Choosing a Deck

Choosing a Deck
What suits you best?

Index

I. Deck Type Introductions
II. Examples
III. Conclusion

I. Deck Type Introductions

In all truth, there are only three types of decks: Control-oriented, One turn kill (OTK)/First Turn Kill (FTK)-oriented, and Beat-oriented. In this section, the mechanics of each will be explained so that you can choose the one which fits you best.

A. Control Introduction

Control can be split in to four categories: Hand Control, Field Control, Grave control, and Disruption. Hand Control focuses on attempting to rid the opponent of their resources before the opponent can even begin to use them. Field Control focuses upon setting an established position on the field all the while destroying the opponent's cards with Monster, Spell, or Trap effects. Grave Control focuses upon targeting decks which rely on the Graveyard (a large amount of decks do so) and not allowing these decks to work as they normally would by blocking off the Graveyard. Disruption-oriented decks utilize the unorthodox strategy of screwing up the strategy of the opponent's deck using cards such as Skill Drain, Royal Oppression, Necrovalley, Macro Cosmos, and Banisher of Radiance.


B. Negation Introduction

Negation-oriented decks focus upon getting out monsters such as Herald of Perfection or Evolzar Laggia and controlling the flow of the game using those monsters. These decks specialize in obstructing the plans of the opponent and hindering the opponent in his/her attempt to establish a good field position. Once these monsters are on the field, they provide an offensive power not only through negation, but many also through simple attack power. A 2400 ATK Solemn Judgment is never a bad thing.

C. OTK/FTK introduction

OTK and FTK decks are focused only upon one thing: depleting the opponent's Life Points to zero in a single turn. This strategy can be quite effective because it means that the opponent does not have any chance to come back once the duel has been completed. This type of deck utilizes combinations to create win conditions and reduce the opponent's Life Points to zero with ease. The major weakness of OTK/FTK decks is that if the opponent is able to stop the OTK/FTK, many of these decks will be utterly crushed.

1. Speed/Swarm Introduction

Speed/Swarm decks focus upon getting large amounts of monster onto the field quickly and then overwhelming the opponent who hasn't had enough time to put up defenses against such an assault. Many times, these decks not only bring out a large amount of monster quickly, but also bring out monsters with high amounts of attack which can overpower any obstacles in the way of the opponent's Life Points.


D. Beat Introduction

Beat decks focus upon getting a constant stream of powerful monster under level four onto the field in order to simply "power through" the opponent's defenses and eventually deplete them of life points. Most of the time, the monsters are floaters which search out each other so that if one dies, the next can take its place. Beat decks play at a slow and steady pace by constantly bringing down the opponent's Life Points. Two examples of Beat decks are Gadget Beat and Light HERO Beat, both of which have powerful "floaters", or monsters which search other monsters as soon as they are summoned.

Note- These types are NOT ABSOLUTE and CAN BE MERGED.

II. Examples

In this section, I will give examples of decks which fill the categories mentioned above and will proceed to show how exactly the mechanics of those decks work.

A. Control Example

1. Hand Control

There are various hand control deck, but those which are successful all share one aspect in common: a loop. For example, there is the Wind-up Loop which dominated the Meta for quite some time and, as many know, can be incredibly easy to get on the first turn. There is also the Faultroll Loop for X-Sabers which can force the opponent to discard his/her entire hand. This was a very influential loop until Dark World decks became popular due to the release of the structure deck. Finally, the OCG only Hieratic/Gishki loop which abuses the effects of Evigishki Gustrake, Gishki Aquamirror, the Hieratic monsters, and Constellar Ptolemys Messier 7 to send parts of the opponent's hand straight back to the deck. All of these loops focus on a quick stream of Special Summoned monsters whose effects can be used to attack the opponent's hand. Overall, hand control decks focus simply on fulfilling the conditions for their loop early on in the game and then simply "out resourcing" the opponent. The weakness of this type of deck is if the loop is stopped via Effect Veiler, Solemn Warning,Torrential Tribute, or Maxx "C".

