Dies Irae

EmperorNexys

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Fun/Casual Decks Egyptian God Blaze Accelerator Harpie 40 High Quality

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Deck Primer

Great beast of the sky, please hear my cry--

Transform thyself from orb of light and bring me victory in this fight--

Envelop the desert with your glow and cast your rage upon my foe--

Unlock your powers from deep within so that together we may win--

Appear in this shadow game as I call your name--

Winged Dragon of Ra!

In September 2020, received a great deal of support in the form of Legendary Duelists 7: Rage of Ra. Now, with the proper support, the monster that was supposed to be the greatest of the Egyptian Gods can wreak its fiery devastation across decks of every tier level.

was always my favorite card in the whole game. Now I finally get to play him the way he deserves to be played. I've been fine-tuning this deck for over a year, and this build allows me to play Ra as the untouchable, omnipotent god he was always meant to be.

Here's a card-by-card breakdown of all the excellent support cards Rage of Ra provided (and later, the Tin of the Pharaoh's Gods), and the most efficient applications of each.

searches Ra, from either deck or GY, GY being relevant every now and then (more on that later). It also grants you one extra summon, and gives Ra the power to absorb the ATK/DEF of the monsters tributed to summon him. These are all self-evidently great effects that don't need much examination, but here are a few general notes about making the most of this spell:

1. Just playing the card gives you an extra tribute summon. You have to remember to banish it from your GY before performing the tribute summon if you want Ra to gain the tributes' ATK. On that note, lets you sacrifice your opponent's monsters for a Divine monster (like Ra!). is a Quick-Play spell, and that's obviously awesome, but if you play it as a normal spell on your turn, you can banish from your GY first, and Ra will absorb your opponent's monsters' ATK points. This can lead to some interesting variations on Ra's ATK, since the only monsters of your own you'll ever really be sacrificing are Reactor Slime and its two slime tokens for 1500 base ATK points, or for 3000. Of course, that base ATK is in addition to the life points you can then pay to Ra's ATK.

2. On rare occasions, you might find yourself in a situation where all three copies of Ra are in the GY, and you have the Sphere Mode of Ra in play. Sphere Mode only searches Ra from hand or deck. can put Ra back into your hand from the GY in this instance, letting you activate an otherwise useless Sphere Mode.

is the card that turns Ra into the all-powerful, game-warping god that he was in the anime. It is a quick-play spell that can't be negated, and it grants Ra three effects for one turn:

1. Ra is unaffected by your opponent's cards' effects

2. When Ra battles, you can tribute any number of other monsters that did not declare attacks this turn and add their ATK points to Ra until the end of the turn

3. After damage calculation, if Ra attacked, send all monsters your opponent controls to the GY.

The applications of this card are even more straightforward than 's. Play it when you are ready to end the game with Ra, or set it and use it as a trap to save Ra from anything your opponent might try to use against your Divine Beast.

is the goo that holds this deck together. You can special summon it when you take any kind of damage, and its DEF rises to match the ATK of the first monster to attack it.

But the real value of is its search effect. When sent to the GY from either your field or your hand, you can add any Spell or Trap that mentions in its text from your deck to your hand. This is really the card that lets you reliably summon, protect, and reform Ra (more on that later) as the situation requires.

is an interesting card, tricky and deceptively powerful. Its steal-a-spell effect is... fun, but most spells in the game at this point are hyper-specific to the deck running them, and won't help you much outside of that deck. Unless you actually see a generically useful spell in their GY (like , the card that was obviously designed to steal), you are better off just discarding this fascinating Trap card, setting up its powerful removal-resurrection trick.

More on that later...

is a flexible card with wide-reaching applications. It lets you discard a Divine monster to search Monster Reborn, from deck or GY. The most obvious thing you can do with it is trade Ra for , and then resurrect Ra, even though the very first line of text on is, "This monster cannot be Special Summoned," allows you to do so anyway, "ignoring its summoning conditions." Ra will have 0 ATK, but he can still destroy any monster for 1000 of your LP. also combos very well with the all the other Ra support cards I'm going to go over, including , but especially--

lets you move your Life Points to and from Ra at will. It is the answer to the problem of summoning Ra with 0 ATK, and is the key to the single most powerful trick of which the deck is capable. Its actual effects are:

1. You can pay Life Points until you have 100 left, one Special Summoned (only if it was Special Summoned) gains ATK points equal to the amount of Life Points paid

2. You can tribute ; gain Life Points equal to Ra's ATK.

and are a match made in heaven. Discard Ra, search , resurrect Ra, feed him all your Life Points but 100, and attack for whatever absurdly huge number that may be. THEN, Tribute Ra and resorb all those Life Points, since requires Ra to return to the GY at the end of the turn in which he was Special Summoned this way.

