Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon – #RA02-EN021
“Dark Magician” + “Red-Eyes Black Dragon” or 1 Dragon Effect Monster
Cannot be destroyed by card effects. Neither player can target this card with card effects. During your Main Phase: You can destroy 1 monster your opponent controls, and if you do, inflict damage to your opponent equal to that monster’s original ATK. You can use this effect a number of times per turn up to the number of Normal Monsters used as Fusion Material for this card. Once per turn, when a card or effect is activated (Quick Effect): You can discard 1 card; negate the activation, and if you do, destroy that card, and if you do that, this card gains 1000 ATK.
Date Reviewed: August 29th, 2024
Rating: 4.33
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is awful. 3 is average. 5 is excellent.
Reviews Below:
King of
Lullaby
Hello Pojo Fans,
Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon is reprinted again and is our Throwback Thursday choice.
A card that changed the game in the OCG and was abused via Verte Anaconda in the TCG, Dragoon is and remains a powerhouse Fusion Monster. You won’t be able to cheat it out with Anaconda anymore, so you’ll have to use a Fusion Spell to get Dark Magician or REBD alongside a Dragon effect monster into the grave for the summon. 3000ATK with destruction and targeting protection from card effects, Dragoon combines that stat line and that protection with burn ability and negation. Pop a monster during your turn and deal original ATK damage to the opponent. Nothing wrong with a little burn damage as an ability and while players don’t care much for their LP, but the pain is compounded when you lose a monster as well. If you do use DM and REBD as the fusion materials you get to use this effect twice per turn. Typically, you will get one pop and burn, it was Anaconda using Red-Eyes Fusion to use both monsters and granting the double burn and destroy that made Dragoon such a staggering foe.
Quick Effect 1-for-1 negation and destruction of a card or effect was a balanced effect until you added in the 1000ATK permanent gain Dragoon received from doing that. If summoned using the namesake monsters, Dragoon could double destroy, double burn, negate on your turn, gain that 1000ATK and likely OTK the opponent. As long as you supply cards, Dragoon is a all-purpose negation boss on the field that will only get stronger the more you negate.
Dragoon may have lost its best way of being summoned, but it was for the best. The whole game was not meant to summon this monster. Both archetypes this card belongs to had waited so long for a card like this and to see it get thrown in EVERY deck was atrocious. Incredibly powerful, monster spot removal paired with burn and either turn negation with a 1000ATK permanent gain to boot, Dragoon is a boss. You’ll likely only get the one burn per turn unless you run a dedicated strategy to get the double, but even with just one burn and destroy, Dragoon will likely always be a powerhouse monster. Both archetypes will have a hard time topping this monster.
Advanced- 4.5/5 Art- 5/5
Until Next Time,
KingofLullaby
Crunch$G
Throwback Thursday this week is a card once highly dreaded before Destroyer Phoenix Enforcer became the better Verte engine to use, and it’s even banned in the OCG, Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon.
Dragoon is a Level 8 DARK Spellcaster Fusion with 3000 ATK and 2500 DEF. Great stats, DARK is amazing, and Spellcaster is great. Fusion Materials are Dark Magician and either Red-Eyes Black Dragon or any Dragon Effect Monster, which is fairly easy and can be cheated with Muddy Mudragon and any other Fusion Sub monsters along with any Dragon, like how Synchro Decks use the former with Dragons to summon this and the latter uses The Light – Hex-Sealed Fusion in Branded with Albion or Lubellion to summon this. Anyways, it cannot be destroyed by card effects and neither player can target it with card effects, which is super powerful protection for a boss monster. During your Main Phase, you can destroy a monster the opponent controls and deal damage to them equal to that monster’s original ATK, which is an effect that can be used up to the number of Normal Monsters used as Fusion Material for this. Great removal and burn if you summon this properly at the bare minimum with Dark Magician, but you can double this if you also used Red-Eyes Black Dragon as material. It’s fine if you don’t use Normal Monsters to summon it, cause the other effect is a soft once per turn Quick Effect when a card or effect is activated, letting you discard a card to negate the activation, destroy the card, then this gains 1000 ATK if a card was destroyed. Omni-negation on a monster with the level of protection is busted, and why this got banned in the OCG and remains there to this day. All 3 effects on this are powerful, even if the second effect doesn’t come up as often as players will try to cheat this out via other means rather than using the original materials. You play this in Dark Magician, you play this in Red-Eyes, you play this if you can get it out. It’s still a very busted Fusion Monster.
