You-Gi-Oh Deck Building

The key to a good deck is knowing how to build on it with the right amount of ratios and cards that synergise well with each other.

We’ll break it down into separate parts. First things first find ourselves an arch type you want to play so you already have a guide of what deck you want, id suggests looking for decklists on https://ygoprodeck.com/card-database/deck-prices/  or watching YT deck profiles just to give you a blueprint. Once that’s done we move on to ratios.

Ratios

As always you want to make sure all your key cards you play as a 3 off this is to ensure you are more likely to draw the cards you want to open with, you can also add cards that act like searchers, so that if you don’t draw that cards you can at least still search it out of your deck, just make sure not to flood your deck, a number you can go off of is 11-13 ratio.

Extenders

Extenders are a great way to get access to other cards to further your plays if built correctly you can use extenders, these cards are typically extra bodies that allow you to go into your ED. So look for cards like these to make your deck faster and more efficient. Depending on your deck’s engine id go off of is 12-14.

BOMB cards

These are the most unloved cards, since they need a lot of set-up it’s hard to get these cards to go off, A lot of these cards are dead in hand when you go first like Raigeki or Super poly, but there for going 2nd or later in the game these cards are relevant, now since these cards are dead in your hand going 1st, its always a little tricky to tell what ratio is good, depending on your deck 2-4 is a good number. You really want to keep the number low unless they’re searchable.

NON Engine cards

In the current Meta Trap decks are hot so a lot of decks play a lot of hand traps and normal traps like Imperm or ASH these are purely for defence and here you just have to see what is even the function of your deck do you want to trap deck, a strong defence deck, burn deck, or an older format that needs hand traps to slow down your opponents, like Twin twister, forbidden chalice, and mine. These cards are hard to put a number on, my deck for example ONLY runs 3 Ashes the rest is all in-engine cards, here you can really go HAM as long as it doesn’t affect the balance of your deck, id say throw them in do a bunch of test hands to make sure you don’t flood your deck. a number you could aim for is 6.

Engine Requirements

These are the cards you have to play but NEVER want to draw there dead in your hands, these are usually the cards you want in your deck so search out, play to field or send to GY/Banish. PSY Driver, for example, is dead in hand without Gamma so we keep him at 1, however, the trade-off is with it. Sadly these cards you have to run just make sure to keep these numbers as low as possible.

Test Hands

Test hands are the only way to tell if your ratio is right. if you don’t want to print out cards id suggest downloading Yu-Gi-Oh Neuron its easy to create decks, adjust them and do test hands. once you are happy with your hands and your drawing more consistently try and find a balance for your decking going 1ts and 2nd, cuz you’re not always going to win the coin flip.

Extend your Combos

Once you know your deck take a look at your extra deck. Yu-Gi-Ohs cards pool is massive and I mean massive (11,145 cards). So now that you know your deck have a look at other cards you can incorporate, for example, if you have a 2 lvl 4 monsters on field you can go into abyss dweller locking your opponent out of their GY or go into ARK catering one of their boss monsters and since your in a XYZ card you can attack and slap on ZEUS. take a look at cards and see what you can create. I encourage you to run all sorts of cards in your ED you will catch your opponent off guard. The more you explore the more options you’ll have and it will make gameplay easier if you’re in a weird situation and playing non-meta cards will throw your opponent off because there is a very high chance that they were not expecting it.

FINAL DECK

You’re final deck should be consistent and balanced, always look at what the Meta is doing and try to find cards that WILL make a dent to it. Try and go for older cards and a variety of them, make your extra deck random and play a good balance of everything.

Hope you learned a lil smt and as always ill catch you guys on the duelling field ‹3

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