Original Link: http://www.dmcomet.net/Articles/c19.htm

It's been a while since I last wrote a card article. Well, you may ask why? The thing is, it just take up a long time to write up a card article, as I see them as 10 card reviews as once, plus I have to write MORE than just purely reviewing the cards.

Since I may choose to review some of the Lightlord cards alone, I would actually for a change not choose to say "which cards is better, which is not", but more so to look at Lightlord as a whole: the deck option, the card options, the theme, and what not.

So let me get it started.

The Theme:
The first thing people think of the Lightlords is the thing that almost the whole Lightlord family has: the drawback of you having to mill your deck few cards during End Phase. Of course, as an obvious statement, all of the monsters are Light attribute, but they have all different types.

The mechanic of deck milling, even some can view it as a drawback, can also led to advantage. One is that there are few cards in the whole family that creates advantage when you mill cards into Graveyard. Also, one can also view that it helps a person to further utilize "the Graveyard as your deck", plus there is always something called "dump-reborn". Of course, the drawback is that there is the chance of losing the game not on opponent's winning it but you milling yourself, plus there are also some matchup that would be PURELY nightmare from the very beginning (talk about it later).

The cards:
The monsters can be separate into few categories, although that's the thing for most of the themes Konami created.

The beater:
- Lightlord Paladin - Jane: The effect itself is very obvious: the monster itself can get to 2100 attack battling with oponent's monster while attacking.
- Lightlord Beast - Wolff: A 2100 attack monster itself, so obviously people would use this as an early attacker. Plus, it's not really that hard to get the effect of this card going using a Lightlord deck.
- Lightlord Dragon - Gragonis: It's a DRAGON after all. Anyway, no only this card is almost guarantee to be big, but it also have the trample ability for the extra damages.

The destructor:
- Lightlord Magician - Laila: This card helps you to clear up the backfield to overcome any obstacle you are going to face that opponent try to create.
- Lightlord Angel - Cerubim: On the flip side, this card clears not only the backfield but also the front.
- Lightlord Hunter - Raiku: It destroy a card on the field after all...

The engine:
- Lightlord Warrior - Garos: While really all of the Lightlord can do the milling process, this card make it faster, which can be for the better or worse. However, afterward you get to draw more cards from your deck, which can draw you into more good cards.
- Lightlord Summoner - Luminous: Well, using the effect of the Lightlord itself, this card can bring back the ones that you really need from the Graveyard. Since most of the Lightlords are Level 4 or less anyway (outside of Angel and Dragon), so it just matter of "what you need".

The finisher:
- Judgment Dragoon: This card combines the destructor and beater as one. Not only this card would clear up the field for the final assault, it also actually make use of the Lightlord "drawback" for the win.

The Magic/Trap support:
As with any other theme, while there are the monsters itself, there are few (four, in exact) support cards that are released JUST for the Lightlords (I would talk about the ones that one person can use in latter section).

- Solar Exchange: This card is the "Destiny Draw" of the Lightlords. Like most of the new theme draws, this card is one of those "2-2 exchange" with you using a Magic plus a specific card to refresh your hand. The difference for this card compared to all the other theme draws? Well, this card also have the deck milling effect tag at the end. The good can be that it fuels your Graveyard up even faster, the bad? Well, it does use 4 cards in your deck, which makes the decking process just faster.
- Justice World: This card is the standard theme field card for Lightlord. Basically, for each time the "drawback" effect activates, it would put counter on this card, and of course, the more counter, the better. Like other field cards, the question is just that whether you feel like it would be too important to use it or can miss it without problem...which I would go with the latter.
- Light Resilience: Well, if you would get decked a lot, why not make opponent "suffer" from the same thing also? This card gives you that option: for each time your drawback would be activate, opponent would get one of his card milled. Well, in the end, the problem is obviously that you will get decked out 2 times faster than opponent.
- Illusion of Shining Light: When Konami banned [Cry of the Living Dead], they just gives you back more. This themed Living Dead let you revived a Lightlord. Is it hard to have a Lightlord in your Graveyard at all? No...no way, consider how much it milled.

The deck itself:
Of course, just talking about the cards means nothing. While individual cards can be good, they are nothing if not put into a deck. For Lightlord, here are some of the options that I can think of one using.

1. Normal Lightlord Beatdown
2. MPT Lightlord
3. Lightlord - Explosion

1. Normal Lightlord Beatdown

This idea behind this type of deck is obvious. Basically, a player starts by using the smaller Lightlords to have some cards holding onto the field, while sometimes to use their effect to destroy opponent cards (mostly Laila), do some damages/having some monster presence using the beaters, while fueling your own Graveyard using the milling effect of the Lightlords itself. The most ideal way to win is of course using cards like [Summoning of Light] to get back 3 [Judgment Dragoon], use one to clear field, the rest to just beat opponent down to dust.

