Crusadia

I am legitimately ashamed to say that Crusadia was the very first Deck in paper that I built where I went out and bought singles for. This Deck was not overly competent back then and it is even worse today. Crusadia is a Link-climb OTK Deck which had the majority of its archetype released in CYHO and it only needed to wait for SOFU for Crusadia Spatha and DANE for Crusadia Testament and Mekk-Knight Crusadia Avramax to round out the rest of the most essential cards for its Deck core. The Main Deck Crusadia monsters all share the same effect that allows you to Special Summon them from your hand to your Main Monster Zone a Link Monster points to in Defense Position in addition to another, different effect. The Crusadia Link Monsters have some way to gain ATK to pump themselves up, allowing you to go for an OTK, and they all also have another effect that is unique to each of them. The Crusadia Spells either help with combat or they provide much needed protection for the Deck. Shockingly, Crusadia also has 2 Trap Cards. They are meant to supplement the Deck whenever it goes first, but the Deck isn’t competent enough going first to really warrant doing so. 

Crusadia is not a difficult Deck to play, and the Crusadia “combo” where you Link-climb into an OTK is really easy to pull off. That being said, the Deck is still bad for several reasons. Probably the biggest issue with the Deck is that you have no cards in your Main Deck that actually search for a Crusadia card. The Crusadia combo relies on you drawing 1 Crusadia monster and 1 extender. That’s really easy to accomplish: You already have 5 Main Deck Crusadia names and there is a whole suite of possible extenders you could be playing. The only issue with this is that you want as many of each as possible and you also want access to Crusadia Draco and Crusadia Maximus the most. More names, extenders, and other summons allows you to play into any potential removal your opponent may have. Draco allows you to add the first Crusadia you Normal Summoned (to make Crusadia Magius) back from GY, which can add back a very important name that would still be able to Special Summon itself from hand to Linkpoint. Maximus doubles battle damage your Crusadia Link Monster inflicts when battling a monster, which becomes more and more necessary the less monsters your opponent has on board for you to attack.

This is where we get into the second issue with the Deck: it has a real issue with playing into interruption and removal. If your opponent flips a The Fallen & The Virtuous to pop your Crusadia Normal Summon, you are moving to Game 2 around 80% of the time. You really do need to establish that Normal Summon and make Magius because Magius is your only in-archetype way to search for Crusadia monsters from Deck. Magius is not the same as Magical Musketeer Max, so Link into the VRAINS! does not do anything for Crusadia. And it is even worse when you realize that your Crusadia Link Monsters don’t trigger when a monster is Normal Summoned to the zone it points to. If you do not have access to Crusadia Testament or Crusadia Power, your opponent can just remove your Link Monster or negate its effects, which forces you to have to go through the line again, and if you can’t that’s the end of your turn. 

While I have individual gripes with each of the Crusadia cards, I want to focus on one last issue the Deck has: it is the ONLY World Legacy archetype to not have a dedicated set of World Legacy Spell/Traps associated with it. World Chalice has 7 related World Legacy Spell/Traps. Mekk-Knight has 5 related World Legacy Spell/Traps. Krawler has 4 related World Legacy Spell/Traps. Knightmare is not a real Deck, but it has World Legacy’s Corruption and World Legacy’s Nightmare. Guardragon is even less of a real Deck and it has World Legacy Guardragon, which was really helpful in facilitating the archetype’s gimmick before both Pisty and Agarpain got banned. Orcust doesn’t have any named World Legacy Spell/Traps associated with it, but they just have so many in-archetype cards that interact and/or directly access World Legacy cards in general. Why is it that not only does Crusadia have no associated World Legacy Spell/Traps, but its only in-archetype ways to access ones are tied to Trap Cards in an OTK Deck? The only World Legacy Spell/Trap that Crusadia benefits from is Succession and you have to be playing Girsu, the Orcust Mekk-Knight to reliably search for it. Girsu is literally carrying 5 out of the 7 World Legacy archetypes on its back. 

