axolotl8@cox.net

 

Deckbuilding Strategy Article - Axolotl

 

Deck Building Article

 

 To build a truly excellent deck requires two things:  planning and testing.  If you simply throw together a deck in 10 minutes with no thought, it won't be able to compete against a deck that has been painstakingly planned out, tested, fixed, retested and tweaked again.  I've noticed as I've been playing Duel Masters the past several months is that there are many people out there who can play Duel Masters well, just they have a hard time actually building the deck.  This article is to try to put into writing the process of building a competitive deck in Duel Masters.

 

 A deck is a personal item, an expression of yourself and your play style.  In Duel Masters, there are many different tactics that are available to be employed against your opponent, and knowing what those are and which you like best is one of the most important parts of knowing what kind of deck to build.  Feeling that a deck is part of you allows you to wield it like a sword, an extension of your mind and arm that allows you to defeat those that oppose you.  Every civilization on Earth has different weapons that they have used that are a part of their culture, from the katana to the scimitar to the longsword.  Each is good and each has its different styles.  In Duel Masters each civilization has it's weapons that are useful, but different.  The Civilizations and their weapons are listed at the end of this article.  Know your weapon well, and that will lead to victory.

 

 I listed the advantages of the Civilizations at the end of the article because I feel most people are familiar by now with what each Civilization can do.  (Feel free to jump to the end of the article if you want to refresh your memory.)  The first step in building a deck is to choose a strategy or two that you like.  After choosing the type of weapon (strategy) you wish to use in your deck, next you must choose the weapon itself, the creatures or spells that you want to base your deck around.  In this example of Deck Building, we are going to create a Diamond Cutter deck.  This type of deck will be very common amongst players because of the large advantage that Diamond Cutter can give.  So that takes us to our primary weapon, Diamond Cutter:

 

Civ : Light
Name: Diamond Cutter
Mana: 5
Text: This turn, ignore any effects that would prevent your creatures from attacking your opponent. (For example, ignore summoning sickness and card effects that say "This creature can't attack" or "This creature can't attack players." Your creatures can't attack creatures this way.)

 


The ability of this spell allows all your Blockers to attack shields.  It also allows creatures with summoning sickness to attack.  This is a game-changing spell.  To use it effectively you will need several blockers in your deck and light has the best blockers.  We will add in blockers a little later as we still need to pick more cards for our deck to be based around.  Since we are basing our deck around this card, we should put in four of them.

 

 Since Diamond Cutter is a Light spell, what other spells does light have that are useful.  The first spell that comes to mind is Holy Awe.

 

Civ: Light
Name: Holy Awe
Mana: 6
Text: Shield trigger (When this spell is put into your hand from your shield zone, you may cast it immediately for no cost.)  Tap all your opponent's creatures in the battle zone.

 

  This is the number one spell in the game as it is used both offensively and defensively.  It's a shield trigger that will stop any further creatures from attacking and it's ability to tap all the opponents' creatures when you cast it means all of your creatures can attack your opponents shields directly or attack and destroy all of their creatures so they can't attack you next turn.  This combined with Yellow's blockers gives all those blockers a target they can attack.  Add four of these to the deck.

 

 There is one more spell that is needed to round out this deck, and that is Logic Cube.

 

Civ: Light
Name: Logic Cube
Mana: 3
Text: Shield trigger (When this spell is put into your hand from your shield zone, you may cast it immediately for no cost.)  Search your deck. You may take a spell from your deck, show that spell to your opponent, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your deck.

 

 Logic Cube is our support card that lets you get the Holy Awe or Diamond Cutter that you need in order to win the game.  It's also a Shield Trigger so many times you won't even have to pay the mana to get the spell you need.  Add four.  This takes us up to 12 spell cards

 

Now let's look at some of the other excellent cards that light has to offer. 
In this new set, Evolution Creatures are now entering the scene.  Evolution Creatures have many advantages and a few disadvantages to them.  If you want to use an Evolution Creature, you have to build a deck around him or he will most likely end up as a dead draw and you won't be able to play him due to lack of creatures to evolve him from.  The greatest advantage of Evolution Creatures is the ability to attack the turn they are summoned.  This adds a lot of speed to the game.  In the Light Civilization there are two evolution creatures, Larba Geer and Ladia Bale.

 

Civ: Light
Name: Larba Geer, the Immaculate
Mana: 3
Text: Evolution-Put on one of your Guardians.  When you put this creature into the battle zone, tap all your opponent's creatures in the battle zone that have "blocker."

 

Civ: Light
Name: Ladia Bale, the Inspirational
Mana: 6
Text: Blocker (Whenever an opponent's creature attacks, you may tap this creature to stop the attack. Then the 2 creatures battle.)  Evolution-Put on one of your Guardians.  Double breaker (This creature breaks 2 shields.)

