Creative Deck Strategy: Pendulum Synchron

Swing into a different approach to maximizing the Synchron potential!

Turbo Boost your Engines with the Synchron Archetype:

The Synchron archetype, comprised of primarily tuners, exists to summon Synchro monsters from the Stardust and Warrior archetypes as a direct result of being used by Yusei in the 5Ds anime. But over the years, and especially with the introduction of the New Master Rules (MR4), the theme received some spectacular support to try and bolster the strategy even with only having access to one Extra Monster Zone. The best example of this was in the form of a new combo-commencing boss monster for the theme, Junk Speeder, which summons as many Synchron tuners from the deck as possible with different levels. Speeder has led to the development of many combo chains for Synchrons over the years, including a ‘1.5 card’ combo to summon out Cosmic Blazar Dragon, the strongest disruptive Synchro monster ever printed. Beyond Speeder, let’s take a minute to cover some of the other key cards.

The heart and soul of the tuner squadron for the Synchron strategy is none other than Junk Synchron himself. Whenever this O.G. is Normal Summoned to the field, he summons any Level 2 or lower monster from the GY, enabling many of your Synchro plays. While there are plenty of options at your disposal to bring back, there are two primary options. Doppelwarrior is the optimal choice for enabling further Synchro plays, as it generates 2 Level 1 tokens whenever it is used as a material for a Synchro Summon. It also has a nifty effect to summon itself from the hand whenever you Special Summon any monster from the GY! The other great option to consider is Junk Converter, a recent addition to the theme that was released in last year’s Legendary Duelists set! And boy, does this new addition to the strategy speed up the deck!

Converter offers the theme two key elements. One, it jumpstarts the deck from the getgo, and second, it extends your tuners for further Synchro plays. First, it can be discarded with any Tuner monster to search out any Synchron monster. As Converter is a Level 2 non-tuner itself, the optimal choice is generally Junk Synchron to immediately have material to make your initial Speeder. Secondly, Converter summons back any Tuner from the GY whenever it is used as material for a Synchro Summon; however, it prevents that summoned tuner from activating its effects for the rest of the turn. This can be helpful if you choose to bring back Formula Synchron or Accel Synchron, both of which can Synchro Summon during the opponent’s turn! Lastly, this card is a Junk monster, so it can be searched out from your deck whenever you use Jet Synchron as Synchro material!

Speaking of other Synchron options, Jet Synchron may be currently best known for its use in 1-card Halqifibrax combos, but it’s effect to Special Summon from the GY is great in this deck for both triggering Doppelwarrior as well as allowing for incremental Synchro Summons to build up to your board of strong Synchro bosses. Using something like Stardust Charge Warrior as a rung on the Synchro ladder works excellently to give you a free draw along the way! Another important Synchron option to highlight is Synchron Carrier, the only worthwhile non-tuner Synchron option. Carrier gives you an extra Normal Summon of a Synchron monster while it is face-up, plus when you use a Synchron Tuner as Synchro material, Carrier summons a Level 2 token to foster future Synchro plays! As I have said and will continue to note, this theme is all about turboing through Synchro monster after Synchro monster, ending on a powerful board. But what can this end state be comprised of?

As far as boss monsters, this deck totally has access to the same powerhouses mentioned earlier. Comsic Blazar Dragon helms the team as the Level 12 representative, being Synchro Summoned using 2 Synchro monsters and a Synchro Tuner. Blazar can negate a summon, card/effect activation, or attack once per turn by banishing itself, only for it to return in the End Phase. Satellite Warrior was the new Level 10 boss introduced in the Legendary Duelists set, Synchro Summoned using any tuner and a non-tuner Synchro. When it is summoned, you can destroy cards your opponent controls, up to the number of Synchro monsters in your GY, then it gains 1000 for each! On the other hand, Stardust Warrior is another Level 10 boss, made out of a Synchro Tuner and non-Tuner. This Warrior carries an effect to negate a summon at the cost of tributing itself, only for it to return in the End Phase!

Of course, this deck has full access to the typical suite of other non-specific Synchro monsters, such as Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon, Draco Berserker of the Tenyi, and F.A. Dawn Dragster to name a few. But the core of this strategy lies in the fact that all of these options are so readily available. With a wide open Synchro toolbox, you can build boards tailored for your specific opponent, as you can generally end on multiple Synchro monsters or even a field that can respond to an opponent’s play by Synchro Summoning Satellite Warrior during their turn! If you don’t believe me, just check the deck out in action in some high-paced replays!

