How to construct an Anti-Meta deck?
If you’re reading this, you’re either pretty annoyed by dueling the same stuff over and over again or you just want to win games without using Meta decks or to find miniscule "flaws" in the reasoning here presented in an attempt to discredit me out of spite. The latter can stop now; you're wasting your time. This article will teach you how to build an Anti-Meta deck out of nowhere , but before we actually get down to it let me break this article down for you into the following;
• What are the Meta decks
• Analyzing the Meta
• Your approach
• Building the deck
• Testing
What are the Meta decks:In my humble opinion, the best way to start explaining something is to define it. In accordance with this philosophy, Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia definition of “meta” is:
Metagame is the way the game is currently played in a given area. Specifically, when players talk about the metagame (or 'meta', for short), they talk about which Deck styles and strategies are the most dominant in their area of play; for instance, a metagame, cards that are played the most often or used by the most people, it also can mean the cards that are available in that area (through local-leagues or casual trade circles), and the current state of the Semi-Limited/Limited/Forbidden lists (If the area plays by the Traditional or Advanced Format).
Now that we know what the term meta means we can determine what the meta decks are in our region, and for us online duelists it tends to get a little bit harder. We have a system that holds nearly all the cards of the game and nobody has to pay any form of money for it, meaning everyone is able to use everything, which in turn means that the meta is more divers. Still we have people that follow up on the hypes and winning decks of the tournaments we all know as Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series or rather YCS tournaments. So how do we determine what decks form the meta and thus being metadecks, we look at the decks that are currently dominating the format. So let’s list them down for a closer view at them;
• Rescue Rabbit Dino
• Dark World Decks
• Chaos Decks
• Karakuri
• Plant Synchro decks
Analyzing the Meta:Seeing we already determined what the meta decks are it is time to make use of that knowledge by analyzing them to very bottom. To just that I advise you to ask yourself the following questions, so that your answers will be your guideline into building the deck you wish to build.
1. Rely heavily on Special Summons? Rescue Rabbit, Plants, Dark World and Karakuri
2. Have multiple large beatsticks? Rescue Rabbit, Chaos decks
3. Rely on tribute summoning? none
4. Have lots of monster control? Rescue Rabbit and Chaos Decks
5. Have lots of spell/trap control? Rescue Rabbit, Dark World and Chaos decks
6. Rely heavily on monster effects? Rescue Rabbit, Dark World, Plant and Karakuri.
7. Rely heavily on spells? Dark World.
8. Rely heavily on traps? none
9. Move at a fast pace? Rescue Rabbit, Dark World, Karakuri and Plants.
10. Clear the field then swing to win? none
11. Control the duel well? Rescue Rabbit, Dark World and Karakuri.
12. Rely heavily on the graveyard? Dark World, Chaos decks and Plants.
13. Rely heavily on banishing? None.
14. Rely heavily on searching/adding from deck? Dark World and Karakuri.
When looking at this list, you can see that many decks rely on being able to special summon monsters to the field. Therefore, Maxx “C” and Thunder King Rai-Oh are good card choices. Halve the decks have multiple large beatsticks, so decks that rely on getting out a really large monster are going to be disappointed when the opponent has more than 1 large monster. Many decks rely heavily on monster effects, so Skill Drain and Effect Veiler are good card choices. Many decks have a hefty number of spell cards so you need a way to stop the engine from continuing. Therefore, using chainable spell and trap cards as well as some negation is important. However, for trap cards note that they aren’t the backbone of very many decks, so cards like Jinzo and Royal Decree may end up being wasted. Because many of the meta decks like to move at a fast pace, an anti-meta deck should have cards that will slow the duel down and make it last more than 5-10 turns (this does not mean stall). These are all things to keep in mind when you go to create your deck.
So we now know what the meta is and how it affects what deck we should build. Let’s now move on to the next step – deciding on a strategy!
