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 But now that I look at it now, I see that that that book is old and outdated, and probably wrong even for its era.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.

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 / Hormone, Maxim Bronze / Nam=Daeddo, Bronze Style
 * 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
 * King Poisonous Mushroom
 * Seventh Tower

Most other mana ramp cards are niche (Gachinko Roulette, Faerie Crystal, Faerie Miracle, Pixie Life, Shrine of Rebirth, Timeless Garden) or are terrible.

Mana recovery
Somehow I doubt that anybody's ever thought "Oh, if only I didn't put that card into mana..." People never think that putting a certain card into mana causes them to lose; it's always the climax of the duel that seems to cause you to lose. However, if you hadn't put that certain card into mana, you might not have gotten to the losing situation in the first place.

Now that I've made you paranoid, I'll offer you some options. The best mana recovery cards to use are Sol Habaki, Apocalyptic Sage, Geo the Man, Earth Titan, and Hyperspatial Green White Hole. Belix, the Explorer and Hyperspatial Red Green Hole is pretty good too. If you're using Giovanni the 10th, Thunder Mecha King, Rolling Snowman and Siren Concerto are useful. If you are running Zeniths, Pixie Life works.

Mana recovery is important in Zenith decks or just about any decks that uses mainly high cost finishers, as most of the time you will be dumping your finishers there.

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, Summer Breeze Faerie. It does nothing useful aside from fixing mana, and is generally a waste of space. You are better off using Imen=Bugo, Dragon Edge or Niga=Abushumu, Invasive Mystery for the same purpose instead. (It is the cheapest possible way to toy around with Space Charge, however.)

Summoning
Any idiot with a brain (and thankfully, most TCO noobs do; Morikawa, however, does not) understands that filling your deck with high-cost cards is stupid.

So what tips can I give about summoning creatures? Well, none that I can think of right now. >.>

Removal
Let's do a comparison of each civilization on their removal:
 * Light: Generally meh. It has tap-and-bash, but that's unreliable. Celestial Arc is too expensive, doesn't have Shield Trigger, and there are so many Dragons running around these days (that is, Dragons in decks not based on Dragons). Eternal Spark isn't great. Panic Room is good, but a bit slow, while Apocalypse Day, while also good, is very conditional. White Knight HEAVEN, Lord of Spirits and Vibros Heaven, Lord of Dragon Spirits are good, but they cost 8, and you'll need other removal spells before then. You could team up with Water and use Miraculous Snare, but that's restricted to 1.
 * Water: Returning creatures to the hand is surprisingly effective, especially at such low costs and against the encroaching threat of psychic creatures. Even then, delaying a creature for a turn or two is good. Putting a creature on the top of the deck is only handled by Corile, and Corile is an excellent card.
 * Darkness: The best? Definitely so, but mainly in control decks. Low-cost darkness removal is few in number (Deadly Love has little use, really), and good darkness removal starts at cost 4 (Infernal Smash, Bubble Trap, Death Smoke). Of course, you can always team with Light and use Divine Punishment of Heaven, or Fire and use Super Infernal Gate Smash. The best darkness removal is Death Hands, Misfortune Emperor, period.
 * Then there's power deduction, which Thunder Tiger and Hyperspatial Emperor Hole are good examples of. But of course the best is Deadzone, S-Rank Zombie which has so many ways to remove creatures with it's -9000 power deduction.
 * Fire: As the Japanese call it, "firepower", Fire power-based removal cards are rarely used for removal alone. Usually, you should use firepower attached to a creature body. The only firepower cards I know of that see use in JP are Boost, Crimson Lord (with the cost 4 hyperspatial spells, it's extremely flexible), Hyperspatial Bolshack Hole, Blazing Tiger, Crimson Lord and Mega Magma Dragon (kills all weenies in rush). Then, there's blocker removal, but aside from Hyperspatial Shooting Hole and GENJI Double Cross, Blastdragon, nobody uses it. Forced Battling is also very useful as well, most notably Bolshack Dogiragon.
 * Also, nobody in Japan likes Punch Trooper Bronks. Must be jarring if you came from North Korea, where Bronks is used a lot.
 * Nature: Probably the second best (beast?) in removal. Natural Snare is Nature's general spot removal spell. Princess Cub, the Crusher is the Nature version of Blazing Tiger, and useful in decks that don't run Fire. Leaf Storm Trap is used in control decks. The=Deadbrachio, World Evil Dragonkind is used in 5 civilization decks for easy removal and anti-Dokindam/Manalock which can usually cause a quick loss. The fact that these removals give your opponent mana rarely matter.

