Deckbuilding has been an essential skill needed to win strategic games
that were first presented to the global interface by Hasbro in the form of
Wizards of the Coast in 1991. Trading Card Games are based on outplaying
your opponent with your favorite creatures, your choice of premium spells,
and finishing your opponent with your deck's headliner you dream everybody will
someday know you for. But before you can master actually PLAYING the game
and honing your skills, you'll have to perfect your deck as much as possible
through the art of deckbuilding.

Many DuelMasters players can currently testify to the overwhelming fact
that the cards used in your deck and manner in which it was constructed
are almost a fifty-percent defining factor in the outcome of the game.
Here's a sample scenario, taken from a game at the New York City Comic-Con
DuelMasters

constructed event:

Player A takes immediate control of the game making the most of his spells
and creatures that allow him to draw additional cards from his deck.
Player B takes a more aggressive approach with his Sol Gala, Halo Guardian
card and begins to attack Player A's shields. With three shields remaining,
Player A was able to be rid of Sol Gala and the rest of Player B's smaller
creautres he was playing over this course of time and end up with six cards
in his mana zone-exactly what he wants. Player B has no field and three
cards in his hand. Three potential threats, unknown to player A. Player A's
deck is designed to deprive his opponent of such a magnificent advantage as
soon as possible. Player B knows whats coming, but he doesn't play a card in his mana zone. He
simply draws and passes back to Player A. Player A smirks and plays mana,
tapping all seven to cast his spell card, Lost Soul, which discards Player
B's entire hand!

This is a common tournament scenario since the card was released in the
second set, but Player B was ready for this precise moment and based
his entire strategy around it! You see, Player B has withheld four copies of
Dava Torey, Seeker of Clouds in his hand and now since they were
discarded on his opponent's turn all four of the massive 5500 power creatures
are put into the battle zone instead of being discarded to the graveyard!
Player A tapped all of his mana for his one spell to gain control of the
game, but Player B set up a scenario when building his deck to use that
very card against him! Player B now has the opportunity to end the game by
breaking all three of Player A's shields and attacking one more time,
plus he is able to play whatever card he draws to help set up another
scenario in case Player A uses one of his powerful cards with the
"Shield Trigger" Ability.

But player B has drawn Fu Reil, Seeker of Storms! This card disables both
players from using "shield trigger" abilities of cards from the
darkness civilization. This outrules the potential Player A can save his
life with his Terror Pits, and makes it much harder for him to come out of
this
situation alive! Not to mention Fu Reil, Seeker of Storms has a whopping
5000 base attack strength, so next to the four 5500-Power Dava Torey cards,
the situation is now very grim for Player A! Player B ends up breaking all
of the shields, one of them being the terror pit he built his deck to
ignore,
and wins the game!

The beauty of that play was simply extravagant. Player A was most probably
the favorite at that moment of the game and was planning to follow up the
disposal of his opponent's hand by brining out a huge creature card that
would be very hard to be destroyed now with no cards in hand. But Player B
was prepared for this specific weakness of his deck and set up a piece of it
to counter this moment and give him a potential win condition!
Everybody wants to be able to pull out of a situation with such an amazing
play as that, don't they? My own deck contains hundreds of unseen backdoors
to put me into a safespot away from my opponent's strategy and also bring
them helplessly under mine. This is the most powerful use of the art of
deck building, and this article intends on aiding you in the perfecting of
your skills.


So what do we need to build a deck like this?
You will need:

1) A broad surface to place your cards on
2) Your DuelMasters cards
3) Pen and Paper

The above is pretty straightforward on how most players make their decks,
but the last will catch most. Pen and paper to build a deck of cards?
Well here's what I do. I write down, before deckbuilding, the main strategy
of the deck I am about to create, and the types of cards it will be weak
against.
I'm going to build a deck with you here in case you want to use this as a
guide making your own deck, or just want to learn a few cool tricks. This is
what
I wrote on my paper:

"This deck will win the duel by putting pressure on the opponent with small
creatures, but be able to add extra cards to the mana zone so when it starts
to slowed down by my opponents it can summon stronger creatures and continue
on its path. It will be weak against cards that destroy multiple creatures
and
shield trigger spells."

The first step is picking the civilizations we want to use for our deck. I'm
making a fast deck but it will need to be able to supply me with cards that
let me add extra cards to my mana zone, which the Nature Civilization seems
to be the most proficient at in my opinion. My first choices for this deck
are going to be small creatures that have abilities to give me mana.

I've taken out a bunch of cool creature cards I found in my bag and placed
them on the table, I have...

~Shaman Broccoli, which is a 2 casting cost creature so it can attack
quickly, and when it is destroyed it goes to my mana zone. This is perfect
for the
deck I want to make.

~Poisonous Mushroom, which also costs two mana and allows me to play another
card from my hand into the mana zone when it's put into the battle zone.

~Bronze-Arm Tribe, which costs three mana and flips the top card of my deck
to my mana zone when it's summoned. By far one of my favorite cards, I can't
pass up putting Bronze-Arm Tribe in my deck.

~Karate Potato, a creature that costs four mana but when its summoned I may
play two more cards from my hand as mana! Not to mention it has the "Shield
Trigger" ability, making it perfect for my deck to combat something faster
than it! This also gives me an incredible speed boost for the deck if i
combine
it with a turn two summoning of Poisonous Mushroom!