Your Approach:At this point, we now know what we are looking at going up against, so it is time to pick which general deck-type we are going to be using. The general strategy or deck-type consists of a collection of cards that have synergy with one another and that often come as part of a set of cards. Examples of different deck-types can be found by searching through forums, or for a very generalized idea of different deck-types you can visit the Wikipedia Yugioh page:
http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Deck_Types:_A-CThis site has an A to Z listing of many of the well-known deck-types with some discussion of the purpose of each deck-type.
You now have decided on a deck-type so it is time to investigate. Look through forums and web sites like Pojo and TCG-player and search for your deck-type. You will find many other people who have made decks based on your same general strategy, so look at their builds and find out what kind of combos they use. If you see a build you find particularly interesting or if you have a question about the build you can always send a PM to the deck-maker to ask why a particular card was included in his/her deck. If the player does not respond back, then you can ask around until you have a good idea of what the deck builder was thinking. Another great place to look for tips on combos is, again, Wikipedia. In Google you can type in “wikia yugioh [card name]” and it will give you a site that describes the card you were looking for. If you go to the “Tips” link for that card you will find a site with all of the combos that people have submitted for that card, thus allowing you to pick and choose what combos from there that you like. Another place to look on Wikipedia is the deck-type listing that I posted earlier. Clicking on the deck-type that you want to build will give you more information on the general strategy of the deck as well as some combos that the deck is capable of.
Now, you have designed a list of combos that you feel would work very well in your deck type. You should now pick a group of combos to use in your deck. These combos should not be picked randomly. Pick combos that can use the same cards. Pick combos where one combo makes another combo even stronger. Do not bother with combos that are difficult to pull off because it often isn’t worthwhile in the long run. You want combos that you can use easily and consistently in every duel. Furthermore, make sure that the individual cards in the combo can stand alone in your deck. If a card is only good when it is in a combo with another card then that is bad for you because it damages the consistency of your deck. You want your deck to have cards where if you have to top deck a card to save your life that there are as few bad cards that could pop up as possible.
*Note that I have decided on a Chaos Anti-meta deck *When you are picking the combos you want to use, also keep in mind that you should never just copy/paste a deck that someone else has been using. You want to make your deck your own. That way, it will aid your personality and, importantly, it will make your opponent continue to guess what your next move will be. The worst possible situation in a duel is for your opponent to never be surprised by a move you have made or a card you have used. While this does not mean you should include crappy cards in your deck, it does mean every now and then having an under-used strategy or combo available to you as a trump card is an important part of building your deck. These, however, are small tweaks to the deck. They should not be so large as to change the focus and strategy of the deck.
Now we have a general theme to the deck and a few good combos to use. The next step is to understand how best to make the deck flow smoothly.
Building the deck: Making the choices for your monsters, spells and traps can be really tough when making an anti-meta deck, which is what we are aiming to do. But knowing the meta decks and their weaknesses makes it a lot easier than if we didn’t. My choices and their explanations are as followed;
• Thunder King Raioh
A lot of the meta decks focus on special summons that do not include card effects, better known as inherited special summons. So for that reason alone Thunder King is a winner and a must have for this deck. Besides that a lot of the meta decks do not have main decked monsters that have equal or more ATK power than Thunder King, so it is likely to put a lot of pressure on my opponent. Also for Dark Worlds, they cannot search with Snoww, which makes it all the better.
• Doomcaliber Knight
All of the meta decks rely on their monster effects, therefore the choice is limited to; Doomcaliber Knight, Effect Veiler and Skill Drain. Skill Drain would do too little versus Dark World and Rescue Rabbit. Seeing they all go under the radar of Skill Drain. So that leaves me with the choice of Doomcaliber or Effect Veiler. I chose to Doomcaliber over Effect Veiler, seeing Doomcaliber has the same ATK as Thunder King, which was hard to get over already. Besides that it is a dark attribute, which fuels the Chaos part in the deck.
• Reborn Tengu
The choice might be a little odd, seeing I am claiming to run a Chaos anti-meta and yet I’m using a wind attributed monster that does not negate anything, or stuns my opponent into doing anything. The reason why I chose to run a play set of Tengu’s is because I still want to have some sort of field presence, which is precisely what Reborn Tengu does.