 

Replays:

If the embedded video does not function properly, check out this video on YouTube.

 

Pendulums Swinging Your Way:

As you may have noticed, this is quite an atypical Synchron build, as it takes advantage of a significantly large Pendulum engine. Between a Supreme King engine and both of the Symphonic Warrior Pendulum monsters, this deck has a lot of smaller engines at play, all with the intention of enabling even more combos than a typical ‘standard’ Synchron build. So let’s break down each!

Symphonic Crescendo:

The Symphonic Warrior archetype has appeared in many of my builds over the years, simply due to its powerful flexibility. If you are unfamiliar with the engine, it all centers around Symphonic Warrior Guitaar. This Scale 7, when activated in the Pendulum Zone, lets you discard a card to summon any other Symphonic Warrior from the deck. The two other monsters typically run alongside this engine are Symphonic Warrior Miccs, which gives you an additional Normal Summon during the turn it is summoned, and Symphonic Warrior Basses, a tuner with the ability to modify its Level. As all Synchro-based strategies require methods of getting to either a Tuner or non-Tuner as needed, this flexibility is key to the start of any successful combo, but the level modulation with Basses truly takes it to the next level in terms of versatility.

More specifically to this build, each part of the engine works well with Synchrons in particular. Just think of Junk Synchron and how powerful his effect can be at initiating a Synchro play. Now imagine doing that twice in one combo due to Miccs extra Normal Summon. That’s just one cool application, but my absolute favorite is the interaction with the Synchron Pendulum monster itself, Performapal Odd-Eyes Synchron. As a monster, this Pendulum Tuner offers an amazing effect – target a Pendulum monster in your Pendulum Zone to Special Summon that target, then immediately Synchro Summon using both monsters. Since Guitaar is a Level 3 monster and the Performapal is Level 2, that means you can make any of your powerful Level 5 Synchro monsters: Junk Speeder, T.G. Hyper Librarian, or Accel Synchron. So not only would Miccs extend your combo, but you also get an extension from the Guitaars bringing Miccs out in the first place!

Supreme King:

While the Symphonic Warrior engine has benefits for the Synchron theme at a variety of levels, the primary benefit to the Synchrons of the included Supreme King engine is its ability to complete your Pendulum Scales. Supreme King Dragon Darkwurm has been used in Pendulum strategies for a while now, carrying an effect to summon itself from the GY whenever you control no monsters. Additionally, whenever he is summoned, you can tutor a copy of Supreme King Gate Zero, which has a Pendulum Scale of Zero. As most of your Synchron monsters have low levels, this can be great in summoning a ton of material from the hand to start Synchro Summoning away, ensuring you save a Normal Summon for a future Junk Synchron. Secondly, Darkwurm can be activated to the Pend Zone and activate a copy of Gate Zero to the other zone if you control no monsters, with the only restriction that you can only Pendulum Summon DARK monsters for the rest of the turn! Either way, these give you a bit more of a boost to accomplishing your Synchro combos!

 

Coming Together with Additional Support Cards:

Beyond the included Pendulum suites, this strategy is backed by a number of powerful support cards that bring more consistency, power, and combo extensions. On the consistency front, Tuning is a powerful tutoring option, grabbing any Synchron Tuner from your deck to the hand before milling a card. Since a lot of your options like to be in the GY, either for Junk Synchron or for their own effects, this can be quite beneficial. On the power front, one of my personal favorite tech options included in the build is Rush Warrior. This monster is often overlooked by modern Synchro builds, because at face value it just offers an ATK bonus and a recovery of a Synchron monster from your GY. But both of these effects have gotten more impactful in this strategy and with recent releases. With Satellite comfortably reaching 5500 ATK or higher, Rush can make its ATK rise to even more absurd levels for an unexpected OTK. Also, with the additional Normal Summons granted by Miccs or Carrier, an extra copy of Junk Synchron is always appreciated.

On the combo extension front, there are a couple of cool options available to you. First, you can actually run Performapal Popperup with a chance to not have to pay a LP penalty! Since you are already running Pendulum monsters and a Performapal monster in the form of your Pendulum Synchron, you are set in limited circumstances. Even if you can’t satisfy that, the sending to draw can be great at digging for more of your combo pieces early on in the duel. Next, you have access to a powerful Continuous Spell, Synchro Chase. While its protection from your opponent’s disruption is normally negligible, its ability to bring back a monster used as Synchro Material for a Stardust, Warrior, or Synchron monster can be huge in the right circumstances. This gives you a better chance to summon Blazar alongside something like Crystal Wing Synchro Dragon, so it is a valuable extender in its own right! But enough talking theory behind the picks, let’s just get to the decklist and other tech options you could try for yourself!