Crusadia has been successful early on as a Link-climb engine in early versions of Dragon Link and Thunder Dragon, but it has never been successful at higher level events as its own strategy. Kaiju Crusadia was a version of the Deck that utilized Interrupted Kaiju Slumber as a strong going-second card to position Kaiju monsters on both player’s fields so that your Crusadia Equimax points to both, buffing its ATK to really high numbers. It could also make use of Gameciel, the Sea Turtle Kaiju and Kyoutou Waterfront to insulate against disruption going second. But, this Deck did fade away pretty quickly when going second became really difficult during the 2020 COVID-era negate-fest formats since this Deck literally cannot play Dark Ruler No More. Mekk-Knight Crusadia was another version of the Deck that made use of the Mekk-Knight monsters being able to be Summoned into your opponent’s established board and positioned so that your Crusadia Link Monsters pointed to them to also massively buff their ATK. This was worse than literal Mekk-Knight at the time, and it faded away around the same time as Mekk-Knight did. Pure Crusadia with a bunch of going second tools is probably the best way to play the Deck still. Why make the Deck more complicated than it needs to be?

This first combo will require a Crusadia name and extender where ideally one of them is either Crusadia Maximus or Crusadia Draco. Let’s say that you have Crusadia Maximus and Crusadia Arboria. Normal Maximus and use him to Link Summon Crusadia Magius. Special Summon Arboria to the zone Magius points to. Magius triggers to search for Crusadia Draco. Link Arboria and Magius into Crusadia Regulex. Special Summon Draco to the zone Leonis points to. Chain Link 1 Leonis and Chain Link 2 Draco. Draco adds Maximus from GY back to hand and Leonis adds either Crusadia Revival or Crusadia Testament from Deck to hand. If you know you can OTK your opponent this turn, grab Revival. If you can’t, grab Testament. Link Draco and Regulex into Crusadia Equimax. Special Summon Maximus to the zone Equimax points to. Activate Maximus’s effect targeting Equimax to make Equimax deal double damage when it battles an opponent’s monster this turn, but other monsters you control cannot attack. Revival gives Equimax an additional 500 ATK and can target it to allow it to attack all monsters your opponent controls once each. So, that is a 4100 ATK monster that can attack all monsters your opponent controls and deal double battle damage. If you cannot kill your opponent and searched for Testament, after damage calculation, if your Crusadia Link Monster destroys a monster by battle, you can draw cards equal to that monster’s Link Rating. You could use this in tandem with Equimax, or you can Link that Maximus into another Magius and then Link Equimax and Magius into Mekk-Knight Crusadia Avramax so that you can draw 4 off of Testament instead of 3. 

This second combo will require Girsu, the Orcust Mekk-Knight and ideally also an extender. Let’s say that the extender is Dogmatika Lawbringer. Normal Summon Girsu and activate his effect to send World Legacy - “World Crown” from Deck to GY. Activate Girsu’s other effect to Special Summon a World Legacy Token to both player’s fields. Link the Token into Galatea-I, the Orcust Automaton. Activate Galatea-I’s effect to send a card from your hand to the GY to search for another World Crown. Special Summon Lawbringer from hand because there is a monster Special Summoned from the Extra Deck on the field. Link Girsu and Lawbringer into Lib the World Key Blademaster. Activate Lib’s effect to set World Legacy Succession from Deck. Link Lib and Galatea-I into Equimax. Now, you could Succession back a Lawbringer and then Special Summon the Crown from your hand, but that only makes Equimax a 6000 ATK beater. So, Link Equimax into Crusadia Magius. Activate Galatea-I’s effect in GY, banishing it to Special Summon itself from GY to the zone Magius points to. Magius triggers to add Crusadia Maximus from Deck to hand. Link Magius and Galatea-I into Crusadia Regulex. Activate Succession to Special Summon any monster from GY to the zone it points to. Regulex triggers to search for Crusadia Revival. Link Regulex and the monster you brought back into Crusadia Equimax. Special Summon Crown and Maximus to the zones Equimax points to. Activate Revival and then activate Revival’s effect targeting Equimax. Activate Maximus’s effect targeting Equimax. You now have a 5600 ATK monster that can attack all monsters your opponent controls once each that deals double battle damage. 