2. Field Control

Field control decks center upon destroying cards on the opponent's side of the field. A major strategy used by control decks in known as popping (using Monster or Spell effects to destroy a card on the opponent's side of the field). Examples of field control decks are Agents, Inzektor, and Volcanics. Agents use the effect of Master Hyperion to pop one card on the opponent's side of the field and hence get a free pop. Inzektors spam the effects of Inzektor Hornet, Inzektor Centipede, and Inzektor Dragonfly in conjunction to pop two cards per turn and then even get to exceed summon a rank 3 XYZ monster. The Volcanic archetype focuses upon abusing the spell card Volcanic Accelerator to pop one or more monsters per turn depending on whether or not they are using Volcanic Scattershot. Overall, Field Control decks focus more on stopping the opponent from getting an established position and hence stopping them from being able to defend themselves or attack you. Field Control decks are very weak against OTK decks because OTK decks end the game before the control deck can actually do anything about the monsters on the field.

3. Grave Control

Grave control decks focus upon stopping the opponent from using the Graveyard to cut off his/her options rather than getting rid of the resources that the opponent already has. It could be thought of as blocking the resources he/she could have and then using the block to your own advantage. Gravekeepers use the Field Spell Necrovalley to lock the Graveyard, obstructing many paths and making cards such as Monster Reborn and Call of the Haunted useless while using cards like Gravekeeper's Steele to avoid the locking of the graveyard and Royal Tribute to get rid of any monsters in the opponents hands which may prove useful in an attempt of resistance. Another example of a grave control card would be Macro Cosmos; although Macro Cosmos does not stop cards from leaving the Grave, it does stop cards from going there which can be equally powerful. It means that powerful decks such as Wind-ups, Inzektors, and Chaos Dragons are simply halted in their tracks. Overall, Grave control is similar to disruption in that it matters more what deck the opponent uses and less in your own deck's strategy.

4. Disruption Deck

Disruption decks focus upon the strategy of messing up the opponent's plans with cards which put limits upon what the opponent is allowed to do. Prominent disruption decks are Gadget Oppression and T.G. stun. Gadget Oppression, as the name implies, used the card Royal Oppression to stop Special Summoning and hence stuns the opponent long enough to deal the damage necessary to win the game. T.G. stun uses the card Skill Drain in order to mess up the opponent's deck and make resistance much harder. All the while, the deck runs cards like Photon Sabre Tiger which actually do better under Skill Drain. Overall, Disruption decks specialize in destroying the strategies of an opponents deck, bringing about victory.



B. Negation-centric Decks

Negation-Centric decks focus on obstructing the plans of the opponent by negating anything that he/she may want to do. In order to do so, the decks summon monsters such as Legendary Six Samurai-Shi En, Evolzar Dolkka, Evolzar Laggia, Naturia Beast, Naturia Barkion, or Herald of Perfection. Six Samurai's are a negation-oriented deck which rely upon getting monsters out quickly so that you can Synchro for cards like Shi En, Naturia Barkion, and Naturia Beast which completely halt the opponent in his/her tracks. Herald Agents are a combination of the Agent control deck mentioned earlier with Herald of Perfection which not only makes a field control deck but also give it strong negation powers as icing on the cake. Dino Rabbits center upon getting the Evolzar monster out and then just controlling the tide of the game with them. Finally, there are the Counter Fairies; Counter Fairies are somewhat an anomaly in Negation-Centric decks because it is not the monsters that do the negating but rather the Traps. Counter Fairies rely on Counter Traps such as Solemn Warning, Solemn Judgment, Dark Bribe, and The Horn of the Black Phantom in order to do the negating in place of monsters. Counter Fairies use the effects of cards such as Bountiful Artemis and Harvest Angel of Wisdom to make up for the heavy costs of the Counter Traps which are used to control the opponents side of the field. Negation decks overall focus upon stopping the opponents plans and then attacking with powerful monsters.

