Machines have always been one of the most interesting types of monsters in Yu-Gi-Oh.
Remember Yu-Gi-Oh GX?
Some of Crowler’s Ancient Gear monsters, especially that Ancient Gear Golem, looked like they had a lot of power.
Who could forget how amazing Zane Truesdale’s Cyber Dragon deck was?
You’re in the right place if you want to use the great power of machines but don’t know where to start.
So let’s get to our top choices for the Best Machine Monsters cards in Yu-Gi-Oh!
15. Leonardo’s Silver Skyship
Skyship is another card that can only be used in casual games, but it still has a lot of power.
It works with more archetypes than Towers and has a great and rare pendulum scale of 10 that makes it easy to call high-level monsters.
There aren’t many cards with a scale that high that don’t only work with a certain set of cards.
Beyond that, it’s a strong defensive wall, and in the pendulum zone, Skyship can possibly win you the match (two out of three duels, even if it’s only the first) by getting rid of three machine pendulum monsters and attacking directly with another pendulum.
In short, it’s illegal, as it should be.
14. Chimeratech Megafleet Dragon
Megafleet is a great update to the old Chimeratech Fortress Dragon. You can easily join it with a monster from the other team.
As a material, it needs the famous Cyber Dragon and at least one monster in either your Extra Zone or your opponent’s.
Then, Megafleet will get 1200 ATK for each of its materials, which is a good minimum of 2400, and your opponent will have lost one of their better creatures.
Megafleet belongs in any Cyber Dragon deck because it can both beat up other cards and get rid of them.
13. Apoqliphort Towers
This item would be much higher on my list, but it’s illegal and unlikely to ever be legalized, which limits how often it can be used.
Towers are hard to beat because they have a high ATK and are immune to spells, traps, and the effects of monsters with a level or rank of 9 or less.
They also lower the ATK of special summoned monsters by 500 and can force an opponent to destroy or remove a monster once per turn.
Only Qliphort builds can use it because it needs to be summoned, but once Towers is on the field, the battle is probably over. You can ignore this almost unbeatable card in competitive play, which is good news.
12. Card Car D
With its effect, Card Car D, which has a funny name from Konami, can really help you gain card advantage.
You can normal summon it and sacrifice it to draw two cards, just like the long-banned spell Pot of Greed.
You can only do this during Main Phase 1, you can’t special summon during this turn, and your turn will stop right away.
But especially early on, you’ll want extra draw power, and cards like Swords of Revealing Light or Threatening Force will protect you in the meantime.
Card Car D is also a great way to put more cards in the graveyard so that cards like Solidarity can use their powers.
11. Cyber Eltanin
Cyber Eltanin can’t be called normally; you have to use a special summoning spell that requires you to get rid of all light-attributed machine-type monsters from your field and/or graveyard, or at least one of them.
Each monster that Eltanin sends away gives him 500 ATK and DEF. So, what makes it so powerful, besides the fact that its ATK could be crazy?
Well, as long as you have one light machine, this card works like the famous field-clearing Raigeki. When Eltanin comes into play, it sends all other monsters to the graveyard.
If your opponent doesn’t have a trap ready, they’ll be in a lot of trouble, and even if they manage to destroy Eltanin, it will have already done its main job, which was to kill all enemy monsters.
10. ABC-Dragon Buster
You may remember that Seto Kaiba used the A, B, C and X, Y, Z monsters (not to be confused with the extra deck XYZ monsters!) when he didn’t want to use Blue Eyes.
Since then, there have been some great help cards for this archetype. And it ended up winning a lot of events.
This strategy was so good, in fact, that ABC-Dragon Buster could only be used once per deck for a while, and it still is in the OCG.
This deck’s top monster is ABC-Dragon Buster.
And it’s so easy to call for.
In fact, you don’t need Polymerization at all.
You just have to get rid of the right things from your field or graveyard. You can quickly get rid of any card on the field by throwing away one card.
This is a great way to get rid of your opponent’s most dangerous cards quickly, before they can mess up your game.
9. Dark Strike Fighter
Like Goyo Guardian, this is a basic synchro monster that just needed a few changes to make it more balanced.
With Dark Strike Fighter, you can sacrifice any monster you control to deal your opponent 200 damage times the level of the monster you sacrificed.
That’s at most 2400 damage right there and then!
This impact only happens once per turn, so as long as you have enough monsters, you can keep burning your opponent every turn.
This is great if your opponent is almost dead and you need a quick way to kill them.
If you’re in a tight spot, you can use Dark Strike Fighter’s own ability to target your opponent and deal 1600 damage to them.
8. Electromagnetic Turtle
The Electromagnetic Turtle is a great defense card that gives you twice as much blocking power as a normal monster.
It has a pretty high defense number of 1800, which should be enough to stop most monsters at level 4 or lower.
Electromagnetic Turtle has a trick up its sleeve (or shell) for when your opponent does manage to destroy this card in battle.
During your opponent’s turn, you can get rid of this card from your graveyard to end the fight phase right away.
This means that your opponent can’t announce any attacks, so you won’t get hurt for another turn.
That turtle is very useful!