For the Main Deck: 3 Mulcharmy Fuwalos and 3 Mulcharmy Purulia. I wouldn’t have even considered making this list if it weren’t for the existence of the Mulcharmies. Crusadia needs the draws to see as many cards as possible just so that it can have both its combo pieces and going-second tools. 3 Dogmatika Lawbringer. If a monster Special Summoned from the Extra Deck is on the field, you can Special Summon Dogmatika Lawbringer from your hand, and if it is Special Summoned from the hand, you can make both players send 1 monster from their Extra Deck to the GY. And if it is sent to the GY, you can target 1 Dogmatika card in your GY except for Lawbringer and add it to your hand. I consider Lawbringer to be in the same class of cards as Dinowrestler Pankratops, Kashtira Fenrir, Alpha, the Master of Beasts, and the new Revolution Cyber Dragon. They are all monsters that you can just Special Summon from your hand on your turn, they have varying ATK stats but ones that are still high enough to beat over a good amount of monsters, and they each have an effect that deals with a card your opponent controls. I really like Lawbringer for several reasons. First, it has a great summoning condition. There just needs to be a monster Special Summoned from the Extra Deck on the field for Lawbringer to be Special Summoned, and that allows it to be either used as a protective form of removal or negation (depending on what you send off of its effect) or used as an extender, which would be Summoned to a zone a Crusadia Link Monster points to either increase their ATK by 2000 or trigger their effects. That isn’t even counting the multitude of things it can do based on what monster it sends from Extra Deck to GY. Sending Elder Entity N’tss targets and pops a card on field. Mereologic Aggregator targets and negates the effects of a face-up card on the field. Garura, Wings of Resonant Life draws you a card, which is actually useful here as you want to see as many extenders as possible. Golden Cloud Beast - Malong and Tri-Brigade Arms Mouser are also valid sends, but for the sake of Extra Deck space and OTKing your opponent, you can play either Malong or N’tss and Mouser isn’t too great because you don’t inherently have piercing damage unless you target your attacker with Crusadia Leonis’s effect. 3 Ghost Mourner & Moonlit Chill. We are specifically playing Mourner because it is both disruption and it can burn your opponent. Even if this is an OTK Deck, it is not Tenpai that can guarantee an amount of damage that will kill your opponent. Crusadia relies very heavily on the monsters that your Crusadia Link Monsters point to, and it doesn’t help very much that the Crusadia Main Deck monsters don’t have great ATK stats outside of specifically Crusadia Leonis and Crusadia Maximus. Any way to get you closer to an OTK is very welcome, but this could be any of the Ghost Girl handtraps of your liking realistically. 2 World Legacy - “World Crown”. Similar to the Crusadia Main Deck monsters, you can Special Summon it from your hand to a zone a Link Monster points to in Defense. You can Quick Effect tribute it when a monster on the field that was Special Summoned from the Extra Deck activates its effect to negate the activation and destroy it. Those are pretty much the only effects of World Crown that will see use in this Deck. Its last effect is that if Crown was previously Normal Summoned/Set and Tributed, you can add 1 World Legacy Spell/Trap from your Deck to your hand. This effect will almost never be used unless you are playing a World Chalice Deck, playing Lahamu the Messenger of Sacred Scripture, or playing World Legacy - “World Key”. While Crown isn’t the worst case of a World Legacy artifact not synergizing too well