Build a Yu Gi Oh! Water Deck

A Water Deck could be one of the most supported deck types in Yu-Gi-Oh!. It is very versatile with a number of playing styles. This guide:

  • Will show how to build a WATER deck in all its forms
  • Help you when you want to change your WATER deck up a bit.
  • Give you good strategies in the fray of a duel
  • Inform you of many useful WATER monsters
  • Show you useful combos in your deck building

Steps

  1. Buy a SD4 (Structure deck 4 Fury From The Deep). It has most of the cards you need for a water deck; for example, Levia-Dragon Daedalus
  2. From your Starter deck, it is highly recommended you use all 3 of your Mother Grizzly and A Legendary Ocean. You can use your Levia-Dragon - Daedalus, Codarus, or both(Codarus is a card upcoming in Absolute Powerforce). At least 1 is recommended. Depending on the number of the above 2 cards you include, add in some Forgotten Temple of the Deep, also in Absolute Powerforce. This will count as "Umi" for Daedalus' and Codarus' effects.
  3. Find cards that will boost any WATER deck such as Warrior of Atlantis, a versatile card you could use to search out "A legendary Ocean", and Aqua Spirit, a Special Summon monster with decent ATK and a good Control Effect. The number of Aqua Spirit(s) should vary depending on your type of water deck, but you should always have 3 Warrior of Atlantis.
    • WATER decks can be used in all 3 general deck strategies: Beatdown, Control or Combo. Choose what type your WATER deck will be.
  4. If you choose Beatdown, get some High ATK Level 5 WATER monsters like Giga Gagagigo and Terrorking Salmon, which can be summoned without tribute from A Legendary Ocean. Use High ATK level 4 WATER monsters as well like Gemini Lancer, Abyss Soldier and Blizzard Dragon, although it has a Control Effect it still has High ATK. It's OK and actually encouraged for your Beatdown Deck to have a few Control elements and vice versa. Add in 1 or 2 Amphibious Bugroth MK-3, Mermaid Knight, and Star Boy. Use Spell cards that will help with Attacking or Swarming like Big Wave Small Wave or Hydro-Pressure Cannon (which will work with Level 4s from A Legendary Ocean). Generic Destruction Trap cards like Mirror Force and Sakuretsu Armor are recommended.
  5. If you choose Control, get cards like Gora Turtle, Maryokutai, B.E.S. Crystal Core, Nightmare Penguin and Penguin Soldier, which will all help you control the field and remove opponent's monsters. Add in 1 or 2 Amphibious Bugroth MK-3, Mermaid Knight, and Star Boy, although this deck will have less of these monsters than the Beatdown deck. Since most of these cards will be Low Level and Low Attack, use at least 2 Salvage, 2 Aegis of the Ocean Dragon Lord, and 1 Hydro Pressure Cannon. Use Gravity Bind and/or Level Limit Area B which is a must for Control Decks. Keep in mind Level Limit is Limited and Gravity Bind is Semi-Limited.
  6. If you choose Combo, this means that you heavily rely on Levia-Dragon - Daedalus' and Codarus' Effects. In this deck, use a high number of either or both of them. If you have mostly Codarus' in your deck, then you want Low-Level Support Cards like Salvage and Mother Grizzly to search it out. If you have mostly Levia Dragon, use Big Wave Small Wave to summon it easier and Aegis of the Ocean Dragon Lord to protect your weaker monsters from his effect. And if you have AT LEAST 2 Levia-Dragon - Daedalus, add in an Ocean Dragon Lord - Neo-Daedalus, NO MORE than 2 because he is a "dead draw". Use 3 Forgotten Temple of the Deep, and 1 or 2 Pseudo Space to copy A Legendary Ocean.
  7. Even if you only plan to use a Beatdown or Control-centered deck, read steps #5 - 7 to get more ideas for your deck. WATER decks are very versatile in this way and can change their playing style to fit the situation.
  8. It can be a good idea to collect "Shark" cards from the new show. Shark uses a variety of strong level 3 monsters to Xyz summon. Rank 3 monsters are currently the most populated, with 7, so you have plenty of options! However, the only two water Xyz monsters are Submersible Carrier Aero Shark and Leviathan Dragon.

