Howdy doodle duelists. I am here yet again with another article, and this time around I’m going to be giving you guys something much different than what I have wrote about in the past. This will be a two-part article in which I talk about both how to build an innovative deck and how to perfect a deck.

After watching Billy Brake and Robby Boyajian playing some Kaijudo at the Yugioh WCQ a few weeks back, I knew I wanted to give the game a try. Kaijudo is pretty much a re-release of the previously discontinued game Duel Masters, which was my favorite game back in the day. I even quit Yugioh for it at one point. After I got home from the WCQ, I read a bit about Kaijudo and realized a set wasn’t even out yet, only starter decks. I pre-ordered a box on ARG soon after and I got the box just the other day. As I was looking through all of the cards I got in my box of Dojo Edition (the first set of Kaijudo) I sorted the different cards and read each of them. I decided that I liked the Darkness, Water, and Light cards the most. After picking all of the best cards, I put 40 of them together and called them a deck. After drawing a couple of hands, I quickly realized that, while I had all of these awesome cards, my deck didn’t flow together too well. You see, each card has a mana cost… whether it is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or even higher, you have to pay that many mana to use that card. You can only play one mana each turn, so in theory, this means playing a mana is a negative one. Regardless of the loss in card advantage, mana is needed to ramp you up to the bigger and better cards in your deck. If you sit at three mana for the rest of the game… sure you will have a bigger hand than your opponent, but not enough cards to compete with them. I had too many cards with a high cost and not enough cards with a low cost. The reason for so many high costing cards was simply because all of their effects were game breaking while most of the lower costing cards weren’t the best. I quickly learned that I needed to sacrifice a bit of the better cards for more smaller costing cards, regardless of their power, to make the deck overall more consistent. This sparked an idea in my head for an article!

Deck building is no easy task, especially with the thousands and thousands of different cards in Yugioh’s card pool. I’m sure everyone wants to make some kind of innovative and successful deck. Although these kinds of decks are not so prominent in large-scale tournaments, they do reward the players that use them with both recognition and respect in the community. Unfortunately for us, Konami has done a great job in making sure that mostly theme decks succeed. Just take a look at the top couple of decks to see which are theme-based. Wind-Up, Inzektor, Hero, Dark World, and Samurai are all theme-based decks that are doing pretty well in today’s metagame. That only really leaves us with Dino-Rabbit, Choas Dragons, and Final Countdown for decks that took some sort of deck building skills.

What kind of deck are you trying to build? Do you plan on making an innovative deck, like Frog Monarchs or Chaos Dragons, or do you plan on making a theme-based deck, like Gladiator Beasts or Inzektors? The most difficult thing in building your own deck is more than likely going to be is where the start should be. I have cut my article into four sections to help us further examine how to build an innovative deck.

THE CORE

To start things off, I would like to talk about “the core.” Most players know the core as the win condition or the backbone of a deck. The core is a card or cards that the deck as a whole, revolves around. Some examples of “the core” are Rescue Rabbit in Dino-Rabbit and Wind-Up Hunter in Wind-Ups. These cards pretty much define your deck. The core doesn’t always have to be just a single card. A good example of this is the Chaos Dragon deck. The Chaos Dragon deck doesn’t really concentrate on a single card, but rather a monsoon of Chaos Monsters. All of the other cards in the deck really help it flow to its win condition. This is why you see the Lightsworn engine in that deck but not in others. Before getting started with your deck, I would recommend that you pick some sort of core for it.

THE SUPPORT

Next up is the support. The support of the deck is pretty much all of the cards that help you either get to your win condition, or helps protect your win condition. Some good examples of the support are Sangan and Forbidden Lance in Dino-Rabbit, and Future Fusion and Card Trooper in Chaos Dragons. In Dino-Rabbit, Sangan gets you to your Rabbit and Forbidden Lance protects the XYZs it makes. In Chaos Dragons, both Future Fusion and Card Trooper fuel your grave for that one explosive play that takes you the game. The support can include defensive traps, or even crazy monster effects, it just depends on your deck's core. Make sure you have a good amount of support in your deck, because you aren’t always going to get to “the core” of your deck without enough support to get there.

THE TECH

The tech is pretty much your counters to the meta. These cards are usually just obscure choices that no one really expects. They will both surprise your opponent and hopefully slow them down. Some good examples of a tech card would be cards like Nobleman of Extermination or Seven Tools of the Bandit in a trap heavy format or Penguin Soldier in an xyz heavy format.

THE… REST?

You have the core, you have the support, and you have the tech, so… what’s next? That would be the rest! The rest of your deck would most likely consist of staple cards, such as Heavy Storm, Mystical Space Typhoon, and Dark Hole which are some of the best cards in the game.

