With the Pendulum Monsters from Super Starter: Space-Time Showdown and Duelist Alliance, two potent Pendulum Summoning suites are now available for use in your Deck! But which one should you use? And before that, what monsters do you want to Pendulum Summon anyways? Read on  to find out!

First, a quick recap of the two major Pendulum Summoning options available at the moment!

Pendulum Normal Monsters with searching Spell Cards

This option uses Flash Knight, Focault’s Cannon, Reinforcement of the Army, and Summoner’s Art to let you Pendulum Summon monsters from Level 3 to Level 6. It generally takes up 8 to 10 slots in your Deck. 2 of each of the 4 cards named above is a good place to start.

Odd-Eyes and the ‘Gazers

This option uses Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon to fetch Timegazer Magician and Stargazer Magician from the Deck, while adding Odd-Eyes to the Extra Deck to be Pendulum Summoned back later. It lets you Pendulum Summon monsters from Level 2 to Level 7. It generally takes up 7 slots in your Deck, but can be run with as few as 5 or as many as 8 without crowding out your basic strategy. This strategy isn’t quite as consistent, but is far more powerful because it puts copies of Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon into your Extra Deck to be Pendulum Summoned throughout the Duel. “Odd-Eyes and the Gazers” would also make a great band name.

So what kinds of monsters and strategies can Pendulum Summoning augment in such a way that you would go out of your way to add Pendulum Monsters to them?

Monsters with “on Summon” Effects

Monsters with effects that activate when they’re Summoned are usually extremely powerful. The limiting factor on your ability to use them is how many you’re able to Summon in a single turn. With only Normal Summoning available to you, you can only activate one of these effects each turn, barring card effects, but with Pendulum Summoning, you can activate a ton of them in a single turn. Here are some possibilities!

Red Gadget, Green Gadget, and Yellow Gadget have been around forever. They were most recently spotted in the Top 8 of this year’s World Championship! Duelists often use cards like Kagetokage or Tin Goldfish to add extra Summoning power to their Gadget Decks which leads to Xyz Summons as well. Those effects are one-shot, but Pendulum Summoning can work every turn. Since you can Summon as many monsters as you want that fall within your Pendulum Scales, even the dreaded triple Gadget hand can turn into an incredible Rank 4 Xyz Monster like Stellarknight Deltaros, while the Gadgets can replace themselves with more Gadgets to be Pendulum Summoned next turn! In Gadget Decks, consistency is key, and you never want to be stuck without being able to Pendulum Summon Level 4 monsters, so the Pendulum Normal Monsters are the way to go here.

Traptrix Myrmeleo and Traptrix Dionaea have been super popular as of late, and each of them has 2 effects: one when they’re Normal Summoned and one when they’re Special Summoned. The Normal Summon effects are usually the more potent of the two, but you can’t deny that extra Spell/Trap destruction and extra uses out of your “Trap Hole” cards are highly desirable! They also go well with the Gadgets, like we saw in the World Championship. Pendulum Normal Monsters are the way to go here as well.

The new “Satellarknight” monsters from Duelist Alliance all have abilities that activate when they’re Summoned in any way! That makes them perfect candidates for Pendulum Summoning. Since they’re all Level 4 LIGHT Warrior-Type monsters and thus compatible with Reinforcement of the Army, it may seem like Normal Pendulum Monsters are clearly the best route to take. They’re definitely the most consistent, but with access to Level 4 LIGHT monsters, Satellarknight Alsahm, and Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon, it’s quite possible to drop 8000 damage on your opponent as early as your second turn of the Duel. A hand of Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon, Satellarknight Deneb or any card that can fetch it to your hand, and either Timegazer Magician or Stargazer Magician is enough if your opponent Summons a monster in Attack Position. So in this case, the Pendulum Normal Monsters are more consistent and mesh better with the overall strategy, but there are insane moves you can pull off that only work if you’re using Odd-Eyes and the Gazers.

Ninjas are a fan favorite that gain huge benefits from Pendulum Summoning! Ninja Grandmaster Hanzo is great regardless of how you Summon him. You can Normal Summon him and grab Ninjitsu Art of Transformation or Ninjitsu Art of Super Transformation, or you can Special Summon him and grab a Ninja monster like Red Dragon Ninja. With access to Pendulum Summoning, you can throw your opponent off balance, making your plays in an unpredictable order and casting doubt over your true intentions, putting your opponent in a bad spot where they’ll have to guess whether or not to use their Trap Cards based on possibly bogus information. Red Dragon Ninja is particularly useful in this regard, because when it finally does hit the field, via Normal Summoning, Pendulum Summoning, or Special Summoning by Ninjitsu Art of Transformation, it can wreak un-counterable havoc on your opponent’s Set Trap Cards!

So which Pendulum Monsters should you use? The best monsters available to Ninja strategies for Pendulum Summoning are Level 5 and up, though Ninja Decks don’t technically need them. In theory, you only need your Pendulum Summons to go up to Level 6 for Red Dragon Ninja, but if you’re using Ninjitsu Art of Super Transformation and/or a strategy based around Ninjitsu Art of Transformation and Apex Avian, having access to Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon and the ability to Pendulum Summon Level 7 monsters can tilt the scales towards the ‘Gazers. We’ll talk more about Apex Avian in our next installment.

That’s a lot of information to take in at once, but it’s only the beginning of how Pendulum Summoning can turn current strategies on their head! Come back tomorrow, and we’ll talk about using Pendulum Summoning to win through sheer force of numbers instead of constant use of monster effects!