Spaceships

Deck Strategy
The spaceships have a variety of effects that trigger upon destroying monsters by battle, a feat complicated by their low attack points. To ensure your spaceships are able to trigger their effects you can use Riryoku to weaken opposing monsters, or Limiter Removal and Honest to power them up.  Enemy Controller and Book of Moon can be used to switch monsters to defense position in order to more easily destroy them with the spaceships. While Jade Knight functions as additional battle tutors, the spaceships whose abilities trigger upon destroying a monster in battle include: Blue Thunder T-45 generates a token to sneak in an extra attack; Falchionβ can dump a ship from deck to grave or revive one to the field; and Lord British Space Fighter can either attack once again, destroy 1 set card on the field, or generate a token. An additional use for Enemy Controller can be the temporary theft of key monsters such as Tuners by Tributing the tokens generated by some of the spaceships. Stun elements incorporated in the deck include Thunder King Rai-Oh and Royal Oppression in order to simplify the game state and buy a few turns to dig for the ships / tutors while trading 1 for 1 resources with your opponent as you disrupt their plays. Such a strategy benefits from the incorporation of Starlight Road as a means of protecting important Spells and Traps while also providing a free boss monster.

Strengths and Weaknesses
​Spaceships are quite underwhelming in terms of their printed ATK and DEF stats, and, though they would stand to benefit from passive stat buffs such as Solidarity, they are limited by the need to incorporate monsters such as Sangan, Shining Angel, and Honest. Well timed removal of defensive Spells and Traps leaves the spaceship player vulnerable to irrecoverable resource loss. Additionally, the popularity of side decked Cyber Dragon makes the deck susceptible to the board breaking Contact Fusion Summon of Chimeratech Fortress Dragon. One of the most significant shortcomings of the deck is the inconsistency with which one can hope to resolve the effects of the spaceships. The pitiful ATK stats may even be too small to beat over some defense position monsters, meaning you need to be careful with when you spend your stat-modifying cards, or must first trade a set Shining Angel or Attack position Jade Knight via Creature Swap in order to set yourself up to resolve a modest trigger effect. In terms of card advantage this strategy plays at a loss, and is a far riskier strategy than Monarchs which similarly rely on making use of the opponent’s monsters.​Spaceships incorporate an element of stun to slow the game down as they prepare their armada to deal with and break through the opponent’s defenses. Battle tutors are traded away with Creature Swap in order to help deploy ships straight from the deck, and Honest provides the finishing touch when your ships are in danger of being destroyed in battle. In addition, the lack of tuners in the deck streamlines the game plan.