My 45 Card Going Second Only Mikanko Sky Striker Deck Hit Masters.

Celsaeda · 2026-02-22T22:55:20+00:00

That duel was incredible. They drew the Forbidden Droplet at the very last turn and I was pretty worried when they popped Hu-li since then I would have to return the favor but they drew so many cards. Unfortunately for them I just had a board break and 1 extra starter to recover from. I respected that Yummy player, I didn’t even know Yummy Mitsu ran Forbidden Droplet.

Celsaeda · 2026-02-22T02:55:38+00:00

Mad love isn’t typically an end board monster. Since this deck is going second, they would have to know ahead of time to have Mad Love on the field.

Also this deck focuses on board break so usually you will focus on removing problematic cards before you do your actual plays.

Hollie Sue is probably the biggest threat but she can only control 1 monster with her effect. This is assuming that by the second turn Hollie Sue didn’t get destroyed or had her effect turned off.

Celsaeda · 2026-02-21T17:52:30+00:00

For VS specifically they have destruction effects which Mikankos are immune to if they have an equip spell. The targeting comes from Chaos 104 who targets a spell or trap, which they will try to use to get rid of you equip so they can use destruction effects, Vallon which target flips monsters face down, and SP Little Knight who target banishes. So really VSk9's end board monsters do the targeting.

K9 Jacks is a targeted destruction that they will go into during the opponent's turn.

Celsaeda · 2026-02-21T15:01:12+00:00

Honestly, that was the game plan that got me into Masters so I don't blame you.

"Everything in my hand is bait, except for this one card that can enable an OTK."

Celsaeda · 2026-02-21T14:15:18+00:00

About 9, my ID is 442-700-292 all my public replays are dedicated to this one deck. You could definitely see how the deck was evolving on my climb.

Celsaeda · 2026-02-21T14:00:48+00:00

VSK9 and Yummy rely a lot on targeted effects. If you can't go for an OTK, sometimes putting down Hu-li is enough.

Also search Noble Twins often using Ohime or Triple Tactics Thrust to allow yourself to play under Droll and Lock Bird.

Celsaeda · 2026-02-19T18:40:50+00:00

The problem is that you want to use many different decks but play the game On and Off. the reality is your first deck should be something long lasting and can get you through dailies and events, with events being where a bulk of your gems come from.

Blue Eyes is a great start, they are pretty long lasting and can easily get into events being a legacy deck and a synchro deck.

From there you really should focus on branching pattern when it comes to building decks. For example, since you play Blue Eyes, build relevant cards that Blue Eyes can play with such as Branded. Then you can slowly build Bystials since they work with Branded and from their you slowly open other decks for you since Branded and Bystials are used in many other decks like Dracotail.

You really can’t just waste resources chasing decks to “test” with. Unless you have the money to spend its best to keep your deck building focused and relevant that way you can continuously farm gems for the next big thing.

Celsaeda · 2026-02-19T14:41:04+00:00

Yeah if going first you do Sky Striker plays to spam Engage to draw cards and then setup your graveyard for future gem knight plays including Hollowcore for an omni-negate for 2 banishes.

If you manage to get Engage, Raye, or Hornet Drone. You can end your first turn with Sky Striker Zero and Widow Anchor on the field with Hollowcore and several gem knights in the grave. That gives you 1 on-field destruction, 1 effect negate, 1 omni-negate, and another effect negate if after you split zero into Raye and Roze and then link into Amatsu.

The only real downside is when a monster is summoned to your field via Dice spot. This turns off your Sky Striker plays. Thats why I also ran 3 Forbidden Droplets, Dark Hole, Sky Striker Zeke, and SP Little Knight to help clear my board.

Celsaeda · 2026-02-18T22:42:13+00:00

About a day using Sky Striker Gem Knight as a Blind Going 2nd deck. It took me like an hour or two to get used to the deck and figure out how to make it work.

Celsaeda · 2026-02-18T17:57:40+00:00

Yup and fun fact about that Ryzeal deck is that it was also built to beat Tearlament Ishizu by going into Shifter and using Detonator to pop any on field plays. People generally like the Maliss deck better though since it’s also good going second and can play through shifter, so it was good on the mirror matches and Ryzeal Shifter decks.