• D.D. Warrior Lady
This is a part of the monster removal squat, as being a monster that has the ability to remove my opponents monster after damage calculation if I chose to do so. So it essence it is an out to large monster or destruction negators like Stardust Dragon.
Now you have a pretty good clue at how to make your card choices, so I will let you do all the rest of them. Be aware of the following though. Every now and then you will run into people who will tell you things like “The perfect ratio for any deck is 20 monsters, 10 spells, and 10 traps. If you deviate too far from this then your deck will suck!” I will say this right now, Ignore those people! Each deck-type has its own strategy and focus and thus has its preferred ratio of monsters to spells to traps. If you are running a deck containing Jinzo and Royal Decree, you wouldn’t want to run 10 traps, because you would be hurting yourself as much or more than you would be hurting your opponent!
After having thought out a good and consistent ratio for your deck, it is time to look at the cards that support your strategy. Note that for every card you essentially need to be able to explain it, in terms of why have you included the card in the deck. So be sure of it that every card in your deck has a reason. This is also the #1 rule when it comes to deck building.
Now that you have a pretty good idea of what your card choices are going to be it is time to decide on the ratio of your card choices. A card ratio has a lot to do with math and card probability, I will spare you the boring theorizing behind it all and skip right to the formula you can use while making your decks;
To determine the number of total 6-card hands, you do:
nCr(cards in deck, cards being drawn)
nCr(40,6) = 3,383,380 total possible hands nCr is a function on most scientific alculators that determines frequency. The actual math behind the function is very difficult and so I wouldn't want to do it by hand. It is represented by the mathematical function:
nCr(n,r) = n! / [r!(n - r)!]
Now, to determine the number of 6-card hands containing at least one copy of the card you desire, you use:
nCr(copies of card, # in starting hand) x nCr((cards in deck - copies of card), (cards being drawn - # in starting hand))
nCr(copies of card, # in starting hand) x nCr(cards in deck - copies of card), (cards being drawn - # in starting hand))
nCr(3,1) x nCr(40-3,6-1) + nCr(3,2) x nCr(40-3,6-2) + nCr(3,3) x nCr(40-3,6-3) = 1,513,596
That determines the possibility of drawing one, two, or three copies of the card in your starting hand. So, we just take that and divide by the total number of hands to get 1,513,596 / 3,383,380 = 0.447 or 44.7%. So, with a 40-card deck and three copies of card, there is a 44.7% chance of drawing at least 1 or more copies of that card in your starting hand. Knowing your chances of opening with a certain card in your opening hand will help you determine the actual ratio of your card choices. This plays a huge role in the actual consistency of your deck ( along with not having non-contribution deck strategy cards ).
Now to still have an image of something in this article, to let you rest your eyes after reading all this, my deck which is my anti-meta deck;
*Note: I allow everyone that reads this to use this deck, make it your own and win with it. *
Testing the deck:This means getting a friend who is at least as good a duelist as the levels of the people you expect to play against and having that friend battle you with the different deck-type that you feel you will probably come up against. You need to play this deck at least 20-30 times before using it in a tournament. This accomplishes 2 goals:
1. You can continue to fix the deck after playing with it. If you feel like you have too many copies of 1 card or not enough copies of another you can play around with the ratios within the deck until you feel you have made the deck as consistent as it is going to ever be.
2. You gain experience playing with the deck. As you play with your deck more and more you will find hidden combos that you didn’t know were there. You will discover how you need to respond to each situation you face, and you will make less noobish mistakes when the time comes that you need to use it for a serious event.
You cannot just pick random people and test your deck against them. It will not give you accurate results. To properly test your deck you need to find a worthy partner or else everything you just did to create your deck will all have been in vain.
I hope you enjoyed reading this obsessively long and in-depth deck building guide and I hope that everyone who read this all the way through ended up learning something new or getting a new and interesting take on something they already knew.
Kind Regards,
The_Dutch_Prince
