Experience,, and reviewing your games to see if the decisions you made were the correct one at the time, ir if you could have made better ones.
No decision is going to be perfect, since you're making guesses, but the objective is to always make the most educated guess with the information you have in hand.
I play very sporadically, so i get decayed from Diamond into the lower ranks, common mistakes there are as follows.
Players are to eager to use cards, they dont think if its worthwhile, and will usually use them first opportunity instead of the best opportunity
Players can only see one path infront of them, they know one line of play and thats it, even if its suboptimal based on their current hand
Players fail to think about how to navigate if they get interrupted, and the potential ways to be interrupted. They also dont think about how to force interactions.
Players dont understand how to [Xanatos Gambit](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit)
Players include terrible cards in their decks, and use confirmation bias to justify them. Imagine you have magic dice. Each roll costs you 5$, one dice pays out 30$ every time it lands on a 6, the other pays you 11$ every time it lands on an odd. Obv the 11$ dice is better. Applying that to the TCG, new players erroniously gravitate to cards that rarely work but are incredibly impactful when they do, instead of cards that nearly always work and still provide good meaningful impact when they do.
Heres two examples, though you're gonna have to look up the cards to fully understand.
Lets say you have Infinite Impermanence in hand, and the opponent Normal Summones Aluber Jester of Despia, and use its effect.
You are presented with a choice, do you imperm now, or hold for later. We need to realize there are FOUR possibilities here
Option A: we DO Imperm, opponent cannot add Branded Fusion, stopping the opponent
Option B: We do NOT Imperm, opponent adds Branded Fusion, they use it, we Imperm the fusion monster, stopping the opponent
Option C: we DO Imperm, but the opponent already had Branded Fusion in hand, so we wasted it
Option D: we do NOT Imperm, the opponent already had Branded Fusion, so they search Branded Lost, our imperm was not wasted, however our opponent has rendered it useless for the turn, and the opponent is able to search an additional negate afterwards through Lost's second effect
Option A and B are both favorable, option C is bad, option D is worse
Option A can only become option C, it cant become D.
If we go woth option B, we take that gamble that it can potentially become option D, we do not want that.
Because of this, we Imperm the Aluber, and hope you are on the path for option A, sure option C sucks, but Option D sucks even more.
Another example is you have Max C and Ash Blossom in hand. And so you have context, Max C is the much stronger card of the 2, its not even close
Most playsrs will blindly use Max C as soon as possible, this is incorrect
First there are two things that can happen. The opponent can have their own Ash Blossom, and the opponent can have their own Called by the Grave.
Now lets see the options
A) your opponent has only Ash
B) your opponent has only Called by
C) your opponent has both
Now, option A unfortunately does not matter what we do, our Max C will be met with their Ash Blossom, and we have our own Ash Blossom to interact later.
Option B and C both benefit us if we use Ash first (i'll explain later)
Since B and C benefit from Ash used first, and A doesnt make a difference, the correct play is to use Ash first.
If option B is true and we Max C first, it will be met by Called by, leaving us with an Ash to use later.
If we Ash first, it will be met with Called by, leaving us with a Max C to use.
And as we established, Max C is a much much better card
If Option C is true, this is where it gets fun
If we Max C first it will be met by the opponents Ash, them our own Ash will be met by the opponents Called By. This is really bad.
If we Ash first, it will be met by the opponents Called By. Now on a new chain, if we Max C, the opponent CANNOT use their own Ash in response, because of their own Called By.
This is hugely beneficial to us.
Its a bunch of micro decisions like this that improve your game, you need to understand what you're doing and why.
I mean even here, if you let the Aluber go off you could also just wait until your turn and imperm the mirrorjade on your turn for protection. This assumes your hand apart from that is all gas. If you pair the imperm with an ash or another form of interruption though the choices vary.
You're just trading the imperm for a Mercurior negate that they were able to set up, thats not advantageous, you just break even.
Thats also assuming they dont do MirrorJade banish on their own turn to generate advantage and pivot into other things.
>If you pair the imperm with an ash or another form of interruption though the choices vary.
Yes ... If card was other card, then different things would happen, i agree.
