Konami Arcade Games

These are a series of cards Konami released based off of characters in their Gradius video game series and other shooters based games. These include player controlled ships, support items, enemies and bosses. It should be noted however that several in the theme for the card game are not from Gradius series.

Playing Style

A Gradius Deck revolves around the use of the cards "Gradius" or "Victory Viper XX03" along with their support cards. The main strategy is to protect your monsters from traps with the effect of Jade Knight and boost them all with cards you can activate during damage calculation, so you dont lose your trap free advantage over your opponent. As a result, a Gradius Deck operates under a Swarm/OTK hybrid. Fighting under this style is a major gamble because just one wrong move can cripple the deck, so this deck must have a counter ready every turn. A variation on this deck reached the SHONEN JUMP Championship Nashville 2010, using cards like Honest (before it became Semi-Limited) and Creature Swap.

The mass swarming of various levels of four and one gives this deck the opportunity to summon the strongest Synchros. However, if this is the desired strategy, then it is best to gear the deck to focus only on performing Synchro Summons for that you can include Lightwave Tuning for fast level 8 synchros.

Typical cards

Monsters

• Gradius
• Gradius' Option
• Victory Viper XX03
• Falchionβ
• Lord British Space Fighter
• Jade Knight
• Blue Thunder T-45
• DUCKER Mobile Cannon (to recycle honest)
• Honest
• Cyber Eltanin
• Sangan

Spells

• Mystical Space Typhoon
• Limiter Removal
• Shrink
• Book of Moon
• Swords of Revealing Light
• Enemy Controller
• Smashing Ground
• Heavy Storm
• Rush Recklessly
• Shield Crush
• Unstable Evolution

Traps

• Torrential Tribute
• Prideful Roar
• Threatening Roar
• Beckoning Light
• Ojama Trio
• Option Hunter

Synchros and Fusions

• Stardust Dragon
• Chimeratech Fortress Dragon
• Chimeratech Overdragon
• Light End Dragon
• Avenging Knight Parshath

Cyber-Gradius Deck

This deck presents some similarities to the popular Lightsworn Deck, as it needs a lot of Mill effects to have a lot of Machine-type monsters in the Graveyard and on the field to use the effect of Cyber Eltanin to clear your opponent's field and attack it directly for an OTK, but be careful, your opponent's Spells & Traps won't be destroyed, so the use of Heavy Storm, Giant Trunade, Cold Wave, along with Counter Trap Cards can totally clear your opponent's field or save you from devastating effects like Mirror Force, Magic Cylinder, or Torrential Tribute. Additionally, this deck presents some advantages to the Lightsworn Deck, the first one is that the player using this deck can see what to discard, since cards are discarded from the hand and not from the top of the deck, and also this deck is almost immune to "Bottomless Trap Hole" and "Messenger of Peace", but it still having a lot of ATK because of the using of "Honest" and cards like "Beckoning Light" to recover the Honests and send more spaceships to the Graveyard. If "Cyber Dragon" is in this deck, "Chimeratech Fortress Dragon" can also be used as an emergency card in the extra deck. Also, only a few Trap Cards are used in this deck, only the staples ("Solemn Judgement" and "Torrential Tribute") and semi-staples ("Raigeki Break") and the "Beckoning Light" because it is a great engine in the functionality of this deck.

Monsters

• Gradius
• Victory Viper XX03
• Falchionβ
• Jade Knight
• Lord British Space Fighter
• Delta Tri
• Trigon
• Honest
• Cyber Dragon
• Cyber Eltanin

Spells

• Swords of Revealing Light
• Mystical Space Typhoon
• Giant Trunade
• Hand Destruction
• Card Destruction
• Heavy Storm
• Limiter Removal
• Dragon Laser

Traps

• Solemn Judgement
• Raigeki Break
• Torrential Tribute
• Beckoning Light
• Option Hunter

Anime Appearances

• Gradius was used by Duke Devlin and Noah Kaiba in Yu-Gi-Oh!.
• The "Bosses", or B.E.S. cards, were used by Lorenzo in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX.