SSS – Second Sky Strikers (July 2021)

Who is gonna win? Hordes of Demons, Superpowerful Dragons, Masters of Arcane Arts,

 

Or a single girl in a mech suit?

 

I’d put my money on the girl with the mech suit, because her favourite tool Engage, is back to 1!

 

The unban of Engage! is absolutely bonkers for Striker, increasing it’s power exponentially. It enables more consistency, an improved grind game, and a search with +1 every turn!

Sky Striker can be splashed in every deck now as an engine again with minimal investment. It generally consists of 1 Engage/1 Hornet Drones/1 Widow in the maindeck and 1 Kagari/1 Hayate/1 Zeke in the extradeck, rewarding the player a free link-2 without using up normal summon, a quick effect negate/change of heart with widow anchor, and a “better pot of greed” with Engage! (Seriously Konami what are you thinking lmao). Anyways, on to the deck (it’s a redo of another deck I made a couple months back):

 

This deck is the usual Sky Striker's deck, but with an unusual twist - less control/lockdown cards (I refuse to play mystic mine) in favour of cards that blow up the opponent's board. The philosophy with this deck is to destroy most if not all of your opponent's resources that they slap down on the board going first, and then close out the match with Sky Striker's unparalleled grind game. NOW WITH ENGAGE!

 

The deck features 3 card types, Going Second Cards, the Generic Staples and the Sky Striker Core:

 

7 Going-Second Cards, the board breakers!

 

2 Lightning Storm - The most expensive card in the deck (About $100 each as of this writing, reprints soon I hope!) it is incredibly powerful. It can wipe either backrow or monsters given the player using it doesn't have face-up cards. This is useful going second, but can become a brick mid/late game, that’s why there are only 2. This card can be replaced by a cheaper alternative like Twin Twisters or Dark Ruler No More.

 

3 Evenly Matched - One of the most potent board killers out there, it's non-targeting/destroying removal can out most boards if allowed to activate. Just skip to the end of your battlephase as you go second, and watch your opponent's carefully crafted board that they've spent 10 minutes building disappear into the Shadow Realm.

 

1 Raigeki - No explanation needed, smash your opponent's monsters!

 

1 Feather Duster - No explanation needed, obliterate your opponent's backrow! This is especially useful during this meta as it is dominated by control cards in the backrow, like Dogmatika Punishment, Ice Dragon's Prison, and Torrential Tribute.

 

17 Generic Staples

3 Pot of Desires – I know some people are reluctant to run Pot of Desires in their deck, but resources are absolutely essential to Sky Striker’s win-condition of coming out on top of the grind game after breaking the board. Try to tutor out your important one-ofs in your deck before you use this, like Multirole and Engage because of either or both of these are banished, the power level of your deck goes down dramatically.

 

2 Pot of Avarice – This card is for resource recycling especially of your Sky Striker link monsters, especially because you burn through a lot of them. This card is a easy +2 because it's conditions of shuffling 5 monsters back into the deck from the GY is so effortless to do in Sky Strikers. Since this card's unban, I've chosen to take out Sky Striker's own resource recycling card Hercules Base because I feel this card is superior even though it's unsearchable. Feel free to bump this card to 3, and maybe take out the Upstart Goblin. This card may be a bit bricky/sticky sometimes though, so be careful.

 

1 Upstart Goblin to put a free spell in your GY strengthening your Striker Link monsters as well as a relatively free +1 draw. It may give your opponent +1000 lifepoints, but arguably in most cases lifepoints don't matter if your opponent has few resources left after you whittle them down with your Sky Striker cards and board equalizers.

 

1 Terraforming to allow for easy access to Area Zero.

 

1 Called by the Grave to out those pesky ghost girl hand traps or banish that old annoying Eldlich dude being a creep in the GY.

 

1 Reinforcement of the Army to search for Sky Striker Raye to allow more consistent access to Striker link monsters.

 

3 Triple Tactics Talent is optimal because of the sheer power and utility of this card. This card will almost always be live, because in a going-second build of Sky Strikers you will bait negates which are often monster effects, and that’s when this card will make it’s move. For example, after throwing down a Lightning Storm and having it negated with your enemy’s Dragoon, you can use this card to steal their Dragoon and pop two monsters + burn! Also, if you get handtrapped, this card can always give you a +2 to possibly get you out of your sticky situation with more cards.

1 Monster Reborn is self-explanatory. Incredible all-purpose extender.

3 Ash Blossom is essential in the 1 for 1 resource war Sky Striker excels at.

1 Dinowrestler Pankratops is great for breaking boards and getting rid of pesky backrow that your spellcards can’t get rid of, like Imperial Order. It also has 2600 atk, so it can get over a 3 negate Apollousa.

