• Pojo Home Page
  
• Message Board
  
• Contact Staff
  

GeneralZorpa on Yugioh
Lightsworn 2: The Lightlords Strike Back!
 February 22, 2010

You Have Failed Me For the Last Time Admiral...
 
I am so loling at the people whose jaws are on the floor now that their precious Sacksworn decks are only worth so much as a pile of garbage. Well, guess what folks? Now is not the time to jump ship, but if you are I am buying JD's for 20 apiece. I am dead serious by the way. The time has gone for a diversified Lightsworn deck. The tools that made that possible are gone now. We need to try something different.
 
There are other cards than the popularized Lightsworn cards. There is Jenis, Gragonith, Rinyan, Lightsworn Saber, and not to mention the standard Garoth, Jain, Lumina, Lyla, Celestia, Wulf, Ryko and Ehren. The point is that the deck is not dead just because the random Twilight jank that people threw into it isn't viable anymore.
 
Thus, innovation will take the stand! I now give you a taste of things to come, with my Lightsworn Version X!
 
I Am Your Father...
 
Monsters-25
 
2x Judgment Dragon
2x Celestia, Lightsworn Angel
1x Gragonith, Lightsworn Dragon
 
3x Wulf, Lightsworn Beast
3x Shire, Lightsworn Spirit
3x Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter
2x Honest
2x Lyla, Lightsworn Sorceress
2x Jain, Lightsworn Paladin
1x Jenis, Lightsworn Mender
1x Garoth, Lightsworn Warrior
1x Lumina, Lightsworn Summoner
1x Ehren, Lightsworn Monk
1x Aurkus, Lightsworn Druid
 
Spells-12
 
3x Solar Recharge
2x Lightning Vortex
2x Monster Reincarnation
1x Foolish Burial
1x Brain Control
1x Heavy Storm
1x Giant Trunade
1x Charge of the Light Brigade
 
Traps-6
 
3x Lightsworn Barrier
2x Beckoning Light
1x The Transmigration Prophecy
 
He Will Join Us Or Die, Master
 
Now I know what you are all thinking, where is all the broken DARK stuff that pulls out so many wins for the deck? The answer is that there is none. The four best reasons for running a Twilight deck (Chaos Sorceror, Dark Armed Dragon, Allure of Darkness, Necro Gardna) are all limited to one. There are probably some other DARK stuff we could add, but in my opinion, it is not worth it.
 
Lightsworn work best when they are in a consolidated deck that works well within itself. Otherwise you get hands like Tragoedia, Solar Reharge, Heavy Storm, Judgment Dragon and Necro Gardna. The deck now has the need for SYNERGY, which is something that the original Lightsworn decks had, but got lost upon it's newest incarnations.
 
The original deckbuilders knew that the deck needed an ability to abuse the effects of Lightsworn milling their deck, as they only innately have two cards that actually do that, Ligthsworn Saber and Wulf. But they managed to overlook one serious contender for the deck, Gragonith. ANd now his little sister Shire has joined the game. SO now we have access to two monsters that can potential have their ATK at 4000 (Shire) and 5300 (Gragonith).
 
In fact the only Lightsworn monster I am not playing in this deck is Rinyan, who is rather weak and ineffective at what she does. Shire will be the heart and soul of this deck, as she is regularly able to get up and over 3000 ATK, even with her own paltry mill condition of 2.
 
So let's meet the players that most people have overlooked, shall we?
 
Lando's Not A System He's a Man!
 
The first name that we see as we go down the list of cards in the deck that we do not automatically know is Gragonith, Lightsworn Dragon. You mean there is ANOTHER Dragon in the Lightsworn arsenal besides JD? Yes there is Wanda! Gragonith often gets overlooked because of his superior cousin Celestia who kills two cards and gets you a mill of 4.
 
Gragonith is not so shy as Celestia, as he boasts an amazing 2000 ATK plus 300 for each and every Lightsworn monster in the graveyard with a different name. Oh, and he has Piercing too. Plus, he mills 3 at the End Phase. You combine that and you have a beast of destruction that literally cannot be stopped by Battle, and as he adds another name to get JD out easier, he goes in the deck.
 
The next card is Shire, Lightsworn Spirit,  Gragonith's little sister and the real power behind the deck. She can regularly get to 2700 ATK with all of the milling that happens, and even get to a grand total of 4000 ATK. She can be Special Summoned with Lumina and is only a Normal Summon away from bashing face. Lovely.
 
Now, the number of Wulf is actually debateable. He is a horrid topdeck and starting the game with dead copies is never fun, but the free Special SUmmon and 2100 ATK body is worth it in my opinion.
 
The number of Ryko is also dramatically higher than almost any Lightsworn deck we have seen yet. The reason is that a lot of the one-card answers that decks pack to counter Lightsworn are vulnerable to Ryko's wrath and he even ends up milling for three, which helps out a lot.
 
Now, Jenis, Lightsworn Mender is a card that I feel should have made the cut long ago. She can win games on her own just for the small price of milling atthe End Phase with a Lightsworn monster, you gain 500 lp and your opponent loses 500. COmbine that with 2100 DEF and the fact that she doesn't mill herself and we have a winner!
 
The next card that we see is Lightning Vortex. Other than JD and Celestia, Lightsworn decks have almost no way to kil monsters outside of Battle, often leading to premature JD plays and losses. Lightning Vortex solves that both by providing a discard as well as clearing the opponent's field.
 
On the plus side, Royal Oppression, Light Imprisoning Mirror, and Dimensional Fissure do not stop the Vortex, so you can swing in with ease. This deck also has a lot of dead cards, so ditching a Wulf, Celestia or Gragonith to put JD online or power Shire seems like a good bet to me.
 
Lightsworn Barrier is one of those cards that you have to admire. Charge of the Light Brigade was so goo dbecause it allowed you to search for options as well as mill cards from your deck. Necro Gardna stalled for free as well. Barrier is the happy medium between teh two. It mills without costing cards, stops attacks in order to mill and forces your opponent to use removal they would otherwise have liked to have.
 
The First Transport is Away
 
The deck does not function like a truly traditional Lightsworn deck. That deck just milled, hoped for the best and dropped a few threats until an opponent overextended and then you drop JD. This deck hokds the fort with monsters, milling and stalling with Honest and Barrier and tehn drops a huge Shire or an attacking Lightsworn to provoke a response.
 
When your opponent is nice and settled in, then you drop a Vortex or JD and hammer them to death with Shire. The other Lightsworn monsters do what they do best, and eventually you have a snowball the size of Vermont.
 
The deck is NOT fast. It is fairly quick, but not nearly as fast as many of the Lightsworn variants out there. Playtesting has revealed it to be about as slow as a Blackwing deck with only 2 Whirlwinds and about as much of a toolbox as Gladiators.
 
The only way you can even conceive of testing this deck is to actually build it though, proxies tend to not play as well as the real cards for some reason. So please get out there and experiment with the Lightsworn deck. It is not just a flavor of the month to be discarded. It needs to be reworked, and I think that this deck (though powerful in it's own right) is not the final stop on this road. Plenty more Lightsworn variants are going to be seen in the months to come.
 
Well, that wraps up this article, if you have any questions, need advise or just want to tell me I'm doing a good job (I like that btw) please email me at raptor1k@hotmail.com and put YGO in the title so I see it.
 
Thanx for Reading!
GZ/span>