The Legendary Modern Decks 2026 are set to debut this week, and with them arrives a celebration of the game’s competitive history, Mitsurugi from the present, Sky Strikers from the distant past, and X-Sabers from circa 2010 Edison, New Jersey. Yes, X-Sabers of all things receive a new array of soldiers in this set, an import from the OCG that’s a bit out of left field, given the best card in the strategy, M-X-Saber Invoker, is still banned. It’s a tough ask for these cards to be considered nearly as competitive as Striker or Mitsurugi, both with proven track records in the modern game, but we’ll do our best. X-Saber harkens back to a time before effect limits or, frankly, much balance at all, so maybe we can wring some wins from this relic of the 5Ds era. Presenting: X-Saber 2026.
X-Saber runs up against a few major problems before it leaves the starting line, and most of them are chalked up to the existing Monster lineup. Given the deck hasn’t really received much support since the years before I could drive (a frightening reminder), many of the required playmakers are clunky or underpowered by today’s standards. XX-Saber Boggart Knight…gives you a Special Summon from hand, and nothing else—there’s even a restriction! Ragigura & Faultroll are pretty good recursion from the GY, especially in the context of one another, but even XX-Saber Darksoul has seen better days. Back when Darksoul came out, there weren’t official rulings or PSCT to rely on, meaning the timing of his effect was often called into question, for individual judges to decide. The main ruling stateside was that each instance of Darksoul provided a lingering search, which might make for a cool grindy deck…but that’s been changed to fit modern rulings and only trigger once per card. Still, the deck has access to XX-Saber Gottoms, which unfortunately has the capacity to tear apart an opponent’s entire hand. That means, due to the imbalance in where the deck’s power lies, your best bet when playing X-Saber is to run a first-turn combofest and prevent your opponent from playing Yugioh entirely.
If that doesn’t sound appealing, have faith, because we’re able to do a little more than just that with the deck, now that new cards have arrived. X-Saber Bruno is a Level 3 Psychic, and brand-new Tuner for the deck, able to Summon himself, quick Synchro, and even search Saber Spell/Traps! This is a card that’s close to a perfectly-designed extender, because what’s more, it can be Summoned from the deck with Emergency Teleport. Paired with this is our ideal starter, X-Saber Pellina, searchable by Tenki, and that mimics the ability of X-Saber’s famous friend Rescue Cat. Instead of Cat for 2x X-Saber Airbellum, in 2026 we’re using her to find Bruno & Boggart Knight, in order to Synchro Summon X-Saber Gottoms, the previous Gottoms’ past self printed more than a decade later. Between Bruno & new Gottoms, we can find Saber Combination & Gottoms’ Second Call, which are excellent for swarming, but fail to answer one specific question: How do we search XX-Saber Faultroll?
Faultroll in this deck is absolutely incredible, and can even perform some soft loops with Ragigura, where each gets back the other if you have an additional copy, but there’s no easy way to put Faultroll in your hand…right? Darksoul adds during the End Phase, and is thus a bit too slow, and Faultroll himself needs to be Special Summoned by his own effect. Sadly, the answer most Duelists have found is playing a single, searchable copy of XX-Saber Garsem, and popping it with a searchable copy of…Saber Slash.
This is technically a means of finding Faultroll, sure, but the sheer psychic damage involved of going -1 to find this monster printed in 2009 makes my head spin. Not only that, but Garsem is terrible outside of this context, and even Slash itself isn’t a shining example of a board breaker. In my list, I’ve foregone this package, though you might find it necessary if the handrip gameplan becomes inconsistent without Turn 1 Faultroll access.
This gets into one of the big questions of X-Saber: What about Invoker? Invoker was banned in 2018, for crimes relating to Zoodiac, and has spent time in jail since then watching its conspirators, Zoodiac Drident & Barrage, now run free. Even in the OCG (and Master Duel), Invoker is unbanned and doesn’t cause issues, so with this product finally coming to the TCG to celebrate the game’s competitive history…why not unban Invoker? See if he breaks a format, try to actually let X-Saber have a day in the sun after so long in shadow. The reason they might not, of course, is that we cannot be trusted with such power. There’s a number of Rank 3 decks like Goblin Biker & Materiactor which would kill for Invoker back, and lists employing the Ghostrick engine in the Main Deck would get access to a Drident+Future Hope at minimum. More troubling still is that, if X-Saber were good, that wouldn’t be very fun for anyone involved; it’s a combo deck whose main line involves discarding 4-6 cards from the opponent’s hand and ending on ~2 negates. That isn’t conducive to fun Yugioh, even if the deck doing it is flush with nostalgia.
If Konami does decide to do this, mind you, a plethora of starters open up to the deck. Rank 3 engines galore, but best of all, Mind Procedure. Mind Procedure finds E-Tele, which finds Bruno without using the latter’s effect, meaning a searched Bruno later on in the turn can be readily Summoned out for extra plays. Remember that Saber Combination doesn’t ask you to Synchro Summon, despite all TCG-Legal Extra Deck X-Sabers being Synchros, it asks you to Summon from the Extra. Therefore, Bruno can grab it, and make Invoker with Procedure to truly get off to the races. In short, that’s another 3 starters for the deck, and not a half-bad monster to banish with a small Psychic package that the deck can already play, via Teleport Fusion off of Serene Psychic Sorceress. E-Tele is one of the most iconic Spells of the era, so it and a retrain of Mind Protector being played in X-Saber would be so fitting. Just one format, Konami, please.
In terms of our non-engine in this list, both Ash & Dominus Purge seem strange to play together, given the latter turns off the former, but we are that weak to a Mulcharmy Fuwalos that it’s worth running everything we can to stop it. That means Purge, Ash, and even Crossout Designator, plus the obvious Called By, and even Belles to prevent opponents from Called By-ing our own Ashes. There’s worlds where we even Droll ourselves during the first turn, just to prevent Mulcharmy draws, as our win condition is the opponent starting their turn with no cards in hand. That’s a pretty dire state of affairs of course, but not entirely unwinnable, which is why we’re lucky to have received Commander Souza, Swordmaster as an additional negate. So, to recap, that’s a full hand rip plus at least one negate, and some Duelists even play Saber Hole as a means of further layering interaction; I feel that’s overkill, but your mileage may vary.
The actual list is built to be as realistic as X-Saber can be, without Invoker, jamming a whopping 19 non-engine into the list with the hopes of starting with an uninterrupted Pellina. I don’t mean to be as defeatist as it may sound at the moment, given there is substantial power in your interrupted endboards, but knowing the ideal open involves a non-game isn’t my favorite. If you do get interrupted though, Bruno enables some fantastic Sorceress lines, where you use his quick Synchro to make Hyper Psychic Blaster Mk-II and Axon Kicker Oracle on your opponent’s turn, with all the interruption that provides. Bruno really does do it all for us, and the ability to weave that line into more of our endboards via Invoker and Level 3 spam packages it would entail might soothe the pain in my heart, yearning for something more interesting to do with these nostalgic warriors. X-Sabers are fundamentally an important part of telling Yugioh’s story, and they do deserve better. At least we can make Naturia Beast? Definitely no other EARTH-centric nostalgia deck that does this gameplay loop better (See my article on Magnet Warriors, trust me).
How do you feel about X-Saber’s treatment with their newly-imported cards? Which deck from the Legendary Modern Decks 2026 is your favorite? Is there a world where X-Saber manages to show up in competition, or are these dead-on-arrival? Let me know in the comments below!
