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Machines have always been one of the coolest monster types in Yu-Gi-Oh’s history.
Remember Yu-Gi-Oh GX? Crowler’s Ancient Gear monsters were some of the most powerful looking monsters (especially that Ancient Gear Golem).
And who could forget Zane Truesdale’s insanely epic Cyber Dragon deck?
If you want to channel the awesome power of machines, but you’re not quite sure where to start, then you’re in the right place.
So let’s kick it up a gear and get to our top picks for the best machine monster cards in Yu-Gi-Oh!
10. ABC-Dragon Buster
You may remember the A, B, C and X, Y, Z monsters (not to be confused with the extra deck XYZ monsters!) as a bit of a niche archetype used by Seto Kaiba – whenever he didn’t feel like using Blue Eyes.
Since then, this archetype has seen some incredible support cards. And it actually won a whole bunch of tournaments!
In fact, this archetype was so good that ABC-Dragon Buster had to be limited to one copy per deck for a while – and it still is in the OCG!
ABC-Dragon Buster is the boss monster of this deck.
And it’s amazingly easy to summon.
In fact you don’t even need to use Polymerization.
All you need to do is banish the right materials from your field or graveyard. And as a quick effect, you can discard one card to banish any card on the field!
This is great for removing your opponent’s most threatening cards as quickly as possible, before they get a chance to mess up your game.
9. Dark Strike Fighter
Like Goyo Guardian, this is a classic synchro monster that just had to be changed to make it more balanced.
With Dark Strike Fighter, you can tribute any monster you control to inflict damage to your opponent equal to its level multiplied by 200.
At a maximum, that’s 2400 damage right then and there!
This is a once-per-turn effect, meaning that as long as you’ve got the monsters to spare, you can keep burning your opponent every single turn.
This is great if your opponent is running low on life points and you need a quick way to finish them off.
If you’re in a real pinch, you can actually target Dark Strike Fighter with its own ability to inflict 1600 damage to your opponent.
8. Electromagnetic Turtle
Electromagentic Turtle is an amazing defensive card which effectively provides you with double the blocking power of a regular monster!
It’s got a pretty high defense stat of 1800, which should be able to stop a lot of level 4 or lower monsters in combat.
However, when your opponent does manage to destroy this card in battle, Electromagnetic Turtle still has a trick up its sleeve (or shell).
You can banish this card from your graveyard during your opponent’s turn to just end the battle phase immediately.
This means your opponent won’t be able to declare any attacks, leaving you safe from damage for another turn.
That’s a handy turtle!
7. Card Trooper
When Yu-Gi-Oh was just a little slower than it is today, Card Trooper was a main deck essential for pretty much any deck out there.
It’s still an incredibly useful card in today’s format, just not a must-have.
When it’s summoned, you can mill up to 3 cards from the top of your deck, having Card Trooper gain 500 attack for each card sent.
Not only does this turn your puny little monster into a 1900 attack beast, but you may also get to set up your graveyard with powerful cards to bring back later.
However, this attack boost isn’t permanent. And at the end of the turn this guy will shrink back down to 400 attack.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though!
Because when it’s destroyed in battle you get to draw a card, meaning it’s actually handy that Card Trooper can make himself weak again.
6. Perfect Machine King
Now this card is perfect for any pure machine deck, and it gets exponentially better if your opponent is running machines too.
Perfect Machine King costs 2 tributes to summon, which for a 2700 attack monster is already better than staples to the Yu-Gi-Oh series (like Dark Magician).
For every other machine monster on the field, this guy gains 500 attack.
If you completely fill your board up with machine monsters, you’ll be looking at a nice 2500 attack boost, leaving you with a 5200-attack monster (assuming you take one of the extra monster zones).
If you want to put in some serious damage, combine this card with DNA Surgery. That allows you to change every single monster on the field to a type of your choosing.
If you call machine, then you’ll gain an attack boost for every monster your opponent controls too!
5. Formula Synchron
This monster alone turned the world of synchro summoning on its head, and changed how we play synchro decks to this day.
