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 But now that I look at it now, I see that that that book is old and outdated, and probably wrong even for its era.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

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: Piss-poor. It has tap-and-bash, but that's unreliable. Celestial Arc is too expensive. Eternal Spark is pretty meh. You'll usually want to rely on other civilizations for removal. Yes, White Knight HEAVEN, Lord of Spirits is good, but it costs 8, and you'll need other removal spells before then.
 * 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.
 * 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). The best darkness removal is for control decks (Black Ganveet, Temporal Soldier, anyone?)
 * Then there's power deduction, which Thunder Tiger and Hyperspatial Emperor Hole are good examples of. But if you want to talk about that, look at the Fire section.
 * 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, and Blazing Tiger, Crimson Lord (kills all weenies in rush). Then, there's blocker removal, but aside from Hyperspatial Shooting Hole, nobody uses it.
 * Also, nobody in Japan likes Punch Trooper Bronks. Must be jarring if you came from KP, where Bronks is used a lot.
 * Nature: Probably the second best (beast?) in removal. Natural Snare is the general 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 fact that these removals increase the opponent's 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. Otherwise, you have to have some defense, even if you're running a beatdown deck. STs are more favored by assault 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. The Strong Guard is meh.

Graveyard
Most decks don't use the graveyard, amd 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. Spell recovery, though, is excellent; most control decks can use Chief De Baula, Machine King of Mystic Light or Phal Pierro, Apocalyptic Guardian.

Self-mill
Coming soon to a theater near you.

Gaining cards in hand
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, 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 still one of the best draw civs. Hustle Castle is an important 4-of in many control decks not running Water. 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, usually to work with 3 or 4 Hustle Castles. However, it's restricted to 1. Gaga Pikarian is useful in Light beatdown decks not running Water. Aqua Attack (BAGOOON Panzer) can...probably be run in either beatdown or control, but I haven't seen DMvault duelists use it yet (except in LDN Hyperspatial controls)
 * Darkness and Fire: The absolute bottom rung in card gain, with only a few cards to gain cards in hand. Kodamanma, All-Devouring Puppet, Kodamanma, Gil Gil Puppet, Fire Crystal Bomb, and Bubble Trap are all useful, even if they take an important resource. The first two are often used in DFN Mad Romanoff beatdown decks, while the latter two...yeah, haven't seem them that often. Still, they function as decent removal as well.
 * 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.

In control, discard is a choice between multiple smaller discard cards (like Jenny, the Suicide Doll and Ghost Touch) and Lost Soul, never both.

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

Attackers
Coming soon to a theater near you.

Blockers
Coming soon to a theater near you.

Evolution creatures
Coming soon to a theater near you.

Psychic creatures
See this page.

Mono-civilization decks
Mono-civ decks, with very few exceptions, are 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.

Oh, and the exceptions are Crowd Mayfly mono-green rush, Zyler's Lighter mono-fire rush, and Cyber/Origin mono-water rush. White Knights and Reapers suck. Zamaru, Treasure of Darkness is better in a Light/Darkness Master Weapon - All Yes deck.