The Joy of Building Obscure Character Decks

Waruuuuuuuuuup! This month I wanted to talk about something I've been doing for a long time. Building Yugioh character decks has been my main hobby when it comes to Yugioh ever since the release of Yugi's Legendary Decks. I have a good number of anime accurate completed decks for the main characters I care about (DM, GX, 5Ds and nothing after) but recently I've had a blast building character decks for super obscure characters who usually appear in 1 episode, lose and are never seen again lol. There are obviously exceptions to the rule, they don't necessarily have to lose (Kaibaman), but in general, the way I would categorize these characters would be having only one full on-screen duel.

Yugioh Duel Monsters manages to have plenty of those, but I wouldn't call them obscure or forgettable. Arkana, Strings and Espa Roba are characters the entire fandom knows and remembers despite only participating in a single duel. There aren't many Gurimos or Jean Claud Magnums in DM, buuuuuuuuuut there's an industrial amount of such characters in GX. That's not to say they're terrible, but I can count the Dr Collector and Abidos the Third fans on one of my hands' fingers. So as someone who has a PhD in Yugioh GX and can unironically host lectures on it, it's really fun to dive deep into these characters and build their most anime accurate deck to the best of my abilities.

 

This is where we run into trouble. Building these decks requires a lot of estimation and educated guesses considering in pretty much every single case, one full on-screen duel is not nearly enough to show their entire deck. Combine that with the fact that we still have a TON of anime exclusive cards which are not yet printed and we're in some interesting territories. In those cases, I find the optimal way to preserve the authentic feel of the character is to ideally run multiple copies of a card we've seen them use once. The me of a few years ago would have vomited at that idea as I was a much bigger purist back then, but I realized that sort of mentality will get you nowhere when building these obscure decks. I would still not alter the number of copies ran in characters whose deck list exceeds 40 and allows for not only anime accurate completion, but also optimization. For example, no matter how much I wanna put 3 copies of Proto Cyber Dragon in Zane's deck, he's shown to canonically run only 1 and has enough cards to the point where I'm not forced to add any through educated guesses, so I keep it at 1 copy.

 

That being said, I don't have that same luxury with the more obscure decks so generally speaking, unless there's a lore specific reason of limiting cards to certain quantities due to their uniqueness (for example only 1 copy of each Crystal Beast existing), 2 or 3 copies are acceptable in order to preserve the feeling of the deck as it appeared in the anime.

 

From then on, if I'm really struggling to get to 40 cards in order to make it playable, I call for emergency help. Allow me to introduce you to what I call THE BIG 4. Pot of greed, Graceful charity, Monster Reborn and Mystical Space Typhoon are generic support cards we've seen used in GX countless times to the point where we can assume any duelist with half a brain will probably run them in their deck. These cards essentially serve as facilitators of strategy. The obscure decks are usually not that good in the first place and they often rely on very specific and goofy conditions being met for the winning strategy to pop off. These 4 cards increase the likelihood of that happening. A duel where one side bricks is no fun so Pot of Greed and Graceful Charity lower the chances of that. Some decks have no access to a special summon, so that's what Monster Reborn is for. Finally, if you're running into a deck where one continues spell/trap is always fucking with you (Gravity Bind, DNA Surgery or even some field spells), MST allows you to actually play the game.

From then on, if there are still not enough cards I look at alternate depictions of the characters, usually from the video games. Legacy of the Duelist and Tag Force Arc-V Special are OK, but since they're not time bound to the specific era I'm building for and include modern cards those older characters would have had no access to, I generally prefer the GX era World Championship games and what I consider the golden standard, the first 3 Tag Force games. These are a good way to get some inspiration and ideas of what cards their anime counterparts could have ran.

That being said sometimes there are cards in those deck lists which you either can't imagine the character playing or just don't make sense story wise (again, in my mind no Jesse deck is allowed to run more than one copy of each Crystal Beast). Additionally, a lot of these suuuuper obscure characters aren't even in those games so that's when I usually put my thinking cap on and browse through some era specific cards to conclude the deck list. I'm specifically looking for cards available in that period (for example GX characters have access to all cards printed in the GX as well as DM eras, but not 5Ds). Additionally, they must fit the theme of the deck and I should be able distinctly imagine the character playing them, so they feel native to the deck instead of out of place.

