Dies Irae

In September 2020, The Winged Dragon of Ra received a great deal of support in the form of Legendary Duelists 7: Rage of Ra. Now, with the proper support, the monster that was supposed to be the greatest of the Egyptian Gods can wreak its fiery devastation across decks of every tier level.

The Winged Dragon of Ra was always my favorite card in the whole game. Now I finally get to play him the way he deserves to be played. I've been fine-tuning this deck for months, and this build allows me to play Ra as the untouchable, omnipotent god he was always meant to be.

Here's a card-by-card breakdown of all the excellent support cards Rage of Ra provided, and the most efficient applications of each.

 

ANCIENT CHANT searches Ra, from either deck or graveyard, graveyard being relevant every now and then (more on that later). It also grants you one extra summon, and gives Ra the power to absorb the ATK/DEF of the monsters tributed to summon him. These are all self-evidently great effects that don't need much examination, but here are a few general notes about making the most of this spell:

1. Just playing the card gives you an extra tribute summon. You have to remember to banish it from your graveyard before performing the tribute summon if you want Ra to gain the tributes' ATK. On that note, Soul Crossing lets you sacrifice your opponent's monsters for a Divine monster (like Ra!). Soul Crossing is a Quick-Play spell, and that's obviously awesome, but if you play it as a normal spell on your turn, you can banish Ancient Chant from your graveyard first, and Ra will absorb your opponent's monsters' ATK points. This can lead to some interesting variations on Ra's ATK, since the only monsters of your own you'll ever really be sacrificing are Reactor Slime and its two slime tokens for 1500 base ATK points, or Egyptian God Slime for 3000. Of course, that base ATK is in addition to the life points you can then pay to Ra's ATK.

2. On rare occasions, you might find yourself in a situation where all three copies of Ra are in the graveyard, and you have the Sphere Mode of Ra in play. Sphere Mode only searches Ra from hand or deck. Ancient Chant can put Ra back into your hand from the graveyard in this instance, letting you activate an otherwise useless Sphere Mode.

 

BLAZE CANNON is the card that turns Ra into the all-powerful, game-warping god that he was in the anime. It is a quick-play spell that can't be negated, and it grants Ra three effects for one turn:

1. Ra is unaffected by your opponent's cards' effects

2. When Ra battles, you can tribute any number of other monsters that did not declare attacks this turn and add their ATK points to Ra until the end of the turn

3. After damage calculation, if Ra attacked, send all monsters your opponent controls to the graveyard.

The applications of this card are even more straightforward than Ancient Chant's. Play it when you are ready to end the game with Ra, or set it and use it as a trap to save Ra from anything your opponent might try to use against your Divine Beast.

 

GUARDIAN SLIME is the goo that holds this deck together. You can special summon it when you take any kind of damage, and its DEF rises to match the ATK of the first monster to attack it.

But the real value of Guardian Slime is its search effect. When sent to the graveyard from either your field or your hand, you can add any Spell or Trap that mentions The Winged Dragon of Ra in its text from your deck to your hand. This is really the card that lets you reliably summon, protect, and reform Ra (more on that later) as the situation requires.  

 

DARK SPELL REGENERATION is an interesting card, tricky and deceptively powerful. Its steal-a-spell effect is... fun, but most spells in the game at this point are hyper-specific to the deck running them, and won't help you much outside of that deck. Unless you actually see a generically useful spell in their graveyard (like Monster Reborn, the card that Dark Spell Regeneration was obviously designed to steal), you are better off just discarding this fascinating Trap card, setting up its powerful removal-resurrection trick.

More on that later...

 

MILLENNIUM REVELATION is a flexible card with wide-reaching applications. It lets you discard a Divine monster to search Monster Reborn, from deck or graveyard. The most obvious thing you can do with it is trade Ra for Monster Reborn, and then resurrect Ra, even though the very first line of text on The Winged Dragon of Ra is, "This monster cannot be Special Summoned," Millennium Revelation allows you to do so anyway, "ignoring its summoning conditions." Ra will have 0 ATK, but he can still destroy any monster for 1000 of your LP.  Millennium Revelation also combos very well with the all the other Ra support cards I'm going to go over, including Dark Spell Regeneration, but especially--

 

SUN GOD UNIFICATION lets you move your Life Points to and from Ra at will. It is the answer to the problem of summoning Ra with 0 ATK, and is the key to the single most powerful trick of which the deck is capable. Its actual effects are:

1. You can pay Life Points until you have 100 left, one Special Summoned (only if it was Special Summoned) The Winged Dragon of Ra gains ATK points equal to the amount of Life Points paid

2. You can tribute The Winged Dragon of Ra; gain Life Points equal to Ra's ATK.

 

Sun God Unification and Millennium Revelation are a match made in heaven. Discard Ra, search Monster Reborn, resurrect Ra, feed him all your Life Points but 100, and attack for whatever absurdly huge number that may be. THEN, Tribute Ra and resorb all those Life Points, since Millennium Revelation requires Ra to return to the graveyard at the end of the turn in which he was Special Summoned this way.

 

If you have managed to put Dark Spell Regeneration into the graveyard, now is the time to remind your opponent of that fact. If you have a copy of Ra in the graveyard and Monster Reborn in hand (which is exactly what you'll have if you've just used Millennium Revelation), Dark Spell Regeneration's in-graveyard-activation requirements are met. Banish Dark Spell Regeneration, discard Monster Reborn, and Ra will return to the field, while at the same time sending one of your opponent's monsters to the graveyard (not targeting, not destroying). From that point, you can use Sun God Unification as outlined above.