If you have managed to put into the GY, now is the time to remind your opponent of that fact. If you have a copy of Ra in the graveyard and in hand (which is exactly what you'll have if you've just used ), Dark Spell Regeneration's in-GY-activation requirements are met. Banish , discard , and Ra will return to the field, while at the same time sending one of your opponent's monsters to the GY (not targeting, not destroying). From that point, you can use as outlined above.

On the subject of Ra going to the graveyard, now is the time to talk about the fact that Ra is set apart from his fellow gods Slifer and Obelisk in that Ra is the only Egyptian God with multiple forms. is a monster with 4000 ATK and DEF that is completely immune to any and all effects. It can only be summoned if it was in the GY while went from the field to the GY. If you have managed to put the Phoenix in the GY before launching the / combo, you can resurrect Ra, attack for, let's say, 7900, and then tribute Ra still during the Battle Phase to unleash the Phoenix, repleting your Life Points and piling on another 4000 points' worth of damage. Attacking with Ra and then with the Phoenix is unexpected and devastating, and is probably the most powerful maneuver of which the deck is capable.

also has a much stronger monster-clearing effect: for 1000 Life Points, you can send any one monster on the field to the GY, without targeting or destroying it, and you can use it as many times in a row as you can afford.

Immune to everything, capable of incinerating anything, regardless of their protection, the Phoenix has only one weakness: it must return to the GY at the end of the turn in which it was summoned. At this point, you search your hand, deck, or GY for the third form of Ra: Sphere Mode.

cannot be attacked or targeted. You can tribute it to Special Summon The Winged Dragon of Ra from your hand or deck (not GY), ignoring Ra's summoning conditions (cannot be Special Summoned), and granting Ra a base ATK and DEF of 4000. Since this is one of the only other ways to Special Summon Ra, and the Sphere Mode of Ra is another match made in heaven. Use the Sphere to summon Ra with 4000 ATK, add 7900 with Sun God Unification, attack for 11,900, tribute Ra (for a net gain of 4000 Life Points, by the way), and then unleash the Phoenix to add another 4000 damage.

This is the ideal way to play Ra, looping him in and out of his three forms to completely overwhelm your opponent.

This requires a little set-up, namely, getting the Phoenix into the GY in the first place. Before the card was released in September of 2022's Tin of the Pharaoh's Gods, this was considerably more difficult. There was no way to search the Phoenix, barring bizarre cards like Card of the Soul, or Extra Deck monsters whose materials we aren't running. You had to either send it straight to the GY with , which is of course a one-of, or happen to draw the Phoenix so you could discard it with something like or . It was the deck's greatest weakness; so many times I thought to myself, all we need now is a way to search the Phoenix, and this deck will truly be a force to be reckoned with.

And now, we have : a universal searcher for anything that says anywhere on it, that also lets you trade an on-field Winged Dragon for an in-deck Immortal Phoenix. And also says monsters (besides Ra) can't attack in the same turn they were special summoned for some reason.

While this card is obviously awesome, here are a few notes about using it to its full potential:

This incredible card offers so many options to you that you might wonder, "What is the right move here?" Well, my end goal is getting to the Phoenix, and while can search it directly, this is really only worthwhile if you already have a way of discarding it from your hand after you've searched it. So, the right move here is to do whatever it takes to get Ra on the field, and that usually means grabbing . Once Ra has arrived, 's third effect will get you the rest of the way to the Immortal Phoenix.

There is an interesting little floodgate effect in the middle there, about how Special Summoned monsters (except ) can't attack the turn they are summoned (the Immortal Phoenix can also attack the turn it was summoned, because it is unaffected by other cards' effects). This is presumably a reference to Ra's ill-defined "Instant Attack" power in the anime, an ability that allowed Ra to attack in the same turn it was summoned—an ability that all monsters already have. It let Marik play around that one time, I guess, but in subsequent duels, he would summon Ra and then announce that he was using the power of "Instant Attack" to attack right away, in the total absence of any reason he wouldn't have been able to anyway... Kaiba, too, was inexplicably impressed when he translated and read this useless ability, but I guess that is all besides the point. The point is, this slightly bewildering line of text is extremely easy to forget, and if you're playing paper, you will have to remind your opponent they can't attack you with monsters that were just special summoned, which they will inevitably try to do, probably repeatedly. You might sometimes have occasion to attack with , but he is also held back by (so just feed him to Ra with .)

is the final piece of the puzzle, and now that it is here, the deck is more consistent and powerful than ever. In fact, after trying to make the deck work without it, it almost makes everything too easy...

is, occasionally, dismissed by the ignorant and short-sighted as the weakest of the Egyptian Gods. This is simply untrue; the confusing design of Ra, with its "?" ATK and it seemingly self-contradicting abilities is a puzzle to be solved, a test to ensure that only those who truly understand Ra can wield him successfully, a test which most duelists fail. Just like in the anime, if you wish to wield the power of the most supreme Egyptian God, you have to prove yourself worthy first. And only a chosen few will succeed in this. By following this guide, you can be one of these few.

This is the Day of Wrath.

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