Thunder Dragon: deck recipe [Oct 2020]

The Lightsworn engine's milling is a great way to setup your graveyard with Thunder Dragons, and then recover the Thunder Dragons with cards like Thunder Dragonroar and Thunder Dragonhawk. Or banish the Thunder Dragons to trigger their effects.

This consistent mill engine is also the reason why we run multiple graveyard effects in this deck.

Charge of the Light Brigade gives you a search and sets up your graveyard for free. When you go first you will want to search and set Ryko for its removal effect and even more graveyard set up. Search Raiden and summon him to get another mill during the Main Phase. Search Lumina when you already have Raiden in the graveyard so she can revive him.

Raiden is a decent low-level beater but the main reason we run him is his ability to mill during the Main Phase. This loads Thunder Dragons into your graveyard for summoning Levianeer or Thunder Dragonduo, which will inturn activate the banished Thunder Dragons' effects.

Being a level-4 Tuner is also a plus since you can easily make high-level Synchros.

Summon Lumina and use her effect to revive Raiden. With both these monsters you can quickly go into a level-7 Synchro. Most notably this combo easily makes Black Rose Dragon to wipe your opponent's board setup.

Lumina and Raiden's combo also gives you access to Fortune Lady Every. Fortune Lady Every is actually a very powerful boss monster in a deck that can make it. Once per turn non-targeting banishing removal without cost, and the ability to gain a huge amount of ATK make her an intimidating presence on the field. The Lumina you used as Synchro material gives Fortune Lady Every at least one revival chance.

The best cards to discard for Lumina's cost are Glow-Up Bulb, Bacon Saver, or Chaos Betrayer because of their graveyard effects. You can also discard a Thunder Dragon for setup.

Ryko is a good search target for Charge of the Light Brigade when going first. Search and set Ryko for lots of milling and disruption during the opponent's turn.

Glow-Up Bulb's effect essentially lets you revive it for free while also giving you free graveyard setup. Put Glow-Up Bulb in the graveyard with your Lightsworn engine and revive it when needed for a Synchro Summon. Usually you will pair Glow-Up Bulb with a revived Thunder Dragon monster or Chaos Betrayer to make a level-6 or 7 Synchro.

Put Chaos Betrayer in your graveyard with the Lightsworn engine, then revive it by banishing Thunder Dragon monsters. This will trigger the Thunder Dragons' effects while you also get to disrupt your opponent's graveyard with Chaos Betrayer's effect.

Chaos Betrayer is always revived in defense position with his effect so you can't really use him to push damage. Instead use him as Synchro material alongside Glow-Up Bulb.

Use these cards to defend against attacks and lethal damage. The fact their effects activate from the graveyard give them great synergy with your Lightsworn engine.

In most decks Aloof Lupine might be a slow search card but this deck can exploit the slow part of Aloof Lupine's effect to its advantage. Upon Normal Summoning Aloof Lupine, banish a Thunder Dragon from your hand and another one from your deck to trigger both of their effects. The best ones to banish are Dragondark and Dragonroar so you get to search another Thunder Dragon.

Levianeer adds a significant amount of firepower to the deck. Thanks to its high ATK and ability to destroy up to two cards upon summon Chaos Dragon Levianeer can be a truly devastating card especially in a deck that has no trouble filling the Graveyard with its summoning cost quickly and consistently.

Always summon Levianeer with a combination of LIGHT and DARK monsters as cost. The multi-card removal effect is its most useful effect. Another thing is to always use Thunder Dragons as cost when possible, activating their effects. But don't use Thunder Dragons whose effect has already been activated during the turn.

Thunder Dragonduo has a similar but less costly summoning condition than Levianeer. Its high base ATK contributes to this deck's power output, while its effects are meant to compliment the Thunder Dragon playstyle.

The ATK boost effect increases Dragonduo's damage output and can let it attack over stronger boss monsters.

The search effect is good for resource gain. And the activation cost triggers a Thunder Dragon's effect, banishing something like Dragondark further increases your potential resource gain.

Lastly, Dragonduo has a slow banish recovery effect which can be used to recycle your Thunder Dragons. This is useful since we don't actually run that many Thunder Dragons relative to our deck size.

The Thunder Dragons all have a unique effect that activates from the hand, an a second unique effect that activates when they are sent from field to graveyard or banished from anywhere. The second effect will usually be triggered by outside support such as Levianeer and Aloof Lupine.

The first effect lets you revive any Thunder Dragon from the graveyard or banish zone. This can be used to bring back a Dragonduo that was previously summoned with its own effect.

The second effect is used to return cards like Chaos Betrayer, Bacon Saver, and Glow-Up Bulb back to the deck because these are cards you want to mill.

We only run one copy of Dragondark to make room for Charge of the Light Brigade. This is also a way to balance the amount of LIGHT and DARK monsters in the deck. This essentially renders Dragondak's first effect useless.

However, its second effect is still a good enough reason to run it. This lets you search a Thunder Dragon as part of a combo that banishes Dragondark.

The first effect lets you recover Thunder Dragons from the graveyard or banish zone. You can use this recover a Thunder Dragon and immediately activate the recovered Thunder Dragon's effect. Retrieve Dragonhawk and discard it to revive Dragonroar. You can also use this to recycle your one copy of Dragonduo.

The search effect might not be as good as Dragondark because it puts the Thunder Dragon on the field, so you can't use their discard effect. One way this Special Summoning can be used to your advantage is by pairing the Thunder Dragon with a revived Glow-Up Bulb for a Synchro Summon. This triggers the effect of the Thunder Dragon used as synchro material.

I faced Blackwings only a couple times, so I can’t be sure, but the matchup did not exactly feel favourable for me, especially because of Blackbird Close; let’s just say that this is a deck that I was simply not able to out-resource.

A previous version of my deck, that I was running back when I had only one Dragonhawk (I pretty much entirely built this deck while I was competing in the KC Cup), actually performed better in this matchup because I was making up for the lack of monsters with more copies of Karma Cut and one of Ultimate Providence.

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