 

15 Sky Striker Cards

 

Everyone knows what these cards do already, so I'll just explain why I picked the ratios for each card. 3 Raye (obviously) and 1 Roze. 1 Roze is fine because she is easily dumped into the GY with Hayate and can be searched through the newly unbanned Engage. 3 Airspace Area Zero and 1 Hornet Drones are also added to allow for maximum access to the Striker links.

 

1 Engage does so much for the deck – exponentially increasing the power of Sky Strikers. Arguably the most broken card ever to be released in Yugioh, Engage is a better pot of greed since it allows you to choose the first card you draw and you still get the second card with minimal set-up in the graveyard. This card can be used repeatedly through the recycling of Kagari and Multirole.

 

1 Multirole for resource recycling of Sky Striker Spells. Whatever you do, DO NOT let this card get banished by something like cosmic cyclone, if it does, that represents about half the grind game power of Sky Strikers down the drain. Ideally, after you equalize the gamestate in turn 2, you search this card with your first Shizuku at the endstep to initiate your grindgame for turn 3.

 

3 Widow Anchor is to maximize your ability for fieldwide control of your opponent's cards and to disrupt plays. I only added one Shark Cannon because I find that other cards are more useful. However, if you come across a deck that uses a lot of monsters in the GY (such as Eldlich) feel free to swap out other cards for Shark Cannon to control the graveyard.

 

2 Afterburners are in this deck because it is an excellent board breaking card that can easily bait out negates, preparing for your truly devastating board-breakers. For example, bait out their one spell/trap negate by targeting their Borreload Savage, then proceed to slap down Evenly Matched and watch their entire board EXPLODE! This card can also destroy an active Area Zero if it's already on your field, giving you another Sky Striker monster on the board. Against backrow decks, feel free to swap a copy of this card out for Jamming Waves! to destroy their face down cards.

 

For the Extra Deck, we have

 

11 Sky Striker link monsters - 3 Kagari (spell recovery from GY), 3 Hayate (direct attack + dump Striker card to GY), 3 Shizuku (Free search and endphase), 1 Kaina (stop opponent's monster's attack), and 1 Zeke (Primarily to link away your oppenent's monster you gained control over and to banish an opponent's monster on board).

 

1 Hiita the Fire Charmer because it also allow access to Selene by stealing your opponent's used Ash Blossom, Almiraj or any other fire monster that is running around in the meta nowadays. Hiita is easily able to be made by first going into Kagari, the fire attribute Sky Striker and linking it away.

 

1 Ningirsu the World Chalice Warrior is a common out (since it is non-targeting/destroying removal) to hard to kill towers monsters like Dragoon. A favourite play I do (after baiting out Dragoon’s negate) is to steal the Verte Anaconda used to summon Dragoon and link it away with my Striker link-1, then send Dragoon to the GY!

 

1 Knightmare Unicorn to shuffle back your opponent’s card. It’s also the easiest way to link climb to Accesscode talker and give it 5300 atk with it’s link-3 rating.

 

1 Accesscode is used to smash your opponent with a slam dunk after you’ve sufficiently tenderized their rock solid defense and depleted their resources. After getting their LP below 5300, push for game with Accesscode Talker with 4+ pops since the GY is packed with different attribute striker links! This badass will be the last thing many opponents see before dropping to 0 LP.

 

Additional Commentary

 

Weaknesses - This deck is very strong, and it can consistently contend vs. the strongest decks of any era of Yugioh (so far), especially since the unban of Engage! to 1. However, this deck autoloses vs. anti-spell floodgates such as Secret Village of Spellcasters and Imperial Order. A deck that uses both of these cards is very difficult to beat (I'm looking at you, Altergeists >:c)

Monster cards that are untargetable/undestroyable/unaffect are very difficult for this deck to get rid of as well, such as the commonly seen Red Eyes Dragoon and The Arrival Cyberse @Ignister. These cards are specifically why I side kaijus like Gadarla to use in match-ups where these cards are common.

Finally, there are some decks that actually still recover quite competently after you wipe their board and can counter-attack your fragile board with strong gigantic monsters for an OTK. Watch-out for these games, and try to force a grind-game where you're several steps ahead to avoid this situation.

 

As a machine player that loves to play aggressively in dynamic interesting back/forth games, I absolutely LOOOOVE this deck. Methodically cracking an established “impregnable” board and going for 1 for 1 trades until you win out feels incredible satisfying. It's super fun wiping your opponent's carefully crafted board, then having your favourite pretty mech girl destroy monster after monster like the Doomslayer. Hope you folks have as much fun playing this deck as I do, even though Sky Strikers technically are not meta anymore. Engage and Afterburners to pierce the heavens! RIP and TEAR the meta!!!



Accept the invitation. Let's "Engage" back into the meta!