with its associated archetype (I mean, it’s no World Legacy - “World Chalice” or World Legacy - “World Wand”), it is still not too great in Crusadia. The reason for that is there is no in-archetype way to access it other than your Crusadia Traps. But, for this Deck specifically, it is necessary since we are playing 3 Girsu, the Orcust Mekk-Knight. On Normal or Special Summon, you can send an Orcust or World Legacy card from Deck to GY and then if there are 2+ cards in the same column as it, you can treat it as a Tuner. Also, if you control no other monsters, you can Special Summon a World Legacy Token to both fields in Defense. Girsu is literally just carrying 5 of the 7 World Legacy archetypes on its back, and the only reason it isn’t a 7 out of 7 is because Knightmare and Guardragon are not legitimate standalone Decks. The tag team of Girsu and Galatea-I, the Orcust Automaton is definitely a force to be reckoned with, as seen by the combo I gave earlier. For the Crusadia monsters, we are playing 3 Crusadia Maximus, 3 Crusadia Draco, 3 Crusadia Leonis, and 3 Crusadia Arboria (sorry Reclusia). Each of them can be Special Summoned from your hand in Defense to a zone a Link Monster points to, which is not an activated effect. Maximus can target a Crusadia Link Monster you control to make it deal double battle damage to your opponent when battling their monster this turn, but other monsters you control cannot attack. Very good for an OTK Deck. I don’t think I could wish for something different. Draco, if Normal or Special Summoned to a zone a Link Monster points to, can target a Crusadia card in your GY other than another Draco and add it to your hand. This is an excellent effect for adding back the Crusadia name you Normal Summoned to make Crusadia Magius, which means that you can Special Summon that monster from hand to Linkpoint as it was previous Normal Summoned as opposed to Special Summoned by its own effect. Leonis can target a Crusadia Link Monster you control to give it piercing damage for the turn. This being an activated effect is kind of awkward, especially because it is on a name that normally isn’t something you NEED to search off of Magius to accomplish the rest of your Link-climb. Sometimes, the piercing really does come up. One example is when you go through the Girsu line, giving your opponent a 0 DEF Token, so piercing from Leonis and double damage from Maximus is really juicy in that scenario. Arboria can banish herself from field or GY instead of your Crusadia monsters being destroyed by battle or card effect once per turn. Sure. Doesn’t come up too often, but it is available. Notably, Arboria is also a Tuner. You cannot convince me that you are supposed to make Ib the World Chalice Justiciar with Arboria. You can do it with the World Chalice monsters because Ib is a World Chalice monster. You can do it with Girsu because Girsu is Ib’s brother. Arboria and the rest of the Crusadia monsters (excluding Avram who is Maximus and Imduk who is Draco) are the scientists who worked on creating the Mekk-Knights alongside Lee, as seen in World Legacy’s Memory. Why the hell would Arboria make Ib? The only thing she accomplished as a Tuner was turn Normal Summon Sangan into a Crystron Halqifibrax. Where’s Crusadia Reclusia? Reclusia’s unique effect is when it is Normal or Special Summoned to a zone a Link Monster points to, you can target a Crusadia card you control and a card your opponent controls to destroy them. 99% of the time, you are popping Reclusia, which actively hurts Crusadia since you literally have to hard-draw extenders and names, so trading one to pop a card isn’t exactly worth it. Also, it is a measly 400 ATK, which is barely a buff for your Crusadia Link Monsters. 

