Sevens Road Magician is a solid boss monster. By sending the top card of your Deck to the GY, this card gains 300 ATK for each different Attribute in your GY until the end of this turn. In the early days, you can easily gain a 2700+ ATK boss monster with this.
Multistrike Dragon Dragias started off strong with its solid ATK of 2500 and strong effect of making a second attack during the Battle Phase it destroyed a monster by battle for a cheap cost of milling 1 card. Because of how good Dragias is at breaking through walls of Set monsters and pushing for heavy damage (particularly if given piercing damage) while beating over most boss monsters with ease, it sees widespread play even several years after its release.
Ancient Arise Dragon's effect allows you to send the top card of your Deck to the GY; this card gains 600 ATK (normally this card becomes 3000 ATK) until the end of the turn. What's worse, if you have twospecific dragons in your GY you can choose 1 face-up monster (1500 or less DEF) your opponent controls, and destroy it.
Dark Revelation is this game's Mirror Force (long before Mirror Force was actually added). It shuffles 4 Spellcaster monsters from your GY into the Deck to destroy all Attack Position monsters your opponent controls. Filling up your Graveyard with monsters is extremely easy with discard effects being dime a dozen and Tribute Summoning being a lot more viable with unlimited Normal Summons and up to 5 draws per turn, so Dark Revelation might as well not have a cost at all, and the lack of a Main Phase 2 means your opponent is usually left wide open after getting blown out by this card. It's easily one of the reasons Spellcasters were so good in the early days of the format.
Jinzo returns for the Rush Duel as a Legend, and it's effect is the same as the original game: neither player can activate Trap Cards, also negate both players' Trap effects. Given that Traps are basically the only means of interacting with your opponent on their turn and Jinzo's stats are massive for a 1-tributer in the format, it gives you at least one turn to deal serious damage uncontested.
Shock Dragon has with rather low ATK for a two-tribute monster, but his DEF is better, so you can wall him when necessary. Luckily, his effect compensates, letting you once per turn make your opponent's strongest monster lose ATK equal to your highest monster's ATK that round. Counting himself, this means you're sapping at minimum 1600 each turn.
Illusion Strike Dragon Miragias requires 2 tributes and has 2500 ATK. His effect requires you to send another level 7 or higher dragon from your hand to the graveyard but lets you make two opposing monsters (that are level 7 or lower) lose 1500 ATK for the turn, and let Miragias attack twice if it destroys an enemy in battle.
Amazing Dealer, if its steep requirement is achieved (needing 3 or less monsters in the GY to activate), has a great effect of discarding 3 cards in the hand to draw 3 cards in the deck, very useful for any decks that requires cards in the GY as a requirement for their effects. Even if the requirement is impossible to achieve in the later turns, it can fall back as a tribute fodder.
Magical Stone Excavation, a classic card that is surprisingly not a Legend Card. Its cost of discarding 2 cards is much easier to manage in the Rush Duel format, and its effect to recover a Spell is devastating considering that it lets you reuse Legend Spell cards (y'know, those same ones balanced around letting you only use one copy per deck). This card got stronger with the release of the Legend Spell Dark Hole, where you now have up to 4 uses of clearing the opponent's field before summoning your own monsters. This card is limited to 1 in the April 2023 banlist.
Release Wrath is supposed to help Reptiles, but it is widely used in any decks that would like to have cards in their GY. Due to it's relatively generic requirement of your opponent controlling a monster & pay 1000LP, for the basic effect of milling 5 cards to the GY.
Barrier Statue of the Inferno was released in 2022 with a lot of surprise as it is the only lingering floodgate currently in the game, preventing players from Special Summoning any monster unless it is FIRE attribute (one of the less popular attributes in the game). Given that it slows down your opponent immensely if you control one (yes, even in a format with unlimited Normal Summons), nobody was surprised when it got limited to 1 in the April 2023 banlist, and was later given the distinction of being the first Rush Duel card to be banned, going to Forbidden on the January 2024 list.
Combos
In the early days of Rush Duels, the Dragoncaster deck (supporting Multistrike Dragon Dragias with Dark Revelation) was considered a Tier 0 deck due to Dragias's ability to attack twice after achieving its generic condition, and Dark Revelation being able to destroy anything that could threaten Dragias. Though subsequent competitive decks would have this deck be balanced in the format.
The Thunderbold Combo, involving Thunderbold, the Blazing Thunder and CAN - Melo:D. While requires an extensive set up (at least four Level 7s monsters including Melo:D and one Level 1 Psychic monster in the GY and having less LP than the opponent), achieving that set up enables the player to fully loop both of their main effects (special summoning a Level 7 monster to the field for the former and shuffle one opponent's face down card to the deck) that cleans up the opponent set cards in the field and reset the opponent's game state. And when the combo is done with the opponent having no set cards left, Thunderbold can special summon another stronger Level 7 monster in the graveyard to deal more damage over Melo:D.