 

Sample Decklist:

Open the spoiler below for the full decklist.

 

Additional Tech Options:

• Synchron-related Options:
  • Road Synchron – As a Level 4 Synchron, this can be another option to summon from the deck with Speeder. I didn’t find him too useful in the combos, as you have plenty of additional material with the Pendulum engines, but it is possibility.
  • Steam Synchron – The Main Deck Synchron option that allows for Synchro Summoning during the opponent’s turn. This combos well with Dawn Dragster or Wind Pegasus to make Satellite during the opponent’s Main Phase, disrupting their plays.
  • Starlight Junktion – Field Spell for Synchrons, allows you to exchange tuners for ones of a different level. This can be helpful in the right circumstances, but if you already have a tuner and non-tuner, your setup should be enough already.
  • Junk Servant – Summons from hand easily as a Level 4 non-Tuner, so great at extending plays.

• Synchro Support Options:
  • Gravity Collapse – Turn to this option to turn off your opponent’s turn by prevent them from Summoning, at the cost of a Synchro monster. Against many decks, this is practically an auto-win button, so worthy of consideration.
  • Scrap-Iron Signal – Another disruptive option, this time that works with Crystal Wing, Satellite, Blazar, or Stardust and can negate any monster activation.
  • Limit Overdrive – A Quickplay Spell that offers alternative ways to Synchro monsters as a Quick effect. Since you are running so many Synchro monsters, this may warrant a look.
  • Burning Soul – Any combo with this deck should end on a Level 8 or higher Synchro, so this can be used to great effect as recovery and a quick option for further disruption!

• Other Pendulum Options:
  • Performapal Celestial Magician – Generic high scaled Pendulum, offers you blanket protection against monster effects for the rest of the turn as long as you already have a Synchro monster on the field!
  • Odd-Eyes Arc Pendulum Dragon – While this would require a sizable investment in card space, you could build out the Odd-Eyes suite to be larger, since Arc could summon Synchron directly from the deck! At which point, you’d be building more Synchron Odd-Eyes, but that may be a viable hybrid!
  • Abyss Actor – Curtain Raiser – Generic Level 4 Pendulum that can be easily Normal Summoned and turned into Junk Speeder with the help of Jet Synchron.

 

A New Impending Boss Monster:

The Synchron archetype may have a ton of support cards now, but one option in particular may be just around the corner for the TCG! Red Supernova Dragon (YGOrg Translation) may have been designed as a new boss option for Resonator and Red Dragon Archfiend decks, but Junk Speeder may be the easiest and most straightforward method for summoning this mega boss. With 4000 base ATK and 500 extra ATK for each Tuner in your GY, it is bound to pack a significant punch as well as a potential disruptive influence on the opponent’s gameplay. Why? Because it can banish their ENTIRE field whenever they activate a monster effect or declare an attack. Combine this with the other disruptive Synchro monsters in the arsenal, and you have quite a powerful strategy on your hands.

 

Outro:

That concludes our foray into the Synchron archetype! I hope this Pendulumatic take on the strategy gives you a new perspective at how you can modify even the most straightforward of archetypes to be a bit more non-linear and a bit less tunnel-visiony on making one boss monster. Also, it’s just pretty cool to start spamming monster after monster to make a pretty strong board of bosses, wouldn’t you say? Anyways, that’s all for now, but I’ll catch you next time whenever we unearth some Fusions, banish some acolytes, and stir in some cyberspace. It’s definitely going to be an intriguing composition!

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Reminder, I also take suggestions for future CDS articles! I really want to see some input from you! If you wish to see a CDS article about the archetype, theme, or strategy you love, feel free to private message me on the YGOrg Discord server, the comments section of any of my YouTube videos, or just post a comment in response to this article on our Facebook page with your ideas to keep under consideration! On most YGO-related communities my username is Quincymccoy, so feel free to reach out

As of now, I have a couple of outstanding requests that I am looking into: Cardian, Digital Bug, Witchcrafter, Fossil, Superheavy Samurai, & Simorgh.