If you are new to professional sports, you might not know what an engine is.
In Yu-Gi-Oh!, an Engine is just a group of cards that fit into your deck to speed it up or give you access to card powers you wouldn’t have otherwise.
Most of the time, these engines aren’t part of the strategy you’re playing.
For example, if you’re playing a Dragon-link deck, you might want to add more swarming power by using the Dogmatika engine.
And if you’re looking for some generic engines to add to your deck, you don’t have to look any further, because we’re going to tell you which engines we think are the best in current Yu-Gi-Oh!
7. Spellbook Engine
This engine uses a two-card combo to draw two cards from the same deck, and one of the cards looks for the other. Does the writer need to say more?
Cards Needed
Spellbook of the Prophetic Magician
Book of Knowledge of Spells
How to Draw
Bring back the Spellbook Magician of Prophecy. Use his skill to look for the Spellbook of Knowledge.
Spellbook of Knowledge should be turned on. You can draw two cards by sending the Magician of Prophecy to the Graveyard.
How and why it works
The perks of this pair go without saying. In fact, the combo makes it easier to find Spellbook of Knowledge if you first look for Spellbook of Secrets and then use its benefit to look for Spellbook of Knowledge.
Putting this engine in a Spellcaster deck makes it even more reliable—so reliable, in fact, that you could say it works like magic.
6. Bamboo Engine
At first view, the Bamboo Engine seems simple, but a closer look shows that weapons made from the panda’s favorite food are very flexible.
Cards Needed
- Bamboo sword or Bamboo sword with a curse
- Golden Bamboo Sword
- 1 monster
How to Draw
- Put either the Broken Bamboo Sword or the Cursed Bamboo Sword on a monster.
- When you use the Golden Bamboo Sword, you will draw two cards.
How and why it works
If you send the Cursed Bamboo Sword to the Graveyard, you can search for any other card in the same group.
If you include the Soul Devouring and Burning Bamboo Swords in your order, you can even make a Draw/Main Phase 1 lock.
Fairy Tail—Rella can add spice and pepperoni to the pie by speeding up the engine by looking for the equip spell cards needed to activate Golden Bamboo Sword.
With all of these perks, the writer might also want to eat some bamboo.
5. The Impcantation Engine
A lot of ritual decks have trouble staying the same. Drawing the two pieces you need for a ritual call at the same time is surprisingly hard.
The Impcantation deck does a great job of giving your ritual deck some general search power, which lets you do some crazy ritual calls.
You should run the following cards in this engine:
- Impcantation Chalislime (3 copies, you want this guy in your hand as much as possible)
- Impcantation Candoll (2/1 copies, searches from the deck)
- Impcantation Talismandra (2/1 copies, searches from the deck)
- Impcantation Inception (1 copy)
For this combo to start, you need to have Impeccation Chalislime in your hand.
We’re lucky that it’s a level 7 ritual monster, because that means we can search for it with Preparation of Rites, a card that’s in every ritual deck.
You can then special summon Impcantation Candoll from the deck by showing Impcantation Chalislime from your hand.
When you summon Candoll, you can add any ritual card from your deck to your hand. You should use this to find the one copy of Impcantation Inception in your deck.
Then, use Impcantation Inception to ritually call up any monster you have in your hand (yes, this ritual spell can actually ritually call up any ritual monster, so go crazy!)
With this spell in the graveyard, you can use Impcantation Inception’s graveyard ability to special summon Impcantation Talismandra from your deck. When this guy is called to the field, you can search your deck for any ritual monster you want and add it to your hand.
This is a cool way to make sure you always have those important ritual monsters in your hand, so you don’t have to worry about drawing the right pieces.
All of the cards in Impcantation’s deck are also very flexible.
So, even if you can’t pull off this exact combo, you can use these guys in a million other ways to find the best cards in your deck.
4. The Artifact Engine
This engine is a lot smaller than the last one, so if you’re running out of room on your deck, this is a great choice.
For this engine to work, you need to:
- Artifact Sanctum (3 copies)
- Artifact Lancea (1 copy)
- Artifact Scythe (1 copy)
Artifact Sanctum is a cool trap card that lets you bring any artifact monster from your deck to your side of the field as a special summon.
You can’t do your fight phase on the turn you use this effect, but that’s not a problem if you use it when it’s your opponent’s turn.
Theoretically, you could go into any Artifact monster from this card, but Artifact Lancea and Artifact Scythe are my top picks for your main deck.
You can also send Artifact Lancea from your hand or field to the Graveyard to stop both players from sending monsters to the Graveyard.
There are a lot of great cards, like Pot of Desires, that you have to banish to use their powers. So having Artifact Lancea on the field is a great way to stop them in their tracks.
Artifact Scythe, on the other hand, stops like nothing else.
If this card is special called during your opponent’s turn, they can’t use their extra deck at all for the rest of the turn!
Pretty much every Yu-Gi-Oh deck makes use of the extra deck in some way. So being locked out of it can be a huge problem for your opponent’s plan, and it can help you win easily.
3. The Rokket Engine
If you’ve played Yu-Gi-Oh! in the last few months, you know how strong Rokkets can be.
They’re the foundation of a very strong deck called Dragon-link, but did you know that Rokket monsters are also great engines?
