Deck Building (2024)

This page gives various deck construction tips.

Deck Building is the concept of creating a deck using the Duel Masters cards that a player owns in their collection.

Details[]

This can both be used for personally unique ideas or for commonly played decks seen on the Deck Collection page.

Each individual card used in a deck is individually assessed before its inclusion, as well as the number of cards and any potential combos that may be used.

Various deck construction tips are included on this page are listed as suggestions for building a viable deck.

Most Deck Type suggestions[]

Finishers and Concept[]

For example, using 2 different evolution creatures such as Supernova Apollonus Dragerion and Drag Moon, the Enlightened. While they are both fire civilization and Dragons, Supernova Apollonus Dragerion has high evolution source requirements needing 3 creatures for its Galaxy Vortex evolution ability, whereas Drag Moon would prefer cheaper costing and easier summoned evolution creatures to evolve over for Ultimate evolution. These 2 cards have a low amount of synergy with each other and wouldn't exist well in the same deck.

In the Duel Masters manga, Shobu Kirifuda used the heavyweight cost dragons of Bolmeteus Steel Dragon and Velyrika Dragon in a rush deck type. This is generally ill-advised due to their costs, even with Cost Reduction such as Cocco Lupia, due to lack of focus in the deck strategy.

Finishers should be packed in around 2 to 4 copies, and cores of the deck should be ran at 4 copies. The only exception to this is Kaiser Baki as the deck space does not allow it and the player must pack 2 Kaiser "Baki", Zenith of "Certain Victory". Other finishers such as Redzone Commands and All Delete should be ran at 4 copies at all costs. However, Loop parts can be easily ran at 1 copy, so Hall of Fame restrictions can only slow down, but not entirely cripple loops as opposed to a ban.

Understanding the Card Pool[]

When a deck concept is decided upon, it is best to use several cards that match this. In order to do that, you should look at various websites that post deck lists to learn how different deck types are created to form a basis to build from, as well as what card combinations are possible.

Balancing the Civilizations[]

If multiple civilizations are used, the possibility of a color accident increases. If you aren't using a 5-color deck or a deck using touch, cards with more than 2 or 3 civilizations should be avoided. If you want to reliably use Mana Acceleration or Draw Sources in the early turns, you should put 12-15 cards of that civilizations color in the deck. To avoid the accidents of having the wrong mana, the amount of multicolored cards of those main colors and cards with "shield trigger" can be adjusted.

Attention to Mana Curve[]

If you use too many Heavyweight finisher cards, the chance of drawing too many in the early turns increases, however if there are too many lightweight cards, the card power of the deck is lowered, and is weaker in the endgame. A balance should be kept between low and high cost cards, but there are decks that have an exception such as Drama and Turbo, or weenie creatures in Rush deck.

High Number of Lightweight cards[]

To reliably use a mandatory card such as Faerie Life or Energy Stream in the early turns, they should have 3 or 4 copies in the deck. The amount other lightweight cards should also outweight the number of heavyweight finishers, as it becomes very frustrating when the player is unable to draw those cards. This is a serious problem in decks like MaltNEXT.

Use Hand Addition[]

In Duel Masters, as the means of drawing is limiting, if you were to use a card from your hand each turn while also charging mana in your mana zone, you would quickly run out cards in your hand. Since the Tempo Advantage would be lost, various Hand Additions should be used, or Search abilities for combo strategies. The only exceptions to this are Rush and MaltNEXT.

The Water Civilization uses Card Draw, whereas the Darkness Civilization uses Graveyard Recovery for creatures, the Light Civilization uses salvage for spells.

Use Functional Reprints[]

For Avoid Graveyard purposes, and to be protected from The Grave of Angels and Demons, it can be advisable to use cards with different names that have the same performance. In a Lambda Beat deck, you could use multiple different cards with the same cost and ability, with Dreaming Moon Knife, Poisonous Mushroom and/or Yattar Wan, Adventuring Fox. However, this isn't usually possible in a Race deck focused on a specific race.

Don't depend on Spells[]

There are many anti-meta cards for spells. It is possible to be completely locked out of play if cards such as Queen Alcadeias, Holy Gaia or Batou Shoulder, Shadow of Fiction is used. Volg Thunder could also deck-out the player entirely. It is advisable to use a higher creature-to-spell ratio in a deck, or feature removal creatures such as Puchohenza, Mia Moja to counteract these cards. Should the player run a deck such as Darts Delete, Forever Princess, Eternal Ruler is strongly recommended.

Don't depend on Psychic Creatures[]

There are also various anti-meta cards for Psychic Creatures. This can include 5000GT, Riot or Thunder Blade, Wolf Tiger. Should the player rely on Psychic Creatures in a deck like Water Darkness Discard, the player should pack extra removal options.

Don't depend solely on Creature or Spell defense[]

When constructing a deck which is intended to perform long term combat, it is advised that the player does not pack defense solely consisting of creatures or spells. This is because should the opponent decide to one shot the player with Magnum, Shortshot or Rafululu, Sound Faerie, he will be rendered completely defenseless. Therefore, a mix of creature and spell defenses are recommended.

Don't depend solely on Dragons or Commands[]

If the player intends to use a long-term combat deck based on Dragons or Commands, it is advised that he packs some spells or non-dragons to remove VAN Beethoven, Zenith of "Shura", since this card will lock all dragons and commands from appearing in the battle zone and thus ending up in the player's demise.

Other[]

• When building a deck, rules such as the Hall of Fame restrictions should also be looked at. In some events, there are other restrictions such as Block Constructed, where only cards from a specific block of sets can be used. These are announced for the tournament regulation in advance.
  • This Hall of Fame ruling is only valid during the initial deck building. If a card on the Hall of Fame such as Bombazar, Dragon of Destiny was added to your hand due to the ability of Come On Victory and a DMX-12 it is allowed, as the Hall of Fame restriction only applies to the deck construction before the start of a game.
• A deck with lowly evaluated cards is known as a "Junk Deck". Attention should be paid to deck building to avoid being called this.
• "Touch" is a term that refers to using a small number of cards of a different civilization than the usual deck colors. Using multiple other civilizations gives different game options, but also increases the chance of mana accidents.
• If you are assembling a deck that isn't a commonly constructed deck, you should find cards that are compatible with the concept card or combo and use several in testing to find the best choice.
• If you want the reduce the real-life cost of building a deck, you can use a proxy card in casual play to learn the lumber of necessary copies of a card you will need before buying too many copies.
• It is also effective to copy a Meta Deck when trying to build a new deck. By knowing the common advantages and disadvantages of a deck and its card choices, you can choose to build from it, adjusting it or fitting in a combo concept.
• As a beginning player may have difficulties in deck building due to lack of knowledge of the card pool, it can be advised to build from a Theme Deck product, or viewing decks on the Duel Masters Official Homepage in the Duel Masters Deck Development section.