 

Next I wanna talk about using oricas for anime exclusive cards that aren't printed yet. Generally speaking, I don't use oricas cuz I find it more exciting to wait for the next Battles of Legend set and hope they FINALLY PRINT TIME FUSION!! There are very few exceptions, which are cards I seriously doubt will ever get printed as well as ones that directly affect other cards who can't function without them. The perfect example is the anime exclusive spell card Ritual of the Ultimate Forbidden Lord, which is the only canonical way to summon Exodius the Ultimate Forbidden Lord. As I generally use the anime (and if they were erratad in the anime, the later anime) effects of cards, I quite literally need that card to summon Exodius in a way that's faithful to the anime.

Source: Studio Gallop

One final thing I wanna briefly touch upon is cards emulating duel sense. This is a pretty controversial topic in my mind and is a grey area I'm not really sure how to feel about. Cards emulating duel sense are ones the character has not played, but are used to ensure the strategy they used in the show is achieved easier in cases where it would otherwise be almost impossible. Let's use Adrian's deck from the previous example to illustrate what I mean. In both of Adrian's latest duels we see his duel spirit being so strong to the point where he's able to will almost every Exodia piece in his starting hand along with Ritual of the Forbidden Lord which always ends up discarded to summon Exodius. 

Emulating those odds in real life is damn near impossible so more often than not, the Exodia pieces are just dead draws in your hand, making his Cloudian side of the deck extremely dominant (and yes, we do know Adrian is canonically running his Cloudians along with Exodia as we see Exploding Cloud in his hand during his final duel. I suppose Fog King and Fog Castle also count but those are more of a bridge between the two archetypes rather than Cloudian exclusive cards). To offset those real life odds and ensure the anime playstyle is actually achievable, I can put a single copy of Painful Choice, which singlehandedly turns the Cloudian Deck with Exodia as support to an Exodia deck with Cloudians as support. We've seen this card being used by other characters like Gozaburo (another Exodia user) in DM as well as Chazz in GX, so we know it's available, however since there's no evidence of Adrian actually using it, it's inclusion is a topic worthy of debate (with my 5 other personalities cuz no one else gives a shit lol).

 

Now that I'm done yapping, here's how I would separate the obscure characters of GX into 2 categories:

Decks that I can realistically build even if there are a few anime exclusive cards missing:

• Abidos the Third
• The Admiral
• Bauregard & Brier (The Duel Giant)
• Brron, Mad King of Dark World
• Dark Magician Girl
• Dimitri (Yugi's stolen GX era deck)
• Don Zaloog
• Fonda Fontaine
• Franz
• Gravekeeper's Chief
• Jinzo
• Kagemaru
• Kaibaman
• Kozaky
• Lorenzo
• Makoto
• Missy
• Princess Rose
• Reginald Van Howell III
• Chancellor Sheppard
• Sky Scout/Harpy’s Brother (Birdman)
• Skull Knight
• Slade Princeton
• Sorano
• T-Bone

Decks I would rather not build either because we haven't seen the characters play enough cards or because too many (or in some cases all) of their cards are still not printed:

• Alice
• Alien of Light
• Amnael
• Bob Banter
• Czar
• Dr. Collector
• Dr. Eisenstein
• The D
• Damon
• Frost
• Guardian Baou
• Harrington Rosewood
• Howard X Miller
• Lucien
• Mad Dog
• The 3 Masked Knights
• Mr. Huffington
• Ms. Dorothy
• Orlando
• Pierre the Gambler
• Prince Ojin
• Sarina
• Sartyr
• Scarr
• Thunder
• Zure

 

Finally, here’s a pic of 5 of my minor character decks I got in a completed and playable state. We got Reginald Van Howell III, Princess Rose, Dimitri, Abidos the Third and Missy.

Follow me to get notified whenever I post.

TikTok (posting daily) 

Shorts YouTube Channel (posting daily)

Instagram (posting daily)

Alternate YouTube Channel

Patreon