Best YuGiOh Master Duel Decks

You'll need to know the best YuGiOh Master Duel decks so you can take advantage of the meta cards and their powerful combinations to win duels more easily. YuGiOh Master Duel has been a massive success since its release earlier in the year, bringing the TCG formula to the free-to-play digital space. If you're jumping in and want to be competitive straight away, check out out best YuGiOh Master Duel decks. 

• Take a look at our guide on YuGiOh Master Duel crossplay too if you want to carry your progress from one device to the next

Best YuGiOh Master Duel Decks: Six Samurai

Although it's not a starter deck, one of the best YuGiOh Master Duel decks is the Six Samurai. It's one of the more simple decks in YuGiOh, and will teach you about the summoning mechanics and how to swarm the playing field. This is because the deck largely revolves around putting out lots of low-level monsters to populate your side of the field, and then sacrificing them to summon more powerful cards. 

There are also a lot of search cards that can be used, allowing you to keep your hand full throughout, and cards like Naturia Beast and Legendary Six Samurai - Shi En, are great at nullifying the effects of enemy traps and spells. You will need to access the Shogun Secret Pack to acquire a full deck of Six Samurai cards, but as the meta of the game is still being figured out, it should stand as a solid and simple deck.

• This has everything you need to know about the YuGiOh Master Duel secret packs

Best YuGiOh Master Duel Decks: Power of the Dragon Beat Down 

After finishing your tutorial, you will be able to choose from three starter decks, and if you choose Power of the Dragon, you can turn it into a pretty powerful beat down deck. In YuGiOh, a beat down deck consists of strong offensive cards with high attack, with the goal being to lower the enemies' life points quickly. A key element of this deck is to quickly negate any strategies that the enemy tries to employ, by focusing purely on raw damage.

You'll want to aim for cards that deal over 1600 damage and hover around four stars, this is you can consistently put them on the field. You may need to edit the deck a little to add some more cards that fit these criteria, but existing cards like the Luster Dragon; Lord of D., Lancer Dragonute; and Axe Dragonute all make a great foundation to build on. This deck also lets you fusion summon the extremely powerful Five-Headed Dragon, although it costs a hefty five dragon cards to do so.

• Lone wolf? Check out our primer on the YuGiOh Master Duel solo mode.

Best YuGiOh Master Duel Decks: Toon Deck

Looking at the card art and descriptions of Toon cards may make it seem like this is a joke, but in the right hands, this deck can be incredibly powerful. The big downside though is that if your enemy is familiar with your deck, or if you don't get the correct draw on your first hand, then it's essentially useless. So, this is one to make use of while the game is fresh.

The Toon deck is primarily built around making direct attacks to your opponent and swarming the board with special summons, to quickly get Xyz summons. This is all made possible by one spell card called Toon World, which is what lets many Toon cards be special summoned and attack directly. Obviously, destroying the Toon World card can easily make this deck almost useless, but with the new players coming to the game, you can take advantage of their lack of experience. 

Best YuGiOh Master Duel Decks: Synchro Of Unity

Synchro of Unity is one of the YuGiOh Master Duel starter decks, and while it's more complicated than the other starter decks if you can get over the small huddle of Synchro summoning - it's very powerful. The playstyle can be similar to beat downs, except the focus is on dealing damage with the cards from your extra deck that are Synchro summoned to the board. 

This lets you swarm the board with low-level monsters, before quickly smacking down game-ending cards that enemies will struggle to deal with. Many of the cards have powerful effects too, like the Junk Warrior which can gain huge amounts of extra attack power when low-level monsters are on the board. Once you understand the Synchro summoning aspect, it all falls into place, and you won't need to rely on drawing the best cards to be effective.

• If you want to use Synchro summoning, check our Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel starter decks guide.

Best YuGiOh Master Duel Decks: Exodia One Turn Kill Mega Draw 

This is a deck that relies on heavy RNG in some aspects, but it's purposefully built around being able to draw as many cards as possible, so you can get all pieces of Exodia in your hand and end the game. With this deck build, it's possible to win the duel in a single turn, and not even let your opponent make a move. 

It uses as many drawing cards as possible, with ones like Good Goblin Housekeeping and Emergency Provisions that can see you draw up to 12 cards in a single go. Royal Magical Library is also essential, as it aids in moving through the deck as quickly as possible to get the Exodia cards.

For monsters, you will need all the LV8 and Destiny HERO cards you can find, which allows you to use spells like Destiny Draw and Trade-In to draw even more cards. As we said, it does rely on RNG to win you the game, but the deck is designed to minimise this as much as possible and allow you a few methods of gathering the cards you require.

Best YuGiOh Master Duel Decks: Eldlich Trap Deck

In the emerging meta of YuGiOh Master Duel, an Eldlich deck based heavily on traps and spells is proving to be one of the best. It's a deck that relies on very few monsters cards, with Eldlich the Golden Lord being your main go-to for summoning, and some extra deck cards to really finish off the opponent. This deck is heavily populated with traps and spells too, and these are effective for locking your opponent out of the game by denying them turns and control. 

• Make sure to check out our guide on YuGiOh Master Duel mobile.

Best YuGiOh Master Duel Decks: Virtual World Deck

Another strong and popular deck in the current meta is a Virtual World deck, which makes use of Virtual World and Synchro summoning cards. With this deck, you'll want to consider the effects of Virtual World cards, which let you special summon monsters to flood the board while also filling your graveyard. Using certain VW cards, you can summon cards from your deck if you banish cards in the graveyard, or increase the attack power of others. Lastly, one of the power extra deck cards, Virtual World Beast - Jiujiu, can't be destroyed when you have cards in the graveyard. 

Essentially with this deck, you'll be swarming the board and populating your graveyard, with both working in tandem to let you special summon game-ending cards and boost your attack.

Best YuGiOh Master Duel Decks: Drytron Deck

The Drytron deck is another strong contender right now, and it allows for some variation, with possibilities for ritual summoning along with Xyz and Link summons. You'll want to summon the Herald of Ultimateness as soon as possible and use its effects to negate the enemy from special summoning monsters. This effect is even more powerful if you can get the first turn during a duel, and you can easily deny your opponent from making any headway early.

Best YuGiOh Master Duel Decks: Prank-Kids Fusion Meta Deck

A Prank-Kids deck can make for one of the simplest Fusion summoning decks in the entire game, and the strategies you can employ are consistent and easy to focus on. The aim is to flood the board with as many Prank-Kids cards as possible, which gives you the Fusion materials for more powerful monsters. We also included the necessary spells and traps to counter any plays designed to swipe your board and make you start over. The end goal here is to summon Thunder Dragon Colossus for big damage.

Best YuGiOh Master Duel Decks: D/D/D Deck

This deck makes use of D/D monsters which can be found in Cross-Dimensional Contracts. It's one of the hardest decks to effectively use in the game and relies on you mastering many of the YuGiOh mechanics involving special summoning. If you play a deck with these cards correctly, you can chain together a ridiculous amount of effects to make your enemy have a terrible time. The goal here is to Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, Pendulum, and Link summon the game-ending cards quickly, and if you're lucky with your first hand, you can finish it before the enemy has a turn. 

That's all for our best YuGiOh Master Duel decks, and as we explore more of the game and a meta forms, we'll update this guide with the best possible decks.

We also have a rundown of the YuGiOh Master Duel ranks if you want to try out the ranked mode.