard and you did not normal summon/set on your turn, you can banish Red-Eyes Wyvern to special summon any Red-Eyes monster from your graveyard during your end phase. I’d say that’s pretty darn handy.
18. Red-Eyes Spirit
Many cards in Yu-Gi-Oh! nowadays have a scary amount of text on them. As powerful as some of those cards are, you don’t always need all of that for a card to be useful. Red-Eyes Spirit lets you target a Red-Eyes monster in your Graveyard and special summon it. As it’s a trap, you can activate on your opponent’s turn. So you can always make sure they have a monster to deal with when it’s sure to disrupt them the most.
17. Allure Of Darkness
Draw power is always important when building a deck, because the more cards you can get into play, the more options you have in a duel. Allure Of Darkness works perfectly in the Red-Eyes strategy! With this spell card, you draw 2 cards, then banish 1 Dark monster from your hand. If you don’t have that monster to banish, you have to send your entire hand to the graveyard – but since nearly every monster in a Red-Eyes deck is Dark, that’s easy to get around.
16. Cards Of The Red Stone
Red-Eyes decks are very comfortable playing from the Graveyard. And this card helps you to get more cards into your graveyard where you want them, while making the deck more consistent. Cards Of The Red Stone is a great quality of life card for the deck. You can send a LVL7 Red-Eyes monster from your hand to the Graveyard to draw 2 cards, and after that you can then send one more Red-Eyes monster from the deck as well.
15. Black Metal Dragon
Sometimes you just need a little extra ATK to run over your opponent’s monsters. With a lot of Red-Eyes monsters having 2400 ATK, a boost can really help. And that’s where this next card comes in. Black Metal Dragon is a LVL1 monster that you can equip to one of your Red-Eyes monsters to give them an extra 600 ATK, bringing something like Red-Eyes Black Dragon to a respectable 3000 ATK. When this monster is sent from the field to the graveyard, you can add a Red-Eyes card from your deck to your hand – which also makes this card valuable for setting up future plays.
14. Tenyi Vishuda
‘Returning’ is a fantastic way to get around monsters that are immune to destruction effects. And Tenyi Vishuda can do that while also helping you summon your more powerful monsters, too. If you control no effect monsters, you can special summon Tenyi Vishuda from your hand – giving you a free LVL7 monster. And if you control a non-effect monster, you can banish this card from your hand or Graveyard to return one of your opponent’s monsters to their hand! If you save this for when your opponent summons one of their boss monsters, you can remove their biggest threat in an instant.
13. Red-Eyes Black Flare Dragon
Burn damage is a great way to hit your opponent’s life points no matter what monsters they’re trying to hide behind. And here’s a powerful one to consider. Red-Eyes Black Flare Dragon is treated as a normal monster when it’s on the field – but as it’s a Gemini monster, you can normal summon it while it’s on the field to grant an effect! For Red-Eyes Black Flare Dragon, that effect is: At the end of the battle phase, you can inflict 2400 damage to your opponent’s life points. That’s more than a quarter of their starting life points, and can be a great way to win a duel if your opponent goes on the defensive.
12. Return Of Red-Eyes
Continuous Trap cards are prime targets for your opponent. But as long as this one is on the field, it can force them to deal with a never-ending army of dragons. As long as Return Of Red-Eyes is in play, if you control a Red-Eyes monster, you can special summon a normal monster from your Graveyard once per turn. When this card gets destroyed you can special summon one more Red-Eyes monster, and this can be an effect monster. So overall, this card is excellent for giving you material for your XYZ or Link monsters. Be sure to make the most of it.
11. Return Of The Dragon Lords
Ignore the Blue-Eyes monster in this card’s artwork. Because this spell card has excellent utility in a Red-Eyes deck too, giving access to the graveyard and a great protection effect. Return Of The Dragon Lords lets you special summon a LVL7 or LVL8 Dragon monster from the graveyard, adding to your deck’s already great use of the Graveyard in the first place! You can also banish this card from the graveyard to prevent one of your dragons being destroyed.
10. Gearfried The Red-Eyes Iron Knight
Red-Eyes decks have access to a very powerful fusion monster called Red-Eyes Slash Dragon. This fusion monster requires a warrior as material, and Gearfried The Red-Eyes Iron Knight is a perfect choice. And this monster is more than just fusion fodder, too. If this card has an equip card attached to it, you can discard that equip card to destroy a spell/trap your opponent controls. Obviously this is great for getting rid of pesky spell/trap cards! And that’s not all, either. Because on top of that, once per turn you can send an equipped card to the graveyard to special summon a LVL7 or lower dragon from your Graveyard. Lots of solid options here. And if you’re looking for suggestions on some equip spells to run in your deck, we’ve got a list for that too.
9. Noctovision Dragon
In Red-Eyes decks, you always want more dragons on the field. And this card does just that, plus also gives you protection from card effects. If you special summon a Dark Dragon you can special summon Noctovision Dragon from your hand. This is great because just like many Red-Eyes monsters, Noctovision Dragon is LVL7 giving easy access to XYZ monsters. This card is dangerous in the Graveyard too. Reason being, if one of your face-down cards is targeted by effects, you can banish Noctovision Dragon to negate the effect. Also, if you end up using Noctovision Dragon as Link material you can draw a card – which is always a nice bonus.