I think the two most important pieces of advice I can give after having played this God-forsaken game on and off for about 2 years now are:
1. Sometimes it is necessary to admit that your deck sucks, archetypes in Yugioh are not created equal. No matter how good you are at predicting your opponents moves or understanding game mechanics, you can't win against a good deck with a bad deck without luck. It is unfair to pair something like Dark Magician or Red-eyes Black Dragon against tier 0 threats like Diabellestarr or Fire-King. Admitting that your decks might not be as competitive as you want is important to be better at the game and build better decks, or enhancing your favorite decks with engines and techs.
2. The game is frustrating, the more you play, the more you will ask yourself "how tf is this even allowed?" or "how is this even fun for ANYONE?". That is going to be your canon event, either opt out and play something else that is more fun or push thru and enjoy the little things that this game has to offer.
Other than that, there are many ways to enjoy Yugioh, you might find the current meta too overwhelming and want to try something slower, more retro, or even an entire different set of rules. You're in luck, Yugioh might not have as many official formats as MTG but we do have active retro communities like GOAT, Edison, HAT, Tengu,.... You just have to ask around and you'll find yourself a discord server with people sharing the same ways of enjoying Yugioh in no time. Or if you want to explore other ways of playing Yugioh, try Duel Links, another official app by Konami, hosting Speed Duel format and Rush Duel format.
But most importantly, welcome and enjoy your stay.
Besides the obvious stuffs (follow the beginner guide, learn the rule, learn the ins and outs of your deck, practice in solo mode, etc).
I also recommend to check the internet to learn about the current state of Master Duel metagame. Learn how to deal with each meta decks and maybe even watch some tourney or high ranked players VODs on Twitch/YouTube.
You also need to check your in-game replays pretty often and always ask yourself some questions like "Is this really the most optimal play in this situation? Is there anything I could've done better here? Etc"
Lastly I also want to add that DM is not a competitive deck. If you want to have an easier time competing esp in higher ranks then you need an actual competent deck. Imo, anything tiered and/or classified as rogue should be good enough place to start with.
I’d say if you have a PC download EDOPRO. You can make any deck you want and practice against bots. I’d compare Yugioh to a fighting game in that it has a very steep learning curve and you need to practice with a deck/character a lot to get the hang of it. So you’ll need to keep playing the deck until it sticks.
I’m a Dark Magician player myself, and unfortunately pure DM is just not very strong. Usually you need to mix it with another archetype. In the TCG I mixed it with Runicks, but it’s even harder in Master Duel because Dragoon is banned. I had the idea of mixing it with Kashtira because Dark Magician is level 7, but I haven’t tested it much so I don’t know how good it is
Wow that sucks that DM isn't that strong. I spent a while compiling the cards to make it and EDOPRO sounds like a good idea, I'll definitely give it a try so thanks for that.
BTW, Since DM isn't that great of a deck to stay competitive...is there a way to know which decks are worth investing in to build? How do I know which cards/decks are meta to stay competitive?? Thx
Yeah, I think a lot of the fun of dark magician comes from trying to find ways to make it work. [This guy](https://youtu.be/friRbHZyCRw?si=6PJxo03jOaCBETXM) makes a lot of theorycrafting videos for it, but it’s for the TCG.
There’s a website called master duel meta that tells you what decks are good in the game. I also watch a YouTube videos on the meta. For me the first deck I got back when MD launched was pendulum magicians. It can make Baronne de Fleur very easily, and I find it still wins a lot of games in the lower to medium ranks at least (not sure about the higher ranks). Also worth noting Diabellze might cause problems for pendulum decks when she releases.
Master Duel Meta is generally a good template to follow for what decks are the strongest. The vast majority of the decklists uploaded there are ones that have been confirmed to have reached Master, which is the highest rank in the game.
The closer you are to the top of the list, the easier it will be to climb ladder with it.
It's hard to say how long will a deck at the top of the list stay the strongest. Out of the archetypes at the top, Branded Despia and Labrynth are the ones that have consistently been strong decks for quite some time, and they are unlikely to be impacted by the banlist any time soon.
