The Fire King Sanctuary

Sacred Fire King Garunix Level 8 FIRE Winged Beast If your monster(s) that was originally FIRE is destroyed by battle or card effect: You can Special Summon this card from your GY (if it was there when the monster was destroyed) or hand (even if not). If this card is Normal or Special Summoned: You can destroy 1 FIRE Beast, Beast-Warrior, or Winged Beast monster in your hand, Deck, or face-up field, except "Sacred Fire King Garunix", and if you do, this card gains ATK equal to half the destroyed monster's ATK it had there, until the end of this turn. You can only use each effect of "Sacred Fire King Garunix" once per turn. ATK 2700 | DEF 1700

If Ponix is the spark that starts the fire, Sacred Garunix is the fuel. He's a crucial component of the deck and the main way to get other Fire Kings into rotation.

Most of the time you will be searching him with Fire King Island, ideally after destroying a FIRE monster. This causes his first effect to trigger and Special Summon himself immediately from hand.

His second effect lets you destroy any Fire King from deck, accessing their on-destruction effects to either control the board or generate more card advantage.

Oftentimes, you will destroy Fire King Avatar Arvata or Fire King High Avatar Kirin, both of which allow you to Special Summon a Fire King from the GY (and Kirin also destroys a card!).

Other times, you might want to destroy Fire King Courtier Ulcanix, which gets Fire King High Avatar Garunix on the field (albeit without clearing the board), to be used as Link/Xyz Material as needed. Or, depending on the game state, you can keep him and wait for an optimal moment to Xyz Summon Garunix Eternity, Hyang of the Fire Kings via Fire King Sanctuary, disrupting your opponent in the process.

You can also destroy High Avatar Garunix directly, causing Sacred to have 4050 ATK - sufficient to run over most monsters. (Watch out for High Avatar Garunix blowing up the field in the next Standby Phase, though!)

Last but not least, an important part of the [1-card Ponix combos] is destroying Fire King Avatar Barong with this effect, so you can search Fire King High Avatar Kirin during the next Standby Phase. Alternatively, you can destroy Fire King Courtier Ulcanix and have her Special Summon Fire King High Avatar Garunix as the 2nd Level 8 needed.

We recommend running 2-3 copies.

Note that Sacred Garunix can Special Summon himself from the GY too, provided he is already there when a FIRE monster gets destroyed.

Over the course of longer games, you'll constantly summon and destroy Fire Kings, which means Sacred Garunix will always hit the field every turn, bringing reinforcements via his second effect.

Finally, beware of the Green Baboon ruling - if you have this card in the hand (or GY) alongside another Fire King that can Special Summon itself from the hand, you will only be able to activate one of them.