Okay, I'd like to start off by saying that's the first and ONLY time I've EVER spelled 'Satellaknight' with an R. Enjoy it whilst it lasts.

Moving swiftly on, it's no secret to the members of this academy that I adore Satellaknight. It's easily my favourite of any of the strategies on offer in the current meta, and taking into account the fact that Reinforcement of the Army was recently taken off the banlist completely, I believe it really has potential. Maybe as of current it's not as good as Burning Abyss or Shadoll, but it's certainly an extremely strong strategy, and it's not to be overlooked. It can still get extremely consistent wins, and even if it doesn't have a strong game 1 against Shadoll, and Burning Abyss can deal with it rather well, it can pick up wins fairly consistently, even against the top contenders.

But there's several different ways to play Satellaknight. My personal favourite is a control variant, which focuses around stopping your opponent and slowly grinding away their card advantage. But we're not here to talk about control. We're here to talk about burn.

Okay, I'm aware I said the B-word, but honestly, it was in the title, what did you expect?

Why burn?
Well there's a simple answer to that:

Satellaknight has a burn card built into it already. And if you haven't seen it, that doesn't surprise me unless you've played Satellaknight before. So let's take a look.



So a summon trigger that deals a thousand right off the bat. We're talking Blackship damage for summoning a monster. And as is the gimmick with Satellaknight, the effect kicks if it's summoned. JUST summoned. It can be normal, flip, special, the works. You summon it, they're going to take the hit, provided it's not negated.

Now there are those of you that're going to assume since you only need one life point to beat your opponent, taking a thousand damage won't really hurt them, since it has to be done several times to really be anything worth worrying about. Is this correct?

Eh... Yeeeah... Sort of.

Well you see, Satellaknight's kind of a tight deck, especially in a format where you need Breakthrough Skill and Vanity's Emptiness to get over Shadoll's trickery. It really can't spare the space for a burn card, because it doesn't really pressure the opponent in any considerable way. It's just a random bit of damage, which is easy to ignore in most situations.

But what if you build the entire deck around burn? What if your deck uses a pressure mechanic, that forces your opponent to act fast, with constant and intimidating streams of direct damage?

Satellaknight Burn - 40 cards
Monsters: 14
1 Honest
2 Satellarknight Alsahm
3 Satellarknight Altair
3 Satellarknight Deneb
3 Satellarknight Unukalhai
2 Satellarknight Vega

Spells: 7
3 Pot of Duality
1 Raigeki
3 Reinforcement of the Army

Traps: 19
3 Battleguard Howling
3 Call of the Haunted
2 Ceasefire
1 Compulsory Evacuation Device
3 Magic Cylinder
1 Solemn Warning
3 Stellarnova Alpha
3 Vanitys Emptiness

Extra Deck: 15
1 Abyss Dweller
2 Castel, the Skyblaster Musketeer
1 Constellar Omega
1 Daigusto Emeral
1 Diamond Dire Wolf
1 Evilswarm Exciton Knight
1 Gagaga Cowboy
1 Heroic Challenger Gandiva
1 Number 101: Silent Honor ARK
1 Number 82: Heartlandraco
1 Number 50: Blackship of Corn
1 Starliege Paladynamo
2 Stellarknight Delteros

With the entire deck designed to capitalise on the damage Alsahm can do, he actually becomes extremely effective. Summoning Alsahm isn't really a problem, considering you have Call of the Haunted to work with, as well as Satellaknight Altair. 1000 LP isn't really that much to sweat, but after it happens a couple of times, it can really be intimidating, and it's a large reason as to why this strategy works.

It’s just really hard to get comfortable and stabilise when you’re facing so much extra damage. Then take into account the fact that the damage isn’t dealt through battle, which makes it much tougher to deal with or avoid. Summon your Alsahm and attack with your Satellaknights. What’s your opponent going to do? They can try to attack into you and clear your field, but if they so much as try, Battleguard Howling sets them back even further, and opens the board for your creatures to attack again, dealing even MORE damage. Even Magic Cylinder becomes game breaking towards the end, because they simply can’t pressure you in any real way. Your opponent has to wait for removal to attack safely, and by then the games over, because the slow but steady drain on their life points has already whittled away what little they had.

The new banlist (Yes, I'll talk about it at some stage) also helps this deck in many ways. Reinforcement of the Army going to 3 is quite the boost, for reasons I'm sure you can work out, and Ceasefire, one of the most infamous and absurdly damaging burn cards in the game's history, was just put to 2. Considering the intense speed with which Satellaknight can summon large amounts of effect monsters, Ceasefire can deal monolithic amounts of damage to your opponent without them having any chance to react. The sudden reduction of life points can be quite striking, and can easily put you in a position to win games, if not win them outright.

This deck also makes good use of the newly unbanned Raigeki. And for those of you that rolled your eyes just now, yes, I AM aware it's Raigeki, but this deck makes better use than most. Considering the deck revolves around constant direct damage, the sudden ability to attack your opponent directly with everything on your board is quite intimidating, and like Ceasefire, can easily put an intense strain on your opponent, if not kill them outright. This deck is EXTREMELY good at capitalising on your opponent having an empty board, and a reset button like Raigeki means your opponent will be taking a LOT of damage, having all their defences blown away so casually.

To conclude, Satellaknight's strong as it is. And although it's down to opinion on whether or not this is more effective than the other Satellaknight strategies that currently exist, it's certainly both fun and effective putting your opponent on a timer and forcing them to rush to do anything to you. It's been Alice, feel free to leave your opinions below and enjoy the deck ^.^