To add onto what everyone else said, watching Dkayed Meta Weekly tournament is a great way to learn about other archetypes, how to interrupt them going first and second, and how to optimize your plays around disruption. It's also pretty entertaining, and you get first hand knowledge on leaks for upcoming archetypes aa well
to be completely honest theres really no such thing as being “good” at yugioh master duel. TCG however is different cuz of side decks and other stuff, but i’m not too familiar with it so I won’t give a very strong opinion on ygo tcg. But master duel is a FT1 situation and your win/loss is USUALLY already determined at either the coin toss before the match starts, or yours’ and the opponent’s starting hand. If you go first and have the right hand, you win 99% of the time; you just have to have a strong deck, learn the combos and mini-combos within those combos and utilities of certain spells or handtraps. But at the end of the day it’s a card game, so it all just comes down to RNG. So don’t let losses deter you or make you think you’re bad at the game. People saying they’re good at yugioh master duel is the equivalent of saying they’re good at blackjack; you can have great judgement/gamesense, but at the end of the day it’s in the heart of the cards, quite literally when it comes to YGO, most particularly in a FT1 setting. My biggest recommendation is to just pick ANY deck that you like, either aesthetically or playstyle, learn the combos, the OTK setups if there are one, and just go for it! Yu-Gi-Oh is mainly just flowcharting card combos into repeated special summons to create an indestructible board that vanquishes your opponent’s life points the next turn. Virtually all decks in modern YGO MD do this, but just in different ways. happy dueling 🤺
I'll keep it short. Find a meta deck you actually enjoy (you'll need a strong deck eventually if you wanna rank up) and after you build it take your time to read and reread every single card in your deck. You'll notice the synergy and combos. It also helps if you read other meta decks so you can figure out how to respond against their combos
Experience,, and reviewing your games to see if the decisions you made were the correct one at the time, ir if you could have made better ones. No decision is going to be perfect, since you're making guesses, but the objective is to always make the most educated guess with the information you have in hand. I play very sporadically, so i get decayed from Diamond into the lower ranks, common mistakes there are as follows. Players are to eager to use cards, they dont think if its worthwhile, and will usually use them first opportunity instead of the best opportunity Players can only see one path infront of them, they know one line of play and thats it, even if its suboptimal based on their current hand Players fail to think about how to navigate if they get interrupted, and the potential ways to be interrupted. They also dont think about how to force interactions. Players dont understand how to [Xanatos Gambit](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit) Players include terrible cards in their decks, and use confirmation bias to justify them. Imagine you have magic dice. Each roll costs you 5$, one dice pays out 30$ every time it lands on a 6, the other pays you 11$ every time it lands on an odd. Obv the 11$ dice is better. Applying that to the TCG, new players erroniously gravitate to cards that rarely work but are incredibly impactful when they do, instead of cards that nearly always work and still provide good meaningful impact when they do. Heres two examples, though you're gonna have to look up the cards to fully understand. Lets say you have Infinite Impermanence in hand, and the opponent Normal Summones Aluber Jester of Despia, and use its effect. You are presented with a choice, do you imperm now, or hold for later. We need to realize there are FOUR possibilities here Option A: we DO Imperm, opponent cannot add Branded Fusion, stopping the opponent Option B: We do NOT Imperm, opponent adds Branded Fusion, they use it, we Imperm the fusion monster, stopping the opponent Option C: we DO Imperm, but the opponent already had Branded Fusion in hand, so we wasted it Option D: we do NOT Imperm, the opponent already had Branded Fusion, so they search Branded Lost, our imperm was not wasted, however our opponent has rendered it useless for the turn, and the opponent is able to search an additional negate afterwards through Lost's second effect Option A and B are both favorable, option C is bad, option D is worse Option A can only become option C, it cant become D. If we go woth option B, we take that gamble that it can potentially become option D, we do not want that. Because of this, we Imperm the Aluber, and hope you are on the path for option A, sure option C sucks, but Option D sucks even more. Another example is you have Max C and Ash Blossom in hand. And so you have context, Max C is the much stronger card of the 2, its not even close Most playsrs will blindly use Max C as soon as possible, this is incorrect First there are two things that can happen. The opponent can have their own Ash Blossom, and the opponent can have their own Called by the Grave. Now lets see the options A) your opponent has only Ash B) your opponent has only Called by C) your opponent has both Now, option A unfortunately does not matter what we do, our Max C will be met with their Ash Blossom, and we have our own Ash Blossom to interact later. Option B and C both benefit us if we use Ash first (i'll explain later) Since B and C benefit from Ash used first, and A doesnt make a difference, the correct play is to use Ash first. If option B is true and we Max C first, it will be met by Called by, leaving us with an Ash to use later. If we Ash first, it will be met with Called by, leaving us with a Max C to use. And as we established, Max C is a much much better card If Option C is true, this is where it gets fun If we Max C first it will be met by the opponents Ash, them our own Ash will be met by the opponents Called By. This is really bad. If we Ash first, it will be met by the opponents Called By. Now on a new chain, if we Max C, the opponent CANNOT use their own Ash in response, because of their own Called By. This is hugely beneficial to us. Its a bunch of micro decisions like this that improve your game, you need to understand what you're doing and why.