This engine focuses on building board influence, and you’ll need the following to run it:
- Rokket Tracer (2/3 copies)
- Quick Launch (2/3 copies)
- Any other Rokket monster (2 copies, or 2 different Rokket monsters)
- Boot Sector Launch (1 copy)
- Striker Dragon (1 copy)
To start this combo, you’ll need to have both Rokket Tracer and Quick Launch in your hand at the same time.
You could do this combination with just one of these, but this is the best way to do it.
Bring Rokket Tracer onto your side of the field, and then play Quick Launch, a quick-play spell card that lets you special summon a Rokket monster from your deck.
Then, you can link Rokket Tracer’s effect to the quick-play spell card. This lets you destroy a card on the field to special call any Rokket monster from your deck.
If you don’t have anything you want to destroy on your side of the field, just target the quick-play card. It’s going to the graveyard in a second anyway, so destroying it won’t change that.
Then you should use Rokket Tracer to link summon Striker Dragon. When it is called, this clever little link 1 monster looks for your field spell Boot Sector Launch.
As of this writing, Boot Sector Launch is one of the best field spells ever.
What it does is:
Once per turn, you can either special summon two Rokket monsters from your hand to your side of the field, or you can special summon Rokket monsters from your graveyard until you have the same number of monsters on the field as your opponent.
If your opponent has a good board, you can call up a lot of monsters at once.
Overall, this engine gives you three more monsters to call and a field spell that lets you bring those monsters back every turn.
So this is a great way to fill the field with water.
2. Invoked Engine
Duelists love this engine so much that it has become a joke in the Yu-Gi-Oh! community.
The joke is that so many Yu-Gi-Oh! games start with normal summoning Aleister, which is one of the key cards in the Invoked system, that it’s almost like a signal that the game has started.
There’s a reason this meme is so popular: the Invoked Engine is a great way to put strong fusion monsters on the field for almost no cost, and it can be used in almost any deck that doesn’t normal summon a lot.
To run this engine, you’ll need:
- Magical Meltdown (3 copies)
- Aleister the Invoker (1-3 copies, depends on how often you want to fusion summon)
- Invocation (1-3 copies)
- Invoked Mechaba (1 copy)
- Invoked Caliga (1 copy)
First, use Magical Meltdown to find Aleister the Invoker in your deck and add him to your hand.
This field spell gives safety to your fusion monsters and stops your opponent from using any effects in response to your fusion summons.
Next, you will need to call Aleister the Invoker himself.
When you summon him normally, his effect goes into action, letting you look through your deck for your fusion spell “Invocation” and add it to your hand.
This incredibly powerful fusion spell lets you use monsters from your hand as ingredients or just send monsters from either player’s GY/field to the graveyard.
From here you’ve got two really great options:
- You can call up Invoked Caliga, a strong dark-type fusion monster that can only use 1 monster effect and 1 attack per turn. This is a great way to stop your opponent from doing what they want, since they can’t do much with only 1 monster per turn.
- You could also summon Invoked Mechaba, a light-type fusion monster that can stop any monster, spell, or trap card your opponent uses once per turn by discarding a card of the same type. For example, you could discard a monster card to stop a monster card.
The Invoked engine can provide your deck with an immensely brutal floodgate, or it can give your deck some extra negate power that it may be lacking.
It’s really quite versatile.
1. Dogmatika/Shaddoll Engine
The most strong engine in all of Yu-Gi-Oh is definitely this one.
It’s easy to understand why!
The Dogmatika engine is in almost every meta deck, so if you want to play professional Yu-Gi-Oh!, you’ll definitely face these cards in your duels.
To make this engine work, you’ll need to be:
- Nadir Servant (3 copies, a must have for this engine)
- Dogmatika Ecclesia (2/1 copies)
- Dogmatika Fleur de lis (2/1 copies)
- Titaniklad the Ash Dragon (0/1 copy)
- Psy-Frame Lord Omega (0/1 copy)
- Elder Entity N’Tsss (0/1 copy)
You’ll need a copy of Nadir Servant in your hands to get this system going.
This insanely strong spell lets you search your deck for any Dogmatika monster and add it to your hand. The “cost” is that you have to send a monster from your extra deck to the graveyard.
You could use this effect to cause a lot of different monster effects. Titaniklad the Ash Dragon is the best one for this engine, though.
If you send Titaniklad, the Ash Dragon to the graveyard, you can look through your deck for any Dogmatika card and either put it on your hand or use a special ability to bring it to life.
This is great for putting together your Dogmatika monsters, especially if you didn’t draw one.
Dogmatika Ecclesia, the Virtuous is a card I’d add to your hand.
Then Ecclesia can special summon herself when any extra-deck monster is already on the field, which is almost always in current Yu-Gi-Oh.
When she is special summoned, you can check your deck for any Dogmatika card, including spells and traps, and add it to your hand.
From here you’ve got 2 options:
You can look for Dogmatika Fleur de Lis, the Knighted, a very powerful monster that can cancel the effects of a monster your opponent controls. You can also look for Dogmatika Maximus, who can send even more monsters from the extra deck to the graveyard.
With Maximus on the field, you can send some very strong cards to the graveyard, like Psy-Frame Lord Omega, who can put cards from your graveyard back into your deck.
Or, you could send Elder Entity N’Tss to the graveyard. When she goes to the graveyard, she can choose any card on the field and destroy it.
Dogmatika Maximus has so many different (and very broken) effects that you can use.
This engine makes sure that you’ll be able to do that many times quickly.