Thunderbold as a flexible revival tool was ultimately powerful enough that it was Limited to 1 in the first ever Rush Duel Forbidden & Limited List on January 1, 2023.
The Potter LoopOTK, focus on Pot of Avarice, its support card Progress Potter. The ability to combine card retrieval & draw cards with burns cards causes loops that burn the opponent's LP if they are unlucky. The consistency boost of Progress Potter caused it to be Semi-Limited on April 1, 2023
Level 7 monsters, especially Normal Monsters, received a lot of strong support cards that made them meta contenders for 2021-2022, especially with powerful Normal Monsters being prominent at the beginning of Yu-Gi-Oh! GO RUSH!! - main protagonist Yudias Velgear's ace monster is the 2500/2500 Level 7 Galactica Oblivion to name one example. In addition to Thunderbold as mentioned above, these cards include:
Secret Order, a very versatile card that special summons a Level 7 Normal monster from either your hand or graveyard to the field, with the added bonus of both increasing its ATK by 700 and granting protection from being destroyed by your opponent's Trap Card effects for the turn it is special summoned. The requirements for all of these effects? None.
Secret Order was Limited to 1 as of January 1, 2023 and back to unlimited on January 2024 as decks have overtaken the power level of Gate Order.
Ship of Seven Treasure, either a -1 that discards an additional card to draw one card, or a net 0 if a Level 7 monster is discarded, in which case the player can draw two cards instead.
Parallel Birth Gate, when you have no cards to play in your hand and have many monsters in the GY, have fun reviving up to 2 Normal monsters onto your field, either use them for swinging in big damage or a preparation for Fusion Summoning.
Necromaid Nana can send itself from the field to the Graveyard and return a Level 7 to the bottom of the Deck to draw 2 cards. This powerful draw tool caused it to be Limited to 1 on the January 2023 Forbidden & Limited List.
After the end of Gate Order, Konami leveled up in creating archetypes that could compete in the metagame note Cyber Dragon, Blaze Fiends, Skysavior, Executie comes out on top, as they are unparalleled in special summoning their members, have strong traps & spells and is in a level (6) that the metagame overlooked at that time. Even their downside of not being able to attack with their Level 7 or higher monsters are not an issue for them. This caused some cards to be limited to 1 as of April 1, 2023, including:
Executie Lilius, the primary beater that can be special summoned from hand if you have a 500 DEF monster in the field, though set to Semi Limited on Apr 2024
Executie Scramble!, their variant of Secret Order (focusing on Level 6 AND 500 DEF monster from hand or GY), though set to Unlimited on Jan 2024
Dragon Roll the Sushi Fairy, a Sixth Ranger that sends main starter Lumiere to the bottom of the deck to draw 1 card, though it is more of a control variant.
Dark Solitaire, a Dark Spellcaster based deck focused on Obsidian Magical Soldier note has the effect to proportionally increase its attack with the number of Spell Cards in the GY, Cat Trois Choice note add a card from the GY to hand if its requirement is met, including this card and a bunch of Spells to control the field or becoming GY fodder to potentially OTK with Obsidian Magical Solider. Choice is Limited to 1 on Jan 2024, with Solider followed soon on Apr 2024
The duo of "Legend Magician" and "Legend Strike" formed the backbone of one of Rush's few truly generic engines. "Legend Magician" is a Level 4 Effect Monster who can excavate the top 3 cards of your Deck, send one of them to the Graveyard, then add a Legend Monster from your Graveyard to your hand, while "Legend Strike" is a Spell Card that can Special Summon any Level 4 monster with 1600 ATK or less or a Legend Normal Monster from your Graveyard, and if you summoned either "Legend Magician" or a Legend Normal Monster you can pop a Spell/Trap. The ability to recur Legend Normals is a lot more powerful than it sounds on the surface given that cards like "Blue-Eyes White Dragon" and "Dark Magician" are not only huge bodies but are also imperative to their respective decks, meaning that a six-card engine that drastically improves your grind game and allows you to put big beaters on the field for minimal cost is not only exploitable in Legend Monster-based decks but practically any deck that has space to shove in a "Blue-Eyes" and six slots for non-engine. Both "Legend Magician" and "Legend Strike" would be put to Semi-Limited in the April 2024 list to cut down on the package's consistency and follow-up.
is a solid boss monster. By sending the top card of your Deck to the GY, this card gains 300 ATK for each different Attribute in your GY until the end of this turn. In the early days, you can easily gain a 2700+ ATK boss monster with this.