My name is Adam Watkins. I am an English Literature and Media major who absolutely loves video games. Some of my favorites are Super Mario Bros. 3,... Read more
Reviewed by Benjamin Barr
Entering the world of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel can be both thrilling and daunting for newcomers. The online card game has plenty of intricate mechanics, a massive card pool, and a vast number of playstyles. In order to help aspiring duelists prepare for their journey to become the King of Games, we here at High Ground Gaming have compiled a list of essential Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel tips that we feel provide a solid foundation for success.
10 Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel Tips for Beginners
Let’s begin!
1. Master the Basics Using Solo Mode
To say Yu-Gi-Oh! is a complicated game would be an understatement. There are so many different mechanics, rules, and systems at play in a single game of Yu-Gi-Oh! that it can make your head spin. Luckily, Master Duel has its own built-in tutorial system found in the solo mode.
This mode will walk you through many of the game’s basic mechanics, as well as some more advanced mechanics like extra deck summoning and chaining. Before hopping into PvP, we highly recommend you get a firm grasp on the three main types of cards: monsters, spells, and traps, as well as their many common variations.
These tutorial missions will also provide you with some resources like card packs and Gems.
While you’re in the solo mode, we also recommend playing through some of the game’s story gates. Not only will these show you some pretty neat lore on many of the game’s archetypes, but it will also introduce you to a wide range of playstyles.
2. Don’t Spend Your Gems Immediately!
The main form of currency in Master Duels is gems. These can either be earned by completing in-game missions or purchased with real-world money.
When you first log into Master Duel, you will be flooded with lots of gems with the intention of helping you build your first deck and get your collection started. However, it’s very important that you don’t spend these gems on random packs or even on packs featuring your favorite anime deck.
A deck you thought might be fun or good may be overly expensive, have a better way of getting the cards for it, or might just be a bad deck to use in PvP. You should instead hold onto your gems until you get a better understanding of the meta – speaking of which…
3. Learn the Meta!
Before hopping into PvP, we recommend learning what decks are meta. A good resource for this is a little website called Masterduelmeta.com. Here you can view a tier list of the best decks in the current meta.
Another way to tell what decks are meta is to look at the cards found in the in-game store’s two most recent selection packs. There is typically at least one top-tier meta deck between these two packs, so it’s a good place to start getting an idea.
Your goal isn’t necessarily to learn all the ins and outs of each meta deck, instead, you want to get a good idea of what types of decks are the strongest in the format. Yu-Gi-Oh! as a card game suffers from power creep, so some decks just naturally have more powerful combo pieces than others. Understanding this will make your time playing Master Duel online so much easier.
4. Keep an Eye on Selection Packs
As stated above, selection packs will almost always contain some really powerful cards, if not most of the cards needed for a deck archetype. Another really good thing about selection packs is that they only contain cards from the selection pack. To understand what we mean we’ll need to break the other pack types down.
There are three main types of packs you can purchase from the store in Master Duel.
The first is called the Master Pack. This pack contains every card in the game in its pull pool. This means when you buy a pack, you have a chance of getting any random card in the entire game. Generally speaking, you want to avoid buying this pack at all costs, as it’s effectively a waste of gems.
The second pack type is called a Secret Pack. These are normally hidden and unavailable for purchase until you meet certain requirements. In order to unlock a Secret Pack you’ll need to obtain a card from said pack that is super rare or higher. After that, the pack will be available for purchase for 24 hours. Once that time limit expires, you’ll need to redo the process.
These Secret Packs should be your go-to option for building decks centered around a specific archetype. This is because Secret Packs have a specific card pool that it pulls from, which can be viewed in the Secret Packs store page. Whenever you pull from a Secret Pack, half the pack will be from the Master Pack card pool and the other half will be from the Secret Pack’s card pool. This means that half your pack will be random cards from any archetype, and the other half will be cards you’re actually looking for.
Lastly, we have Selection Packs – the best option. The reason Selection Packs are so much better than the other two options is that every card you pull from these packs will be a card from their specific pull pool. That way you don’t have to worry about half of the pack being random cards from an archetype that you’re not interested in.
Knowing exactly what pool of cards you’re pulling from will increase the likelihood of you getting the specific high rarity cards you want. There’s also the fact that most of the cards you get from these packs will be pretty good, so even if you get a card that isn’t for your archetype, it might still be worth keeping.
5. Understand Card Rarity
Master Duel has four different card rarities: common, rare, super rare, and ultra-rare. The rarity system is pretty self-explanatory. Cards that are lower rarity have a higher likelihood of being pulled from packs. It’s unclear what conditions determine card rarity, but generally speaking – the stronger the card is, the rarer it will be.
6. Understand the Crafting System
Master Duel has blessed its users with the card crafting system. This system allows users to dismantle cards to obtain crafting points for that specific card’s rarity. The breakdown goes a little something like this:
- Standard versions of a card of any rarity will reward 10 crafting points.
- Glossy versions of a card of any rarity will reward 15 crafting points.
- Prismatic versions of a card of any rarity will reward 30 crafting points.
You will need 30 crafting points of a specific rarity to craft one card that matches that rarity. Here’s an example, let’s say you want to craft a Blue-Eyes White Dragon. Because Blue-Eyes is an ultra-rare card, you’ll need to dismantle the standard versions of three other ultra-rare cards in order to craft a single Blue-Eyes White Dragon.
This crafting system will be the foundation by which all your decks are constructed. Learning to use it effectively will allow you to make decks for much less gems, and as a result you won’t need to grind nearly as much for gems (or be tempted to spend real money…).
7. Learn How to Get More Gems
You have two options available to you if you want more gems. You can grind for gems by playing the game, or you can pay real money for gems by buying gem packs from the store. There are some things to keep in mind if you want to maximize your efficiency with each method.