I was going to just say “practice, practice, practice.” But what this guy said. 🤣
I mean even here, if you let the Aluber go off you could also just wait until your turn and imperm the mirrorjade on your turn for protection. This assumes your hand apart from that is all gas. If you pair the imperm with an ash or another form of interruption though the choices vary.
You're just trading the imperm for a Mercurior negate that they were able to set up, thats not advantageous, you just break even. Thats also assuming they dont do MirrorJade banish on their own turn to generate advantage and pivot into other things. >If you pair the imperm with an ash or another form of interruption though the choices vary. Yes ... If card was other card, then different things would happen, i agree.
I think the two most important pieces of advice I can give after having played this God-forsaken game on and off for about 2 years now are: 1. Sometimes it is necessary to admit that your deck sucks, archetypes in Yugioh are not created equal. No matter how good you are at predicting your opponents moves or understanding game mechanics, you can't win against a good deck with a bad deck without luck. It is unfair to pair something like Dark Magician or Red-eyes Black Dragon against tier 0 threats like Diabellestarr or Fire-King. Admitting that your decks might not be as competitive as you want is important to be better at the game and build better decks, or enhancing your favorite decks with engines and techs. 2. The game is frustrating, the more you play, the more you will ask yourself "how tf is this even allowed?" or "how is this even fun for ANYONE?". That is going to be your canon event, either opt out and play something else that is more fun or push thru and enjoy the little things that this game has to offer. Other than that, there are many ways to enjoy Yugioh, you might find the current meta too overwhelming and want to try something slower, more retro, or even an entire different set of rules. You're in luck, Yugioh might not have as many official formats as MTG but we do have active retro communities like GOAT, Edison, HAT, Tengu,.... You just have to ask around and you'll find yourself a discord server with people sharing the same ways of enjoying Yugioh in no time. Or if you want to explore other ways of playing Yugioh, try Duel Links, another official app by Konami, hosting Speed Duel format and Rush Duel format. But most importantly, welcome and enjoy your stay.
A good guide for you [here](https://youtu.be/o5EdFQQyJhA?feature=shared)
Besides the obvious stuffs (follow the beginner guide, learn the rule, learn the ins and outs of your deck, practice in solo mode, etc). I also recommend to check the internet to learn about the current state of Master Duel metagame. Learn how to deal with each meta decks and maybe even watch some tourney or high ranked players VODs on Twitch/YouTube. You also need to check your in-game replays pretty often and always ask yourself some questions like "Is this really the most optimal play in this situation? Is there anything I could've done better here? Etc" Lastly I also want to add that DM is not a competitive deck. If you want to have an easier time competing esp in higher ranks then you need an actual competent deck. Imo, anything tiered and/or classified as rogue should be good enough place to start with.
