Today marks the release of the Dragons Collide Structure Deck. It’s a wild ride through time and space, featuring the greatest dragons and dragon Summoning combos from every era of the game! To celebrate, here’s a look at some of the most historically significant Dragon cards and combos that are appearing again in Dragons Collide!

Lord of D. + The Flute of Summoning Dragon is very likely the first combo that long time Duelists ever learned. Playing these two cards together, along with some tough Dragons from your hand, leads to a field full of Dragons that can’t be targeted by Spells, Traps, or card effects. In the old days, Duelists would use this combo just like Kaiba did on TV. Lord of D., the Flute, and 2 Blue-Eyes White Dragons. As long as one of the cards you had left could stop Raigeki and/or Dark Hole.  Man-Eater Bug couldn’t target your Dragons, so your opponent would have to draw one of their most powerful Limited Spell Cards, or waste cards and take a lot of damage to get rid of just one Blue-Eyes.

Dragons were pretty quiet for most of the GX era. Cyber Dragon was a really big deal at the time, but it wasn’t even an actual Dragon, it was a Machine. That all changed in the second to last GX era booster set: Phantom Darkness. Phantom Darkness had two incredibly powerful Dragons in it, Prime Material Dragon and Dark Armed Dragon. Both were used upon release and are still used today, but it’s undeniable that Dark Armed Dragon is one of the most powerful monsters ever. It quickly migrated on to the Semi-Limited and later Limited Cards list after Duelists realized exactly how easy it was to put exactly 3 DARK monsters in the Graveyard.

An interesting thing about Dark Armed Dragon is that it’s the most-used Dragon outside of Dragon Decks, by far. Even today, Dark Armed Dragon is known to make an appearance in Izektor Decks owing to the Inzektors being all DARK and having Graveyard manipulating abilities. It shows up in some Hyperion Decks that use a higher than average number of DARK monsters. Heck, I’ve even seen it in Ninja Decks that use Interplanetarypurplythorny Dragon!

The 5D’s era was all about Dragons, but the vast majority of them were the signature Synchro Monsters of the series. That didn’t stop The White Stone of Legend from being a very cool callback to the classic series though! As a Tuner, The White Stone of Legend gave Dragon Decks a nifty Tuner to use, and its effect let Decks based around Blue-Eyes White Dragon shine brighter than ever. White Stone and Blue-Eyes are an important part of Dragon Decks that use Cards of Consonance and Trade-In to draw more cards and load the Graveyard with Dragons.

The most well-known Dragons of the Zexal era are easily the Evolzars. I mean, they’re Dragons made out of Dinosaurs, which is especially cool if you imagine the Xyz Summoning looking like parts of a giant robot combining together. But they aren’t the only Dragons. There’s also Thunder End Dragon, the very first Rank 8 Xyz Monster. And how do you Summon Thunder End Dragon? By overlaying 2 Level 8 Normal Monsters, for example, 2 Blue-Eyes White Dragons. Thunder End Dragon has the same ATK as a Blue-Eyes White Dragon, but it also comes with a special ability: You can detach 1 Material to destroy every other monster on the field.

Blue-Eyes is a great monster to use as Xyz Material for Thunder End Dragon. You can combine 2 to Summon Thunder End, use the effect to destroy every other monster, then use Swing of Memories or Birthright to Special Summon the Blue-Eyes you just detached and attack directly for 6000. Then all you have to do is keep Thunder End Dragon on the field until next turn, use its effect again, and win!

If you haven’t checked out Dragons Collide yet, what are you waiting for? You get to play with awesome giant Dragons that level everything in their path. And every Duelist worth their salt owes it to themselves to pull off the Lord of D. + Flute combo at least once in their life!