Pay-to-Play Method
Let’s get the paid method tips out of the way first since there is less to go over. Many Master Duel players have expressed their displeasure with the prices of gems in the shop. If this is something that bothers you we have good news!
Konami regularly has sales on gems throughout the year. These sales often consist of one or two special promotional gem bundles that the player can purchase two or three times for a significantly lower price than the standard bundles.
Free-to-Play Methods
The free-to-play methods for getting gems require a bit more effort, but it’s honestly not too bad. The first method comes from solo mode. Many of the gates in solo mode will reward you with around 200 gems for completing the gate.
Considering the fact that you only need 1000 gems to get a 10-pack, this isn’t too bad of a grind. Not to mention, you’ll be getting plenty of new cards and structure decks for completing these gates.
Another free-to-play gem grinding method is to rank-up in the competitive PvE mode. This is the main reason we recommend building a competitive meta deck first before making all your fun anime decks. These decks will help you grind through the latter while also teaching you about good deck building and strategies.
Without a doubt, this method takes the longest but will reward you consistently with gems as you level up. Additionally, this method is repeatable every month when the rank ladder resets.
Next, we have the easiest method – complete missions. Players can earn gems by completing different missions/challenges while dueling. Challenges include things like special summoning a certain number of monsters or using a certain number of spell or trap cards.
There are also daily missions that you can obtain by logging in each day. These missions don’t always grant a ton of gems but are consistent, so they’re worth doing if you have the time.
The final free-to-play gem-grinding method can be done by simply participating in the regular event modes Konami brings to Master Duel. These themed events of ten bring a totally new ban list and encourage creative/fun deck building. They also come with loaner decks that players can use if they don’t want to spend the time and resources needed to build a deck for these events.
These events will often reward around 3000 gems total for playing a certain number of duels and even come with additional event-exclusive missions that will reward players with additional gems. These events are timed so grind them out when you get the chance.
8. Learn the Deck Building Process
Now that we have some gems and a good understanding of how the shop works, let’s talk about the deck-building process. Whenever you’re ready to build your own deck, you’re going want to keep a few things in mind – Deck size, Ratios, and Win Conditions.
Deck Size
Decks in Master Duel need to be between 40 and 60 cards in order to use them in a duel. The general rule most duelists abide by is to keep your deck at exactly 40 cards. This is because the fewer cards that are in your deck the more likely you are to draw your combo pieces and play makers.
Placing this limitation on yourself is also a good way of making sure that only the best cards in your deck are selected for play. There are some instances where having more cards in your deck is actually a good thing, but most decks will only benefit from keeping their total deck size at or as close to 40 as possible.
Ratios
In Yu-Gi-Oh! you are only allowed to have a maximum of three of the same card in your deck. Ratios are all about figuring out what number of a specific card you should play for optimal efficiency.
You might think having three of your best card is always the best choice, but that isn’t always the case. This will ultimately come down to your own best judgment and play style, but here are some general rules to help with card Ratios.
- Can the card be summoned/activated on its own without hard-to-achieve/additional requirements? If not, you probably shouldn’t run three.
- Can you only use the card’s effect once per turn? If so, you should probably run less than three.
- Is the card searchable? If so, you probably don’t need three copies.
- Can the card search out other cards? If so, you may want to run three copies.
There are exceptions to these rules, but if you keep them in mind, your deck should have good Ratios.
Win Conditions
This might just be the most important tip we can give you for building a deck in Master Duel. Even if your ratios are good and your deck is only 40 cards, if you don’t have a win condition, you’re going to be in some serious trouble.
The idea is pretty simple, what is your deck’s main objective(s)? What end board are you building towards? How do you intend to decisively win the game?
For a Branded player, the win condition would be fusion summoning monsters from the extra deck that can attack over the opponent’s monsters or destroy the opponent’s cards. Runnik’s win condition is to banish every card from the opponent’s deck so that they lose by deck out. Some decks set up an end board of spell, trap, and monster negates so that their opponent can’t build a board.
All of these are valid win conditions. Once you have your win condition in mind, you can begin building your deck around that win condition. Add cards that make getting to the win condition easier. Draw cards, search cards, and extenders are all things you’ll want to run in any deck so try to use them if you can.
This game becomes much easier to play when you have a clear endgame in mind while making plays.
9. Use or Prepare for Hand Traps
Hand traps are cards that can be activated in the hand in order to negatively impact your opponent during their turn. The idea is to interrupt your opponent’s plays and prevent them from building their ideal endboard.
There are a number of great options for hand traps currently in the game like Ash Blossom, The Bestial monsters, and Maxx C. You can even get Ash Blossom from a promotional pack in Master Duel’s store.
10. Learn Card Timing
Here is a bit of an advanced tip, but it will really go a long way in helping you get better at Duel Master. Learn when you should and shouldn’t activate a card effect. Sometimes a duel can be won simply by delaying a card effect for the right moment.
Many opponents will play weaker cards with the intent of baiting out your card effects. Try not to fall for these baits. Here’s a good rule to follow – wait until your opponent is about to do something that will negatively affect you or summon a monster that you can’t deal with, before using your effects to interrupt their strategy.
Join the High Ground!
Becoming a skilled Master Duel player is not an easy journey, but it can be really fun once you pick up these tips and figure out what you’re doing. By mastering the core rules, understanding card interactions, and honing your strategies, you’ll be well on your way to becoming quite the formidable duelist.
We hope these 10 tips will help you on your quest to become the next King of Games, and if you’re still looking for more Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel related content, consider subscribing to the High Ground Gaming newsletter and join the high ground today!
Happy gaming!
You must sign in to comment.
Don't have an account? Sign up here!