Notes & Combos

Season 53 Master V

After a lot of testing I was still opening too many unplayable hands on the 52 card version, so I moved to 54. At this point I wouldn’t even be surprised if 60 ends up being correct eventually. Avoiding brick hands matters almost as much as consistency with this deck.

6 Fiendsmith starters (opening 1: 45.86% / opening 2: 8.94%)

17 Exodia starters (opening 1: 86.22% / opening 2: 50.51%)

23 Total starters (opening 1: 94.63% / opening 2: 71.74%)

22 HTRAPS (opening 1: 93.63% / opening 2: 68.62%)

9 Bricks (opening 1: 61.37% / opening 2: 18.97%)

The most important stat for me is the double brick chance. Almost 1 out of every 5 games you open 2 bricks and it feels awful. Even if you lose a bit of consistency and need to use lesser htrap options, you avoid the worst scenario where the hand quality completely falls apart and you lose to 1 interruption.

Compared to my Season 52 build, I slightly changed the htrap ratios, cut Nibiru to 1 because it just wasn’t doing enough most games, and started trying Ghost Belle, Ghost Mourner, and sometimes Ghost Ogre. Going second still feels rough but that’s just Master Duel.

Fiendsmith still carries a huge amount of the deck. Even when the Exodia side of the hand is terrible, sometimes you can just pivot with Link Spider into Moon. Other games become about simplifying the board enough for Fiendsmith to carry by itself.

Millennium is still my pet deck and I’ll probably keep trying to push M1 with it, but every season feels harder. I also want to try a Sky Striker version later when I finally get enough URs.