Normal Monster

Normal Monsters, colored yellow, are primarily used to protect your Life Points from Direct Damage, and to offer high ATK for use against your opponent, in exchange for having no effect. They usually possess basic stats; ATK, DEF, Level, Attribute, Type, and more often than not, one value is sacrificed to benefit another. High ATK and low DEF Normal Monsters are often associated with Beatdown Decks. Normal Monsters are popularly called Vanilla, both as a reference to how they are "plain" with no effects as well as to the creamy yellow color of their cards.

Though they do not have inherent effects, there are often Spell, Trap or Effect Monster effects associated with specific Normal Monsters. For example, "Dark Magic Attack" can only be used with "Dark Magician", and "X-Head Cannon" is the only legal target for two specific Union Monsters. Normal Monsters have received some very powerful support cards for general use, such as "Birthright", "Silent Doom", "Ancient Rules", "Symbols of Duty", "Justi-Break" and "Dark Factory of Mass Production". In general, Normal Monsters have many more legal options for being Summoned back to the field from the Graveyard than Effect Monsters ("Call of the Haunted", "Premature Burial" and "Monster Reborn" being the most popular). Gemini Monsters take advantage of the more varied options for Summoning Normal Monsters back to the field.

A subset of Normal Monster support is devoted to that of Normal Monsters that are low in Level (typically Level 3 or lower), allowing them to be summoned out of the deck en masse to flood the field with cards like "Human-Wave Tactics" or "Enchanting Fitting Room," to then be powered up with cards like "Triangle Power", "Amulet of Ambition", or "Sword of the Soul-Eater," or to wipe all of the opponent's cards in their Hand and on their field away with "The Law of the Normal".

The card text (or flavor text) on Normal Monsters is for illustrative purposes only, and has no effect on gameplay, since these cards have no effects.

Normal Monster Decks are also known as Vanilla Decks. The most popular cards in vanilla decks are cards like " Non-Spellcasting Area ", " Heart of the Underdog ", " Skill Drain ", etc. If playing a beat down vanilla deck, use of powerup cards such as " Mage Power " and " United we Stand " are recommended, as well as backup cards like " Ultimate Offering ", letting you summon more than 1 monster per turn, works great with " Heart of the Underdog ", or " Cold Wave " letting you atack without fear of magic &/or trap cards.

Example

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