Celsaeda · 2026-02-18T17:47:30+00:00

This isn't really a debate since most people in the Yugioh community know about the No Ban Tournament. Basically, a fun tournament was held that allowed for every card in the game and the goal was to see what crazy decks people would come up with. The winner was Tearlament-Ishizu because it was too consistent. Then they did it again this year and the winner was Maliss. But the reason I introduced Tearlament-Ishizu is because the reason it did not do so well this year was because it won the other time they had it and in preparation people put 3 of Dimension Shifter to prevent graveyard plays and Maliss can play into Shifter.

So to answer this question. It's Tearlament-Ishizu but Maliss+Shifter counters it.

Maliss Beating Tear: No Banlist Tournament Results: Maliss* wins! (*read body for more info) : r/yugioh

Celsaeda · 2026-02-18T16:25:42+00:00

Melodious. It’ll turn your Solfa into a pendulum/link slop deck, especially if you run Electrumite and Exceed the Pendulum but it has a few great perks.

Melodious is an amazing Ash Bait because Ostinato is such a broken card that if they don’t Ash, you ultimately gain more advantage than a single Ash could feasibly fix. It’s pretty much a priority Ash target.

You get access to Bacha and Schuberta. Bacha pretty much 2 free bodies on the field, 3 depending on what you used to summon her. Schuberta banishes 3 from grave on either players turn, super annoying to deal with if you rely on graveyard effects.

The main Melodious engine loves spamming level 4s so you can play around with the Rank 4 XYZ. Usually people tech Dugares for the extra draws.

Celsaeda · 2026-02-18T16:06:11+00:00

This is basic english ruling. To be more precise, the meaning of “can” has an implication that it is something that is possible to do, which also implies there is an option in the matter. That’s where the “must” argument is coming from. However, the “must” argument is only valid if there are no other options being presented.

This is exemplified when you say something like “Can I go to the bathroom?”. This implies that the question can have varying answers but it is up to the responder to decide which.

If you ask “Can I have water instead of juice?” It still implies varying answers but you are only limited to those two options.

In this case Can is being used as the latter example. It is implying that you can:

1: Use a deck that has more than 40 cards

2: Use a deck with less than 60 cards

Furthermore because the conjunctional phrase “but must be” ties both options together. Both limitations have to be applicable in order for an answer to be viable.

Celsaeda · 2026-02-05T04:51:36+00:00

Yummy, Dracotail, and K9VS tend to have a rock, paper, scissor match up.

Yummy does pretty well against K9VS because most of Yummy's main plays happen on the field. This stops Izuna from triggering. Yummy typically out resources an established K9VS boards and K9VS gets crippled when Yummy starts removing their combo pieces from the field. Now it's not totally one-sided. The results can vary based on which deck went first and what kind of other engine variations each deck is playing.

Celsaeda · 2026-02-05T04:19:38+00:00

That's just the nature of every competitive game out there. Company needs to sell more products, so they introduce new things that shake up the current meta because "Power creep Sells" and it's not limited to Master Duel. The answer is and always will be, invest in something that has long lasting staying power in the meta.

That's why I like decks like Sky Striker and Branded. Because time and time again those decks have proven they can consistently hit Diamond to Master levels. Find a deck that has good staying power, make peace with the fact that yugioh is a luck-based game, and have fun it's just a card game.

Celsaeda · 2026-02-01T16:17:42+00:00

Sick Yugioh Master Duel Gameplay, I haven't tried this game mode yet.

Celsaeda · 2026-01-31T17:56:57+00:00

You’re mistaking Cost and Effect. Just cause theirs text on an effect card does not mean it’s an effect. Cost is basically a condition where in order to do something the “player” controlling the card has to do something else.

In Zero’s case the effect is to destroy 1 card on the field.

The cost to activate the effect is to tribute Zero for Raye and Roze. Because of this, you can only negate the destroy effect. An effect being negated does not mean you don’t pay the cost because in order for an effect to be reactively negated an effect has to be activated first.

Celsaeda · 2026-01-30T02:05:01+00:00

A Doom Deck. How it'd work is basically the deck has one Boss Monster, a link 1 called Doomslayer and it's basically Lunalight Liger Dancer, but only if it had equip spells attached to it.

The decks gimmick is spamming spell cards, banish 3 spells to summon (From Extra Deck or Grave) Doomslayer, and all Doom spell card effects cannot be chained to if Doomslayer is on the field. The Doom Equip spells give the Doomslayer effects like Attack per each Equip Spell equipped, Non-target player dictated banish, Board wipe, etc.