Tips

  • Many of your cards will say "If 'Umi' ...". Use A Legendary Ocean instead of Umi, NO EXCEPTIONS. A Legendary Ocean will support all your WATER monsters and lower their levels (very, very important), while Umi only can boost your Aqua, Fish and Sea Serpent types (you will have some Beast, Beast-Warrior, Machine and Even Plant types in your deck). A Legendary Ocean also counts as Umi anywhere, so you can only have a total of 3 A Legendary Ocean and Umi combined in your deck. Just get used to thinking of A Legendary Ocean as "Umi".
  • You can use Gravity Bind to prevent strong monsters from attacking, so tribute summoning will be easier. If it isn't helping your monsters and you want to attack with your Higher-level monsters, use Giant Trunade or Mystical Space Typhoon on it.(In this case, add in 1 Giant Trunade. You should already have Mystical Space Typhoon in all of your decks).
  • Nightmare Penguin is a Good Control and Defensive card, with a solid 2000 DEF when A Legendary Ocean is on the field, and he boosts the ATK of all WATER monsters by 200. When he is Flipped Face-up, you can return 1 opponent's card to their hand. Usually, you want to return an opponents monster to their hand, because if you choose a Spell or Trap card, they can just set it again. Returning a Spell or Trap card is in most cases, only useful if you flip Nightmare Penguin during your turn and you want to attack without your opponent destroying your monsters with a trap like Mirror Force.
  • Since A Legendary Ocean is Vital in this deck, you will need some ways of protecting it/retrieving it. Using Judgement of Anubis in your deck will protect it and your other Spell/Trap cards from the more common forms of Spell/Trap Destruction today (Mystical Space Typhoon, Heavy Storm), and remove an opponents monster. You can also use Field Barrier or Magic Reflector. But All of these cards should be used in small amounts.
  • Some other support cards exist, like Maiden of the Aqua, Water Hazard, Armed Seahunter, or The Legendary Fisherman. While these aren't sure to help your deck and are not included in this guide, you should consider these cards when building your Water deck or playtest them. You never know when you might find a really good combo with these cards or that they really help your style of playing.
  • Cursed Fig is an optional tech card that when destroyed, will lock down face-down 2 Spell/Trap cards from being activated as long as it's in the graveyard. Use it in your deck if you think your deck doesn't have enough cards that destroy Spell/Trap Cards. Cursed Fig can be searched by Mother Grizzly, Salvage, and Protected by Aegis of the Ocean Dragon Lord.
  • Fenrir is a good control card similar to Aqua Spirit, but when it destroys a monster your opponent skips his next draw. When choosing a monster for both these card's summon, choose WATER monsters with more than 1500 ATK, in case you want to retrieve them with Salvage.
  • Lockdown combo: Scrap-Iron Scarecrow+Penguin Soldier+Any attacking monster. Can add a gravity bind/level limit Area-B w/ "A legendary Ocean" to make an even deeper lockdown.
  • Deep Diver is used mostly in Combo Decks, but you can fit one into any WATER deck. He can search a monster from your deck and put it on the top of your deck when he is destroyed in battle. By using Creature Swap on this card, you can destroy him with your own monster and you get his effect (because he is sent to YOUR graveyard). This also works well with Mother Grizzly.
  • If you want to use a Synchro monster, you will need a few Fishborg Blaster (tuner monster). It can Special Summon itself from the graveyard. The problem is that A Legendary Ocean will make it hard for you to synchro summon any high-level monsters. The only easy monster is to synchro summon Armory Arm (level 4) with Fishborg Blaster (Level 1) and a Level 4 Water Monster (4 - 1 (ALO) = 3)
  • Forgotten Temple of the Deep is a card that will soon be released in Absolute Powerforce. It is treated as Umi and can be used by Levia-dragon - Daedalus, and once per turn it can remove an Aqua, Fish or Sea Serpent monster you control from play and return it at the end of your next turn. It is useful for protecting important monsters from your opponent's destruction effects like Lightning Vortex. But you cannot use this effect, use Forgotten Temple of the Deep for Levia's or Codarus' Effect and then get your monster back. The effect of having your monster returned is not resolved as part of the first effect, so Forgotten Temple of the Deep MUST be on the field for your monster to be returned.
  • You can use Hydrogeddon in your deck if it's a Heavy Beatdown deck. Hydrogeddon can be powered up with A Legendary Ocean field spell but also has the power to summon another Hydrogeddon if it destroys a monster. You should use either 3 Hydrogeddon in your deck or none at all.
  • - Monsters cannot be reduced to level 0.
  • B.E.S. Crystal Core is a Good WATER Card, it can be summoned without tribute when A Legendary Ocean is on the field, and can change opponents monsters to Defense Position, which usually means they can be destroyed in battle easier. It also has decent ATK and can be used in Control OR Beatdown. But keep in mind it gets 3 counters when its Normal Summoned, NOT Special Summoned, and if it battles without a counter it's destroyed after damage calculation. You can get around this if you attack your opponent directly with it, it won't lose a counter in that case.
  • Go to yugioh.wikia.com for more info on deck types
  • Maryokutai is an underrated but useful control card that can stop an opponent's spell if it sacrifices itself. Try to use Maryokutai's Effect whenever you can. If you wait too long your opponent could destroy it via trap card, battle, etc. Maryokutai is only recommended for more experienced duelists so if you're a beginner don't use this card.
  • A Legendary Ocean with Levia Dragon - Daedalus (IOC) means only 1 sacrifice.
  • Another water structure deck that would be useful is 'Realm Of The Sea Emperor'.
  • Tornado wall is a powerful card that protects your life points from all battle damage if "Umi" is on the field. You can include 1 or 2 in your deck if you don't think your deck has enough protection. Only use 2 if you have Forgotten Temple of the Deep in your deck.
  • If you want a No. monster in your deck, the best one to use is Number 101: Silent Honor ARK

