There have been a lot of incredibly strong archetypes in the world of Winged Beast Monster Cards.
From Harpies in the original series, who always had high attack stats and great ways to reliably special summon, to Blackwings in the 5DS era, who broke synchro summoning as we know it!
If you have a Winged Beast deck and want to give it more power, this plan will help you do that.
18. Hunter Owl
Hunter Owl is great in any wind attribute deck because it has a maximum ATK of 3500.
Even though it might not be very impressive if you don’t have any other wind monsters on the field, it will make up for that when its power is fully used.
I’ve seen this card a lot of times, and each time I have trouble getting rid of it.
17. Battlestorm
Even if you don’t care about its first affect, Battlestorm is a great level 4 monster.
It gives you an easy-to-summon beat-down card with a high ATK that you can use to clear your opponent’s field and deal a lot of damage.
You can’t really go wrong if you put this into a deck that is mostly made up of monsters with wings. If this card didn’t have a dark quality, it would be higher on the list.
16. Mist Bird Clausolas
This card doesn’t get much attention because it’s a Level 3 synchro, but its power is good.
It can choose a monster on the field and make its attack 0 and its effects go away for the rest of the turn.
It won’t be on the field for long, but every turn, it can use this affect to make an opponent’s boss monster weak and easy to run over.
15. Vortex the Whirlwind
A synchro monster with 2100 attack may not sound like much, but it’s a great way to start a combo!
When it dies in battle, you can special summon any winged-beast monster of level 4 or lower from your deck.
This means that you only need to attack a bigger monster than this one to get the exact cards you need on the field.
Specially calling monsters from the deck is a powerful tool for any play style.
It means you don’t have to wait around and hope you draw the right cards. Instead, you can get them right on the ground whenever you need them.
14. Fire King High Avatar Garunix
This person is just like a phoenix:
He comes back stronger and with a vengeance when he is killed by a card effect.
When it’s killed this way, it comes back to the field during the next standby phase, and when it does, it blows up every other monster on the field.
This is a great way to get some cards that get rid of other cards into your deck.
It can get rid of a lot of monsters at once, leaving your opponent with no defenses at all.
Even though this will also kill your other monsters, it is part of the Fire King plan.
All of the Fire King monsters get different effects when they are killed by a card effect, so this destruction can be the start of a vicious combo chain!
13. The Atmosphere
This card sounds strong just based on its effects and strength, and it’s good that its effect backs up this claim.
It can’t be normal summoned, but it can be special summoned by removing 2 monsters you control and 1 monster from your graveyard.
You lose the same number of monsters as you would with a tribute summon, plus one card from the grave, so it’s not hard to do.
While it’s on the field, you can use an equip trick to attach a monster your opponent controls to this card. If you do, this card gets the same amount of attack and defense as that monster. In other words, it absorbs that card into itself.
With this effect, no mountain is too high. If you take the right monsters, you can make this guy’s attack stats go through the roof.
12. Mist Valley Apex Avian
This card was a mainstay in pendulum decks for a long time, especially when Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon was one of the best pendulum monsters around:
When a card with an effect was played, you could take this card or any other Mist Valley card from the field and put it back into your hand. This would cancel the effect and destroy the played card.
When pendulum monsters were around, this was crazy strong.
You could just pendulum summon this guy the next turn, and then you’d have a free cancel card on your field every turn.
11. Raidraptor – Final Fortress Falcon
Raidraptors is a Winged Beast deck that focuses on XYZ and uses a lot of the Rank-up concepts introduced in Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal!
They have some boss monsters that are way too strong, and this is one of them.
It’s a rank 12 monster, but don’t worry, you don’t need three level 12 monsters to call it out. That in itself would be a big deal!
The Rank-up cards that come with this deck are used to call it, which makes it very easy to call.
When this guy kills a monster in battle with his huge 3800 attack, you can remove a material from this card to let it attack again.
You can do this up to twice per turn, which gives your opponent a lot of attacks to fight against.
10. Blackwing – Kalut the Moon Shadow
If you played Yu-Gi-Oh when these cards came out, you already know how strong they were.
Blackwings were so good that at one point, several of their cards were put on the banned list. Even now, there are still some cards that are just too good to be used in a game.
Kalut was on the banned list for a while, but it has since been taken off.
It’s definitely one of the best Blackwing cards because there aren’t many ways for your opponent to beat it.
During the damage step, you can get a Blackwing monster with 1400 attack by getting rid of this card.
At this point in the fight phase, your opponent can’t play cards that would stop the attack, so if you drop a Kalut on them, they’ll take the damage no matter what.
This extra attack can be the difference between winning and losing in a lot of situations, and it’s great for any Blackwing build.
9. Caligo Claw Crow
Caligo Claw Crow doesn’t work well with all Winged-beast decks.
And it works pretty well with dark monsters in any deck, not just Winged-beasts.
If you’re in charge of a dark monster, you can free-of-charge special send this guy from your hand.
This ability can only be used once per turn, so if you have more than one Caligo Claw Crow in your hand, you can’t use them both.
But this is a great way to get more monsters on your field so you can call them, whether you want to use tribute, link, synchro, or any other type of summon.
The better your monsters will be and the more likely you are to beat your opponent, the more monsters you can call from the extra deck.
8. Earthbound Immortal Aslla Piscu
The Earthbound Immortals are a character that people either love or hate.
Even though they are very powerful because they can attack the enemy straight and have very high attack stats, they are also pretty weak:
When there isn’t a field spell on the field, they blow themselves up naturally.