8. Red-Eyes Alternative Black Dragon
Red-Eyes Alternative Black Dragon has great synergy with Red-Eyes Black Dragon, and can force your opponent to make this tough decision. Do they want you to have a monster with 4800 ATK or not?! You can tribute a Red-Eyes Black Dragon from your hand or field to special summon Red-Eyes Alternative Black Dragon from your hand. This monster has 2400 ATK/2000 DEF (same as REBD) and when it’s destroyed, you can special summon a LVL7 or lower Red-Eyes monster from your graveyard! This is a strong effect on its own. But if you special summon Red-Eyes Black Dragon, it comes onto the field with double its ATK! There’s only a handful of monsters that can stand up to a 4800 ATK beast.
7. Red-Eyes Fusion
Archetype-specific fusion cards are often far more convenient than using Polymerization. And this card is no exception. As long as one of the materials is Red-Eyes Black Dragon, then Red-Eyes Fusion lets you fusion summon a card from your extra deck using materials from your hand, field, or deck. Any monster summoned this way has its name changed to Red-Eyes Black Dragon, so cards that support monsters with that name will also work. Just keep in mind, you can’t summon any other monsters the turn you use this card. Which can leave you vulnerable if your opponent disrupts you, so keep a long-term strategy in mind.
6. Red-Eyes Fang With Chain
Want a trap card that can power up your own monsters, or use your opponent’s monsters against them? If you do, then Red-Eyes Fang With Chain may fit the bill. This is a unique and powerful trap that you can equip to one of your Red-Eyes monsters to let it attack twice per battle phase. It’s a decent effect, but where this card gets really nasty is with its 2nd effect. If this card is equipped to one of your monsters, you can send Fang With Chain to the graveyard and equip one of your opponent’s monsters to yours instead! Your monster takes the equipped monster’s ATK/DEF too, so this card is really a fantastic counter to any powerful monsters on the field. The possibilities with this card are endless. And you can often win outright by taking your opponent’s boss monster and going for an all-out attack!
5. Red-Eyes Slash Dragon
This fusion monster is the reason you want to play Gearfried the Red-Eyes Iron Knight in the deck. Red-Eyes Slash Dragon has a respectable 2800 ATK/2400 DEF by itself. And when a Red-Eyes monster declares an attack, you can equip a Warrior monster to this card to give it an extra 200 ATK. This effect pales in comparison to this card’s devastating quick effect, though! If any card you control is targeted by a card effect, you can send an equip card you control to the graveyard to negate the activation and destroy that card. This monster gives your entire field protection from effects, if your opponent isn’t willing to lose a card to deal with it.
4. The Black Stone Of Legend
In this list I hope you’ve seen how good Red-Eyes decks are at using resources in the graveyard. A lot of cards allow you to play comfortably from there, but this card may be the best at it! The Black Stone Of Legend is an incredible card that, when tribute, lets you special summon a LVL7 or lower Red-Eyes monster from your deck. That’s a strong effect on its own, and gives you access to almost any monster in the deck! What makes this card so great though is its effect in the Graveyard, which lets you shuffle a LVL7 or lower Red-Eyes monster from the Graveyard back into the deck. If you do that, you can add this card right back to your hand – so you can use it again whenever you want.
3. Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon
Now this card is so good that it’s even used in decks that have nothing to do with Red-Eyes. Yes, it’s that powerful! Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon has a respectable 2800 ATK/2400 DEF and is easy to special summon, only requiring you to banish 1 Dragon monster you control. The reason this card is so dangerous though is because of it’s once per turn effect that lets you special summon a dragon monster from your hand or graveyard. Many effects like this have restrictions. But Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon’s effect simply states ‘Dragon’. This effect is just incredible, and it stands to reason that at the time of writing this article, this card is limited to 1 per deck. Not hard to see why.
2. Red-Eyes Flare Metal Dragon
Cards that punish your opponent for activating effects are always great. But combined with a decent 2800 ATK/2400 DEF and some graveyard effects, you’ve got everything you could want in an XYZ boss monster. Red-Eyes Flare Metal Dragon is easy to summon too, as it requires 2 LVL 7 monsters. And your Red Eyes deck is full of them! While this card has material, it cannot be destroyed by card effects, which makes it a real pain for your opponent to deal with. And that’s not even the best part! Each time your opponent activates a card or effect, they take 500 damage. This is devastating to an effect-heavy deck, and can force your opponent to misplay just trying to avoid the burn damage. You can also remove material from this card to summon a normal Red-Eyes monster from your graveyard. So yeah, there’s a lot to like here.
1. Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon
It would be hard to not put this card at the top of any list it’s in. This monster has a library of effects, and is currently limited to 1 per deck (and has even seen a ban on Japan’s ban list!) Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon is a Fusion monster using Dark Magician and Red-Eyes Black Dragon, or a Dragon effect monster, as material. Dark Dragoon has great stats at 3000 ATK/2500 DEF and cannot be targeted or destroyed by card effects. As if that wasn’t good enough, during your main phase, you can destroy a monster and inflict burn damage equal to the attack of that monster – and if you used 2 normal monsters for the fusion summon, you can do that twice! The unbelievable thing here is that those aren’t even the best effects! Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon also has a quick effect that lets you negate any card effect, destroy that card, and gain 1000 ATK! Whether you’re winning or losing, this monster can single-handedly turn a duel around no matter the situation – and that’s why it comfortably earns the top spot in this ranking.
