Dragunity

"Dragunity" (ドラグニティ－ Doragunitï) is an archetype released in the Duel Terminal. The term "Dragunity" is a portmanteau of the words Dragon and Unity. Their effects mainly revolve around equipping any Level 3 or lower Dragon-Type monsters in your Graveyard to your Winged Beast-Type monsters in play (in the sense of the Dragon-Types transforming into weapons, or the Winged-Beast "Dragunity" monsters "uniting" with their Dragon "steeds" as "Dragunity Knights"). Because of their heavy focus on sending monsters to the Spell & Trap Card Zones, the "Dragunity" archetype is often compared to the "Crystal Beast" and "Cyberdark" archetypes. They also utilize powerful Dragon-Type Synchro Monsters, although they require Dragon-Type Tuner monsters as well as Winged Beast-Type non-Tuners.

Playing style
The main purpose of Dragunity decks is to have combo plays available for easy Synchro Summons. "Dragunity Phalanx" is the key card here - a Level 2 Tuner monster that can be Special Summoned while it is equipped to a monster. By equipping Phalanx to either "Dragunity Dux" or "Dragunity Legionnaire" (both of which can equip Phalanx as soon as they're Normal Summoned), they allows access to Level 6 or 5 Synchro Monsters respectively. The most used Synchro Monster in this Deck is "Dragunity Knight - Vajrayana", which has similar equipping abilities to Dux and Legionnaire that can be utilized to Synchro Summon Level 8 monster (this is commonly known as "Synchro climbing" for most Dragunity duelists).

This combo only requires Dux in your hand and Phalanx in your Graveyard, and it is incredibly simple to set-up with the help of "Dragon Ravine". It's basicaly a Dragunity version of either "Reinforcement of the Army" or "Foolish Burial", it allows you to placing cards necessary for your combo, while also maintains the longevity and consistency of your combo. This allows you to continuously Synchro Summons in virtually every turn.

Cards like "Dragunity Arma Mystletainn", "Instant Fusion" (with "Mavelus") and "Garuda the Wind Spirit" can provide more Summoning power, exponentially increasing their speed and allows more Synchro and Xyz Summons in one turn. "Tempest, Dragon Ruler of Storms", combined with "Gold Sarcophagus" can also help search "Dragunity Arma Mystletainn" (or any other Dragon-type monster necessary for your combo), aiding in consistency.

Other support cards such as "Hieratic Dragon King of Atum" and "Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon" allows the deck to take their Synchro Summoning power into the next level, raising their capabilities of Summoning multiple monster at once, and, at the same time, allows them to occasionally perform OTK or create near-invulnerable fields such as "Stardust Dragon" + "Queen Dragun Djinn" + "Photon Strike Bounzer" combination. Because of this, they can also utilize Rank 6 Xyz Monster for handling certain difficult-to-approach scenarios, such as "Gauntlet Launcher" and "Constellar Ptolemy M7".

However, with the January 2014 Lists, "Dragon Ravine" being Forbidden and "Tempest, Dragon Ruler of Storms" becomes Limited, making this archetype suffers a major loss in both consistency and power, eliminating them completely from competitive environment.

Weaknesses
Ever since January 2014 format, Dragunity decks have lost a major consistency due to the loss of "Dragon Ravine", making them much harder to compete in the current metagame. Dragunity deck's main strategy is "Dragunity Dux" or "Dragunity Legionnaire", which makes negating their effects with "Effect Veiler" or "Breakthrough Skill", or destroying them before their equipping effects kicks in with "Bottomless Trap Hole", "Torrential Tribute" and "Solemn Warning" really proved troublesome for any Dragunity players (especially in early game stage).

Dragunity decks relies on their Graveyard since they need monsters "Dragunity Phalanx" in the Graveyard to execute their combo plays, which means cards that banishes like "D.D. Crow", "Crevice Into the Different Dimension", "Chain Disappearance", and "Banisher of the Radiance", or cards that prohibits Graveyard access like "Necrovalley" and "The End of Anubis" can be reliable counters against Dragunity decks. Since most Dragunity decks are built in turbo-style combo based strategy, cards that disallows or disrupts Special Summons such as "Vanity's Emptiness" and "Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo" is very catastrophic for this Deck.

Despite the numerous disadvantages "Dragunity" users face, "Dragunity" Decks also have ways of dealing with these cards. "Debunk" and "Mind Drain" can stop "Maxx "C", "Gorz the Emissary of Darkness", and "Effect Veiler", while "Imperial Iron Wall" completely annihilate any and all banishing attempts (albeit it also prevents you from Special Summoning any of Dragon Rulers if you utilize them). You can add Spell/Trap removal cards to get rid of threats like "Poisonous Winds", "Dimensional Fissure", "Macro Cosmos", "Vanity's Emptiness", etc.

Trivia

 * The Dragon-Type monsters in this archetype so far all have armor which either covers most of their body ("Dragunity Phalanx"), or have a piece of armor that resembles, and is named after, a weapon (i.e. "Dragunity Darkspear"), or wielding the weapons themselves (i.e. "Dragunity Arma Leyvaten"). By contrast, the Winged Beast-Type monsters seem to be named after historical warriors (Ex. - "Dragunity Legionnaire" is named after the common solider in the Roman army).


 * Their archetype symbol is the green emerald for the Dragon-Type monsters, and for the Winged Beast-Type monsters is the green emerald surrounded by a gold outline of wings.


 * As with the Blackwing archetype, there is a heavy distinction between the Tuner monsters and the non-Tuner monsters in terms of appearance. Similar to "Blackwings", the non-Tuner monsters are all humanoids in bird outfits with mechanical-like wings, while the Tuner monsters are composed of small, armored dragons (whereas the "Blackwing" Tuner monsters are all small birds).


 * Their "rider and mount" style, as depicted in their "Dragunity Knight" forms, are also adopted by later archetypes, such as "Gusto" and "Spirit Beast" (albeit with different types and mechanics).