In Yu-Gi-Oh, it doesn’t matter how good your game plan is.
Something is going to go wrong, and your best cards are going to end up in the trash.
You’ll need a way to bring those monsters back if you want to win.
Let’s start with the obvious: Monster Reborn is still one of the best cards in the game if you want to bring monsters back from the dead.
It doesn’t have any of the rules or limits that most current cards do, and it’s the only card that can change what’s in the graveyard of an opponent.
But Monster Reborn is still not being played, even after all that.
Most Yu-Gi-Oh archetypes have their own way to get monsters back, but I want to look at some of the general ways to get monsters back, so you can use these cards in any deck you want.
12. Living Fossil
Compared to Monster Reborn, what’s better? Monster Reborn, of course, that can be searched.
World Legacy Succession is tied down by rules and limits, but you can add it from your deck to your hand with Lib, the World Key Blademaster, World Legacy – “World Armor”, World Legacy – “World Chalice”, Mekk-Knight of the Morning Star, or World Legacy Survivor.
At first, that might sound like too much work, but Girsu, the Orcust Mekk-Knight is a one-card Lib that also sets up the conditions for both Lib’s effect and World Legacy Succession itself.
At this point, you can’t call up Ib, the World Chalice Justicair, but the World Legacy engine is still a better way to call up monsters from the dead than hoping you draw into your one copy of Monster Reborn.
11. World Legacy Succession
Compared to Monster Reborn, what’s better?
Monster Reborn, of course, that can be searched. World Legacy Succession is tied down by rules and limits, but you can add it from your deck to your hand with Lib, the World Key Blademaster, World Legacy – “World Armor”, World Legacy – “World Chalice”, Mekk-Knight of the Morning Star, or World Legacy Survivor.
At first, that might sound like too much work, but Girsu, the Orcust Mekk-Knight is a one-card Lib that also sets up the conditions for both Lib’s effect and World Legacy Succession itself.
At this point, you can’t call up Ib, the World Chalice Justicair, but the World Legacy engine is still a better way to call up monsters from the dead than hoping you draw into your one copy of Monster Reborn.
10. Monster Reincarnation
Monster Reincarnation is a spell that, for most of its life, was almost never used.
It’s just a bad version of Monster Reborn, right?
Not really, and here’s what happens:
You can return any monster from your graveyard to your hand by getting rid of a card.
In modern Yu-Gi-Oh, this impact is great for two reasons.
First of all, there are a lot of cards, like Performapal Skullcrobat Joker, Elemental HERO Stratos, and Salamangreat Gazelle, whose powers happen when they are normal summoned.
So, if you put them back into your hand, you can normal summon them again and use their awesome powers again.
Second, this card is great for bringing hand traps back to life. And in current Yu-Gi-Oh, hand traps are very important. Using the right one at the right time can mean the difference between winning and losing.
If you can reuse your own hand traps, you’ll always be ahead of the game and could win in no time.
9. Dragon Revival Rhapsody
Even though this card works best in dragon decks, there are so many different kinds of dragon decks that it had to be mentioned.
What it does is:
If you control a Spellcaster monster, you can choose two Dragon monsters in your graveyard, including one normal monster, and special summon them to your side of the field. However, your opponent can’t take any more damage for the rest of the turn.
This was made for Blue-Eyes decks at first, since it can be found with King of D.
But this card is useful in other dragon decks as well!
If you’re using an Odd-Eyes deck, for example, this impact can be very strong. That deck already has a lot of spellcasters, and you can always target the Odd-Eyes Arc Pendulum Dragon. This spell is a way to fill your field with more dragons.
8. Graceful Revival
Who said that monsters with low levels had to be weak?
Graceful Revival is a trap card that lets you bring back one of your lower-level monsters (level 1 or level 2) by special calling it to your side of the field in attack position.
At first, this trap was used a lot in synchro decks to bring back low-level monsters so that synchro calls could happen.
But recently, it has been used in Melffys and other low-level monster-focused decks.
