Burst Protocol arrives to the TCG in less than a month, and from what we’re seeing OCG-side, there’s one deck worth talking about as the set’s greatest beneficiary: Radiant Typhoon. We’ve seen a number of similar lists eke out top cut slots following their two new pieces of support, but I want to focus on the most recent placement of the strategy at the Miyagi Qualifier, a team tournament slightly more prestigious than a Regional. In adapting this list to the TCG, and getting a chance to play with Radiant Typhoon’s new tools, it struck me how much better the deck now feels with a dedicated in-archetype tool in the Extra Deck, and alongside a little-discussed WIND support piece also arriving in BPRO, there’s some real promise for decks playing 3 copies of genuine, original Mystical Space Typhoon in 2026, printed all the way back in Spell Ruler 24 years ago. You could, if committing to the bit, play 3 MSTs that still said ‘Magic Card’ and not Spell. With that glorious thought in mind, let’s talk about why I’m excited for Radiant Typhoon in 2026.
Radiant Typhoon has had a modest impact on the TCG at large since its debut in Doom of Dimensions, often coupled with a secondary engine like Runick, but it’s run roughshod over Genesys format, showing the strength of the cards in the right environment. Not only have we seen the environment change for the deck in Advanced Format, with critical interaction points like the set Traps from Dracotail being pivotal, but the two new cards drastically change the deck’s ability to grind once you get two bodies on the board, making the core play do quite a bit more than Totem Bird pass, its prior Extra Deck play. The less exciting of the two, Elation, is a great way to translate MSTs or card advantage into more bodies on the board, something that was useless until the second new card, Radiant Typhoon Varuroon, the Sea Spirit was revealed. We’ll talk extensively about her, but the short of it is that, because MST represents either a negate or additional copy of any archetypal Spell/Trap, Varuroon can be up to a +3 in the right context.
With strict material requirements, lil Varuroon (as it shares a name with the Level 9 Main Deck boss) is only accessible in pure Radiant Typhoon. This is great, as we get to cycle through Radiant Typhoon Meghala more often now as the WIND lock is less of a detriment. Why play pure though, what does the new Link actually do? For starters, it grabs you a copy of MST, critically going to your hand meaning it can be activated that turn. Then, when a Quick-Play, such as the actual MST you added, is activated, you get a free copy of Radiant Typhoon Mandate, the archetypal Continuous Trap—oh, and there’s also a bit of Monster removal, as a treat. Varuroon gets an MST, places a card in the backrow to be popped with MST, and then rewards you for doing so; it does everything for the strategy with essentially 0 cost. This is especially noteworthy as a core issue of Radiant Typhoon was its reliance on cards which felt awful to open, such as the titular MST & Mandate, here now as free cards to find with the mandatory Link-2.
The player Kurose, this deck’s pilot, also relied on another small package to get things done: The Fallen & the Virtuous. I’ve been calling the list pure thus far in the article, and while that’s essentially true, a small secondary package exists purely in the Extra Deck, its Main Deck card being 3 copies of the generic Quick-Play. Given we need to play extremely pure, the normal swath of Quick-Plays we’d have with a sub-archetype like Runick don’t exist here, and as we need ~9-12 non-RT Quick-Play Spells it’s one of the best legal options. Arriving in Burst Protocol are a few new targets for it to send, as well, in The Dragon that Devours the Dogma & Ecclesia of the Black Dragon. Our first copy of TF&V sends the former, which gets another copy of TF&V, then that second free copy sends Ecclesia, which reshuffles The Dragon and another card on field. In essence, one copy of the card represents, over 2-3 turns, 2 pops, +1 card, and then a shuffle. That’s a darn good Quick-Play, and certainly beats out Book of Moon for a similar slot.