 

On the subject of Ra going to the graveyard, now is the time to talk about the fact that Ra is set apart from his fellow gods Slifer and Obelisk in that Ra is the only Egyptian God with multiple forms. The Winged Dragon of Ra - Immortal Phoenix is a monster with 4000 ATK and DEF that is completely immune to any and all effects. It can only be summoned if it was in the graveyard while The Winged Dragon of Ra went from the field to the graveyard. If you have managed to put the Phoenix in the graveyard before launching the Millennium Revelation/Sun God Unification combo, you can resurrect Ra, attack for, let's say, 7900, and then tribute Ra still during the Battle Phase to unleash the Phoenix, repleting your Life Points and piling on another 4000 points' worth of damage. Attacking with Ra and then with the Phoenix is unexpected and devastating, and is probably the most powerful maneuver of which the deck is capable.

The Winged Dragon of Ra - Immortal Phoenix also has a much stronger monster-clearing effect: for 1000 Life Points, you can send any one monster on the field to the graveyard, without targeting or destroying it, and you can use it as many times in a row as you can afford.

Immune to everything, capable of incinerating anything, regardless of their protection, the Phoenix has only one weakness: it must return to the graveyard at the end of the turn in which it was summoned. At this point, you search your hand, deck, or graveyard for the third form of Ra: Sphere Mode. 

The Winged Dragon of Ra - Sphere Mode cannot be attacked or targeted. You can tribute it to Special Summon The Winged Dragon of Ra from your hand or deck (not graveyard), ignoring Ra's summoning conditions (cannot be Special Summoned), and granting Ra a base ATK and DEF of 4000. Since this is one of the only other ways to Special Summon Ra, Sun God Unification and the Sphere Mode of Ra is another match made in heaven. Use the Sphere to summon Ra with 4000 ATK, add 7900 with Sun God Unification, attack for 11,900, tribute Ra (for a net gain of 4000 Life Points, by the way), and then unleash the Phoenix to add another 4000 damage.

 

This is the ideal way to play Ra, looping him in and out of his three forms to completely overwhelm your opponent.

 

This requires a little set-up, namely, getting the Phoenix into the graveyard in the first place. Before the card The True Sun God was released in September of 2022's Tin of the Pharaoh's Gods, this was considerably more difficult. There was no way to search the Phoenix, barring bizarre cards like Card of the Soul, or Extra Deck monsters whose materials we aren't running. You had to either send it straight to the GY with Foolish Burial, which is of course a one-of, or happen to draw the Phoenix so you could discard it with something like Millennium Revelation or Forbidden Droplet. It was the deck's greatest weakness; so many times I thought to myself, all we need now is a way to search the Phoenix, and this deck will truly be a force to be reckoned with.

 

And now, we have THE TRUE SUN GOD: When activated, add one The Winged Dragon of Ra or one card that mentions it from your deck to your hand, except The True Sun God. Monsters, except The Winged Dragon of Ra, cannot attack the turn they are Special Summoned. Once per turn, during your Main Phase, you can send this card from the field, or one copy of the Phoenix from your deck, to the graveyard, then send Ra from your field to the graveyard.

 

While this card is obviously awesome, here are a few notes about using it to its full potential:

 

I usually use its first effect to search the Phoenix right away, and then I find my own way to discard it. What I really want is to be able to attack with Ra, sacrifice it to Sun God Unification during the Battle Phase, and then attack again with the Phoenix. It's nice that the card gives you the power to summon the Phoenix on its own, but if you use this option, you will miss out on the double attack opportunity.

 

There is an interesting little floodgate effect in the middle there, about how Special Summoned monsters (except The Winged Dragon of Ra) can't attack the turn they are summoned (the Immortal Phoenix can also attack the turn it was summoned, because it is unaffected by other cards' effects). This is presumably a reference to Ra's ill-defined "Instant Attack" power in the anime, an ability that allowed Ra to attack in the same turn it was summoned—an ability that all monsters already have. It let Marik play around Vengeful Bog Spirit that one time, I guess, but in subsequent duels, he would summon Ra and then announce that he was using the power of "Instant Attack" to attack right away, in the total absence of any reason he wouldn't have been able to anyway... Kaiba, too, was inexplicably impressed when he translated and read this useless ability, but I guess that is all besides the point. The point is, this slightly bewildering line of text is extremely easy to forget, and if you're playing paper, you will have to remind your opponent they can't attack you with monsters that were just special summoned, which they will inevitably try to do, probably repeatedly. You might sometimes have occasion to attack with Egyptian God Slime, but he is also held back by The True Sun God (so just feed him to Ra with Blaze Cannon.)

 

The True Sun God is the final piece of the puzzle, and now that it is here, the deck is more consistent and powerful than ever. In fact, after trying to make the deck work without it, it almost makes everything too easy...

 

The Winged Dragon of Ra is, occasionally, dismissed by the ignorant and short-sighted as the weakest of the Egyptian Gods. This is simply untrue; the confusing design of Ra, with its "?" ATK and it seemingly self-contradicting abilities is a puzzle to be solved, a test to ensure that only those who truly understand Ra can wield him successfully, a test which most duelists fail. Just like in the anime, if you wish to wield the power of the most supreme Egyptian God, you have to prove yourself worthy first. And only a chosen few will succeed in this. By following this guide, you can be one of these few.

 

This is the Day of Wrath.