The DARK and GY engines are two of the most powerful and flexible in the entire format, so it makes sense that the best deck in the metagame is built to use both to their fullest. Meet Vayu Turbo.

Our namesake card, and it’s a weird one. A Tuner, but you can’t actually use it to Synchro Summon. Instead, you use it to perform an ersatz Synchro-esque summon from your GY. The monster you make won’t have any effects, but it’s free on-demand damage you get without spending a card from your hand. That’s really good.

Vayu’s main partner is this guy. Sirocco is more useful when drawn than Vayu, being a 2000 ATK monster you can usually normal summon without tribute (the ATK ceiling for no-strings-attacked non-tribute summons is generally 1900). The effect to gather all Blackwings’ (from either side of the field!) ATK is more useful in a pure Blackwing deck, but worth keeping in mind all the same.

With a Vayu and a Sirocco in your GY (maybe sent there with the help of Dark Grepher, or perhaps milled from a Ryko) you can begin putting out your negated Synchro monsters, starting at level 6. Then, if your level 6 Armed Wing gets destroyed, you can use it later with another Vayu to put out the level 7 Armor master, and then even later use him to get the level 8 Silverwind. Since Vayu negates their effects you don’t really need to care what they do, just how big their stats are. Being able to generate large monsters without spending cards in hand lets you play both an explosive and a grinding game as needed; this flexibility is key to Vayu Turbo’s reign on top of the meta.

We finish today looking at two powerful extenders, for Vayu and any other deck that banishes key monsters over the course of a duel. (Zombie decks love these two cards). Burial from a Different Dimension lets you put back your bansihed Vayus (alongside some non-Tuner bodies if necessary) so you can keep churning out dudes even after your opponent thought you’d run out of gas. Return from the Different Dimension doesn’t play as nice with Vayu himself, but is great at grabbing the Siroccos you’ve used as fodder, maybe alongside a Plaguespreader Zombie or something, and burst your opponent’s final fliepoints when they thought they were safe. Both of these power cards are limited, because Vayu is far from the first time having access to your banished cards was super powerful.

(Return also highlights an obscure Yu-Gi-Oh rules thing! You can’t use it to grab Synchro monsters summoned via Vayu’s effect. That’s because Synchro Monsters are “Special Summon Monsters”, ie monsters that cannot be normal summoned, and must instead be special summoned via a specified means. For Synchro Monsters, this means a Synchro Summon. Once you’ve done this, you can special summon that monster through other means if it gets destroyed or banished. But Vayu isn’t a Synchro Summon, it’s just a regular special summon, and so these improperly summoned Synchro Monsters are ineligible to be Returned. Yu-Gi-Oh!)

Next time, we’ll check out the rest of the Blackwing crew.