On the positive side of the deck, it kills opponent fast and leaves no trace while opponent just wondering what had you done. The effects of most of the Lightlords are pretty nice...since all of them can do SOMETHING to help you on the way and none of them would be a dead draw. Of course, the drawback to this option is that you need to kill opponent FAST, or else it would just be matter of time before you decked out yourself (of course, using a bigger deck can help ease this problem). The other is that it have a nightmare matchup scenario against any RFG deck (i.e. [Banisher of Radiance], [Macrocosmos]), stall deck (deck out yourself), or for that matter, Mill deck. Also, one DDVD can hurt any beatdown deck badly...

I would talk about my own version of this deck at the end of this article.

2. MPT Lightlord

The idea of this deck is since each Lightlord CAN help you get more cards to Graveyard, the idea is like the old MPT deck: except that it does not rely on [Magical Merchant] as much. The way this deck wins is very similar to the beatdown option, except that the whole engine is very different.

3. Lightlord - Explosion

Since Magical Explosion OTK is a very popular deck, and Lightlord fuels Graveyard. Do I even recommand this option? No...a normal Magical Explosion OTK works faster and is more stable, WAY more stable.

The decklist...just for an example:

Monster (LV5 or higher): 8
Judgment Dragoon//裁きの龍 x3
Lightlord Angel - Cerubeim//ライトロード・エンジェル ケルビム x3
Lightlord Dragon - Gragonis//ライトロード・ドラゴン グラゴニス x2

Monster (<LV4): 20
Lightlord Magician - Laila//ライトロード・マジシャン ライラ x3
Lightlord Beast - Wolff//ライトロード・ビースト ウォルフ x2
Lightlord Warrior - Garos//ライトロード・ウォリアー ガロス x3
Lightlord Summoner - Luminous//ライトロード・サモナー ルミナス x3
Lightlord Paladin - Jane//ライトロード・パラディン ジェイン x3
Lightlord Hunter - Raiku//ライトロード・ハンター ライコウ x3
Honest//オネスト x2
Warrior Lady of Another Dimension//異次元の女戦士

Magic: 12
サイクロン//Cyclone
早すぎた埋葬//Early Burial
大嵐//Heavy Storm
死者蘇生//Raise Dead
Solar Exchange//ソーラー・エクスチェンジ x3
Reincarnation of Dead//死者転生 x3
Foolish Burial//おろかな埋葬 x2

Trap: 5
Illusion of Shining Light//閃光のイリュージョン x2
Summoning of Light//光の召集
Holy Barrier - Mirror Force//聖なるバリア－ミラーフォース－
Tidal Wave//激流葬

Note that I still had to fully test out the above deck (since I do not see all deck types all the time) so the ratio may change over time. The idea is just to mill, find Dragon (Reincarnation/Summoning of Light/draw) --> kill.

Just to answer the question why no [Pot of Avarice]: test it yourself and you may find it to be slow and unstable and may hurt the tempo more than helping it. The deck amount of 45 sounds about right for a Lightlord, since too much may actually slow down the deck and having the chance of now milling yourself because you cannot find the right things more!

In last word, have fun with Lightlord for the ones that want to play with it, since it is better than one thought. Of course...for those that still thinks it sucks, I will not convince you to change your mind until one day you got raped by Lightlord.
**NEW UPDATE**
The testing and result:

After some testing, here are my few cents...

1. The beatdown version is WAY better than the MPT version
I had tried both version of Lightlord deck, I just do not like the MPT version at all, period. Having the extra Avarice and Merchant in my deck seems to actually slow down the deck more than actually helping the deck moved fast and furious.

2. Luminous, the "god" summoner
If there is one card that is super useful, it HAVE to be Luminous. It is by far the second best card in the deck in terms of helping yourself moving (the obvious number one is of course Solar Exchange). It revived the lower level monsters for tribute bait, it help tune your hand with the bad Wolff and Raiku out, plus it helps you to fill up the Graveyard.

3. Judgment Dragoon is not the best Dragon
Although Judgment Dragoon IS still the finisher, Dragonis gives me THE monster to deal insane amount of damages to opponent. And this thing grow fast and furious...and is a monster destruction target waiting to happen...oh wait...there is Cold Wave...

4. It IS indeed pretty good deck...although may not be as powerful as Dark counterpart
When I'm talking about Dark counterpart, I'm talking about the TCG version with Allure and Darklord Zerato, as the version without the TCG exclusive is nowhere as fast. Who winning the Dark versus Light battle depends a LOT on the skill of the duelist...and side decking. Both decks are vulnerable to RFG continuous cards anyway...and the Lightlord user HAVE to hope that opponent do not have [Deck Destruction Virus of Death] waiting on you (since I did have my whole hand after [Summoning of Light] destroyed once...)

In last word, have fun with Lightlord for the ones that want to play with it, since it is better than one thought. Of course...for those that still thinks it sucks, I will not convince you to change your mind until one day you got raped by Lightlord.

- Baron, 3/2/2008