This is a vastly upgraded version of my first Domain deck. Galaxy is my favorite archetype in the whole game, so I’ve worked pretty extensively on the deck. I’ve never written a primer before, but, I really like this deck, so I figured I might as well for this one, especially because Galaxy seems to be an archetype people struggle with when first learning, so I hope this helps.
How do I win?
The end goal of Galaxy is overwhelming your opponent(s) with either the high control power or high attack power of your Rank 8’s. Usually, you’ll be closing games out with Number C62: Neo Galaxy-Eyes Prime Photon Dragon , but, most of your boss monsters have pretty high attack, wth Number 90: Galaxy-Eyes Photon Lord being your weakest, ATK wise at 2500 ATK.
Starters
Starliege Seyfert can sculpt your hand with any Dragon you need, by sending Dragons from your hand/field to the GY equal to the Level sent (i.e., if I needed a Level 8 Dragon, I need to send monsters with a total level of 8 to search). What I use it for usually is the Level 4 Tachyon Cloudragon by sending itself. I’ll explain later.
Chaos Space can search any of your Nomi monsters, which you have a lot of:
Chaos Dragon Levianeer is a great monster, just, in general. It can revive monsters or kill your opponent’s cards. Great card all around.
The Bystial Lubellion on top of being a hand trap searcher, can also activate one of the 3 Branded Continuous cards from your deck. Etude of the Branded is a great one-sided Macro Cosmos card if you control a Bystial, Branded Beast pops cards, and Branded Regained can draw you up to 4 cards per turn cycle.
The Chaos Creator , which on summon revives a card AND shuffles two of your banished cards back to the deck.
Photon Thrasher , Photon Vanisher , Black Dragon Collapserpent , and White Dragon Wyverburster , which are all fantastic for making one of your two Rank 4’s.
Schwarzschild Infinity Dragon summons a Level 8 Dragon from your main deck, in exchange for losing that monster’s effect and locking your Extra Deck to Dragon Xyz monsters for the turn. Not a very big deal, since 14 of your 15 cards are Dragon Xyz.
Galaxy Soldier and Galaxy Hundred fill a very similar purpose, which is sending your Galaxy or Photon cards to the Graveyard. Soldier sends any LIGHT from the Hand to summon itself, (Ideally sending either of the Photons I’m about to mention or Eclipse Wyvern ) and Hundred sends one Galaxy/Photon from the Deck.
Your ideal send targets are Photon Emperor if you have a Galaxy/Photon Monster on the field, as it can revive itself and grant you an additional Normal Summon, or Photon Jumper . When Jumper is sent to the GY it can grab a Galaxy or Photon Spell/Trap from the Deck
Seventh Tachyon is one of the most cracked search cards in the game. In exchange for revealing an Over-Hundred Number (which, in this case is Number 107: Galaxy-Eyes Tachyon Dragon ), you’re allowed to search any monster from your deck that matches that monster’s Rank in Level and is either the same Type or Attribute. (In your case, you can search any monster that is a Level 8 LIGHT and/or Dragon). Then you get Xyz Locked for the turn, which, as stated with Infinity Dragon, is a non-issue.
Extenders
Due to the nature of being both an anime deck and a Dragon deck, you have so many cards that extend your plays, so, I’ll have them sorted by where they start from
Extenders 1: The Hand
Since I brought this card up earlier, I’ll go over it now. Tachyon Cloudragon is literally your in-archetype Snake-Eyes Poplar . If its added to the hand, you can special summon it. Then, you can tribute it to special summon a Tachyon monster from Deck or GY. You’re gonna want to summon Galaxy-Eyes Tachyon Primal .
Galaxy Knight and Galaxy Summoner have similar function. On Normal they can revive a monster from your graveyard. While Knight can only revive Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon , it’s a Level 8 you can Normal Summon without Tribute if you have a Photon or Galaxy on the field. Summoner, on the other hand is a Level 4 that can modify the level of any LIGHT monster on the field to 4.
Galaxy-Eyes Tachyon Primal and Photon Vanisher both search a monster on summon, and can Special themselves on certain conditions. Tachyon Primal can be summoned to either field if there’s a Dragon Xyz, then can add a “Tachyon” spell/trap from deck to its owner’s hand. Photon Vanisher can add Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon. Not something you usually do, but, still. As Xyz Material, Photon Vanisher grants that monster the ability to banish whatever it destroys in battle.
