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
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
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.