7. Card Trooper
When Yu-Gi-Oh was just a little bit slower than it is now, Card Trooper was a must-have for almost every main deck.
Even in the new format, it’s still a very useful card, but it’s not a must-have.
When it’s called, you can send up to three cards from the top of your deck to the mill. For each card sent, Card Trooper gets 500 attack.
This turns your weak little monster into a beast with 1900 attack, and you may also be able to put strong cards in your graveyard that you can bring back later.
But this boost to attack isn’t always there. And when the turn is over, this guy will go back to having 400 attack.
Even so, this isn’t always a bad thing!
Because it lets you draw a card when it’s killed in battle, it’s useful that Card Trooper can make himself weak again.
6. Perfect Machine King
Now, this card is great for any machine-only deck, and if your opponent is also playing machines, it gets a lot better.
To call out the Perfect Machine King, you have to pay 2 payments.
For a monster with 2700 attack, that’s already better than Yu-Gi-Oh mainstays like Dark Magician.
This guy gets 500 damage for every other machine monster on the field.
If you fill your board with machine monsters, you’ll get a nice attack boost of 2500, giving you a monster with 5200 attack (if you take one of the extra monster zones).
Combine this card with DNA Surgery if you want to do a lot of harm. This lets you change the type of every monster on the field to whatever you want.
If you call machine, you’ll get a boost to your attack for every monster your opponent controls.
5. Formula Synchron
This monster changed the way we play synchro decks even today.
When you call it, you can draw one more card.
This is great for restocking your resources and giving you more monsters to synchro call in a combo-heavy deck, like a synchro deck.
The second result of this card is its real beauty:
During your opponent’s turn, you can quickly synchro summon a monster while it is their turn.
This lets you play effects that only happen when you call a creature during their turn.
For example, the Black Rose Dragon can blow up the whole board if you play it.
4. Cyber Dragon Infinity
With this XYZ monster, Cyber Dragons went from being a niche archetype to a strong group of monsters that can do a lot of damage.
But what’s so great about it?
Once per turn, you can choose any monster in an attack position on the field and use it as an XYZ material for this card.
This is a great way to get rid of your opponent’s monsters, because if you just kill them in battle or with a card effect, they go to the graveyard and can be used again by your opponent.
This won’t work, though, if they are used as equip cards.
And the icing on the cake for Cyber Dragon Infinity is that you can remove one XYZ material to stop any card from being activated and destroy it.
Yes, you can cancel monster effects, spells, and traps with this, and you also get to destroy the card.
3. Ancient Gear Golem – Ultimate Pound
This is a better version of the first Ancient Gear Golem. It can do everything the first one could do and more.
First of all, this guy does piercing battle damage, which means that no matter what, your opponent will take damage if this card hits them.
If you use this card to kill a monster in battle, you can then attack again by getting rid of a machine card.
This can be done twice per turn, giving this huge monster with 3000 attack points three strikes per turn.
Your opponent will probably want to get rid of this threat as soon as possible.
Ancient Gear Golem – Ultimate Pound makes sure that you will still be able to defend yourself when they are gone.
When this card is destroyed, it searches your deck for a copy of Polymerization and brings an Ancient Gear monster from your graveyard back to your hand.
This gives you everything you need to call forth a strong Ancient Gear combination.
And believe me when I say that those are some very strong cards.
2. Cyber Dragon
Cyber Dragon changed Yu-Gi-Oh from the old-school “one monster per turn” style to the way it is now, with lots of special summons.
It was the first card in the history of Yu-Gi-Oh that could be special summoned right away!
You can special summon Cyber Dragon for free (you don’t have to pay a payment) if your opponent controls a monster and you don’t.
If your opponent gets to go first, this is just a sure free monster.
But during a play, your field will be empty a lot of the time.
Your opponent might have drawn a Raigeki or called out a lot of high-attack monsters to clear the board.
Cyber Dragon is the best card to use to make a comeback, no matter what.
This card can also be used in just about any deck. Making it one of the most useful machine-type monsters in all of Yu-Gi-Oh!
Since this card came out, there have also been a lot of new help cards.
Cyber Dragons are now mostly used in XYZ summoning decks, and there are a lot of cards that can help you bring out Cyber Dragon as quickly as possible for rank-5 XYZ plays.
1. Divine Arsenal AA-Zeus – Sky Thunder
This is a must-have if your extra deck has any XYZ monsters.
To bring this card into play, you only need an XYZ monster fight. All done!
Once that is done, you can use that card and its ingredients to XYZ summon AA-Zeus.
Then, you can remove two XYZ materials from AA-Zeus to send every card on the field except this one to the graveyard.
The word “send” is the key word in this card that makes it so strong.
In modern Yu-Gi-Oh, many strong monsters have effects that say something like “can’t be killed by battle or card effects.”
How do you get rid of those things?
Well, putting a monster in the graveyard is not the same as killing it. It just moves to a different spot on the field.
Useful, right?
So, Divine Arsenal AA-Zeus – Sky Thunder can get rid of all of these indestructible monsters at once, making this XYZ probably the best machine monster worth running.
