There are so many different warriors in Yu-Gi-Oh, with a whole range of different effects to suit your play style. Maybe you’re looking for monsters that have huge attack stats and beat down your opponent, in which case they’ve got your back. Or maybe you’re looking for monsters that can provide a defensive wall, keeping you safe for a few turns. And yep, warriors have got just the thing! So without further ado, let’s look at our top picks for some of the best Yu-Gi-Oh warriors out there.
15. Gagaga Cowboy
Now that I think about it, I’m not really sure how a cowboy counts as a warrior. But hey, Gagaga Cowboy is a great card, so I’m not complaining! You can detach an XYZ material from this card to get one of two effects, depending on this card’s battle position. If Gagaga Cowboy is in attack position, you can make this card gain 1000 attack during the battle phase, while your opponent’s monster loses 500 attack. If this card is in defense position, however, you can simply burn your opponent for 800 damage. Both of these effects are fantastic for finishing close games in an instant. And this effect combined with the fact that this card is crazy easy to summon makes Gagaga Cowboy a versatile tool for any deck.
14. D.D. Warrior
D.D. Warrior is a fantastic way of getting rid of monsters permanently. A card that has been banished is astronomically harder to retrieve than one that’s simply been sent to the graveyard. Yu-Gi-Oh is full of cards like Monster Reborn or Call of the Haunted to bring back monsters from the graveyard, but there are barely any cards that bring back banished ones. (well, stuff that isn’t banned, anyway…) If your opponent has a big monster that’s getting in your way, all you need to do is set D.D. Warrior face down and wait for your opponent to run into it.
13. Legendary Six Samurai – Shi En
Six Samurai took the meta by storm when they first came out. In fact, I remember playing a lot of online duels at the time. And I swear half of the servers said “No Six Samurai decks allowed”. This synchro monster is one of the main reasons this deck was so powerful. Shi En can quick-effect negate a spell or trap card every single turn, which makes doing anything in Yu-Gi-Oh 10 times harder. Shi En also has the ability to prevent itself from being destroyed by destroying another Six Samurai monster you control instead – meaning once you’ve got this card out, your opponent is going to have a seriously tough time trying to overcome it. Six Samurai still sees a little bit of play to this day. And with cards like this, it’s no wonder why.
12. Nekroz of Brionac
The Nekroz archetype proved once and for all that ritual monsters weren’t just some forgotten gimmick from the older days of Yu-Gi-Oh! This band of monsters left such a mark on the meta game that Nekroz decks are still played competitively to this day. Nekroz of Brionac is the strongest of the bunch, with two different effects. You can either discard it from your hand to search whatever Nekroz card you need, or you can summon it to return two monsters to the extra deck. In a meta game that’s all about summoning big extra deck monsters, Nekroz of Brionac is an insanely powerful counter to most decks you’ll come across.
11. The Fiend Megacyber
This card is to warriors what Cyber Dragon is to dragons, allowing you to bring out big monsters for free. The Fiend Megacyber can be special summoned from your hand, providing that your opponent has 2 more monsters than you do. This is actually a huge improvement on Cyber Dragon, which you can only special summon while you control no monsters. And this means if your opponent has the upper hand and their board is filling up with monsters, you can try to beat them down with this. A 2200 attack monster that’s practically free? How could you say no to that?
10. Vision HERO Vyon
HERO decks have evolved way beyond what they were in the anime. They used to be a pretty trivial archetype that had some cool fusion monsters, but were ultimately pretty useless. Since then we’ve also seen Destiny HEROs, Masked HEROs, Evil HEROs, Vision HEROs, and Xtra HEROs… all of which have made the HERO card pool very diverse and powerful. Vision HERO Vyon is a great staple for any of these HERO decks, allowing you to send any HERO monster from the deck to the graveyard. This is great for setting up graveyard effects, or even for sending big monsters to revive with Monster Reborn! You can also banish any HERO from your graveyard to add Polymerization from your deck to your hand. A lot of the HERO cards work around fusion summoning, so this is perfect for bringing out your strongest HERO fusion(s) straight away.
9. Exiled Force
Exiled Force shows that there really is strength in numbers. While this card’s attack stat may not be the best, it’s effect more than makes up for it. You can tribute Exiled Force from your field to target and destroy any monster on the field. And this can be on either side of the field too, should you wish to destroy your own cards. Exiled Force is able to destroy face-up or face-down monsters, which means you can get rid of pesky flip-effects before they even have a chance to activate. That’s the last time you get Morphing Jar’d on a good hand!