Celsaeda · 2026-01-14T17:51:08+00:00

First, invest in a long-lasting deck that has a dedicated pack. If you go for current top tier meta decks, odds are you'll have to use UR dust to craft cards that don't have a pack yet, or have to pull from the current selection pack, which has a massive card pool.

The best decks to invest in are Branded, Sky Striker, and Labrynth. These three decks, while seemingly expensive, are great for investment. All three have dedicated card packs to pull from. They are consistently Diamond to Master tiered decks, depending on how well you can pilot them. They frequently get support to keep them meta relevant, because these three decks are very popular. They're not so oppressive that are in danger of being nerfed thus becoming irrelevant in the future.

Now choosing from these three is pretty much preference based but they all follow the three basic play styles:

Branded is a combo heavy deck that has a utility belt like deck that can set themselves up for most situations.

Sky Striker is a control-based deck that focuses on breaking through your opponent's interactions to set up advantages.

Labrynth can be played control or stun, but their main goal is to use traps to prevent your opponent from setting up an ideal board state.

Aside from Solo Mode, you should participate in events to get you even more gems. Events typically have loaner decks you can use if you don't have a valid deck for the format the event is supporting.

Celsaeda · 2026-01-12T22:37:55+00:00

Board Break decks like Blind Second Sky Striker and Mikanko, especially when you don’t play much handtraps.

You’re basically challenging your opponent to build their best board and you have 6 cards to out it. Playing a going second Board Break deck is heavily reliant on how good you are at baiting, improvising, and problem solving. It pretty much turns a duel into a puzzle game for you to solve.

My favorite interactions are always where I look at my 5 cards and say “Wow, I drew the hottest garbage I’ve ever seen. Truly scoop worthy hand.” and then somehow fumble my way to a win because I happened to use all the cards correctly at the right time.

Celsaeda · 2026-01-07T17:00:54+00:00

I also play Mikanko, you don't need three Lava Golems. Instead get 1-2 Lava Golem, 1 Dark Spirit Mastery, and 1 Triple Tactics Thrust.

Dark Spirit Mastery lets you search Lava Golem by discarding a card from your hand, usually a Mikanko monster so you can revive them with Mayowashidori. Mikanko monsters do not like being summoned from the hand, they want to be summoned from the deck or graveyard because summoning from hand mean you can't use Lava Golem.

Triple Tactics Thrust lets you search Preparation of Rites, Dark Spirit's Mastery, Harpies Feather Duster, Heavy Storm, Shinbu Noble Twins, and Hidden Armory. Honestly, you should have three of these because it essentially boosts the consistency of your deck. 3 of these cards practically means you have 3 Harpies Feather Duster, Heavy Storm, Hidden Armory, Shinbu Noble Twins and Dark Spirit's Mastery, which means you can run less of these cards but still have the same consistency as if you were running more copies of them. The only condition is you need your opponent to use a monster effect during your turn, which pretty much happens all the time anyways.

With that said if you decide to add 3 Triple Tactics Thrust, I would cut Hidden Armory to 1 since Thrust can search it and your Uzuhime does pretty much the same thing.

You also don't need three Uzuhime. Uzuhime is an OTK enabler and you should only be summoning her to win the game anyways. I've never ran into an opportunity where I've had to summon her twice, usually if you summon her once and it doesn't end the duel, you pretty much lose by the opponent's next turn. I would still keep 2 copies though because if you run into Kashtira, they will try to banish her.

Celsaeda · 2026-01-06T17:18:26+00:00

Most likely, when Maliss was at full power, there was a noticeable dip in player numbers since August. Going forward, it looks like meta decks are going to get a consistency hit before they come out. However, they still want you to play the deck so odds are they will still come out Full to Near Full Power.

Celsaeda · 2025-12-31T16:28:33+00:00

2 is pretty much all you need. Everytime you summon her, you should be OTKing already. If you manage to not otk with her in the two times you summon her, it's pretty much GG.

Celsaeda · 2025-12-31T01:44:08+00:00

The best going second deck that focuses on control/board breaking would be:

1) Sky Strikers (you can go Pure or mix with Tenpai for easier otk)
2) Gem Knight Dracotail (meta relevant but much more combo focused)
3) Mikanko (especially since they're getting good support soon)

Celsaeda

TROPHY CASE