So, what do you have so far? I like to pick cards that immediately aid my
strategy first before cards that are good against specific situations.
Moving on, im going to want more fast creatures, and several large strong
ones. These will probably have to come from another civilization since I
would
like more of my fast creatures to cost one mana, and the Nature Civilization
creatures that cost one mana available to me look like they might slow me
down at times. After careful consideration I've chosen to add the Light
Civilization to my deck. Now I'm going to open my box of light cards and
pick out a few that look
cool, lets see, there is...

~Tulk, The Oracle, which isn't so amazing with only 500 base power points,
but has the casting cost of one mana so it can't hurt to use.

~Sol Gala, Halo Guardian, which gets stronger if either my opponent or myself
casts a spell card that turn, and has "blocker" which can help me out when
I need it.

~Urth, Purifying Elemental, which is 6000 points strong and after Karate
Potato can come out turn five. With Poisonous Mushroom in the build I now
have the potential to bring out this bad boy on the fourth turn of the game. Not to
mention it untaps at the end of my turns so it cannot be attacked!

~Yuluk, The Oracle, which is one mana for 2500 points! The drawback is I
must play a spell the turn before I summon this card. Hmm...maybe this isn't
as hard as it looks.

So I got some slightly bigger guys and more small creatures. Did you get
anything good from your cards? I'm now going to move into my spell
selections for the deck, and since I've been playing a while I hardly need to look at what
I got to pick them! I want...

~Fairy Life, which increases my mana cards by one and has shield trigger for
only two mana!

~Soulswap, which trades a creature in my battle zone for a potentially
larger one, or re-use its effect.

~Holy Awe, a shield trigger spell that renders all of my opponents creatures
defenseless for one turn and can get me out of tight spots.

Hold on, my bag just dropped to the side and dripped out a few cards, I have
to put them back in...

Wow, This card I found while putting away is the perfect one to combine with
Yuluk, the Oracle! Solar Trap costs only one mana and taps
any creature on my opponent's side of the battle zone. This can be a blocker
or a cool monster I don't want my opponent to have against me.
If I'm using this, using Solar Ray, its shield-trigger counterpart can't be
a bad idea, either.

Hey wait, there aren't going to be a lot of cards in my hand playing with a
deck like this and that makes my choice cards prone to the Darkness
Civilization's cards like Cranium Clamp and Locomotiver! I think I'll deck a
few copies of Sanfist, The Savage Vizier to scare my opponent
out of discarding me and wasting their card so I can get another beatstick
on them. Also, I'll add a few water cards that let me draw to
amplify the advantage Sanfist will grant me either way my opponet choses to
respond to it.


Okay, so heres what the deck on my table looks like so far:


Creature Cards
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Poisonous Mushroom
Shaman Broccoli
Karate Potato
Bronze-Arm Tribe
Yulok, the Oracle
Tulk, the Oracle
Sol Gala, Halo Guardian
Urth, Purifying Elemental
Sanfist, the Savage Vizier

Spell Cards
~~~~~~~~~~~

Faerie Life
Soulswap
Solar Trap
Holy Awe
Solar Ray
Brain Serum
Energy Stream

Now these are alot of cards, so I'm not going to use a few of them. I'll
have to shuffle it up a few times and see exactly what I need and what I
don't. Why don't you do the same?


Well I've decided Karate Potato isnt the best thing at times, but its still
good. Yuluk the Oracle was a nice fit to the deck, and sometimes
I was drawing Urth, Purifying Elemental at bad times. Bronze-Arm tribe
doesn't need to be at four, and solar ray was a bit unnecessary due to solar
trap being in the deck. Here's what I got now:


Creatures: 28
~~~~~~~~~
4x Shaman Broccoli
4x Poisonous Mushroom
2x Karate Potato
3x Yuluk, the Oracle
3x Tulk, the Oracle
2x Bronze-Arm Tribe
3x Urth, Purifying Elemental
3x Sanfist, the Savage Vizier
3x Sol Gala, Halo Guardian

Spells: 16
~~~~~~~~~
3x Brain Serum
3x Energy Stream
2x Holy Awe
3x Solar Ray
3x Soulswap
2x Faerie Life

There are 46 cards in this deck, but alot of it lets me draw and gain mana
so I don't care that it is 6 cards over the minimum deck size much at all.
Now what do we do once we've built the first version of the deck? We go play
with it! I went out and dueled a few of my friends around the neighborhood
and played this in Manhattan over the week, and now here's what I noticed:

*Drawing too many cards that give me more mana at the same time is bad! I
cant do anything else!

*Not enough blue cards, I might need a few more
*I really don't need Karate Potato as much as I thought, but he's still
kickin'! (Pun intended)

So lets see what I came up with after play-testing my deck:

4 Shaman Broccoli
4 Tulk, the Oracle
3 Yuluk, the Oracle
3 Sol Gala, Halo Guardian
4 Urth, Purifying Elemental
4 Sanfist, the Savage Vizier
3 Bronze-Arm Tribe

4 Brain Serum
2 Spiral Gate
1 Thought Probe
3 Energy Stream
3 Solar Trap
3 Soulswap
3 Faerie Life

This time my deck is only roughly 45 cards, has more blue cards and I added
a neat card, Spiral Gate, to get rid of more enemy threats! It worked
really well against some of my friend's weapons of choice, including
Bolmeteus Steel Dragon, powerful Vortex Evolution cards, Niofa, Horned
Protector, and Zero Nemesis! I'm happy with my deck and now I'm confident that if I
practice with it enough without changing it I'll know exactly how to handle
my opponets and what I have to back me up. I hope you were just as
successfull with your deck!

For all the readers, you can e-mail me with any tips of your own or
contributions to this article at Uneven_Piece@Hotmail.com
That's all for now, Own the Zone!

~Tom Rogers