In decks that focus on lower levels, activating this trap could set up a rank 2 XYZ summon right away. This makes it a very powerful tool for reviving those decks.
7. Pot of Acquisitiveness
Even though the Pot of Acquisitiveness doesn’t always bring monsters back to you right away, it does bring them back from the bottom of the pile of monsters you sent away.
And that’s something you should definitely play!
This quick-play spell brings back to your deck three of the monsters you removed, then lets you draw a card.
This card is a must-have if you play a deck that gets rid of a lot of cards.
It has no effect on your card advantage, meaning you don’t lose or win any cards in your hand or on the field. So it’s almost a free way to get cards back after they’ve been sent away.
6. The Transmigration Prophecy
There are a lot of card effects that happen when cards are moved from the deck to the graveyard, which is why The Transmigration Prophecy is so useful.
This trap lets you put two of your dead cards back into your deck.
So, you can resend (or re-use) those cards and send them back to the graveyard again and again, giving any graveyard effects twice as much value.
Consider this card in decks like Shaddolls, which can send cards from the deck to the graveyard like nobody’s business.
5. Limit Reverse
Okay, this trap does bring in monsters that aren’t as strong.
But that doesn’t mean it’s always bad.
The Limit Reverse special brings a monster with 1000 attack or less from your graveyard to your side of the field in attack position.
In a pinch, this is a great way to take a little less damage in fight. But this card’s real use is to set up extra calls from the deck.
Low attack stats are common on tuners, low-level monsters, and all kinds of cards.
So, Limit Reverse is a great way to set up any kind of extra deck call you want.
You can also use this card to bring back a weak monster you don’t care much about and then use it right away to bring out a bigger creature with a tribute summon.
4. Miracle’s Wake
No matter how good our monsters are, we will always lose battles from time to time.
Miracle’s Wake is a useful recovery card for those times. It lets you bring back from the graveyard any monster that was killed in battle and sent there this turn.
This trap is a lot of fun to set off during the end phase of your opponent’s turn. Just when they think they have you beat, your biggest monster storms back onto the battlefield.
3. Pot of Avarice
This “Pot” card is easily one of the best in the Yu-Gi-Oh game.
We all know by now that the original Pot of Greed is just too good to be real, so Pot of Avarice is probably the best we’ll get.
You can draw two cards if you put 5 monsters from your graveyard back into your deck. Simple as pie.
This not only puts 5 of your monsters back into your deck where they can be used again, but it also gives you +1 card advantage overall.
And I think it’s safe to say that everyone likes a little pull.
2. Call of the Haunted
This is the Yu-Gi-Oh card that comes to mind when I think of getting a monster back.
If you’ve ever played Yu-Gi-Oh, whether it was on the field in the early 2000s or in a tournament in the last few years, you’ll know this card.
Call of the Haunted is an ongoing trap that brings a monster from your graveyard and puts it in attack position on your side of the field.
There’s no limit to what you can call up with this card. Maybe use it to call up a weak monster you can use for an extra deck summon.
Or you could use it to bring back one of your big boss monsters to hit your opponent with.
Call of the Haunted is always a good way to bring back monsters, no matter what you’re looking for.
1. Monster Reborn
It’s no news that this is by far the best card in the game to bring back a monster.
It’s been around since the first booster pack, and it does exactly what it says on the box.
Plus, Monster Reborn has a benefit that other cards that let you bring back monsters don’t have:
You can take monsters from the graveyard of your opponent.
In addition, Monster Reborn has no limits.
The monster you call up doesn’t need to be in a certain place for battle. It doesn’t have to be a certain level or attack, either.
As long as the monster can be called by a special spell, you can have it.
This spell to bring the dead back to life is so strong that it was banned for many years.
But as of this writing, the TCG has put back one copy of Monster Reborn in each deck, which makes me very happy.
So, if you play a deck that uses the graveyard, which is pretty much every deck except pendulums, this card is a must-have.