For the Spell/Traps: 1 Reinforcement of the Army to search for the Warrior Type Crusadia Arboria. 1 Triple Tactics Talent. While this could be a copy of Crusadia Power to make one of your Crusadia monsters unaffected by card effects, except its own, for the turn, I like the utility of Triple Tactics a bit more. 3 The Fallen & The Virtuous.  You can either send a monster that mentions Fallen of Albaz from your Extra Deck to the GY and target and destroy a face-up card on the field or if you have an Ecclesia monster in your field or GY, you can target a monster in either GY and Special Summon it to your field. It is really good removal, and you can add it back from GY to hand with the GY effect of Dogmatika Lawbringer. Also, you can send a copy of The Dragon that Devours the Dogma from Extra Deck to GY to search for Lawbringer in the End Phase, which may not come up often, but is still something you could do. 3 Forbidden Droplet. Being able to trade cards from your hand or field to negate the effects of face-up monsters your opponent controls and halve their ATK is really good in an OTK Deck. Originally, I was playing 3 Droplet and 3 Forbidden Crown, but I decided to Side Deck 2 Crowns instead. Keep in mind that this Deck cannot play Dark Ruler No More. DRNM stops your opponent from taking damage for the rest of the turn after resolution, which actively prevents you from OTKing your opponent, so keep that in mind. 1 Crusadia Revival, which is a Field Spell that gives your Crusadia Link Monsters 500 ATK. Also, you can target a Crusadia Link Monster you control to have it be able to attack all monsters your opponent controls once each this turn, but other monsters you control cannot attack. Great effect, but I just wish that this card also searched for a Crusadia monster on activation or something. 1 Crusadia Testament. You can choose between activating 2 different effects and you can only activate 1 Testament per turn. You can make it so that your opponent cannot activate cards or effects in response to the activation of your Crusadia monster effects this turn or you can activate it after damage calculation in which your Crusadia Link Monster destroyed your opponent’s monster by battle to draw cards equal to your Link Monster’s Link Rating. The first effect of Testament is kind of redundant considering it is much better to just play going-second tools to insulate your plays. However, the second effect is much more important. When searching off of Crusadia Regulex, you need to be able to discern if you are able to kill your opponent this turn. If you can, search for Revival. If you can’t, search for Testament. That way, you can either draw 3 cards when punching and destroying a monster with Crusadia Equimax. Or, you can Link-climb into Mekk-Knight Crusadia Avramax and draw 4 cards when it destroys a monster by battle. Long story short, this gives you the card necessary for a potential follow-up play if you cannot OTK your opponent this turn. 1 World Legacy Succession which targets a monster in your GY and Special Summons it to Linkpoint. While we can’t search this in-archetype, through the Girsu line, you can set this off of Lib the World Key Blademaster to access the entire Crusadia line off of Normal Summoning Girsu. You could play 3 copies, but it is more intuitive to just play 1 and use the other 2 slots to play going-second tools. 

