When Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s began, it started something that some long time fans argue should never have been started in the first place: the ability to bring monsters out from a separate deck. These monsters would be known as Synchro Monsters, and could be summoned by taking a new type of main deck monster known as "Tuners" and combining them with non-Tuners (the other monsters).
By adding the levels of non-Tuners and Tuners together, players could summon new monsters from their "extra deck". A level 3 Tuner plus a level 4 non-Tuner to make a level 7, and so on. From the very beginning, Synchro Monsters forever changed the game of Yu-Gi-Oh, and introduced many of the best monsters in the game. For this list, we’ll be looking at many of those monsters and talking about which ones were the most powerful.
10 LEO, KEEPER OF THE SACRED TREE
Sometimes, all you need is something that gets right to the point. Leo is a level 10 monster that’s a giant beatstick. It has 3100 ATK, meaning it gets over most monsters, but it’s best ability is that it can’t be targeted with your opponent’s card effects, except during your own Main Phase 2.
That’s a very specific window with which to activate cards, and almost always means Leo can make it through at least one battle phase alive, and every subsequent Main Phase 2 it survives, it can do the same thing again. Leo doesn’t have any other effects besides that, but if the opponent needs to burn through power cards like Dark Hole or Raigeki to get rid of it, that’s good enough.
9 NATURIA BEAST
If this list were made years ago, this card’s big brother Barkion would likely have made the list in its place. Its ability to negate traps was crucial back then, but these days traps have become more of a rarity (at least until the next series comes out and hopefully Konami makes traps viable again).
Naturia Beast is a great example of a powerful card that’s also well made. It can only be summoned with an Earth tuner and an Earth non-tuner, restricting it to certain decks. It only has 2200 ATK, making it fairly easy to kill. But then it can send the top 2 cards from the deck to the grave to negate the activation of any spell card, which is clutch for stopping key field spells or power spells from altering the momentum of the game.
8 SCARLIGHT RED DRAGON ARCHFIEND
Scarlight Red Dragon Archfiend is the manga version of Jack Atlas’ primary synchro monster, Red Dragon Archfiend. Working with other Red Dragon Archfiend support, the card’s name counts as “Red Dragon Archfiend” while on the field or in the graveyard. But what’s really good about the card is it allows its owner to destroy other special summoned effect monsters on the field that have less attack than Scarlight.
It has 3000 ATK, so that’s going to be most special summoned monsters, plus it can deal 500 damage for each monster destroyed. That seems light, but considering it could obliterate all the opponent’s defenses then attack for 3000 turns this into a strong way to end a duel.
7 SHOOTING QUASAR DRAGON
The final evolution of Stardust Dragon gives us this absurd creation. A level 12 monster, it summons itself with 1 Tuner Synchro and at least two normal Synchro monsters. To begin with, the number of attacks it can make depends on the number of non-Tuner Synchro monsters used to make it. So the minimum number of attacks it has is two. Did we mention it has 4000 ATK?
Secondly, once per turn it can negate any card or effect for free. Finally, even if the opponent destroys it, it special summons a Shooting Star Dragon from the Extra Deck, meaning they still have to deal with a monster with 3300 ATK monster that can still negate effects.
6 PSY-FRAMELORD OMEGA
Unfortunately for Psy-Frames, PSY-Framelord Omega wound up suffering from the same problem as many other boss monsters belonging to other archetypes. The summoning conditions were generic, so other decks were better at using it than the original deck was.
This resulted in the monster being limited to a single copy both in the West and in Japan. It was fine in its own deck but when players could summon multiple copies, banish all of them on either player’s turn to banish three cards from the opponent’s hand face-up, it went from being abusive to being frustrating to play against.
5 CRYSTAL WING SYNCHRO DRAGON
It’s somewhat sad how quickly everyone forgot about Clear Wing Synchro Dragon in favor of its big brother, Crystal Wing, but it’s understandable. Crystal Wing is an insanely good card. It can negate a monster effect as a quick effect, destroy that monster, then gain it’s ATK until the end of the turn.
It’s status as a quick effect monster actually means it can ignore hand traps like Kalut or Honest, meaning it can attack into any monster it wants with a clear mind. Even better, if it battles a level 5 or higher monster it gains that monster’s attack during damage calculation, guaranteeing that it wins the battle. And at 3000 ATK to start, possibly the duel itself.
4 T.G. HYPER LIBRARIAN
Cards that require other cards to be good aren’t usually what people would call powerful. But T.G. Hyper Librarian is a card that allows players to draw a card everytime a monster is Synchro Summoned on either side of the field. In Yu-Gi-Oh, the most important resource system is cards.
Players will play cards that banish 10 cards from their 40 card deck just to draw 2 cards, and this monster came out when Synchro Summoning happened multiple times per turn. Sometimes, players couldn’t even get rid of Hyper Librarian without synchro summoning, meaning they had to give their opponent a card just to kill it.
3 BRIONAC, DRAGON OF THE ICE BARRIER
Trishula’s little brother. Brionac was a level six synchro monster, making it incredibly easy to summon, but it came with an incredible card effect. Once per turn, a player could discard cards from their hand, then target cards on the opponent’s side of the field up to the number discarded to return those cards to the hand.
Considering anti-targeting was less of a thing at the time, Brionac basically got around everything if it wasn’t destroyed on summon. This allowed it to remove larger boss monsters or battle focused traps like Mirror Force or Dimensional Prison.
2 IGNISTER PROMINENCE, THE BLASTING DRACOSLAYER
Ignister Prominence is possibly the most powerful Synchro Monster that released during the Pendulum Era. Requiring a non-tuner Pendulum monster to summon, the card worked perfectly as a Synchro boss for Pendulum decks. It could target a Pendulum monster on the field or in the Pendulum Zone, pop it, and shuffle a card on the field into the deck.
What made this particularly offensive was this didn’t target or destroy, meaning it dodged the protection of most monsters. At best, players would have to count on their monster being unaffected by card effects. Even if that were the case, at 2850 Ignister can run over most things.
1 TRISHULA, DRAGON OF THE ICE BARRIER
For a long time, Trishula was THE big boss of Synchro monsters. It was a level 9 that required one tuner and two non-tuners, so the investment was huge for the time period it was released in. But for those who could summon it, it carried an absolutely deadly effect: making the opponent banish one monster from their hand, field, and graveyard.
This meant getting rid of the most dangerous monster on field, a card the opponent might recur from the grave to the hand, and a resource the opponent could use the following turn. All that, and it still had 2700 ATK to smack over most monsters with.