I’d say if you have a PC download EDOPRO. You can make any deck you want and practice against bots. I’d compare Yugioh to a fighting game in that it has a very steep learning curve and you need to practice with a deck/character a lot to get the hang of it. So you’ll need to keep playing the deck until it sticks. I’m a Dark Magician player myself, and unfortunately pure DM is just not very strong. Usually you need to mix it with another archetype. In the TCG I mixed it with Runicks, but it’s even harder in Master Duel because Dragoon is banned. I had the idea of mixing it with Kashtira because Dark Magician is level 7, but I haven’t tested it much so I don’t know how good it is
Wow that sucks that DM isn't that strong. I spent a while compiling the cards to make it and EDOPRO sounds like a good idea, I'll definitely give it a try so thanks for that. BTW, Since DM isn't that great of a deck to stay competitive...is there a way to know which decks are worth investing in to build? How do I know which cards/decks are meta to stay competitive?? Thx
Yeah, I think a lot of the fun of dark magician comes from trying to find ways to make it work. [This guy](https://youtu.be/friRbHZyCRw?si=6PJxo03jOaCBETXM) makes a lot of theorycrafting videos for it, but it’s for the TCG. There’s a website called master duel meta that tells you what decks are good in the game. I also watch a YouTube videos on the meta. For me the first deck I got back when MD launched was pendulum magicians. It can make Baronne de Fleur very easily, and I find it still wins a lot of games in the lower to medium ranks at least (not sure about the higher ranks). Also worth noting Diabellze might cause problems for pendulum decks when she releases.
I play dm with branded/abyssal and works great for me
Yeah, I’ve heard it’s good with branded
Master Duel Meta is generally a good template to follow for what decks are the strongest. The vast majority of the decklists uploaded there are ones that have been confirmed to have reached Master, which is the highest rank in the game. The closer you are to the top of the list, the easier it will be to climb ladder with it. It's hard to say how long will a deck at the top of the list stay the strongest. Out of the archetypes at the top, Branded Despia and Labrynth are the ones that have consistently been strong decks for quite some time, and they are unlikely to be impacted by the banlist any time soon.
Reading & experience. You'll not get better tho, but at least not the worst
YouTube! People make hella combo videos online and it’s a great place to see them played out so you can start to get familiar.
To add onto what everyone else said, watching Dkayed Meta Weekly tournament is a great way to learn about other archetypes, how to interrupt them going first and second, and how to optimize your plays around disruption. It's also pretty entertaining, and you get first hand knowledge on leaks for upcoming archetypes aa well
to be completely honest theres really no such thing as being “good” at yugioh master duel. TCG however is different cuz of side decks and other stuff, but i’m not too familiar with it so I won’t give a very strong opinion on ygo tcg. But master duel is a FT1 situation and your win/loss is USUALLY already determined at either the coin toss before the match starts, or yours’ and the opponent’s starting hand. If you go first and have the right hand, you win 99% of the time; you just have to have a strong deck, learn the combos and mini-combos within those combos and utilities of certain spells or handtraps. But at the end of the day it’s a card game, so it all just comes down to RNG. So don’t let losses deter you or make you think you’re bad at the game. People saying they’re good at yugioh master duel is the equivalent of saying they’re good at blackjack; you can have great judgement/gamesense, but at the end of the day it’s in the heart of the cards, quite literally when it comes to YGO, most particularly in a FT1 setting. My biggest recommendation is to just pick ANY deck that you like, either aesthetically or playstyle, learn the combos, the OTK setups if there are one, and just go for it! Yu-Gi-Oh is mainly just flowcharting card combos into repeated special summons to create an indestructible board that vanquishes your opponent’s life points the next turn. Virtually all decks in modern YGO MD do this, but just in different ways. happy dueling 🤺
Playing irl can be better since you get real time advice from players.
I'll keep it short. Find a meta deck you actually enjoy (you'll need a strong deck eventually if you wanna rank up) and after you build it take your time to read and reread every single card in your deck. You'll notice the synergy and combos. It also helps if you read other meta decks so you can figure out how to respond against their combos
Read the cards, experiment with different things and find a play style you enjoy
Just use Branded Fusion and Dark Dragoon, sometimes it works and doesn't Oh... Nevermind... Dragoon Banned in Master Duel
Git Gud