 

They evolve from Guardian type Creatures.  However, we have to ask ourselves if these cards fit into our Diamond Cutter deck.  When building a deck it is always important to make sure a card fits in with the theme, and not just put in a card because it is cool.  Lucky for us, both of these evolution creatures would fit in our deck.  Since we want to attack shields to win, Larba Geers ability of tapping all blockers is great.  Also he's a 5000 attacker which is nothing to sneer at for only 3 mana.  The other evolution creature, Ladia Bale, is a 9500 double breaker blocker.  Ladia Bale's power will be useful for dealing with very large creatures that you opponent may bring out and has the added flexibility of being a blocker (Though the card would be just as good if not better if it wasn't.  $#%%@@  Critical Blades.)  For our deck let's put in four Larba Geer and two Ladia Bale.
Since we wish to use these two evolution creatures, we need to include in our deck Guardian type creatures that they can evolve from.  Some that come to mind are La Ura Giga, Reso Pecos, Dia Nork, Szubs Scin, and Grand Gure.  However, before we go adding these in, we need to make sure that there are no other cards we need in the deck.  Then we can use these cards to fill in the blanks.
 A personal favorite of mine is Miele, Vizier of Lightning.

 

Civ: Light
Name: Miele, Vizier of Lightning
Mana: 3
Text: When you put this creature into the battle zone, you may choose 1 of your opponent's creatures in the battle zone and tap it.

 

 I think that Miele is a great card because of its ability to tap an opponent's creature.  This lets you get past an opponents blocker or attack that previously untouchable creature you opponent just played.  This card combo's with many other cards due to his low mana cost making him very flexible.  He has a great combo will Diamond Cutter.  Due to the amount of blockers this deck is going to have, you will make it to late-game and large amounts of mana.  For eight mana you can summon Miele, tap an opponent's blocker, and then cast Diamond Cutter, allowing Miele to instantly attack an opponent's shields along with all the blockers you already have on the field.  The impact to your opponent of loosing a blocker and you gaining several extra attackers all at the same time can be devasting, even game finishing.  Add four.
 Now we have the core of the deck and it should look like this:

 

Creatures (10):
4x Miele, Vizier of Lightning
4x Larba Geer
2x Ladia Bale
 

 

Spells (12):
4x Logic Cube
4x Holy Awe
4x Diamond Cutter

 

 Twenty-two cards is over half of our deck and we are off to a good beginning.  We have several cards sitting out in the wings waiting to be added, so we won't have any trouble coming up with the remaining cards needed.  Now that we have the core of our deck it is time to consider how we want our deck to play, even though it's not built yet.  This process can give us ideas for which cards to add to the deck.  The first 5 turns of the game are crucial as everyone is building mana and going for the extra advantage of board control or breaking a few early shields.  So let's imagine what sequence of events we would like to see.


Turn 1:  Play mana
Turn 2:  Play mana, summon Emerald Grass
Turn 3:  Play mana, summon Miele, tap opponent's creature and use Emerald Grass to destroy the creature your opponent summoned on their Turn 2
Turn 4:  Play mana, summon Reso Pecos, attack with Miele.  Break 1st shield.
Turn 5:  Play mana, summon Dia Nork, attack with Reso Pecos and Miele and break 2nd and 3rd shields.

 

This is how I would imagine a good start to my game.  This is the early game and it's important to be strong there, just as it's important to be strong in the mid game and the end game.  If we wanted to use this plan, we would need four Emerald Grass, four Reso Pecos, and 2 Dia Norks added to our deck.  Reso Pecos is especially useful as he is a Guardian that can be evolved for our Evolution Creatures.

 

Mid game is usually very short and is where more powerful creatures come out, and we need more powerful creatures to deal with them.  As this is a Light Deck, there is no way of destroying your opponent's creatures by spell, only by attack.  This makes Ladia Bale important as she can kill most creatures out there, and she would like some help.  Two Grand Gures help a lot, but we need some attackers also.  Urth, the Purifying Elemental is a very useful card as he untaps himself, making him almost immune to being attacked, so we can add 2 of him also.  It's also important to not loose site of the goal of your deck.  In this case, it is a Diamond Cutter deck so we need more blockers that we will be able to use offensively at the correct moment.  Lets look at turns 6 and 7.  These will be a little more generic as by now you never know what your opponent will be doing and it is important to respond to his actions.

 

Turn 6:  Play Mana, summon Reso Pecos.
Turn 7:  Play Mana, summon La Ura Giga and Evolve with Larba.  Attack 4th shield.

 

In order for this sequence to happen, we need to add four La Ura Gigas to the deck.  End game begins when you start your final progression to win the game.  In this imaginary case it would go like this:

 

Turn 8:  Play Mana, summon Miele, play Diamond Cutter and attack and destroy 5th shield and attack again for the win.

