Notes & Combos

In Fillis We Trust

This season was a very tumultuous one, and I can say pretty safely it might be least favorite of 2026 in terms of Master Duel formats. The uninterupted Elfnote KT or Pure Elfnote endboard is pretty close to unbreakable unless you have like a top 1% hand or your opponent is experiencing an aneurysm.

HOWEVER, I decided to do my full ladder run BEFORE the ban list take places and "weakens" Elfnote for a couple reasons

1. **** Elfnote, we gotta stick it to them at full power
2. I'm not so certain the consistency hits will really make the gameplay much better, it will just let you win the handtrap mini game slightly more often
3. The Dark Magical Curtain shenanigans sound like they will be VERY frustrating given the inclination of the MD playerbase for shenanigans

Now, for the deck list! I churned through all sorts of deck lists, some from the DC and some of my own creation, and I came to the conclusion:

I do not think there is a satisfying deck list for Striker currently

This isn't really a statement about the strength Sky Striker, because I think it's actually really really good at smoking the **** out of the common handtraps played in the current meta when going 1st! (so many games were my opponent using ogre/harmonia/veiler etc and starting their turn with 3 cards into zero and 3-4 backrow lol)

Rather, this is a statement about the metagame. The Elfnote decks kind of invalidate anything but playing handtrap minigames, and every other deck has to fall in line. Thus there weren't nearly as many truly satisfying grind games to be found this season.

With all that being said, most of M5 to M1 run was done with Fillis' Top 100 list from the Duelist Cup, and here are my thoughts on some non engine and other things after trying a million different decks

Fuwa: This card sucks, but also kind of doesn't suck. The one of for crossout I think is weirdly perfect. Elfnote has great Fuwa compromises, so maybe this is better at 3 after the Update

Noble Knight Shield Bearer: I always wondered why people didn't just play a 2nd Eldam, but Shield Bearer makes ROTA way better because it's either Striker engine or RT engine

Non Ash/C/Droll handtraps: They were all okay but not good enough to see in multiples so I love this handtrap soup I got going on

Exciton: Almost never came up, just go for another Kagari

Dimensional Barrier: I tried it. This card sucks, don't play it. You win going first anyway