What Makes a Deck Good

What makes a certain deck good? Most of you will probably say that consistency is the on the key factors in a good deck. Or maybe the ability to make strong monsters. Both are correct, but there is more to it than just that. The game has moved to a point where the goal is go first and make a board full of negations to lower your opponent’s ceiling allowing you to win the game quickly if your opponent doesn’t have any good outs. The perfect deck in theory should have the capability to make a first turn board full of disruptions as well as being able to play around your opponent’s disruptions going second (as well as playing around hand traps). One of things that most disruptions have in common is the limited amount of uses (excluding flood gates and cards like Naturia Beast). Looking at the Pendulum magician first turn of Odd-eyes Vortex Dragon and Narito the Moral Leader. They can both only be used once per turn. This means you simply must have the capability of baiting out two negations maybe three if they have an Ash in the hand. The best way to do this obviously is Amano-Iwato. However, it isn’t searchable and most decks can’t run it without lowering their own ceiling so much that they will lose.

So, how do we build our decks to utilize this theory the most? I recently have been experimenting with Karakuris. I found that going first I could consistently end on a board of Crystal Wing and Nautria Beast and maybe an Ash in hand as well if I drew it with Saryuja. This is by no means an easy board to out. My opponent can’t out Naturia Beast unless they have Ghost Ogre and if they do I can negate it with Crystal wing. However, the deck has its flaws. If my opponent could out my board there was no way I could recover. This lead me to the conclusion that card advantage is everything. A decks power level can be gaged by its ability to plus. A deck that can easily plus can remake boards that have been broken.

In most cases summoning a synchro, XYZ, or Link monster (Except link 1 monsters) is a neg 1. You are using 2 cards to make 1.  Fusion summons are worse. If you use cards from your field or hand then it’s a neg 2. If you play a deck that can spam lots of Synchro or XYZ monsters, but never plus you will run out of resources fast. If you look at most meta decks in the best they all have one thing in common. They can turn negs into plusses. Take shaddolls for example. If you resolve El Shaddoll Fusion using a Trick Clown and a Shaddoll Beast to summon Construct you are technically going minus 2. However, Trick clown resolves its effect summoning itself and Beast gives you a card, as well as Construct’s effect sending a Shaddoll Dragon and then destroying a card. You just turned a minus 3 into a plus 1. Another good example is the Crystron Needlefiber combo with O-lion and Summon Sorceress in ABC. Needlefiber by its self is insanely good as it turns a normal neg 1 into a plus 0. Adding in this combo and you no just went plus 1. The main point is that most of these decks never neg when making plays. These decks have the capability of making powerful boards but still have enough cards to make a good follow up play the next turn.

If we look at the Brandish Maiden deck. We see a deck that can’t really make a lot of powerful monsters, but they do play enough disruptions and removal in the form of spells. The one thing that makes the deck so good is because of their ability to gain resources. Once the deck has set up its first turn board and they have Multi-roll on the field the deck will begin to generate so much free advantage. If you have 3 or more spells in your graveyard every card you play is a plus 1. Each time you link summon a Brandish Maiden Link monster you are going plus 1. This played a huge part to my advantage one game. My opponent had Herald of Perfection on board and I had a Brandish link, Multi-Roll, 4 set and 3 in hand. I had so much Card advantage over my opponent that I could afford to play through all his negations. He only had 3 cards in hand so he could only negate up to 3 times after that I was able to do whatever I wanted. I then got everything he negated back with Multi-Roll. In the end I had gained so much advantage in that game that it won me the game on top of having access to removal cards when I needed them. Similar decks could be Dragon Rulers with Super Rejuvenation and Spellbooks with Spellbook of Judgement.

To sum it all up: Decks that can generate free card advantage over time are better than decks that can throw out a big board with lots of negations, but have no way to recover. I would rather play a slower deck that can gain advantage with inevitability than to play a deck with a high play ceiling. Decks that have inevitability are at a huge advantage if played correctly.