Extra Deck: 1 The Dragon that Devours the Dogma which can add a Dogmatika or Tri-Brigade card from Deck to your hand during the End Phase in which it is in the GY because it was sent there this turn. Notably, we are not playing Albion, the Branded Dragon. There are 2 reasons for this. The first is that we don’t have much space in the Extra Deck. The second reason is that Dragon Devours the Dogma can search for a Dogmatika card as opposed to searching for a Branded Spell/Trap. If you are forced to go first, setting The Fallen & The Virtuous and then sending Dragon Devours the Dogma on activation allows you to search for Dogmatika Lawbringer in the End Phase for follow-up. Then, if Lawbringer is used as Link Material and sent to GY or sent to GY any other way, you can add back The Fallen & The Virtuous from GY. For the sends off of Lawbringer, we have 1 Elder Entity N’tss and 1 Mereologic Aggregator. If sent to GY, N’tss can target and destroy a card on field. If sent to GY, Aggregator can target and negate the effects of a face-up card on the field until the end of the turn. As mentioned, you could play Golden Cloud Beast - Malong instead of N’tss if you want a non-destruction form of removal. However, you could also consider cutting some other card to play a Garura, Wings of Resonant Life to get a sweet draw in a Deck that really needs all the cards it can get. 1 Mekk-Knight Crusadia Avramax. It requires 2+ monsters Special Summoned from the Extra Deck. While it is Link Summoned and on the field, your opponent cannot target it with card effects and they also cannot target other monsters for attacks. Once per battle, if Avramax is battling a Special Summoned monster, you can Quick Effect increase its ATK by the ATK of the monster it's battling during damage calculation only. Also, if it is Link Summoned and sent from field to GY by your opponent, you can shuffle a card on field into Deck. Basically, Avramax is the monster that you will go into and sit on going first if you don’t value the negate provided by Crusadia Equimax. Or when going second, Avramax is a large body with targeting protection who is especially potent when combined with Crusadia Revival and/or Crusadia Maximus and/or Crusadia Leonis. Or, if you don’t OTK your opponent, you Linkoff everything and go into it and sit on it and hope to survive. For the more standard Crusadia Link Monsters: 2 Crusadia Equimax, 1 Crusadia Regulex, 1 Crusadia Spatha, and 2 Crusadia Magius. Each gain ATK equal to the combined original ATK of all monsters they point to and monsters they point to cannot attack. Equimax is the LINK-3 and once per turn, you can Quick Effect Tribute a World Legacy or Crusadia monster it points to in order to target a face-up card on the field and negate its effect until the end of the turn. Tributing specifically a Crusadia or World Legacy monster it points to is not exactly worth it to just negate the effects of a face-up card on the field. It is okay at best considering that you are actively weakening Equimax by doing so. Regulex is a LINK-2 that searches for a Crusadia Spell/Trap from Deck if an Effect Monster(s) is Special Summoned to a zone(s) it points to except during the Damage Step. This is your only way to search for Crusadia Spell/Traps. Granted, this being the only way to do so isn’t that terrible since you only need either Revival or Testament, but it would’ve been nice if Regulex also had the option of searching for a World Legacy Spell/Trap. Spatha can target a monster in either player’s MMZ and move it to another MMZ on its controller’s field if an Effect Monster is Special Summoned to a zone it points to except during the Damage Step. Spatha’s purpose is that she picks up one of your opponent’s monsters that is in their Rightmost, Leftmost, or Center MMZ and moves it to above your EMZ so that Equimax (or Regulex) can be boosted from its ATK. It’s kind of cute in a sense. Magius adds a Crusadia monster from Deck to hand if an Effect Monster is Special Summoned to a zone it points to except during the Damage Step. It is a necessary effect rather than a great effect - is how I would word Magius. It sucks, but you gotta play it so that your Deck can actually function. 1 Haggard Lizardose which can banish a monster with 2000 or less ATK from field or GY and target 1 face-up monster on the field to make its ATK become equal to the original ATK of the monster banished for this effect. I am playing a bunch of LINK-2 monsters for the Girsu line based on what you have in your hand. Lizardose is useful in that it can banish say a Ghost Mourner & Moonlit Chill, a Mulcharmy, or a low ATK Crusadia from GY and make one of your opponent’s monsters tiny. This is great for OTKing more easily and if you use this effect on your opponent’s monster that your Crusadia Link Monster points to, your Link Monster is gaining ATK equal to that monster’s original ATK while its current ATK on field is tiny, allowing for even greater damage. 1 Lib the World Key Blademaster which can only be Link Summoned while there is a World Legacy card in your GY. During your Main Phase, she can set a World Legacy Spell/Trap from Deck, but it cannot be activated this turn if there isn’t a World Legacy monster in GY. Also, if she is Link Summoned and sent to GY as Link Material, she can shuffle a card on field into the Deck. Nearly all of the time, you are making Lib when doing the Girsu line. She sets World Legacy Succession from Deck and she is removal when she is used as Link Material. 1 S:P Little Knight. It’s a bit of a back and forth for me. S:P is better going first, but she is still technically removal that can banish a card from field OR GY when doing the Girsu line. 1 Dharc the Dark Charmer, Gloomy. In the Girsu line, you can Link Galatea-I and another monster into  Dharc and then if your opponent has a DARK in their GY, you can just take it for yourself and place it in a zone that will pump up Equimax. 1 Galatea-I, the Orcust Automaton, which can send a card from hand to GY to add a World Legacy monster or an Orcustrated Babel from Deck or GY to hand. And if she is in your GY, you can banish a different Orcust card from GY to Special Summon her from GY. She searches for World Legacy - “World Crown” and can then Special Summon herself back from GY, preferably to a zone a Crusadia Link points to so that it can trigger its effect. 

Side Deck: 3 Gameciel, the Sea Turtle Kaiju, 3 Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring, 2 Droll & Lock Bird, 1 Harpie’s Feather Duster, 2 Triple Tactics Thrust, 2 Forbidden Crown, 1 The Black Goat Laughs, and 1 Anti-Spell Fragrance. You could also consider Nibiru, the Primal Being, but be careful about the Token because its original ATK/DEF is ?/?, which is actually 0/0. So, a Nibiru Token in the zone a Crusadia Link Monster points to will not boost its ATK and you have a massive Token to deal with.