C. OTK/FTK

OTK/FTK decks are based upon getting rid of the opponent's Life Points in one turn by completing a combo. For example, Frog FTK once dominated its format working off a combo of the cards Ronintoadin, Subsitoad, and Mass Driver to quickly burn the opponent down to 0 Life Points. Fish OTK works on the basis of using the card Superancient Deepsea King Coelacanth in conjunction with Fishborg Blaster to summon synchro monster with ease and simply attack. Another OTK deck is the Gallis FTK which combines the cards Gallis the Star Beast, Koa'ki Meiru Doom, and Genex Ally Birdman to burn the opponent to 0 life points. Overall, the point of OTK/FTK decks is just one thing: to win.

1. Speed/Swarm

Speed/Swarm decks center upon getting out monster incredibly quickly and simply overwhelming the opponents defenses and ramming those monster into the opponents life points. Examples of these decks are Blackwings, Tele-DAD, Lightsworn, and Chaos Dragons. Blackwings were once a very fast swarm deck which completely destroyed anything in its way. However, Blackwing- Gale the Whirlwind and Black Whirlwind had to be limited in order to prevent the deck from becoming any greater. Before these cards were limited, Blackwings could easily get out strong synchro monsters and quickly win the game. Tele-DAD is another deck which became so powerful that it had to be stifled. The deck focused upon using the card Emergency Teleport to get Krebons and then Dark Grepher to send Destiny Hero Malicious to the grave or even Plague-Spreader Zombie. Then the duelist could synchro and get a Dark Armed Dragon or DAD onto the field giving an opportunity to pop some cards and also attack with a 2800 beatstick. Another Speed/Swarm deck is the Lightsworn deck which is comprise of monsters with incredibly powerful effects in exchange for having to send cards from the top of your deck to your grave or "mill" every turn. Lightsworn decks spam the effects of cards such as Wulf, Lightsworn Beast and Lumina, Ligtsworn Summoner to quickly swarm the field and also use the effect of Judgment Dragon to get a strong beater (or two/three depending on the hand) as the only card on the field. Finally, is the Speed/Swarm deck most commonly used in the current meta: Chaos Dragons. Chaos Dragons abuse the effects of Lightplusar Dragon, Red-eyes Darkness Metal Dragon, Darkflare Dragon, Eclipse Wyvern, Black Luster Soldier- Envoy of the Beginning, Chaos Sorcerer, and DAD to summon deadly beatsticks and simply attack for game.

D. Beat decks

Beat decks focus upon slowly running over the opponents defense with a steady stream of monsters. In order to do this, many beat decks utilize "floaters": monsters which bring other monsters to your hand as soon as they are summoned. The first example of a Beat deck would be (Machina) Gadget Beat. Gadget beat is a deck comprised of only machine type monsters. Because it has only machine type monsters, it can use solidarity to give monster an 800 attack point boost. The deck spams the effects of the Gadget monsters along with solidarity to get a 2000-2200 attack beat stick every single turn. When a Machina engine is added, solidarity can even boost Machina Fortress to 3300 attack and Machina Gearframe (another floater) to 2600. Similarly, Light Hero Beat spams spell cards such as E-Emergency Call and Reinforcement of the Army along with Elemental Hero Stratos in order to get a stream of monsters with 1800-1900 attack which can be rammed into the opponents wall of defense. Beat decks follow the saying "slow and steady wins the race."; as consequence of the slowness, they suffer in the early game, but once the mid game hit they become deadly.

Which deck-type suits you?

If you like to play dynamically and leave the opponent with few or no options, Hand Control suits you best.

If you like to destroy all the opponents monsters, spells, and trap then finish by attacking directly, Field Control suits you best.

If you like to annoy your opponent by using cards which stop their monsters, spells, and traps from working, Grave Control and Disruption suit you best.

If you like to irk the opponent by allowing them to squander away their resources, Negation-centric decks fits you best.

If you like to use a combo to completely destroy your opponent immediately, OTK/FTK suits you best.

If you like to Rush through your opponents defenses, Speed/Swarm decks are best for you.

If you like a slow and steady pace which topples down the opponent, Beat styled decks are best suited for you.


Conclusion

Now you know which deck suits you best, with this information you can begin building your deck. First figure out which deck in the category you picked is the most prominent in the met you are in. After that, all you have to do is begin building.

for building advice go here:
[link]

Read the whole thing, don't skip around. (it's really good)