Let’s talk about the other breakout star though, Forbidden Crown. Coming to the TCG in, unsurprisingly, BPRO, this ‘isolates’ a monster for a turn, making it unusable and negated. This is far better than just a negation, or a removal, because so much of modern Yugioh exists with the notion that cards can be moved from zone-to-zone throughout a turn—Crown puts a stop to that, and ends combos before they begin. Remember how many times a single Yummy monster gets resummoned throughout the course of a turn, and you’ll see Crown’s immense value. That’s not all though, as BPRO also delivers Sheena the Twin Storm Deities of Divine Thunder, a pseudo-handtrap. I say ‘pseudo’ because it technically can’t be used turn 1, but provides immense pressure from hand as soon as you stick a single WIND monster. This can reset cards in concert with lil Varuroon’s ability to place things in the backrow, is a fine beater, and follows in the WIND tradition of putting monsters where they really don’t want to be, a hidden information zone.
Sheena gives you a substantial amount of game going second, which I think is where it truly shines. You can open with a card like Radiant Typhoon Swen, walk facefirst into a negation, and respond with Sheena to wipe their board and land a Monster that hits for more than a third of their LP. It enables OTKs, still has great use going first, and does so from a fairly honest position, all things considered. I feel the identity of Radiant Typhoon in a post BPRO world is as the claimant to Mitsurugi’s throne of ‘cards giving more value than they ought to’. A lot of Radiant Typhoon just goes +2 for no reason, provided one of those pluses is Mystical Space Typhoon. If you place value on that card, as I do, as opposed to seeing it as an ancillary gimmick of the strategy, that’s a ton of free cardboard to Set going first. WIND as a type appears to be getting the tools it needs to be an Attribute of note, much as FIRE did in 2022, and LIGHT did last year.
There is one card for WIND decks people know though, and it’s Harpie’s Feather Storm, the reason you see Harpie Conductor in our Extra Deck. Yes, the floodgate Trap from hand saw play at 3 copies in the side, for going first, just as cards like Dimensional Barrier did before it. I loathe cards like these, that aim to end the game before it starts, and with Radiant Typhoon being both WIND-locked and having a draw 2 in Radiant Typhoon Vision it’s more likely to be seen here than in other decks. Similarly, Lancea, Super Poly, and even Fantastical Dragon Phantazmay saw slots in the Side Deck, prepared for Sky Strikers. I do wonder if a relevant Dominus Trap, like Purge or Spiral, could be worthwhile here. The concern with those stems from the usage of the Branded mini-package in the Extra, but I’m not super bothered by it when those Dominus Traps just win the game anyway.
A normal endboard for this list looks like lil Varuroon, Totem Bird, your favorite Radiant Typhoon boss of choice (e.g. Radiant Typhoon Fonix, the Great Flame), and 2-4 face-down Spells. If that reminds you of Dracotail, with the Spells being their Traps, that’s a good observation! This deck does have some similar trappings, and while it’s less density-dependent than that deck, which plays some truly awful cards just to have enough names for its Fusion Summons, we similarly play as many Quick-Plays as can be afforded, even toeing into 41 cards. Since the banning of Simorgh, Bird of Sovereignty, WIND has lacked a compelling deck that cared about its endboard until now, and if that card saw freedom from the Forbidden & Limited List, I could see RT rise to being a high tier 1 strategy.
As it stands, while we don’t know the changes that may come with BPRO, I feel the deck will have greater legs to stand on in the TCG than in the OCG; we’re truly at a nadir of playability for targeted negation, the absolute bane of this strategy due to lil Varuroon, and decks rely just enough on backrow for a triple MST build to make sense. I don’t love the lack of Extra Deck options available here, but fingers crossed this is the year of WIND.
It’s a new year, and a new meta…hopefully with more interaction and back-&-forth. Yugioh is at its best when it’s the fighting game of TCGs, with rapid-fire cards and effects hitting the table, reactive play after reactive play. While I’ve groaned a bit at seeing Radiant Typhoon at Genesys events, in Advanced Format I am over the moon at its potential playability in a meta context, as it has a low enough ceiling to be easy to teach, but enough targeted removal to be a brutal deck to master. Here’s to another 24 years of Mystical Space Typhoon.
What excites you about Burst Protocol? What do you hope to see in 2026? Do you think we’ll have a TCG-Exclusive deck like Mitsurugi this year? What changes do you want to see to the banlist this year? Let me know in the comments below!