Aslla Piscu is my favorite Earthbound Immortal. When it leaves the field, unless it leaves because of its own effect, you can kill every monster your opponent controls and deal 800 damage for each one.
If your opponent has a full board and has also used an extra monster zone, you will take 4800 damage right away.
Since this guy can already do a lot of damage by attacking straight, this move alone can end games in an instant.
And if there’s room in your flying beast deck for a tribute summon, I’d choose this one.
7. Mist Valley Soldier
In Yu-Gi-Oh, level 4 tuners are very expensive.
The most common level for a monster that isn’t a tuner in the game is level 4, so having these level 4 tuners makes it very easy to synchro summon for level 8.
Some of the best Yu-Gi-Oh combo monsters are level 8:
Stardust Dragon, Red Dragon Archfiend, and Thought Ruler Archfiend are all great options that can win you games quickly.
But this card’s effect is also pretty good. It lets you bring back to your hand any monster that fought this card and wasn’t destroyed by the fight.
This is a great way to get rid of monsters like Spirit Reaper that can’t be killed in fight and would otherwise be a wall of defense for your opponent.
6. D.D. Crow
As Yu-Gi-Oh has gone on, the graveyard has taken on a very different role.
It used to be a place to put cards like spells and traps that had been used up or monsters that had been killed in battle.
It now works like a second hand, and players can usually get cards and benefits from it. This isn’t because the rules changed or anything; there are just a lot more cards now that can special call things from the graveyard.
Your opponent can’t use their graveyard if D.D. Crow is in play.
You can throw it away for a quick effect to get rid of a card from your opponent’s graveyard. This means they won’t be able to special summon it back for a while.
I’d put this card in a side deck with or without Winged-Beast.
If your opponent is using a lot of graveyards in their game plan, D.D. Crow is the perfect card to shut down their whole plan in an instant.
5. Barrier Statue of the Stormwinds
Floodgates are a great way to stop your opponent from getting too far ahead.
A floodgate is any card impact that lasts the whole game and stops one or both players from taking a certain type of action. This could be special calling or drawing. Everything in Yu-Gi-Oh! has a floodgate.
Barrier Statue of the Stormwinds stops both players, except for wind monsters, from special calling monsters.
Most monsters with wings are of the Wind type. So, this Barrier Statue is a great way to stop your opponent from using special calls while still letting your deck do as much as it can.
If you’re on a tight budget like I am, these Barrier Statues are a very cheap way to add openings to your deck.
They were all recently released as rares in the Maximum Gold set, so they’re not too expensive to buy as of this writing.
4. Shinobaron Peacock
Shinobirds are one of the strangest characters to show up in Yu-Gi-Oh in recent years.
They are a type of spirit monster that is all about ritual calling, which has never been done before!
Spirit monsters are monsters that all go back to their owners’ hands at the end of the phase in which they were called normally.
This usually leads to some crazy breaking effects, and this is no different.
When this card is ritually summoned, you can send back to your opponent’s hand up to three monsters they control. This is like having three Compulsory Evacuation Devices in one strong monster.
If you get rid of these extra monsters from your deck, your opponent will have to go through the trouble of calling them again, giving you a crazy amount of value.
Then, you can bring a spirit monster from your hand into play for free, no matter what its casting conditions are. This sets you up to win the game by sweeping your opponent.
3. Genex Ally Birdman
This guy is not only one of the best Winged Beasts, but also one of the best tuning monsters.
And this is so easy to bring about:
You can special summon this guy for free if you return one other monster you control to your hand.
When you add this to the fact that he is a hand level 3, you have a lot of power on your hands.
In fact, Genex Ally Birdman is such a strong tuner monster that both the OCG and the TCG only allow one copy per deck.
I’d highly recommend using this guy as your tuner if you want to add some synchro plans to your Winged Beast deck.
2. Raiza the Storm Monarch
Since the beginning of Yu-Gi-Oh, monarchs have been strong cards.
When the Monarch structure deck came out in 2016, they were the most powerful cards in the game. From 2007 to 2010, there wasn’t a single competitive deck that didn’t try to use their power.
Raiza is one of the strongest people there.
You can put any card on the field on top of its owner’s deck when it is normal called.
So this action not only gets rid of some powerful cards, but it also makes sure that your opponent’s next draw won’t be a surprise.
You know exactly what they’ll draw, so you can use the rest of your turn to get ready.
This guy is worth adding to any Winged Beast deck because he only costs 1 tribute to bring into play.
1. Castel, the Skyblaster Musketeer
In Yu-Gi-Oh, the best monsters are the ones that do crazy things and are easy to call.
Castel the Skyblaster Musketeer fits both of these descriptions.
It’s a basic rank 4 XYZ monster, which means you only need two level 4 monsters on the field to call it out.
This is easy to do with a lot of decks because it only takes one standard summon and one special summon. It’s as simple as it gets.
And what it means:
You can put any face-up card on the field back into the deck by removing two materials from this card.
This is great for getting rid of monsters that your opponent has that are very strong.
Unlike most other ways to get rid of a monster, Castel just put it back on top of the deck, so it can’t be used again until it’s drawn again.
And Castel can flip any face-up monsters into face-down defense position, which is great if your opponent has monsters with big attack stats but low defense numbers.
This makes them easy to run over, even with weak monsters, leaving your opponent helpless. This is all thanks to Castel.