To further understand the core, the support, the requirements, and the rest, let’s take a look at the deck that Joe Giorlando took to the top 4 of YCS Philadelphia a couple of months ago.

3 Tour Guide from the Underworld
3 Rescue Rabbit
3 Kabazauls
3 Sabersaurus
3 Jurrac Guiaba
1 Sangan
1 Neo-Spacian Grand Mole

3 Mystical Space Typhoon
3 Forbidden Lance
1 Heavy Storm
1 Dark Hole
1 Monster Reborn
1 Book of Moon
2 Soul Taker

2 Solemn Warning
2 Bottomless Trap Hole
2 Dimensional Prison
2 Macro Cosmos
2 Torrential Tribute
1 Solemn Judgment
1 Starlight Road

In order to check if you understand each and every one of these sections, I would recommend that you take the time and place each card in one of the four sections that I have described. Then scroll down and see how you did!

In the mean time, here is a cool picture of Rescue Rabbit

                     :I. ..
                    :III/ I.
                   : III  II
                  :  III .II
                  : .III III
                  : III' III
                  : III  II'
                  : `I/__L_
                ./'        ~~-.
               ."   -~~-       `.
               :    .==.         :
               |    `..b'      ___:
               |           __.`\__/__
                `.       ----   _i_----
                / `-........:`----'
              /'    ,MMMMMMM.
            :'     .MMMMMMMMm.
           :'      mMMMMMMMMMm
          /:       MMMMMMMMMMM
        /' :       MMMMMMMMMMM
      /"           `MMMMMMMMM'
     :      \       `MMMMMMM'\
    :'       `:      MMMMMMM: `\
    :         `:     `MMMMM':   `:
    :      mMMMm      MMMM' :    :
    :     mMMMMMMm    mMMm  :    :
     \    `MMMMMMm    mMMm  :   /
    /~~~   MMMMMMm    mJVm  : /'___
  :'| |   /`JMMMMm . .m96m  \      \
   ~~~~~~~        \_:_|   L_/~~~~~~
QUIT PEEKING!
                     :I. ..
                    :III/ I.
                   : III  II
                  :  III .II
                  : .III III
                  : III' III
                  : III  II'
                  : `I/__L_
                ./'        ~~-.
               ."   -~~-       `.
               :    .==.         :
               |    `..b'      ___:
               |           __.`\__/__
                `.       ----   _i_----
                / `-........:`----'
              /'    ,MMMMMMM.
            :'     .MMMMMMMMm.
           :'      mMMMMMMMMMm
          /:       MMMMMMMMMMM
        /' :       MMMMMMMMMMM
      /"           `MMMMMMMMM'
     :      \       `MMMMMMM'\
    :'       `:      MMMMMMM: `\
    :         `:     `MMMMM':   `:
    :      mMMMm      MMMM' :    :
    :     mMMMMMMm    mMMm  :    :
     \    `MMMMMMm    mMMm  :   /
    /~~~   MMMMMMm    mJVm  : /'___
  :'| |   /`JMMMMm . .m96m  \      \
   ~~~~~~~        \_:_|   L_/~~~~~~
Okay, here it is:
THE CORE - The core of this deck consists of the dinosaur monsters that make the rank 4 xyz monsters.
3 Rescue Rabbit

3 Jurrac Guiaba

3 Kabazauls

3 Sabersaurus
THE SUPPORT - The support of this deck consists of cards that search rescue rabbit, protect it, and keep the xyz it made on the field.
3 Tour Guide from the Underworld

1 Sangan

3 Forbidden Lance

1 Book of Moon

2 Solemn Warning

2 Bottomless Trap Hole

2 Dimensional Prison

1 Solemn Judgment

1 Starlight Road
THE TECH - Joe opted to tech Grand-Mole to get rid of pesky cards like Spirit Reaper, Safe Zone, and Wind-Up Zenmaines. He teched Macro Cosmos to counter Inzektors and Chaos Dragons which were both really big decks at the time.
1 Neo-Spacian Grand Mole

2 Macro Cosmos
THE… REST - The rest of this deck is just a bunch of staples that I wouldn’t really consider tech, support, or core.
3 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Heavy Storm

1 Dark Hole

1 Monster Reborn

2 Soul Taker

2 Torrential Tribute
Once you are done building your deck, you are not actually done. There is much more to be done. The first thing you should do is getting a few games in versus a variety of decks. Bring your deck to a tournament and see how it does. After each game, take note of which cards did exceptionally well and which didn’t. By the end of the day, you should have noticed a few of the flaws in your deck. Do this a couple of times and before you know it, you might have yourself the next innovative deck!
That’s it for this week’s article, but stay tuned for next week’s where I will be talking about how to perfect a deck. So until then, play hard or go home!

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Paul Clarke

		
	
	

		

		

			

				
Latest posts by Paul Clarke (see all)
			
			

				

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