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YamiBakuraFan's Little Shop of Horrors
Building a Character deck – Yami Bakura
August 15, 2005

            Hello Pojo followers of all ages! Welcome to my very first main site article! For those who do not know me from the Pojo message boards, I am YamiBakuraFan. Yes, as my name suggests I am a rabid Bakura fan boy and a part time OCG player as well. For those with limited knowledge of the OCG (Official Card Game), it is the Japanese counterpart to the wildly popular Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG. In some aspects the OCG is much like the TCG, however it has many more promotional cards yet to hit American shores. In my articles I will discuss these promos and even build decks based upon them! I do tend to use quite a bit of OCG terminology so for those who don’t know much about the OCG in general I’ll try and explain many cards not released as of yet as I go.  

            For my first article, however, I will not be discussing certain cards in general but a certain characters deck from the anime and manga. Who, do you ask? Yami Bakura of course! Why else would I be called YamiBakuraFan? Yes, I know a lot in terms of the OCG, but I’m quite an expert when it comes to building character based decks, and this one in particular. In this article I will explain how to build a deck based on Yami Bakura’s deck, and explain a few interesting combos you can use with it as well. 

            First some information on Bakura himself. Many of you have most likely watched quite a bit of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Anime, but for those that haven’t, Yami Bakura is an evil spirit of a Thief  who is locked within the Millennium Ring. When the kind Bakura, a friend of Yugi puts on the ring he cannot control the immense powers of the spirit and it takes over his body! The spirit seems to be determined to collect the Millennium Items, and will not let anyone step in his way! Yami Bakura successfully manipulates many of the other characters in the anime into doing just what he wants, and this brings him closer to fulfilling his evil ambitions.  

            In the anime and manga, Yami Bakura refers to his deck as an “occult” deck. It is a deck that is based on evil ghosts and spirits, as well as the Ouija Board combo, with Dark Necrophia as his centerpiece. That is exactly what I’m going to do in the character deck. First, through extensive knowledge of the manga I will jot down a list of all cards used by the character. This is a good idea when building any character based deck. It helps you get the basic idea of their cards and combos.  

            You’ll also notice I am basing this deck on the manga, and there’s a reason behind that as well. In the anime the characters tend to use many filler cards to help make the episodes longer and the duels more interesting. Many of these filler cards can stray from the theme, or just be completely made up cards just to fill time. All in all, it’s more effective to build a character deck based on cards from the manga, but since much of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Manga has not been released to the U.S. as of yet players can use the anime just the same!  

Here is a complete list of all cards used by Bakura in the manga in his battle city and battle ship duels that have been released as cards for the OCG: 

Headless Knight
Possessed Painting
Demon Sleeper|
Earthbound Spirit
Ghost Duke
Puppet Master – Controller of Dead Spirits
Dark Necrophia
Gelnia
Goblin Zombie
Dark Corridor
Poltergeist
Death Messages E,A,T, and H
Dark Tutor
Ouija Board
Dark Spirit of Silence

            As you can see that’s quite a few cards and combos that we can make use of in the deck. Since Necrophia is the main focus we’ll need a lot of Demon sub type monsters in the deck. This will also help another of Bakura’s combos which is the Puppet Master. For those unaware of Puppet Master’s effect it is as follows:

Puppet Master – Controller of Dead Spirits
Dark Main-type
Demon Sub-type
Level 6
0/0
Effect: When this monster is successfully sacrifice summoned, you may pay 2000 LP to special summon two Demon sub-type monsters in your cemetery to the field. The selected monsters may not attack during the turn that they are special summoned by this cards effect. 

Basically Puppet Master is giant demonic cemetery recursion engine. It actually will work quite well when dumping a bunch of Demons into the cemetery for Necrophia food. Another combo would be the Ouija Board and Death Messages. But since this isn’t a total Ouija Board deck, it would kill the theme to try and fit in great amounts of Ouija Board support. So in this deck it will just kind of be in there to keep true to Bakura’s deck.  