Shield triggers
Shield triggers? The number of those you should have depends on what your deck has and what it wants. If it's a rush deck, then ignore all defense. (If you run Mono Fire Redzone, then you probably need some, such as Holy and Liberation of the End.) Otherwise, you have to have some defense, even if you're running a beatdown deck. STs are more favored by beatdown decks, which usually need the defense but usually don't want to play blockers. Control decks can use quite a few STs, but they generally prefer blockers.

Shield manipulation
So you want to manipulate shields to have STs. Well, surprisingly, beatdown is the deck that wants to do this, mainly due to Hyperspatial White Blue Hole and Hyperspatial Green White Hole. Easy ST setup, and you get to play something like Gaga Packun, Io Enforcer or Diana, Temporal Brave.

Control can use ST manipulation as well. Aqua Super Emeral is good at this, being both a blocker and a card that sets up shields.

Shield adding
Not much to say. Shield adding from the top of your deck (that is, stuff like Skysword, the Savage Vizier) is one of the things you can do with reckless abandon, because there is little downside. Don't overdo it, though.

Shield adding from the hand, however, is only to be used on Hyperspatial Green White Hole and Hyperspatial White Blue Hole. If you'e not using Nature or Water, you can use The Strong Guard, I guess. If you're using Gods, try Wired, Spirit Knight Right God.

Graveyard
Most decks don't use the graveyard, and most decks don't need to use the graveyard... but for those that do...

Card recovery
Not much creature graveyard recovery these days, except tacked onto a good effect like Hyperspatial Revive Hole, Moors, the Dirty Digger Puppet, Magic Shot - Soul Catcher or even a finisher creature like Grateful Dead, Lord of Demons.

Spell recovery, though, is excellent; most control decks can use Chief De Baula, Machine King of Mystic Light, Phal Pierro, Apocalyptic Guardian or Spellbe, Aqua Spellcaster. Nowadays though they're all overshadowed by the even stronger Sr Spellcyclica, Dragment Symbol.

Self-mill
While Volg Thunder is mostly used to mill the opponent, the following cards should be helpful for self-milling decks:
 * Darslain, Dream Knight is a stronger version of Honenbe used for decks that require more offense.
 * Honenbe, Skeletal Guardian fills your graveyard, recovers a creature and is a solid blocker. That's a +3.
 * Bone Dance Charger supplies your graveyard and increases your mana early game.
 * Primal Scream was the main graving spell back in the day.
 * Loud Park, True Flashing Right God is the same as Honenbe, just that it has a niche in God Nova OMG decks. I guess you could use it in Zombie Dragon decks too.
 * Bloody Cross is the earliest type of graving you can get. It can be abulsable with stuff like graveyard evolutions, Giovanni the 10th or Shrine of Rebirth.
 * Devil Hand is a Terror Pit with self-mill attached to it.

Gaining cards in hand
Most people on TCO do not know the importance of draw. Card draw is important. If you find that your opponent is continually removing and discarding your cards, or you find yourself forced into top-decking mode, card draw eases that significantly.

I use the term "draw" loosely, because that certainly isn't the only way to get cards in hand.

The draw you need varies by decktype and civilization.


 * Water: By far the best card draw, and usable in both beatdown and control. Examples of good Water draw cards in beatdown include Aqua Hulcus, Qurian, Viblo Blade, Hulcus Range, Newton, Aqua Ace, Christopher, Dark Knight, Cosmo Cebu Lambda, the Super Electromagnetic, Aqua Cutlass, Temporal Swordsman / Aqua Excalibur, the Awakened Indigo Swordsman, and Lucky Ball. In control, you might see stuff like Aquan Jr.'s Delivery and Energy Stream.
 * Nature: Nature is strange in that it only has 1 or 2 draw cards, but it's still one of the best draw civs. Hustle Castle is an important 4-of in many control decks not running Water. Lifeplan Charger goes well with mana ramps too. Trio, Tribe works well in hyperspatial control. Shaman Totem is decent, but...not as used often.
 * Light: Light has a few card-gain effects. Just a few. Mist Rias, Sonic Guardian works mainly in control decks and it's not restricted now, so if you plan to play slowly, use it. Gaga Pikarian is useful in Light beatdown decks not running Water. Aqua Attack (BAGOOON Panzer) can be used in either.
 * Fire: Used to share the bottom position of card advantage with Darkness, but Schumacher, New World changed everything. There's also Pulsar, Trans Suction, Kodamanma, Gil Gil Puppet and Fire Crystal Bomb. If you run Invasion, Turbo 3, Supersonic is perfect and it also prevents your Redzones from becoming still objects.
 * Darkness: Just use Vader, Dark Armor. Heavy, Dragon God is not restricted now too, so you may want to use it.
 * This section doesn't deal with mana or graveyard recovery.

