Master Duel Magical Musketeers

After a month of playing around with different decks, I have stuck with Magical Musketeers, and I will be writing this guide about how to play them! Magical Musketeers are an off-meta deck, being able to disrupt almost anything your opponent throws at you given the right hand and draws. The Magical Musketeers all have 2 shared effects: 1. You can activate "Magical Musket" Spell/Traps directly from your hand on your opponent's turn. Being able to wretch out a counter trap or monster negate from your hand is PRETTY GOOD if you ask me. And number 2. All the Main Deck monsters have effects when a spell/trap is activated in their columns, which means they kinda play like Mekk-Knights, which is pretty cool.

We know how I do this. I explain the monsters, then the Spell/Traps, then the Extra deck monsters.

Anyways, the monsters. We're running the popular combination of handtraps: Ash Blossom and Maxx "C". I really shouldn't have to explain these cards, they explain themselves in their text and gameplay. Super powerful and can single-handedly turn a bad opener into a devastating hand. And then there's Dragon Buster Destruction Sword. You will only use this is a stupid combo with Cherubini and Union Carrier.

Now, the Magical Musketeers. We have 3 Capsar, 3 Doc, 3 Starfire, 2 Kidbrave, and 1 Calamity. Caspar is possibly the strongest main deck Musketeer. When a spell/trap is activated in this lad's column, you get to search a "Magical Musket" card from your deck given its a name that wasn't activated in the chain and resolve. He can search either a monster, spell, or trap, so his utility is amazing. Doc adds a Magical Musket card from your GY to your hand when a spell/trap is used in his column. He's the Caspar of the GY, which has its uses, being able to recycle powerful spell/traps or the link monster I'll explain later. Starfire special summons a Magical Musketeer from the deck given its Level 4 or lower. Which is fair, because being able to special Mastermind, a Level 8 with a powerful end of turn effect to draw cards equal to the number of Magical Musket spell/traps you activated that turn. Kidbrave allows you to discard 1 card to draw 2 cards. Baby Graceful Charity is still decent, but not as good as selecting cards you want to add to your hand, so that's why we run him at 2. Calamity reborns a Magical Musketeer from your GY when a spell/trap is activated in her column. It has utility, but not enough to run at 3 or even 2. Plus, we can search her with Caspar anyways, so 1 copy is fine.

Now, the Spell/Traps. Most of these cards are the generic power cards, so I'll go over them first. 1 Raigeki, 3 Pot of Desires, 3 Cosmic Cyclone, 2 Called by the Grave, and 2 Forbidden Droplet. I'm not gonna go into extreme detail about them, I'll just briefly explain what they do and why I ran them over certain cards. Raigeki pops all your opponent's monsters. Pot of Desires banishes 10 cards from your deck for you to draw 2 cards. "Why not run Extravagance or Prosperity?" Because we enjoy our Extra Deck. Like, A LOT. We have extremely powerful cards in it that I don't want to get rid of, so I use Desires instead. Cosmic Cyclone allows you to pay 1000 LP for a Spell Speed 2 Spell/Trap banish. You can run Twin Twisters in this spot, but I'd rather not discard potentially game-winning starters and spell/traps to pop 2. Plus, Eldlich is a pain, so banishing cards is great! Called by the Grave is your way of saying "I don't like being hand-trapped today, thank you though." You usually never wanna get Ash'd with this deck, so running this card is a must. Forbidden Droplet allows you to send cards in your possession (field AND hand) to be able to negate the effects and halve the ATK of monsters equal to the amount of cards you sent. It also has the added bonus of your opponent not responding with cards if you sent cards of that type to the GY for the cost of the card. Which means theoretically, this is a Spell Speed 3 spell, which Spell Speed 3 is only for Counter Traps. You can honestly run Forbidden Chalice or Infinite Impermanance instead of this. Any of them are fine.

And the last of the main deck: our Magical Musket Spell/Traps. 3 Cross-Domination, 3 Desperado, 3 Last Stand, 1 Dancing Needle, and 1 Crooked Crown. Cross Domination is the archetype's "Forbidden"-type quick-play spell, being able to negate any monster's effect and set their ATK value to 0. Desperado pops any face-up card on the field. Dancing Needle banishes up to 3 cards in any GY and banishes them. Its good for proactively banishing problematic cards in your opponent's GY. Crooked Crown allows you to special summon a Magical Musketeer from your hand and if you do, your opponent can't summon a monster in their monster zone in the column that your Musketeer was summoned in.

Now its time for the Extra Deck. Not gonna lie, space was a little tough trying to balance out the extra deck. At first, I wanted to run a Utopia OTK package with Utopia, Utopia Double, and Double or Nothing, but it didn't come up a lot, so I chose the Buster Lock, with Cherubini, Union Carrier, and Dragon Buster Destruction Sword. If you wanna go all in for this, I recommend running Cir and Graff, both Burning Abyss monsters. I did it without them because I think we have plenty of Level 3's Anyways, we got 3 Magical Musketeer Max, 2 Phantom Knights of Break Sword, 1 Abyss Dweller, 1 Tornado Dragon, 1 Bagooska, 1 Cherubini, 1 Knightmare Phoenix, 1 Union Carrier, 1 Masquerena, 1 Knightmare Unicorn, 1 Crusadia Avramax, and 1 Accesscode Talker.

Magical Musketeer Max is the strongest card in this deck. Going 2nd and summoning this card is a potential +5 in card advantage, which is INSANE for a Link 1 monster. When he's Link summoned, you can special summon Magical Musketeers from your deck equal to the amount of spell/traps your opponent control or he can grab Magical Musket spell/traps equal to the amount of monsters they have on their field, given the spell/traps have different names. Break Sword is a Generic Rank 3 Xyz monster that can pop one card you control and they control. I'll be honest, most Rank 3 Xyz monsters in the game are awful, so I think Break Sword is the one worth running. Abyss Dweller shuts down your opponent's GY effects for an entire turn as a Spell Speed 2 effect. Crazy. Tornado Dragon is a Spell Speed 2 Spell/Trap pop. Bagooska is the best stall card when it comes to Rank 4's, so we run him as a last resort when we need a turn or 2 to hopefully turn the tide. Cherubini and Union Carrier solely exist to perform the Buster Lock with Destruction Sword. If you want this to be consistent, run Cir and Graff in the main deck like how PK Rhongo Turbo uses them to get into Cherubini and other important Rank 3's. Knightmare Phoenix and Unicorn are Spell/Trap pops and card bounces respectively, as long as you discard a card for cost. They are generically good link-climbing monsters. Crusadia Avramax is a Link 4 Boss Monster you can build up to, and it doesn't let your opponent target it with card effects and their monsters can only target him for attacks. Oh yeah, and when a special summoned monster attacks him, he can gain ATK equal to that monster's ATK during damage calc. Note that this is once per BATTLE, not once per TURN. And he floats into a shuffle when he's sent to the GY because of the opponent. And finally, Accesscode Talker. I have nothing to say about him. You should know he WILL end your game if summoned.

I'll go over possible inclusions for this deck that I didn't have: Utopia OTK package (Utopia, Utopia Double, and Double or Nothing), Graff and Cir (to help the Buster Lock), and every possible going second tool. This deck LOVES to go 2nd, so including cards like Lightning Storm, Harpie's Feather Duster, Evenly Matched, Dark Ruler No More, etc. are EXTREMELY good choices if you wanna go for it.

Anyways, that's it for these weirdos with guns. Have fun playing a mildly infuriating to go against deck and hopefully this guide helped you!