Galaxy Expedition can summon a Level 5 or higher Galaxy/Photon monster from deck if you already control a Level 5 or higher Galaxy/Photon monster.
Nebula Dragon can summon another Level 8 Dragon with itself from hand by negating the other monster’s effect.
Schwarzschild Limit Dragon is basically Level 8 Cyber Dragon. Pretty simple, but, nobody ever complained about a card being good and simple before.
Galaxy-Eyes Afterglow Dragon is both a great extender and finisher. You can special summon this card if you have a Galaxy-Eyes monster. If it’s detached from a monster as Xyz Material, you can either attach a Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon from your hand or deck to an Xyz monster you control or Special Summon it.
Further, if you detach it during the battle phase, you can double the ATK of all your Numbers.
Photon Orbital can equip itself to a Galaxy/Photon monster and can be sent from the field to the GY to add a Photon or Galaxy monster from deck to hand
Extenders 2: The Field
Card of Safe Return is insane in this deck, because you will be summoning from the GY A LOT.
Branded Regained , as stated in the subsection of Chaos Space, can draw you up to 4 cards per turn cycle. Which you can trigger with ease thanks to your Chaos cards, Bystials, and Black & White Dragons. It can also help reset Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon to the deck after you use Afterglow Dragon once.
Overlay Network is probably the most flavorful ZEXAL anime card ever, since it can help set up Xyz plays using your hand and GY.
Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon can summon Dragons left right and center. In other news, the sky is blue.
Extenders 3: The GY and Banishment
The Bystial Lubellion , and Galactic Spiral Dragon can revive themselves from the GY, helping make Rank 8’s. Spiral Dragon can turn all monsters you control to Level 8.
Photon Jumper and Photon Emperor both trigger when they hit the GY. Jumper can add Galaxy/Photon Spell/Traps on hitting the GY and Photon Emperor can revive itself and grant you an extra Normal Summon for Lights.
Arkbrave Dragon can revive a Level 7 or 8 Dragon on the Standby Phase after it hits the GY. Usually, you want to revive Dark Hole Dragon to search Dark Hole
Read Eclipse Wyvern to figure out why it’s here. Banishing a Dragon from Deck to add it back to your hand later is pretty good.
Extenders 4: The Extra Deck
Hieratic Dragon King of Atum can summon any Dragon from the deck, usually targeting Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon and can be made very easily with your Bystials.
Number 95: Galaxy-Eyes Dark Matter Dragon , on top of being one of my favorite Numbers, sends 3 Dragons from your deck on summon as cost to make one of your opponents banish 3 cards from their deck.
Number 90: Galaxy-Eyes Photon Lord is probably the best card to summon going first or second. Between its Spell Speed 2 Monster Counter, and the fact on each of your opponent’s turns, you can either choose to attach a Galaxy/Photon card from your deck OR add that card to your hand. I suggest the following.
Photon Jumper is a great card to add both for the Spell/Trap search or because it’s the most dramatic attack negate ever, being able to discard to skip both your and the attacking player’s Battle Phases.
Photon Cerberus can stun all Trap cards the turn it’s normal Summoned
If you already have a Tachyon Dragon out, you can search Lord of the Tachyon Galaxy to return all monsters Summoned this turn to the deck.
Dragluxion is the monster you’re gonna want to summon the most. On summon, you can add 1 “Galaxy” or “Tachyon” card from your deck to your hand, which almost makes the card worth running by itself. Its second effect is to detach 2 Xyz Materials from it to use it as the sole Material for a Rank 8 Dragon with 3000 ATK. You use this to summon either Galaxy-Eyes Cipher Dragon or Number 97: Draglubion . Cipher Dragon can steal an opponent’s monster, which you can use to bring out one of your 3 Galaxy-Eyes’ that require other Galaxy-Eyes Xyz Monsters if you stole a Galaxy-Eyes. Number 97: Draglubion can detach an Xyz Material to summon any Number Dragon using a different Number Dragon as Xyz Material from your Extra Deck. You use this to summon Number C107: Neo Galaxy-Eyes Tachyon Dragon with Number 107: Galaxy-Eyes Tachyon Dragon as Xyz Material.
Galaxy Photon Dragon is your best Rank 4 between the two you run. It has 3 effects, all of which are relevant.
