Yu-Gi-Oh!: 10 Of The Best Decks From The Anime

The power level of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime doesn’t come close to the real-life card game, but there are still plenty of fun decks that players have gotten to watch be used throughout the years. Some, like Joey’s, are incredibly messy and have a few problems. However, some are pretty solid.

Decks that are constructed around an archetype tend to be a bit stronger. When they have a concise focus, they’re going to do better, and most of the decks on this list do just that. Just like one of Yugi’s rivals from Battle City, the rare hunter Arkana.

10 Arkana

Arkana was a rare hunter that based his deck around the Dark Magician. While Yugi’s deck prominently features Dark Magician, Arkana’s is built around the monster. There are multiple copies of it along with some pretty powerful support cards that make it quite the focused deck. Arkana knew what he was doing, and only someone as strong as Yugi would have been able to take him out. Thanks, Dark Magician Girl.

9 Zigfried

Zigfried might not have been able to defeat Kaiba, but that doesn’t mean that his deck was anything to sneeze at. His Valkyrie cards were no laughing matter. They overcame talented duelists like Joey and took out Weevil and Rex in a single turn. He was able to get them to storm the field quickly, and it took Chaos Emperor Dragon to come onto the field to actually take the cards down. That’s saying something.

8 Leon

Leon is another duelist that knew what he was doing when it came to archetypes. All of his monsters were in the same fairy tale group, meaning that they all worked together to bring out some pretty powerful effects.

Rebecca is noted to be one of the best duelists in the world during the KC Grand Championship arc, and she couldn’t defeat Leon. His deck is pretty airtight. There aren’t many holes that anyone is going to be able to find in this one.

7 Mai

Mai’s strategies stayed pretty stagnant during her time on the show, but that’s because she made smart decisions. Mai’s deck revolved around summoning one Harpie Lady to the field and powering her up with an array of different spell cards. From there, she’d use Elegant Egotist to multiply that Harpie Lady. She would quickly swarm the field and overwhelm her opponents with her monsters, which tended to get her pretty far in tournaments.

6 Yugi

Yugi’s deck wasn’t one that viewers saw often, as Atem tended to be the one in the driver’s seat. However, Yugi’s deck was quite the strong one. He relied on level monsters like Silent Magician and Silent Swordsman and would use Gandora the Dragon of Destruction to wipe the board. No matter what was in his deck, he defeated Atem and all of the Egyptian God Cards in a single duel. He knew what he was doing when constructing that one.

5 Dartz

Dartz’s deck might be the epitome of anime nonsense, but it got the job done. It was filled with Orichalcos cards that built off one another to power themselves up. From there, he was able to summon a monster with infinite attack points that was incredibly hard to defeat. If it hadn’t been for Yugi, Dartz likely would have gone undefeated for his entire life (which was very, very, very long).

4 Kaiba

Kaiba’s deck relied on a few things. He had some pretty strong spell and trap cards that would shut his opponent down, and Crush Card Virus, which would destroy their deck, too. He also had so many dragons. Dragons all over the place. Oh, and don’t forget the dragons.

Kaiba’s deck was about sheer power. Destroy the opponent’s deck and then beat them down with his Blue-Eyes White Dragon cards. There’s a reason that Kaiba almost never lost throughout the series. He had a great deck to back up all of his talk.

3 Pegasus

According to the anime, Pegasus never released Toon cards because they were thought to be too powerful. So he just kept them for himself. The cards were powerful, though. They could easily swarm the field and then hide in Toon World to avoid destruction. However, if that strategy failed, Pegasus had a much darker side of his deck that he would be able to rely on as well. When the Toons couldn’t come out to play, Thousand-Eyes Restrict would make its way to the field, and that’s never a good position to be in for his opponents.

2 Rebecca

Rebecca had a pretty powerful deck during the KC Grand Championship arc. She would lock down her opponents with cards like Gravity Bind and then use Fire Princess to systematically take down her opponent’s life points while increasing her own. She also had powerhouses like Diamond Head Dragon in her deck in case she needed to go on the offensive.

1 Atem

Atem’s deck is obviously a pretty great one. While it’s mainly focused on his Dark Magician cards, he also had the magnet warriors, the Egyptian God cards, and something for basically any position that he found himself in. No matter what was going on in a duel. Atem had a card to stop it, which is why he earns a place on this list. You don’t become the King of Games without a strong deck to back it up.

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