My Deck Construction Guide

This guide will help you build a REALLY good deck that will work with any combo.

To begin we will set down some ground rules:

1.) No deck should have more than 40 cards. The reason for this is covered further down in “Draw-Odds” but trust me, this is a vital point.

2.) No deck should contain more monster cards than magic/trap cards or vice versa. Keep the ratio at 1:1

3.) Don’t COMPLETELY focus your deck around one Combo. A combo is like a long linked chain. If one link breaks the whole chain breaks and if that happens then your out for the count

4.) Never have more than 2 of any card unless your deck depends on that card

5.) Never have more than 1-2 (7+ Level) or 2-3 (5-6 Level) monsters

6.) Don’t be afraid to experiment

So, you have your deck and don’t know how what to do.

First of all you need to decide what kind of deck your making. I’m not talking about the combo I am talking about the speed-type of your deck. If your deck is a fast deck (quick combos, powerful monsters, lots of damage in little time) or if your deck is a stall deck (defence monsters, large combos waiting on many cards, less damage spread over more time)

So is it stall or speed?

SPEED

20 monsters and 20 magic/trap cards

First decide if you are going to use high level monsters or not. If so follow Rule 5# and keep the numbers down.

The monsters should be 70% Attack and 30% Defence

This works out to be 14 Attack and 6 Defence monsters. This is a rough guide and if you go 1 or 2 cards over/under then don’t worry too much.

Your High-Level monsters fit into whichever category you need (SS is attack, ROTC is def)

Effect monsters come into this also but must again be set into the right costs for attack or defence

STALL

20 monsters and 20 magic/trap cards

First decide if you are going to use high level monsters or not. If so follow Rule 5# and keep the numbers down.

The monsters should be 60% Defence and 40% Attack

This works out to be 8 Attack and 12 Defence monsters. This is a rough guide and if you go 1 or 2 cards over/under then don’t worry too much.

Your High-Level monsters fit into whichever category you need (SS is attack, ROTC is def)

Effect monsters come into this also but must again be set into the right costs for attack or defence

Choose monsters that fit with your combos but also some that will give you added defence or that bonus bit of attack that you didin’t think of. You will notice that the SPEED deck has 70%atk whilst the STALL only has 60%def. This reason is simple. You can’t stall and win! Well, not all the time anyway. I once tried to deck someone by stalling but it doesn’t work so the other 40% attack is your hitting power, balanced with the defending cards it will help you keep that advantage.

Fairly simple? Right?

No, but it will become so… Now you have your monsters, what trap or magic cards should you use? Again it follows the same simple question, do you want to speed or stall?

The classic stall cards are Swords of Revealing Light, Waboku, Trap Hole etc and the speed such as Fissure, Rageki/Dark Hole and Trap Hole once again. You will need to decide which fit your combos but follow the simple rule that ANY card that DESTROYS is a Speed Card and any card that PROTECTS is a Stall Card. Much like with monsters you should mix in both types and not focus on one only but there is no specific formula, just use your common sense.

Now, in the rules at the top of the page we touched ever so lightly on “Deck-Odds”. So what are Deck-Odds?

Simply put, every time you draw a card there is a given chance it is card (a) and a given chance it is card (b). The more of card (a) in your deck the greater the chance that it will be card (a). The amount of cards in your deck also effects this so the LESS cards in your deck, the better your deck odds will be.

Cards that IMPROVE deck odds are Pot of Greed, Card Destruction, Sangan, Witch of the Black Forest & Last Will. These cards are designed to shrink your deck and help the odds of drawing cards in the future.

You may notice as well, aside from Last Will they are all restricted.. This isn’t just because they are powerful cards with their effect it is mainly drawing on the idea that the better deck-odds you have then the better chance of pulling the card you need.

PoG is restricted to 1 per deck, Card Destruction to 2 and even last will is only 3. However, Combined Sangan and WOTBF are total of 4 cards. Their effect is fantastic, a free card to your hand but they also reduce your deck size by 1 which at the beginning might not seem powerful… towards the end of a duel it can often mean life or death.

Look at the below example:

Billy has 55 cards, no deck-odd improvement cards

Pete has 40 cards and all of the above explained cards

The game is to turn 20, each player at this point should have drawn 10 cards each without any help from effects. This leaves Billy with 45 and Pete with 30. However, Pete has also played PoG twice (using magician of faith to save it from the grave and re-play it) and a Card Destruction (with 4 cards in hand) so his deck is 8 cards less making his total 22. But he also used the effect of a Sangan and a Witch of the Black Forest so his total is actually 20!

Neither player has played their best cards or best combos and the game looks fairly even except for one difference. Billy has 45 cards in his deck & Pete has 20.

Now, assuming that each player is waiting for ONE card that will guarantee them the game and lets for arguments say there is only ONE card of its type in the deck.

For Billy to draw that card it is a 1 in 45 chance. For Pete to draw that card it is a 1 in 20 chance. Who has the better chance of drawing the card they want?

Pete… and its because he was wise enough to realise that the less cards in his deck means the greater the chance he has to pull any of the remaning cards!

Another Idea that I like to play with when creating a deck, maybe even a main deck is the “Stabilisers” technique. It’s a very easy thing to do and given enough time you will find it is the best way to form a good deck.

Firstly, decide which type of Deck you have. If it is a Stall deck then you need to use Attack monsters as your stabilisers and if it is a Speed deck then you need to use Defence monsters.

Now design your deck based with the above Speed or Stall design method. Before you finish throw in a few of your stabiliser cards and balance the deck by removing some of your main (attack for speed or defence for stall) cards.

Play out each game as usual and take note of which cards are doing you proud and which cards are making you loose. You will begin to learn what cards help you and which hinder you… if you need more stabiliser cards, add them! If you find they are pulling you down, remove them!

After a lot of testing you will see the kind of deck you like. They will probably not be the same type of percentage of cards discussed in the above design methods but because we can’t choose our cards from an unlimited supply we must make do with what we have. If you deck works with 80% def cards, use it… My advise above is a general rule, using the stabiliser method you can form the best deck for the specific combo you have playing with.

You must learn how to play with the cards you have. Learn how to use your combos and how they effect the rest of your cards.

I’m almost done but before I go, a quick note on SideBoards.

A Sideboard can be your best friend but depending on the deck you use it can help your opponent if you don’t build it right.

I prefer to use sideboards as my utility cards rather than loading a different deck combo from them.

I don’t use Barrel Dragon in my main deck, it is too hard to get onto the field and never seems worth it. However should I go up against a HEAVY stall deck with cards I can’t destroy with attacking then the Barrel is a very good card to have and would be worth it.. This is how I use my sideboard. I load cards that are useful against certain combos and whilst easily transferred into my deck don’t drastically change its form.

The kind of people that load 15 new cards from their deck are playing with fire… It takes time to learn how to use your deck so if someone suddenly said to you, half way through for you to rip up 15 cards and open 2 new boosters and get 15 cards from there… you would consider them MAD! This is just what you are doing… You are playing with a half a deck you know and half a deck you don’t. Sure, you might be familiar with the cards effects and how they work but you are disrupting your own gameplay…

There really isn’t much more I can go into. There are a lot more tricks to learn about creating decks but if I gave them away here I would be robbing you of the magic of finding them out for yourself

Thank you…

Pot Of Greed