Warnings

  • One big mistake most Beginner duelists do is they use a structure deck as-is and don't edit it. It is bad with Structure deck 4 because it only has 1 Levia-Dragon - Daedalus and 1 Neo-Daedalus. Do NOT use Neo-Daedalus if you only have 1 Levia Dragon in your deck. He can only be summoned by contributing Levia Dragon (Some Neo-Daedalus in the structure deck are misprints, find the real effect at yugioh.wikia.org). If you draw him when you don't have Levia Dragon, he is useless until you get a Levia-Dragon.
  • Try not to use too many cards to boost attack, instead use more cards like Penguin Soldier or Nightmare Penguin. Normally a water deck depends on abilities to control the opponent or remove their cards, that is why A Legendary Ocean is used more for it's level-decreasing ability and the ATK boost is only a nice side-effect.
  • Always be sure you have an empty or bad hand before you use Neo-Daedalus's ability. It can still help even if your opponent has a lot of Life Points left because the chances are, whatever your opponent draws won't help him and you can always summon other monsters to attack. But if you have a lot of good cards in your hand use those first.
  • Organize the cards in your WATER deck by Monster, Spell and Trap and see the Monster to Spell/Trap ratio comes close to 1:1. There should be slightly more spells than traps in this deck.
  • When deciding if a card is good for a WATER deck, ask yourself these questions:

    • Does it help my other cards?
    • Does it center around my style of playing?
    • Do other cards in my deck help it/strengthen it/protect it?
  • Remember, just because a card supports WATER monsters or Umi, doesn't make it good. One example is Deep Sea Warrior, a horrible card. Make your deck close to 40 cards, if possible.
  • Organize the cards in your WATER deck by these categories: Spell/Trap removal or prevention, Monster removal, Special Summoning, Monster protection, Spell/Trap protection, searching, Monster/spell/trap recovery from graveyard, High ATK/ATK boosters, attack protection/prevention, tribute monsters, Low-level monsters. There is no set ratio for these categories, this just helps you organize your deck better and decide which cards to add/remove.

Things You'll Need

  • A Yu-Gi-Oh! rulebook
  • Structure Deck 4 (Fury From the Deep)
  • A little bit of cash
  • 15 minutes of your time

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

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