And don't talk to me about Super Trash Train, Fuuma Devil. I don't quite trust that card yet.

Discard
Discard is exclusively the purview of the Darkness civilization (Pakurio and Kishima Giant notwithstanding). Most decks, as they are, don't really use heavy discard.

In beatdown decks running darkness, Jenny, the Dismantling Puppet is often used to snipe specific cards in your opponent's hand that can mess with your strategy. Zamaru, Treasure of Darkness is good, but not worth restricting yourself to mono-Darkness or a deck with several multicolored cards. Master Weapon - All Yes, on the other hand, is so amazing that beatdown decks are built around it (usually Light/Water/Darkness these days).

All Yes is also a Cross Gear. Suck on that, Ryusei Kaiser, the Eternal and Berlin!

In control, discard is a choice between multiple smaller discard cards (like Jenny, the Suicide Doll, Ghost Touch, Myoga, Familia's Yamikamu, Dark Camster) and Lost Soul, usually not both. Also, some decks use Pet Puppet, Puppet Trick in combo with Troll, Graffiti Doll. Lost Mind Torture has also seen a few use due to the rampaging spell meta. That, Mind Reset and Vice Kaiser Zeta, the Vengeance also combo quite well with Batou Shoulder, Shadow of Fiction. For progression reasons, Mono Darkness Control uses cards such as Zabi Barrel, Western Doll, Tigermite, Bomb Devil and Unlucky Darts.

Other than that, Jenny, the Dismantling Puppet (or Pakurio in non-darkness decks) is always a given in three-civ control.

If you want to run fatties and have a way of bringing then out easily, Nicol Bolas, Radio Roses, Zenith of "Wisdom" and Dark Masters, Demon Dragon are good options to devastate your opponent.

Attackers
Attackers are pretty much anything that can attack a player and can be put into your deck. When you set your field and feel confident, you can try attacking with the creatures you already had in the battle zone. Beware of a Shield Trigger however; a shield trigger Upheaval or Holy is not a good sight at the start of the game.

Blockers


First things first, if you have a deck that isn't rush, add a Falconer, Lightfang Ninja to it. It's awesome. But why one? Well, it's restricted to 1.

Aside from that, how do you decide if you want blockers in your deck?

Blockers in beatdown

 * If you have a beatdown deck with an powerful low-cost evolution creature like Astral Reef or Marshall Queen, and want an evolution bait that costs less than it that happens to be a blocker, use it.
 * Aqua Guard for Crystal Spinslicer
 * Cosmo Politan for Marshall Queen
 * Fist Blader for Pacific Champion
 * Marine Flower for Astral Reef and Emperor Tina
 * Shuu, the Oracle for Kagekiri, Bird of Fire and Pildol, Bird of Fire
 * Death March, Reaper of Death is just an excellent cheap evolution creature for a rush deck that just happens to be a blocker. The blocking isn't going to matter much unless the opponent has forced you to be defensive. In the same vein, if you've got an excellent attacker, like Marrow Ooze, the Twister, that just happens to be a blocker, use it.
 * Otherwise, just don't run any blockers in beatdown.

Blockers in control

 * In control decks, you generally want to run a few blockers over relying on shield triggers for defense. Good blockers include Bloody Shadow, Mystic Light Death Knight, Mil Armor, Mecha King Vizier, Chakra, Temporal Thunder Dragon and Emeralda, Pitch Dragon Elemental.
 * You should generally avoid blockers without any effects other than blocking. Bloody Shadow has Gravity Zero, Mil Armor reduces the cost of your spells, and Chakra turns into a big finisher creature. No Bloody Squitos, La Ura Giga, Sky Guardians, or Madrillon Fishes. Ability-less psychic blockers are an exception; Aqua Cascade (ZABUUUN Cruiser), Merrianne, Apostle of the Alps, Silver Volg, and Martini, Temporal Dancer are all perfectly usable, because the flexibility of hyperspatial spells is amazing.

Evolution creatures
Coming soon to a theater near you.

Psychic creatures
See this page.

Mono-civilization decks
Mono-civ decks, with very few exceptions, were never at their full potential. Sure, you may feel good about that Ballom mono-darkness deck or that mono-Fire beatdown deck, but trust me, it will never be as good as it could. One civilization can only do so much, and it isn't hard to fix mana in Duel Masters at all.

