User:Romanoff Blitzer/The Nameless Guide



You can hold the trophy.

No matter how many Duel Masters cards you own or don't own.

No matter how old the other kids are at your local tournament.

No matter if you just stumbled onto TCO and haven't yet memorized the difference between summoning sickness and shield triggers.

No matter what, these words of wisdom will help you hold the—hey, wait a minute.

No, I'm just copying what's in that book. Yes, the imaged book. Yes, I have it in real life, back in the days of English DM when I barely had any freedom to buy any cards of my own. That book used to be so fascinating. It kind of is, now. But now that I look at it now, I see that that that book is old and outdated, and probably wrong even for its era. Like this part: "A 3000-power speed attacker that costs just three mana? What's wrong with that overpowered picture? As a drawback, Magnus has to return to your hand at the end of each turn." I was gracious enough to cross out "drawback" and write in "FURTHER ADVANTAGE!!". But enough rambling.

No, these words of wisdom will not help a total noob (and 90% of TCO Duel Masters duelists are). But hopefully, it can kinda help drag the general ignorance of TCO DM duelists out of the swamp of shittiness, somewhat.

I have quite the jaded view when it comes to TCO DM duelists. Them and not knowing how to build anything other than Dragon decks (especially those with Bolshack NEX. At least they typically aren't mono-Fire anymore, but I still dislike their ignorance.

Well then, let's get started.

Choosing a deck
"Your deck should contain 40 cards and should be built around a victory condition or theme. For fun, you could build a deck that summoned only gel fish, or you may want to include only cards that speed along your victory condition." That was taken from the shitty old book. Yes, it holds true today. But people have no idea what cards actually speed up their victory condition, and even if they do, they don't know what works better. There's too much to say on this, so I'll edit this section later.

Mana zone
Yes, the mana zone. Nature absolutely rules over the mana zone, what with its many mana ramping effects and its mana Recovery.

Mana ramping
There actually really isn't much to say here, when it comes to Nature. Nature is the king of mana ramp, and even if you want to not use Nature and try to use Chargers for mana ramp, Nature will probably work better.

Good cards for mana ramp are as follows:
 * Bronze-Arm Tribe
 * Dreaming Moon Knife / Poisonous Mushroom / Yattar Wan, Adventuring Fox (for beatdown decks with an important cost 4 card)
 * Faerie Life / Living Lithograph
 * Jasmine, Mist Faerie

Most other mana ramp cards are niche (Shrine of Rebirth) or are terrible.

Mana recovery
Somehow I doubt that anybody's ever thought "Oh, if only I didn't put that card into mana..." Well, mana recovery, while usually not needed, is very useful. But really, the only mana recovery cards to use are Sol Habaki, Apocalyptic Sage and Geo the Man, Earth Titan.

Mana ceiling
When you reach the mana total where you can cast your highest-costing card, you have a decision to make: Continue with mana, or hold back to retain more cards? Well, if you're running a deck with mana ramp, it tends to be useless after you reach your mana ceiling, so put that into mana (unless you want to use Bronze-Arm and Jasmine as creature bodies, which is perfectly acceptable). If you have a lot of draw, you might want to continue putting cards into mana to play more cards. Otherwise, stick with the mana ceiling.

Mana fixing
Sometimes people think they have problems with getting the right civilization into mana. This should never be a problem at all in 2, 3, or even 4-colored decks. In 5-colored decks, you'll probably want to use a few multicolored cards, especially 3-civilization cards like Romanesk, the Dragon Wizard and Persistent Prison of Gaia, to help fix your mana. But, no matter what, never use Courtney, Fairy of the Summer Breeze. It does nothing useful aside from fixing mana, and is generally a waste of space.

Battle zone
Coming soon to a theater near you.