 

Here is what we have now:

 

Creatures (28):
4x La Ura Giga, Sky Guardian
4x Emerald Grass
4x Miele, Vizier of Lightning
4x Reso Pecos
4x Larba Geer
2x Dia Nork, Moonlight Guardian
2x Urth
2x Grand Gure
2x Ladia Bale
 

 

Spells (12):
4x Logic Cube
4x Diamond Cutter
4x Holy Awe

 

This makes forty cards, which is a complete deck.  It is important to see that the way we want the game to play out helped determine the extra cards to put in our deck to flesh out the core that we set up.  As we designed our core pieces, we kept ideas on the side for cards that would go with them and then were able to use them to complete the deck.  I usually try to stay in the 40 to 46 card range for my decks, but feel free to add something that you feel is important to your style of play.
 You may think that now we have made a deck and are ready to go.  This is not true.  Now begins the testing phase.  No one is going to make an excellent deck on the first try, though you can make a good one.  All decks should be tested out against two styles of deck to see if they can win against them.  The first type is against a  mono-red or mono-green deck.  These two civilizations have speed and all decks need to be able to survive against speed.  The other type of deck is a deck with big monsters and high defense, possibly red/yellow or black/yellow.  Being able to beat a rush of small creatures requires a different strategy than fighting a few large creatures.  Test you deck against these two types of decks, and when you can beat both, you have a good deck.  Pay attention while you play.  Do you have a card that you are always playing in the mana zone because you can't use it?  Think about what you could replace it with that would make the deck better.  Test your deck some more, replace some cards with other cards, and after a while you will have a finely tuned deck that is capable of winning tournaments.  I say capable because it is not the weapon the wins the battle, but the person who wields it.  But that is for another article.
 I hope some of this information is useful to you.  It is the method that I use for building my decks and works for me.  Let me know what you think

 

Axolotl
Email me at axolotl8@cox.net with any comments or questions.

 


Appendix

 

Earlier in the article I promised to list the Civilizations and their weapons.  Here they are.  The key to building any deck is to know what creatures and spells you have available to build with.  The better you know the creatures and how they work together, the better you will be able to construct a deck.

 


Light:

 

Blocking - Blocking is what Light is good at.  Not only can it's Blockers block, they can also attack creatures, which adds flexibility to your strategy.  Light also has the strongest blockers in the game at 6000 and 9000 power which no other color has.
Tapping - Tapping is the primary weapon of Light.  It gives an incredible advantage and Light has both creatures and spells that tap your opponent's creatures.  This gives two advantages:  You can attack a creature you previously couldn't because it wasn't tapped and you can stop creatures from attacking you if a tapping card comes up as a shield (Like Holy Awe).
Searching - The Light's searching power is limited to Spells.  While searching for creatures (Nature) or for any card (Water) is better, the Light Civilization has some awesome game changing spells that are good to search for.
Unblockables - This is a small side specialty, but Light does have creatures and spells that can make creatures unblockable.
Drawing - Light is not too good at card drawing, but does have one creature that can cause you to draw a card.  This is a secondary weapon of the Light.

 

Fire:

 

Power Attacker - Fire has many creatures that gain power as they attack allowing them to destroy many larger creatures than other civilizations creatures that have the same power.
Destroy - Fire has a limited ability to kill your opponent's creatures.  It can kill any creature as long as its power is less than 4000.  Fire can't destroy the larger creatures.
Attack Untapped - An interesting ability that only fire has.  The ability to attack untapped creatures is very useful as it allows you to attack creatures that would normally be untouchable, preventing your opponent from ever being able to attack you.

 

Darkness:

 

Blocking -  Darkness has several blockers, but there is usually a twist to them.  Some can attack shields, but are low powered and some kill themselves even if they win.
Destroy - Darkness has more powerful creature destruction than Fire with several cards that straight out kill an opponent's creature like Death Smoke and Terror Pit.
Slayer - Slayer is a Dark only ability that lets a creature kill whomever it battles with, even if the Slayer Creature dies.
Discard - Black has several cards that can make you discard cards from your hand at random and one card (Lost Soul) that forces them to dicard their entire hand.

 

Water:

 

Blocking -Water has two types of blockers, those that can't attack, and lower powered, higher costing versions that can attack.
Drawing - One of Water's strengths is the ability to draw extra cards and it does this well.
Searching - Water has the best search card in the set, Crystal Memory.  This allows you to search for any card in your deck and should be in any deck that plays Water.
Unblockables - Water has some creatures that are unblockable, that can bypass an opponents blockers and attack shields or creatures directly.  These creatures are usually weak, though there are some strong ones and some good support for them.
Return to Hand - Water also has a few creatures that when destroyed return to your hand.  This is very useful in certain cases.

 

Nature:

 

Mana Acceleration - Nature's primary weapon is the ability to give you extra mana, allowing you to cast bigger, better creatures sooner than your opponent can.
Searching - Nature can only search for creatures, but this is a very useful search as creatures are what attack shields and protect you.  If you have no creatures, you will loose.
Unblockables - Nature has creatures that are partially unblockable.  They are stronger than the Water Civ's unblockables, but cost more and can be blocked by blockers that are capable of destroying them in battle.
Power Attackers - Nature has several creatures that gain power as they attack allowing them to destroy larger creatures than other Civilization's creatures that have the same power.