It gives other LIGHT monsters you control 500 extra ATK. This can help close out games in the case you’re on the backfoot or you’re not the only one at the table with Big Damage being your game plan.
Once per turn, you can detach 1 material to take any Galaxy/Photon card from your deck and add it to your hand OR send it to the GY. This helps with Jumper and Emperor’s floating effects and can help set up Summoner and Knight for another Xyz play if you still have a Normal Summon.
If you special summon a LIGHT monster, you can modify its Level to either 4 or 8. Since you have a handful of cards that don’t line up, this can help get them in line. Alternatively, this is great for providing monsters for Xyz material. Using Photon Vanisher as material for a big Rank 8 also transfers its Battle Banishment effect to a huge body that’s not limited to being Rank 4. And on the rare occasion, you do want to Level Down a big monster like Photon Emperor to make Starliege Photon Blast Dragon.
Counterplay & Defense
Photon Cerberus is a counter for Trap decks, since it can prevent players from using Traps the turn it’s summoned.
Effect Veiler and Infinite Impermanence negate Monster effects on the field.
Number 90: Galaxy-Eyes Photon Lord can negate Monster effects from anywhere at the cost of a detach.
Starliege Photon Blast Dragon protects all your monsters with 2000+ ATK from being targeted or destroyed by your opponent’s cards and effects.
Number 38: Hope Harbinger Dragon Titanic Galaxy can negate Spell cards and redirect attacks. A lot of people don’t know that effect. But, it’s won me some games.
Fantastical Dragon Phantazmay can draw you a ton of cards if your opponents are like my friends, and play a ton of Link-heavy decks.
The Bystials, ( Bystial Magnamhut , Bystial Saronir , Bystial Druiswurm , and Bystial Baldrake ) are counters to other LIGHT and DARK decks. They’re also free, big Level 6 bodies to be used as Xyz Materials. Magnamhut can search Dragons, Druiswurm can kill Special Summoned Monsters, and Baldrake can negate Extra Deck summons.
Both of your Tachyon Dragons, Number 107: Galaxy-Eyes Tachyon Dragon and Number C107: Neo Galaxy-Eyes Tachyon Dragon can provide huge board negations. Tachyon Spiral of Destruction can destroy all negated cards, and their presence on board allows access to Tachyon Transmigration , which can negate all of your opponent’s cards in the chain and return them to the deck and Lord of the Tachyon Galaxy
Weaknesses
The deck that lives by the Bystial dies by the Bystial. This deck is very weak to GY hate. Branded Regained and Galaxy Journey both help make up for this, but, if your opponent controls a card like Macro Cosmos , things are going to be very difficult for you if you don’t have any outs.
Winning the Game
You'll most often win the game by summoning a ton of Xyz Monsters and overwhelming your opponents with sheer damage and effect control.
Galaxy-Eyes Afterglow Dragon is a huge push for this deck to win the game. If it gets detached during the battle phase, all your Number monsters get their ATK’s doubled.
The monsters that will be pushing for damage most often are Number C62: Neo Galaxy-Eyes Prime Photon Dragon , Number 95: Galaxy-Eyes Dark Matter Dragon , and Number C107: Neo Galaxy-Eyes Tachyon Dragon . However, all your monsters will usually be putting in some work.
Number 62: Galaxy-Eyes Prime Photon Dragon and Number C62: Neo Galaxy-Eyes Prime Photon Dragon also hold very different roles in your OTK.
Prime Photon is best for closing out an opponent with a huge life total, like from using Child’s Play for example, if the coast is clear, as Prime Photon will often have over 9200 ATK, due to the high amount of high Rank monsters you’ll be playing.
Neo Prime can serve to take out multiple opponents simultaneously but is most often your safest attacker, as it becomes unaffected by opposing monsters if it has Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon as Xyz Material. It also gains ATK equal to the combined Ranks and Levels of its Xyz Material x100 as a static effect, usually landing it around 6400 ATK before the Afterglow Dragon boost. You’ll often want to attach Tachyon Cloudragon to this card to give it 400 more ATK, meaning you’ll be swinging in with a 13,600 triple attacker, when the battle phase comes!
Conclusion
I hope you found this primer helpful! Galaxy has been my favorite archetype ever since I first got seriously into Yu-Gi-Oh and I hope that this primer, along with my decklist, has made Galaxy a deck of interest for you!