Making plays with Island

All the combos we went through so far required you to open Legendary Fire King Ponix or Fire King Courtier Ulcanix.

They are your simplest way to get started (requiring just them and a FIRE monster to do the full Fire King combo), but after playing some games you will realize they are not perfect in every situation (like when your opponent runs Droll & Lock Bird - more about that here.).

Also, you have only 3 copies of each - even with cards like One for One and [Pot of Prosperity], you just might not be able to get to either of them. What do you do then?

Well, if you look a little deeper, you quickly realize that Fire King Island is actually the key card in all our combos, and that opening it or Fire King Sanctuary, with an assortment of monsters, can often be everything you need to make a decent board.

There are also cases where you might not want to start with Ponix or Ulcanix, even if you have them in your starting hand. For example, if you open Fire King Avatar Arvata alongside Sanctuary, it's preferable to Normal Summon Arvata so you're more resilient against handtraps.

We'll play through three starting hands, to see what all that means:

• One in which Normal Summoning Arvata is better than Normal Summoning Ponix/Ulcanix;
• One where we opened neither starter, but we did open Island and 2 Fire Kings;
• And one where we opened Island and 4 non-engine cards.

Let's get started!