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Structure Decks are cool because they can fill a variety of roles, depending on your needs. On the one hand, you can play them right out of the box and have some fun trying out the unique strategies they present. Structure Decks are designed to be cohesive and synergetic, and playing with one in a Sealed Pack or even a Constructed environment can sharpen your wits. From there, they often make a great starting point for a serious Constructed Deck.

On the other hand, Structure Decks are also a convenient source of playable material for other decks. You can often get a collection of 20 or more tournament-worthy cards in one package, and you get them for a low price without having to dig through boxes of commons at your local hobby store. If you spend some of your time experimenting with new strategies, but don’t want to rip apart your Creature Swap or Chaos Return deck to do so, then Structure Decks are a great place to get that extra Heavy Storm or Sakuretsu Armor.

As a source of playable and desirable cards, Lord of the Storm shines. Haven’t seen the decklist yet? Let me show you what makes the latest structure deck a smart buy!

Every Structure Deck consists of a chunk of reprints and a handful of new cards that you can’t get anywhere else. Lord of the Storm is above average in that respect, offering two new monsters and a new trap that are all very good at supporting certain themes. Take a peek at the deck’s marquee ultra rare.

This card cannot be Special Summoned. If you Tribute Summon this card, the Tributes must be WIND. While this card is face-up on the field, both players take 1000 points of damage during each player's End Phase. Decrease the damage each player takes when this happens by 500 points for each Spell and Trap Card that player controls.

Simorgh doesn’t look like much at first glance: almost any deck can get two spell or trap cards into its back row, which prevents the Bird of Divinity from dealing any damage. But while getting two spell or trap cards set is easy, keeping them there isn’t. There are plenty of Wind monsters that specialize in bouncing spell and trap cards off of the field. Some of them, like Lady Ninja Yae, Icarus Attack, and Swift Birdman Joe, can be found in Lord of the Storm. Others, like Byser Shock and Giant Trunade, are pretty easy to come by. Similar tactics will provide ample support for the deck’s second new monster, too . . .

If there are no cards in your opponent's Spell & Trap Card Zones, this card can attack your opponent's Life Points directly. When it does, any Battle Damage this card inflicts to your opponent's Life Points becomes the original ATK of this card.

What’s that? Why it’s the sweet smell of synergy! Like Simorgh, Sonic Shooter needs your opponent’s spell and trap zone to be clear in order to perform at its best. It can be a little tricky to work at first, but once the Shooter starts taking swings, it’s hitting pretty hard. 1300 damage a turn is nothing to sneeze at, especially if it’s backed up by another 1000 from Simorgh’s burn effect. You could just play three Shooters and two Birds with a ton of spell and trap hate, but I find the best way to run the deck is to play three copies of Chain Energy. That way, if your opponent wants to keep you from dishing out damage with Shooter and Simorgh, they’ll have to take damage in the process, paying out life points every time they set another spell or trap. On your turn, you get a far better deal. Swift Birdman Joe and Giant Trunade will bounce Chain Energy back to your hand for a nominal 500 life points, allowing you to play any cards you like before you lock down the field again. It’s an idea that has some serious potential.

Discard 1 card from your hand. Special Summon as many "Harpie Lady" cards as possible from your Graveyard. When this card is removed from the field, destroy all the monsters that were Special Summoned by this card's effect.

The final new card is perhaps the most interesting. It’s a definite must-have for any Harpie deck, and it’s a bit more versatile than it might appear. On one hand, it’s sort of like a Harpie-specific version of Return from the Different Dimension. It lets you generate a big swarm of attackers in the mid- or late game at the drop of a hat. Since it’s keyed towards Harpies, it doesn’t share Return’s high level of splashability, but it also doesn’t cost you half your life points. If the card you’re discarding to activate Hysteric Party happens to be a “Harpie Lady” monster, it’s really not costing you anything, period.

What makes this trap so good is that it gives more than just a sudden crush of attack power. You can use the smaller Harpies that you special summon as tribute fodder, which is really nice if you need to foot the bill for Simorgh, Bird of Divinity. Its all-Wind tribute requirement can be a bit daunting, but Hysteric Party makes summoning it a total snap. In addition, if you decide to give the Chain Energy idea a shot, Hysteric Party gets you a bunch of cards on the field while bypassing Chain’s damage. Good stuff.

When Royal Decree was reprinted in the Warrior’s Triumph Structure Deck, we all ran out and bought three. I followed the same pattern this time around, because Lord of the Storm happens to reprint the best Wind monster ever made: Slate Warrior!

Slate Warrior is an amazing card in the current format. Its flip effect allows it to take down monsters like Cyber Dragon and Chaos Sorcerer and come out swinging for the next round with a massive 2400 ATK. If it gets destroyed while it’s set, the opponent’s attacker becomes an easy mark for a follow-up attack, and its status as a flip effect monster means it even has synergy with Night Assailant. A relatively pricey videogame promo, it’s only been reprinted as a super rare in Tournament Pack 8, which didn’t really help the average player, because it was still darn expensive.

If you don’t own a playset of Slate Warrior, then this Structure Deck is a great opportunity. For less than the price of the original holo version, you can nab a less shiny copy, as well as 39 more cards. That makes experimenting with Wind themes a whole lot easier.

Every serious duelist should have a playset of the “recruiter” monsters from Spell Ruler. If you want to play an attribute-specific deck, you almost always want to play at least two of the appropriate recruiters. They maintain board presence, load your graveyard with fodder for cards like Silpheed and Aqua Spirit, and they create synergies that justify your playing a themed deck.

That said, they aren’t very easy to find. Many of them appear only in Spell Ruler and Dark Beginnings Vol. 1, and that can be rough: Spell Ruler is really old and difficult to get in some areas, while Dark Beginnings is a massive set to try and pull a single card from. Lord of the Storm includes two copies of Flying Kamakiri #1, a must for any Wind or Insect deck, and it’s a really nice card to have around. Special summoning stuff like Sasuke Samurai #4 and loading the graveyard for Doom Dozer, it can be a very valuable part of your arsenal.

Have you wanted to try Harpies, but don’t have the time to search for obscure commons and super rares? Almost a third of the deck’s reprints are devoted to Harpie cards: pick up two Structure Decks and you’ll probably have anything you could need. Each has one copy of the numbered Harpie Lady monsters, Harpie Girl, Harpie’s Pet Baby Dragon, and Triangle Ecstasy Spark. You’ll also find a pair each of Harpie Lady Sisters, Elegant Egotist, and Harpie’s Hunting Ground.

The rest of the deck’s reprints are what we’ve come to expect from a Structure Deck: useful, splashable stuff that comes in handy when you’re building additional decks for casual play or testing. Card Destruction is reprinted for the first time since the last Yugi deck, and other useful spells include Mystical Space Typhoon, Nobleman of Crossout, Heavy Storm, and Reload. Some of the traps are Dust Tornado, Call of the Haunted, Sakuretsu Armor, and Dark Coffin, the latter being very difficult to find otherwise. Half a dozen cards that see play in just about every deck? That’s icing on the cake in my mind.

The Lord of the Storm Structure Deck just hit store shelves in the last short while, so it should be available where ever you play cards. Slate Warrior? New cards? Actual themes that make playing Wind worthwhile? Sign me up!