When it’s summoned, you get to draw an extra card.
In a combo-heavy deck (like synchro decks tend to be), this is fantastic at replenishing your resources – and for giving you even more monsters to synchro summon with.
The real beauty of this card is its second effect:
As a quick effect, you can synchro summon a monster during your opponent’s turn.
This allows you to play effects that only activate on summon, all during their turn, such as Black Rose Dragon which can blow up the entire board!
4. Cyber Dragon Infinity
This XYZ monster took Cyber Dragons from a niche archetype, into a destructively powerful set of monsters.
But why is it so great?
Once per turn, you can target any attack position monster on the field and attach it to this card as an XYZ material. This is a great way of getting rid of your opponent’s monsters, because when you simply destroy them by battle or card effect, those monsters get sent to the graveyard – ready for your opponent to use all over again.
But that won’t work if they’re used as equip cards, though.
And the real cherry on top for Cyber Dragon Infinity is the fact you can detach one XYZ material to negate and destroy any card activation.
That’s right: with this you can negate monster effects, spells, and traps, and you also get to destroy whatever the card is too!
3. Ancient Gear Golem – Ultimate Pound
This is an upgrade to the original Ancient Gear Golem, doing everything the original can do and then some.
First and foremost, this guy does piercing battle damage, meaning that if this card attacks your opponent, then they’ll be taking damage no matter what.
If you manage to destroy a monster in battle with this card, you can then discard a machine card to attack again!
You can do this twice per turn, giving this huge 3000 attack monster three attacks in one turn.
With a threat like this, your opponent will probably want to get rid of it pretty quickly.
When they go, Ancient Gear Golem – Ultimate Pound ensures that you’re not left defenseless.
Because on destruction, this card searches a copy of Polymerization from your deck and brings back an Ancient Gear monster from your graveyard to your hand.
This gives you all the materials you need to summon a powerful Ancient Gear fusion.
And trust me, those are some seriously powerful cards.
2. Cyber Dragon
Cyber Dragon changed Yu-Gi-Oh from the old-school “one-monster-per-turn” format, into the special summon riddled format we’re in today.
It was the first card in Yu-Gi-Oh’s history that was readily available to special summon!
Cyber Dragon lets you special summon it, for free (no tributes), provided your opponent controls a monster and you don’t.
If your opponent manages to go first, then this is just a free monster guaranteed.
Bu there are plenty of times in a match when your field will be empty.
Maybe your opponent drew into Raigeki, or they summoned a whole bunch of high attack monsters and cleared the board.
Either way, Cyber Dragon is the perfect card to make a recovery.
This card is useful in pretty much any deck out there, too. Making it one of the most versatile machine-type monsters in all of Yu-Gi-Oh!
Since this card’s release, there has been loads of new support cards released as well.
Cyber Dragons are now primarily an XYZ summon focused deck, with a wide range of other cards available to help bring out Cyber Dragon as quickly as possible for rank-5 XYZ plays.
1. Divine Arsenal AA-Zeus – Sky Thunder
If your deck plays any sort of XYZ monsters in the extra deck, then this is a must-have.
All you need to summon this card is to have an XYZ monster battle. That’s it!
Once that’s complete, you can XYZ summon AA-Zeus using that card, and its materials as XYZ materials.
You can then detach 2 XYZ materials from AA-Zeus to send every single card on the field to the graveyard, except for this one!
The key wording that makes this card so powerful is the use of the word “send”.
A lot of powerful monsters in modern Yu-Gi-Oh will have effects that say something along the lines of “can’t be destroyed by battle or card effects”.
How are you meant to get rid of those?
Well, sending a monster to the graveyard doesn’t count as actually destroying a monster. It’s simply changing where it is on the field.
Handy, right?
Therefore, Divine Arsenal AA-Zeus – Sky Thunder can get rid of all of these indestructible monsters all at once – making this XYZ arguably the best machine monster worth running.
Rob Myers is a physics student from England, who spends his time looking at space and turning it into numbers. In his free time he enjoys playing card games, reading the Discworld series, and working his way through his never ending video game library.
