I hope you enjoyed that homage to my colleague Jason Grabher-Meyer’s column! It’s his birthday soon, so I thought a respectful reference was in order.

 . . . Actually, I have no idea when his birthday is. Either way, Happy Holidays, Metagame.com readers! This week, we’ll be finishing up my look at the elemental builds.

Next on the table is a favorite attribute of many a duelist—Light! Light monsters were once in extremely high demand for their contribution to the Chaos Emperor Dragon – Envoy of the End and Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning equation. Even though Chaos is basically gone, the attribute still houses some of the best monsters in the game.

Unlike the search-based Fire and Dark decks we discussed, this one goes to the other extreme of not using a search monster at all. The Light deck’s self-replacing searcher is Shining Angel, a nifty 1400 ATK/800 DEF monster that can find a variety of answers to deal with any problems that might spring up. Unfortunately, it’s probably put to its best use in a Fairy deck. You see, most Light monsters also happen to be Fairies, and have a number of sub-themes. These include The Sanctuary in the Sky and Mudora build-ups that have nothing to do with the attribute itself. As a result, most people tend to confuse a Light-based deck with a Fairy deck, when the two should be built very differently.

The Fairy deck focuses on the powers of Airknight Parshath, one of the best Light monsters in the game, and Mudora, which isn’t a Light monster at all. By sending a lot of Fairies into the graveyard through the effect of Shining Angel, a chain reaction occurs. First, Mudora’s ATK value rockets to mind-numbing numbers. Second, players (such as Evan Vargas) are able to qualify for Nationals with Fairy decks!

However, today’s Light deck isn’t going to feature Shining Angel at all. Sure, it was a great card when D. D. Warrior Lady wasn’t limited. However, the current group of Light monsters with ATK values lower than 1500 is a rather lackluster group. The only remotely playable cards in the build would be one copy of the Warrior Lady and perhaps White Magical Hat, but neither of those cards creates much of a use for Shining Angel.

Constructing a Solid Light Monster Lineup

There are only a handful of excellent Light effect monsters in the game, and all of them have ATK values higher than 1500. Everybody knows the two most popular are Cyber Dragon and D. D. Warrior Lady, so the goal is to support those cards with other great effect monsters. The deck will feature better special-summoning capabilities than many others, while packing the raw ATK values that are required to push through pesky cards like D. D. Assailant.

We can begin by penciling in three copies of Cyber Dragon, an irresistible special summoned monster that’ll have 2600 ATK once Luminous Spark is on the field. Using so many copies of this somewhat situational card requires a unique approach to the spell or trap lineup, and so we’ll have to keep that in mind when we’re constructing the rest of the deck. The single copy of D. D. Warrior Lady is also a given, so that leaves us quite a few more slots to work with.

One slot will definitely belong to Asura Priest, a Spirit monster that boasts a nifty 1700 ATK and can clear the entire field in one fell swoop. Asura Priest was quite popular in the previous Scapegoat-dominated metagame, but its use has dropped off as of late. In the hand disruption metagame, it’s very difficult to justify the use of any Spirit monster, but Asura Priest is a special exception. The fact that it’ll burst out of the gates with a Spark-enhanced 2200 ATK will set it up for many two-for-one trades. You can whack a D. D. Survivor and a D. D. Assailant in the same turn, clear everything that a Mystic Tomato summons to the field, or easily deal with those pesky Sheep tokens.

Another great card that’s somewhat overlooked is Blade Knight. In the current metagame (where Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive is fairly popular), Blade Knight will help you wipe the board of many pesky flip effects. Its ATK is 2000—2500 with Luminous Spark—both of which are monstrous scores in the current tech-based environment. Then, there’s yet another solid Light Warrior card that can impact some of the common choices in the metagame, Ninja Grandmaster Sasuke. The card has a solid 1800 ATK and can take out many face-down defense position monsters if you use cards like Swords of Revealing Light and Ceasefire to lift them up.

These cards all add a potent offensive punch to the deck. To balance the offense with more resource laden monsters, we’ll add a copy of everyone’s favorite Magician of Faith and a couple of Magical Merchants. These cards serve a dual purpose. First, they lead to more resources in your hand. Second, they’ll often be destroyed as a result of battle, leading to this equation. Trade a Merchant for a spell or trap from your deck, leaving a monster on your opponent’s side of the field. Now you can summon Cyber Dragon!

Let’s take a look at the build.

Monsters: 18

3 Cyber Dragon

1 Zaborg the Thunder Monarch

1 D.D Warrior Lady

2 Magical Merchant

2 Blade Knight

1 Asura Priest

1 Magician of Faith

2 Ninja Grandmaster Sasuke

1 Sangan

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Soul of Purity and Light

1 Airknight Parshath

1 Helping Robo for Combat

Every monster helps your resources in some way or provides sufficient offense, especially when you’ve got Luminous Spark handy. You can trade field presence with cards like Asura Priest and Magician of Faith, because you can simply special summon Cyber Dragon on the next turn! This type of offense will require a few spells and traps that protect against us from the hand-disruption capabilities of pesky cards like Spirit Reaper. Take a look at the spell and trap lineup of the Light attribute deck.

Spells: 16

1 Dark Hole

1 Snatch Steal

1 Premature Burial

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Heavy Storm

1 Nobleman of Crossout

1 My Body as a Shield

1 Scapegoat

2 Enemy Controller

1 Book of Moon

3 Luminous Spark

2 Smashing Ground

The use of Enemy Controller is justified, because you can keep monsters in play in order to bring Cyber Dragon onto the field. In these particular cases, Enemy Controller helps against Spirit Reaper, which is a huge threat, and it also protects almost all of your monsters once they hit the field. Finally, the fact that it can be chained to many other spells, traps, and effects is a huge plus when you’re considering whether or not to play it. The rest of the spells are quite basic, with the exception of Luminous Spark.

Again, like with all other field spells, you want to play Luminous Spark only when you’re sure that you’re going to gain advantage from it. You don’t want to open with it, but rather, you should drop it to give your monsters the additional 500 ATK boost to take down a monster that they couldn’t destroy otherwise. Starting off with a one-for-one trade (Luminous Spark for their monster) will make it a lot easier to stomach when the inevitable two-for-one trades from Mobius the Frost Monarch and Heavy Storm hit the board.

Because of these threats, the traps for this deck need to be flexible. You have to be very careful about when to set your spells and traps.

Traps: 8

2 Time Seal

3 Dust Tornado

1 Call of the Haunted

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Robbin’ Goblin

What an exciting spell and trap lineup! You can use those Cyber Dragons to their full effect here, since none of your traps remove your opponent’s monsters from the board. Instead, you’ll want to set Dust Tornados in the early game so that you can set your opponent up for all types of pain during your turn. A standard opening turn play should be a set Magical Merchant and Dust Tornado. Then, you can go off the next turn with Cyber Dragon and a monster of your choice.

This Light attribute deck is really fun to play. Try it out sometime! I’m sure it will bring you lots of joy for the holidays.