How to build an Anti-Meta deck

(DPs Paid~Anzo)

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-C This 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) =b]3,383,380 total possible hands[/b] nCr is a function on most scientific calculators 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 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
DA Article Team Member

Good job man

Good job with the deck owo.
Very creative to say the least.

One thing though... The main deck kills all of the meta-game decks EXCEPT dark world. (you'd have to side-deck for it, and since going first is a win condition in yugioh you want to be sure you can take care of any deck you play, ever)

To say the least, I would reccomend maining the Banishers and the D-Fissures
This will not only allow you to kill darkworlds, but also get a 2-0 against plants and karakuris.

Another thing:
#10 is a little wrong, Dark Worlds (From what I've seen in my advances at regionals) Clear the field with little hoes named Grapha and then special goldds or beigges and afterwards return to special one of the graphas. Since Grapha has 2700 attack + 300 due to the field spell, that can leave with a total of 2700 - 6000 total damage in one turn, not to mention any solemn warnings/judgments you may have used up already.
since Dark World are a huge pain in the anushole I'd say we all go to konami and burn the printing press of SDGD, with a large bat ofcourse.

Lethal, your incompetence is a little annoying. I've only seen three of your posts, but I already want to stab myself at how annoying you are.

Like usually, great article TDP, followed by nice deck result at the end. I liked it, pretty consistent and has answers to anything.

Only thing that anti-meta decks suffer are those heavy moves of plants and others that can generate so many things at once that your Thunder King and backrow feel lonely :D Thats the only way they can overcome this anti-meta deck and that is why they are still at the very top in tournaments. Still, it makes them good trouble and with a bit of sack luck you could win a tournament with this deck with no sweat.

Note: LethalAfterZ, you don't respond like that to someone's work that needed some time to be done, especially when it's done for the sake of learning in this academy. We all here highly appreciate people who actually bring effort and help this academy to stay on top, and I'm not letting anyone interfere and ruin that with fail posts. This time its only an unofficial warning and watch your posts in future if you want to get some respect in here. We all joke and troll a bit, thats how forums work, no one can be serious all the time but if you want to troll you must know the time and place for it. Insult is not an option. Do not reply on this note here. If you have something to tell, do that in a PM.

Amy mad u look hot when ur angry <3

as for the article its pretty well made and you showed me the deck before but in the end no matter how many anti-meta decks are made Meta>Anti meta dunno why tho lol

LethalAfterZ: TDP usually test his deck up to 50 times before making a judgment about it id like to see you do an article like this instead of just being a jerk. we will be waiting for you work

TDP, great job as always man. You've always been a great article writer and didn't fail to deliver once again. 10/10 great job

LethalAfterZ wrote:

Did you even do any testing with that deck, or is that just some random ***** you put together within 5 minutes? Nice guide, though.

As for you, theres a difference between being confident and just being flat out stupid. Be confident about yourself in a respectable way that doesn't undermine anyone. Knowing TDP, I know he doesn't give a rats ass about a troller like you, but there might be some people in this academy that won't tolerate your crap. I don't care if you came out of your mother with the five pieces of Exodia in your hand, you need to learn, before being a duelist or anything in life, you respect yourself as much as you respect others.

The article is great and all, the build is also good but Dutch Karakuri decks are not meta, Agents are. Nowadays Karakuris are utterly killed by any deck that mains Maxx "C"s (in most cases all decks have Maxx "C"), everything else added to that = win. Agents >>>>>> Karakuri imo >_> *this is not because I am playing Agents, it's simply a fact, plus what i have seen while playing the deck. Kristya pretty much baits out more then half of the removal of my opponent and if it hits the field, well they are screwed*

i like the artice but i pefer the rockstun deck when it comes to anit-meta (espically my twisted verison of it XD) but hey thats just me any way nice article man

Nice work TDP great article ^^ I would like to test that deck out though because I do enjoy chaos stunnish deck, and that build looks utterly irresistable

@Train: I disagree with your post for 2 reasons. First is Karakuri should be considered meta, just because they have the ability to get a good lock out within 2 turns and commonly perform OTK's while retaining hand advantage. Second is that, even though maxx "C" does kill it, it also kills most plant combos, and even agents if used against Venus. Also most Karakuris side D-fissure during matches so Maxx "C" would most likely only ever be good in r1. Just ma two cents.

@LethalAfterZ: I am assuming that you are Meta World Peace from DN forum, but regardless, don't hate on something you haven't tried or can't make. TDP is good duelist. You can take it or leave it.

If am not wrong, no one read articles as much as i do. Of course this article opened my mind of several things (like that math you did there) never did that before i might give it a shot.

As for Karakuri, i think it needs more time to be considered as Meta decks, even if it pwn people, it has many gabs needs to fill.

Anzo, you are in DA for so long and haven't read nekofjung's deck builder guide....vanish.

Who said i didn't >_>

You would of notice probability there if you did

^+1

You should have noticed by now, neko used to make some small math things.

Really ? O_O .. oh, i mean .. uhm .. yeah i know that.

Too... Much.... Reading... Need.... Aspirine.... *colapse* *wakes up shaking* anyway! nice guide man!!! i totally read it through all the way to the end! (argh my eyes are burning)

Okay this is good ive seen some mistakes on this but im simply going to stay silent just becouse of all the hard work you put into it you got my respect and thanks for the great topic.

Lethal i will beg the admins for a ban duel if i must but no matter the cost i will force you to shut up!

By saying there are mistakes and not telling those is not even near being silent lol.

I am sure TDP wants to know them too


P.S: please, no more talk about lethal in every thread. My patience is low at this rate :/

Meheh...so it's my 1st time in awhile checking up on these forums (no I don't play anymore), and what do I find? TDP writing an anti-meta article, with people in the thread still talking about my articles. XD

It feels great to still be thought of now and then by you guys. Great job Dutchie on the article, and it's great to see that things are still so active on these forums! Amy Cool seems to be doing an awesome job of keeping things together. =)

Well, back to the shadows of my life I shall go, but remember my friends - I will always be lurking!

OOO Neko posted!
Nice to see you are still alive man. Soz for the offtopic but well, I felt the urgent need to post D:

Pretty sure thats a necropost.

nekofjung doesn't necropost. For saying something like that you will be forced to go through a grueling course of how to be a proper moderator.

Lesson 1: nekofjung's posts are valued.

lol yea forgot to mention that to you Exiled. sorry about that. But ill do it now: neko's posts never go under DA rules check, they are on a higher level.


its always great to see neko giving a post to DA after his retirement from ygo. we all feel so excited about it


thanks for checking by neko, we try to keep this place good as always and yea your skills are so awesome ppl still talk about

many old ppl checking DA today what is this? EJ, you, dante wtf

Ight, and its a sign of the apocalypse Amy

Thankyouuu for the Quick guide o.O.Actualy i always heard of Meta here and there..but was afraid of asking "what's meta xD" now i know..so..ehh call me a noob -_-.
And thanks for explaining how i could make a anti-meta deck.Things is..it's preety simple..you just have to negate his effects so he won't be able to summon anything that could bring you down.*It's like making Dragunity feel like baby dragons o.o *

Thanks for the article now I wont get pwned by the Meta so much.