Engine Building 101: Tactics for a SECES-ful Engine...

Engine Building 101: Tactics for SECES-ful engine creation

When it comes to engine designing in Yu-Gi-Oh there are a few things to consider; size, efficiency, consistency, execution and speed (SECES). These factors drive engine creation at its core, whether as an advanced player consciously choosing cards weighing pros and cons, or as a beginner adding cards that would look cool to see in combo. I plan to elaborate on the things the pros do in order to help all of us newbs and slightly experienced players build better decks.

S The size of an engine is crucial to its success simply because the odds are stacked against larger engines due to the fact of needing so many cards to get started. In comparison when the engines are smaller they are a lot easier to start up, and use. Like tour guide for example, one card engine that essentially pumps out automatic xyz monsters like nothing for next to nothing. That is why tour guide is considered a decent card, and an excellent example of an engine; small, powerful and simple; a testament of good engine mechanics.

E Efficiency, its reliability to carry out what it is designed to do, is another cornerstone of great engines. Whether it is “Draw-Drop Swarm” like Dark World, or “Pop-and-Plus” like Inzektorz, or even “Insta-Xyz” with tour guide, each of these very efficient engines share a few things in common, but before we get too far into this just allow me make one thing clear. Consistency adds to Efficiency, and not vice-versa. Remember efficiency is how well the engines do what they are designed to do, making big gains on little investments. For example an engine that I built focused on combining four cards for a lil “Drop-and-Pop” action in Dark World, but I could never get the four cards back or destroy enough of my opponent’s cards to break even, as a result I concluded that the engine was too inefficient for competitive play and scrapped it. In Inzektorz, Centipede and Dragonfly make big gains of hornet simply by adding extra Inzektor cards to the field and hand and destroying opponents field, meaning for one card you cause a 2 card swing (-1 to opponent’s field and (+1 to your hand or field) simple and efficient. The best way to think in terms of efficiency is getting the most out by putting the least in…

C The next concept of engine design is consistency, how able are you in getting to and starting up your engines. This is by far one of the most important concepts because this aspect encompasses balancing the deck and provides important information on fine-tuning your engines and improving the deck overall, but at the same time in my opinion the hardest to get right. Ratio balancing the engines goes further than just playing 3 copies of a card just because it seems essential to the deck. There a few factors to take into consideration when balancing ratios. First is determining the importance of the card in question, ask yourself does it serve a vital role in the success of the engine or not, and what is that purpose. Does search the deck to provide you access to your other combo cards easier, does it actually serve as a part of the engine or is a utility tool used for recovery or creating openings. Once these question are answered usually that’ll be a giant indicator of how many you should be using. Of course after construction you’ll need to play test and alter to effectively construct the deck and the engines inside.

E The fourth concept of engine design is execution, what the end result of the engine is and how you use that for victory. Whether it is swarm rush or whatever it is, a lot of common sense is needed here to establish successful end states that make the deck win. Just think about this, if your engine is designed to crank out lots of little level 3 monsters what good would that be without tuners to synchro or rank 3 XYZ to go into to further push your build. The last piece of advice on execution is check, and double check what the engines in the deck are driving towards and adjust to further them and give them viable outs at their completion

S The last concept and one of the most important is Speed. Is the deck getting to start-up execution and completion as fast as possible or are there cards that clutter, or don’t belong, or hindering from its maximum potential. I get it there are cards that have not al lot to do with decks but are a necessity such as dark hole and torrential and the staples, but those should be excluded when you take this into account. The simplest way to increase a decks speed is to keep the overall size as close to 40 as possible, and when that is too hard to do be sure to add cards to the deck that can make up the difference as efficiently as possible. For example in a deck that removes cards from the graveyard, in my opinion I don’t think that pot of avarice would be the most efficient card to use, granted it would provide excellent recovery if you were having issues but that’s mainly a side deck-able fix. I’m talking in essence raw speed boost cards, like pot of duality in decks that don’t focus on special summoning, Common charity in normal decks, allure in dark decks that run dark armed dragon and even in ones that don’t… Overall speed will be the determining factor in how fast you can attempt to execute and how soon your tempo can be established, and ultimately how quickly you can achieve victory.

In conclusion, the size, efficiency, consistency, execution, and speed are key points to take into consideration when thinking about building engines for you deck. If you keep this in mind during construction im sure that this will help you achieve SECES (success)…


Guardians of Darkness {G.o.D.}
LTG Gradyent

Really like that Article mate, I know some members wanted an article like this in the academy so thaks for doing it

+1 For that !

^like me XD


very nice article and it helped me a lot

Very nice work there.

didn't we have a really similar article written by TDP?

Nice job man , i enjoyed the reading and gave me a few ideas

Hey nice article, I also had something related to this written a few days ago, and posted it now that I see this. Good job!

I'm loving this article, dude. I've been wanting a little resource like this so me and my brothers could start putting decks together better. Definite +1!

thanks everyone, lol i like writing and i like yug, so its only natural to put the two together like this, if anyone has any ideas on what else you need help about or want to read about let me know lol