            Dark Tutor may seem a bit out of place here, but it was used for a special combo with an unreleased card in the manga called Drag to Death, which had a similar effect to Hand Obliteration in the OCG.  The basic combo is to use Dark Tutor to add your opponents best monster card from there deck to there hand and then use Hand Obliteration or another card to send it into the cemetery. Many of you can think of a great card to use this with, Chaos Soldier! But in other decks it will take a bit of thinking. Just remember your opponents deck theme, and a key card to kill that poses a threat to you, that is the card to use Dark Tutor with. Next would be Gelnia and Goblin Zombie, an interesting set of undead monsters Bakura uses.  

Goblin Zombie
Dark main-type
Undead sub-type
Level 4
1100/1050
Effect: When this card does Battle Damage to your opponent, your opponent must send the top card of his or her deck to the cemetery. If this card is sent to the Cemetery from the field, choose 1 Undead Sub-Type Monster from your deck with a defense strength of 1200 or less, show  it to each player, and put it into your hand. Afterward, shuffle your deck.

Gelnia
Dark main-type
Undead sub-type
Level 4
1300/1200
if an opponent's card effect destroys this card and sends it to the Cemetery while it is face-up on the field, it is Special Summoned to your Field during your next Standby Phase.

Although they don’t support the combos with Puppet Master and Dark Necrophia, Goblin Zombie can be a good search engine for another Gelnia or a Soul Hunting Spirit, which can defend your life points while your other combos take action.  

            Now that we have all of the combos that Bakura uses together, let’s make the deck! Remember this is a semi-competitive deck. So taking it to a tourney is ill advised. It can be a very fun deck to play with friends or against other character themed decks, but will not stand up in a really competitive game environment. Well, here’s the deck! 

Main board: 40 cards

01)  Headless Knight
02)  Headless Knight
03)  Possessed Painting
04)  Possessed Painting
05)  Demon Sleeper
06)  Demon Sleeper
07)  Earthbound Spirit
08)  Earthbound Spirit
09)  Ghost Duke
10)  Puppet Master – Controller of Dead Spirit’s
11)  Dark Necrophia
12)  Dark Necrophia
13)  Goblin Zombie
14)  Gelnia
15)  Soul Hunting Spirit
16)  Critter  
17)  Death Message [ E ]
18)  Death Message [ A ]
19)  Death Message [ T ]
20)  Death Message [ H ]
21)  Dark Corridor
22)  Poltergeist
23)  Dark Tutor
24)  Hand Obliteration
25)  Mischievous Demon Twins
26)  Jar of Greed
27)  Angel’s Gift
28)  Early Burial
29)  Cyclone
30)  Foolish Burial
31)  Foolish Burial
32)  Devil’s Sanctuary
33)  Devil’s Sanctuary
34)  Ouija Board
35)  Dark Spirit of Silence
36)  Cry of the Living Dead
37)  Holy Barrier – Mirror Force
38)  Magic Cylinder
39)  Deck Destruction Virus of Death
40)  Soul Line

The deck utilizes all of Bakura’s combos in it in some form. I put doubles of all of Bakura’s non-effect demons so there are plenty of monsters to remove for Necrophia as well as for Puppet Master’s effect. I could have added better demon cards like Newt or Demon Soldier, but for this deck I wanted to keep as close to the theme of Bakura’s deck as possible. Foolish Burials can get your demons into the cemetery quickly. Dark Tutor can be used with Hand Obliteration or Demon Twins. I also added 2 Devil’s Sanctuary cards in this deck. Not only will they provide a good stall to get your combos into play, they can also provide a free tribute for Puppet Master or Ghost Duke.  

Again this deck is for fun play, not tourneys. But if you want to change it up to your specific needs and play around with the themes do so. It’s your deck, play it how YOU want to! Just have fun, that’s what this game is all about isn’t it?  

I hope that you all enjoyed my first article here on Pojo!  

Please stay tuned for my future articles!  

Until next time,

                                                                                          - YamiBakuraFan