The Most Iconic Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards of All Time

Blue-Eyes White Dragon

A vanilla Normal monster with a huge 3000 ATK and no effect of its own

Kaiba's signature dragon and the original boss monster, a vanilla 3000 ATK beater that defined raw power. Only four were ever said to exist and Kaiba owned three, and since a deck can run at most three copies of a card, that was already a complete set. So when he tore up the fourth, Yugi's grandfather's copy, he guaranteed he would be the only person who could ever field a Blue-Eyes at all. Decades on it is still the face of the game and the core of one of its biggest archetypes

Dark Magician

A 2500 ATK Normal Spellcaster, the classic mage with no built-in effect

Yugi's ace and the closest thing the franchise has to a mascot, the wizard he reaches for when it matters most. On paper it is unremarkable, and players love to point it out: 2500 ATK for a Level 7 that needs two tributes, when Summoned Skull hits just as hard for one tribute fewer. What keeps Dark Magician around is love, not stats: it has been re-illustrated in more artworks than almost any card, and a whole web of support, from Dark Magician Girl to dedicated spells, exists purely to back it up

Red-Eyes Black Dragon

A 2400 ATK Normal Dragon with no effect

Joey's signature dragon and the eternal underdog. Weaker than Blue-Eyes on paper, yet so loved it grew into an entire archetype of its own. What many forget is that it was not originally his: Joey's early ace was the Flame Swordsman, and he won Red-Eyes as a prize by beating Rex Raptor in Duelist Kingdom, wagering his own Time Wizard for it

Exodia the Forbidden One

A 1000 ATK monster that wins the duel the instant you hold it together with all four Forbidden One limbs

The most famous win condition in the game: hold the head together with all four limbs and you win on the spot, no matter what is on the board. It is burned into every fan's memory as the way Yugi handed Kaiba his first defeat in the very first duel of the series. Its fame even spread past Yu-Gi-Oh, and players of other card games now use 'Exodia' as shorthand for any deck that wins by assembling a combo or meeting a condition, rather than by attacking the opponent down. And there is a small irony in the name: despite being 'the Forbidden One', the card itself sits at Limited, one copy per deck, and is not Forbidden at all

Kuriboh

A tiny 300 ATK Fiend you can discard to stop the damage from one attack

Proof that a fluffball can become a legend. It is Yugi's clutch defensive trick, the little monster he discards to block an attack, and it started a franchise tradition: every later protagonist gets their own Kuriboh, a loyal sidekick always ready to step in and defend its duelist

Slifer the Sky Dragon

An Egyptian God whose ATK and DEF grow by 1000 for every card in your hand

Yugi's own god and the dragon that loomed over the Battle City arc. Its power scales with your hand, which sounds terrifying, but in practice you play your cards out, so by the time it lands your hand is often nearly empty and the dragon far weaker than its legend

Obelisk the Tormentor

A 4000 ATK and 4000 DEF Egyptian God that cannot be targeted by either player's card effects, and can tribute two monsters to clear the opponent's field

Kaiba's god and the most consistently powerful of the three. Unlike Slifer and Ra its huge stats are fixed, not tied to your hand or your Life Points, so it is always a 4000-point threat, and since neither player can target it with effects it is genuinely hard to remove or beat in battle

The Winged Dragon of Ra

An Egyptian God you can pump by paying Life Points, or pay to destroy a monster

Marik's god and the most mythologised of the three, wrapped in summoning chants and an aura of being unbeatable. On its own, though, the original card was clumsy and underwhelming, and it only became genuinely strong years later through the support cards built around it