Advanced Rating: 4.5/5
Art: 5/5 The bond between Yugi and Joey will never be broken.
Mighty
Vee
If you asked me what the biggest boogeyman in the Yugioh community was, I (and many others) would point to a single card– this week’s Throwback Thursday card, Red-Eyes Dark Dragoon. A level 8 DARK Spellcaster Fusion monster, Dragoon requires Dark Magician and either Red-Eyes Black Dragon or any Dragon Effect monster. While it sounds generous enough, the Dark Magician part alone makes it a huge hassle, and if you want the full effect of Dragoon you’ll need the original Red-Eyes as well, compounding the headache. Interestingly, Dragoon borrows Black Luster Soldier’s stat spread of 3000 attack and 2500 defense, which is still very solid. Currently, Dragoon is banned in the OCG and in Master Duel yet is free at 3 in the TCG. It seems like everyone who has played after 2020 has a story about this card, so let’s dive into the card that (allegedly) changed Yugioh…forever!
Right off the bat, Dragoon is a Towers-lite monster, being immune to destruction and targeting on both sides. In most scenarios, this isn’t a huge deal, though there are very fringe cases where it might backfire. Still, those cases are nowhere near common enough to detract from how excellent this protection is, especially since targeting and destruction are still as common as ever, contrary to what some would think. Dragoon’s first activated effect can be used a number of times up to as many Normal Monsters you used for its Fusion Summon, so if you used Dark Magician and Red-Eyes, you can fire it off twice– it lets you destroy a monster your opponent controls and burn them for its original attack. This is an excellent boardbreaker that, funnily enough, does not target, so it can get over many untargetable monsters (but not indestructible ones). The dreaded icing is, of course, Dragoon’s final effect, a soft once per turn Quick Effect that triggers in response to any card or effect activation to let you discard a card and negate the activation, destroy that card, then permanently grant Dragoon 1000 attack. Yugioh players had always complained about omni negates, but Dragoon took it to another level by being a Towers-lite that constantly got stronger and could annihilate whatever monsters you managed to set up, if any at all!
It’s not hard to see why many considered this a fanfic custom card as a bandaid for Dark Magician and Red-Eyes. Indeed, initial impressions among seasoned players were poor, with only casual players being particularly afraid of the card since it embodied “modern yugioh”– a big invincible stick that negates everything. Opinions quickly changed when the OCG started utilizing Predaplant Verte Anaconda to cheat it out by sending Red-Eyes Fusion; it was essentially a board capper as long as you had any two jobber monsters since Verte is completely generic. Orcust and Eldlich hybrids were the main users at the time, but pretty much every deck ran the engine, leading to Dragoon being banned in the OCG. Dragoon’s history in the TCG couldn’t be any more different, thanks to the fact we had already gotten boardbreakers that counter Dragoon like Forbidden Droplet, plus the engine itself was deemed way too bricky for TCG tournaments. While Dragoon remains in jail overseas, it still sees fringe play in decks like Branded, Shining Sarcophagus (hint hint) and Virtual World, and of course in its native decks Dark Magician and Red-Eyes as well. Some would say Dragoon is still a symptom of an overarching problem that plagues Yugioh, but I would argue that the line between problematic boss monsters and appropriately difficult to summon boss monsters is quite thin. Thank you for reading my Dragoon essay!
+Versatile combination of strong effects gives it incredible board presence
+Easy to make in dedicated decks
-Still requires heavy investment and combo lines due to terrible materials
-Most decks that can make it are either mediocre or have more efficient options
Advanced: 4/5
Art: 4.5/5 Though it screams fanon, it really does look like the logical next evolution of Dark Paladin, with a Red-Eyes twist!
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