8. Doppelwarrior
An absolute staple for any sort of synchro deck. When any monster is special summoned from the graveyard, you can special summon Doppelwarrior from your hand. Synchro decks are all about reviving your dead monsters to synchro summon with. And so if Doppelwarrior is in your hand, chances are you’ll summon it in no time. When Doppelwarrior is sent to the graveyard for a synchro summon, it generates two level 1 tokens in its place, giving you even more material to synchro summon with. That’s practically 3 cards for the price of 1.
7. Masked HERO Dark Law
Without a shadow of a doubt, this is the best Masked HERO out there. And Masked HERO Dark Law is an absolutely brutal way to hinder your opponent. While Dark Law is on the field, any card your opponent sends to the graveyard is banished instead. This means any monsters you destroy by battle or card effect, yeah, they’re gone for good! There are also cards like Dimensional Fissure which do similar things, but in this case your cards don’t get banished as a result. And Dark Law also prevents your opponent from adding stuff from their deck to their hand (or at least, it will make them think twice about it!) If they do, you can banish one random card from their hand – depleting them of valuable resources.
6. Armageddon Knight
Being able to send cards straight from the deck to the graveyard is a powerful tool in modern Yu-Gi-Oh. It used to be a bit of a novelty – I mean, why would you want to actively destroy your own monsters? As Yu-Gi-Oh has progressed, we’ve seen loads of great effects that activate when they’re in the graveyard. In fact, Shaddolls are a fairly new archetype that pretty much all have these graveyard effects, allowing you to draw cards, special summon monsters, and a whole range of broken effects. Armageddon Knight is the most versatile way of sending cards from your deck to the graveyard, with exception to Foolish Burial (which is limited at one copy per deck). If you’re looking to give your deck a bit of a boost in power and speed, I’d highly recommend including a copy of Armageddon Knight.
5. Number 39: Utopia
As weird as it is to say for a relatively new mechanic, this card is definitely the most nostalgic XYZ monster out there. For a lot of us, this card was our first introduction to XYZ summoning, with the XYZ starter decks! Number 39: Utopia allows you to prevent up to two attacks, while it has XYZ material. This is great for building up a defensive wall to keep your opponent from finishing you off. Another great strategy with this card is to negate its own attack, then combine it with the card Double or Nothing which lets it attack again, this time with double the attack power! There’s also a whole range of great rank up XYZs to summon off of this card, such as S39: Utopia the Lightning, an insanely powerful XYZ monster than gives itself 5000 attack!
4. Gilford the Lightning
If Gilford the Lightning wasn’t so difficult to summon, it would easily be at the number one spot in this list. For 3 tribute summons, you can destroy every single monster your opponent controls, all in one fell swoop! That’s face-up and face-down monsters, meaning your opponent will be left truly defenseless. The spell card equivalent of this effect, Raigeki, was banned for many years – and has only recently been allowed at one copy per deck, showcasing just how powerful this effect can be.
3. D.D. Warrior Lady
This card is very similar to D.D. Warrior, but with the added advantage that you can choose whether you want to banish the battling monster. At 1500 attack, there may be some smaller monsters your opponent can run this over with. Yet if you’re banishing an opponent’s monster, surely you want to banish their biggest and best monsters! And with this effect, you can special summon it back from the graveyard through Monster Reborn or Call of the Haunted whenever you need – and then activate the banishing effect when it’s battling a much bigger monster.
2. Goyo Guardian
This synchro monster is so insanely powerful that Konami actually had to change its card text to make it less broken. For the low cost of an Earth tuner and a non-tuner, you can essentially steal your opponent’s monsters all for yourself. Every time Goyo Guardian destroys a monster by battle and sends it to the graveyard, you can special summon that monster to your field in defense position. This means that during your next turn, you can switch that card to attack position, and beat down your opponent with their own monsters. The best bit about this effect is that it’s not just temporary until the end of the turn. As long as you’ve got that monster on the field, it’s yours to keep! Well, until the game’s over. Then maybe give it back.
1. Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning
The best warrior monster is one that’s incredibly easy to summon, and has two absolutely broken effects alongside it! To summon it, all you need to do is banish a light and a dark monster from your graveyard. You don’t even have to use up your normal summon. This card alongside its Chaos counterpart (Chaos Emperor Dragon – Envoy of the End) absolutely dominated the meta game when they were first released. In fact, these were some of the very first cards to ever get banned in competitive Yu-Gi-Oh! Envoy of the Beginning allows you to banish any monster on the field, face down or face up. While you can’t attack with this card the turn you activate its effect, this is still a fantastic piece of monster removal. But if you’re more inclined for a good ol’ beatdown, then this card’s second effect is exactly what you’re looking for: If Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning destroys an opponent’s monster by battle, it can attack all over again. With an attack stat of 3000, that is a lot of damage to be dealing all at once.
