Cloudian

Facing a Cloudian deck, an opponent quickly discovers that almost nothing on the board will go away quietly. The majority of Cloudian monsters share an immunity to battle destruction, meaning direct attacks accomplish little beyond forcing the issue — and even that is complicated, since many members punish the attempt. Cloudian - Poison Cloud destroys the monster that battles it and deals 800 damage, while Cloudian - Sheep Cloud replaces itself with two tokens that can be tributed toward further Cloudian summons. The deck does not end games through a single overwhelming threat; instead it accumulates Fog Counters across the field and converts them into card-for-card destruction through monsters like Cloudian - Acid Cloud and Cloudian - Cirrostratus, grinding the opponent's resources down while Natural Disaster turns each of those destructions into 500 points of burn damage.

The counter generation is self-reinforcing. Cloudian Squall places a Fog Counter on every face-up monster each Standby Phase, Cloudian - Storm Dragon adds one per turn after arriving from the graveyard via banishment, and Cloudian - Turbulence can churn out copies of Cloudian - Smoke Ball to populate the field and inflate the counter totals. Cloudian Aerosol accelerates the engine further by discarding a Cloudian to load a monster with counters equal to its Level, or recovering a monster from the graveyard to the field outright.

The archetype carries one significant structural constraint: every Cloudian with battle immunity immediately destroys itself if it ends up in face-up Defence Position. Playing around mass-position-changing effects is consequently a constant concern, and opponents who recognise this will attempt to exploit it wherever possible.