In the past, the only good mono decks were Outrage/Dual Shock Dragon mono-fire rush, Cyber/Origin and Liquid People mono-water rush. White Knights and Reapers suck. Zamaru, Treasure of Darkness might seem good, but having other civilizations is more worth it; it explains how All Yes decks grew from LD Zamaru to LD without Zamaru to LWD.

However, with Dragon Saga we got stronger focuses on mono decks and we witnessed the emerging of newer meta decks such as Mono-Light rush, Mono Light Heaven's Gate, Mono Darkness Control, Mono Darkness Draguner, Mono-Fire rush, Mono Fire Redzone, Malt "King", MaltNEXT, Mono Nature Bearfugan and Mono Nature Sasoris. Now Mono civilization decks, if organized correctly, are a hit in the metagame...Until we see the release of insanity into the metagame...or will we?

Stuff that you probably should not underestimate/overestimate
It's sometimes easy to dismiss a new card as shit when you first saw it before it was released. Very likely it could be the opposite because some cards are not that strong at first glance, but when you see them played in front of you, you will realize that they are pretty dangerous/annoying. The reverse is the same with seemingly good cards; chances are they will simply fall flat in real practice. Make sure of this when you see new cards from websites before you dismiss them as shit.

The following is a list of stuff that you should not underestimate;
 * Cheap Darkness/Nature Evolution Creatures; these things seem to be harmless/easy to beat at first glance, but most of them will overrun you before you even know it, as they will usually contain some sort of effect that will allow them to plow through your defenses easily. Examples include: Death March, Reaper of Death, Huckle Kirin Sawyer, Jungle Governor, Sanmadd, S-Rank Tribe
 * Stuff that has an alternate loss effect in place of speed, strength and effect; most of these stuff are laughed upon like clowns when they first appear before people even used it, but the truth is when they are actually used, the loss effect barely matters because they will plow you through before the loss effect even matters. If the lost effect matters, it's very likely being sent out at the wrong time. Examples include: Dokindam X, The Legendary Forbidden, Bombazar, Dragon of Destiny (You won't see the latter)
 * Stuff that sends cards into your shields; Seems like buffing you at the first glance, but this usually means that the opponent is running some sort of Deck-out/Baki/Hyperspatial control deck and usually the shields does not matter in those cases, and may even become a demerit since the cards will never be recovered. Please don't underestimate them, especially that if they are cheap. Example: Miraculous Snare, Pakurio
 * Stuff that removes your own shields for an advantage; Sometimes your shields are worth sacrificing in a rush deck. Usually it's for hand advantage or sending out Dual Shock Dragon. Your opponent will die before the shield loss matters. Or maybe sacrificing shields to activate Revolution or using Emeralda, Pitch Dragon Elemental to use a shield trigger. Don't overdo it, however.

The following is a list of stuff that you should not overestimate;
 * Shield Trigger giving stuff; Shield Trigger giving stuff usually isn't that good considering it takes a good deal to activate those effects yourself. If you get to return a shield to your hand to use the shield trigger, your opponent very likely chooses that stuff so manipulating shields is pointless. Most of them don't have much removal resistance as well so your opponent will very likely try to remove it before you get to use it's effect. Examples: Lionel, Zenith of "Ore", Perfect Earth, Planetary Dragon
 * Mass cost tramplers; Most of these are pretty flashy, but since they have various limitations such as difficult evolution bait, can only cost trample from hand and luck based effects, they won't be the next Chirico or Baki. Examples: Unidentified, Domitius, Evil Emperor of Five Dragonskind
 * Revolution stuff; Trust me, they will NEVER outpace and outrun Invasion decks. Keep this to the anime, please. Examples: Many stuff
 * Shield Breaks; Seriously, don't give your opponent shield triggers to use. you will be stuck in a terrible situation, or you can trigger an heaven's gate loop and die. If it Burns shields and not breaks shields, feel free to use it. Examples: Death the Lost, Demon Revolution, Sonic Boom, Sonic
 * High cost and Passively defensive stuff; Stuff that say "You can't be attacked" and "Your shields don't break" probably aren't that good if they are high costed or difficult to activate, since most of these stuff take a hard time to activate and have no removal resistance in order to balance things up. Examples: Oni "Champion", Victory Twelve, Yomi, Humanity God, Saurpio, Ancient King (Although the last one is used for other reasons other than defense.)

A Walkthrough of the Civilizations

 * Light
 * Water
 * Darkness
 * Fire
 * Nature
 * Zero
 * Multicolored