Pure Gravekeeper's

Necrovalley Jumpscare! The infamous field spell is what made Gravekeeper's popular but wait, there's even more! Activate Necrovalley ----> Summon Gravekeeper's Spiritualist ---> Summon Gravekeeper's Supernaturalist ----> Activate Hidden Temples of Necrovalley ----> Activate Royal Tribute = Win the Game. It's the dream combo which many Gravekeeper Decks focus on but what do you do if that doesn't work? Well this Deck uses all the other better Gravekeeper Cards to have a weaker Plan B which does work quite often (Surprisingly). Let's go a bit more into Detail and see how the very first real Archetype of Yugioh is working nowadays:

Entering the Realm of the Tomb Keepers

Without Necrovalley the Deck basically doesn't work so you need some cards to get to your essencial Field Spell online as soon as possible. Gravekeeper's Commandant can be discarded to search for Necrovalley. If he's not in your Hand you can use Necrovalley Throne to search for him from your Deck. Together with Gravekeeper's Priestess who's treats the Field as Necrovalley with 200 ATK/DEF for all Gravekeeper's on top, you have 10 Cards which either are Necrovalley or get you to find that card. That's pretty much a 25% - 30% Chance to find that card for every card you Draw which sounds kinda low but in reality you will have the Field Spell 90% of the time from experience speaking. 

If the opponent interrupts your search with cards like Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring you still have a chance for recovery with Gravekeeper's Stele which can retrieve any 2 Gravekeeper Monsters from the GY back to your Hand. Since Gravekeeper's Commandant is not a Once per Turn you can recycle and discard him again to get to Necrovalley eventually. 

With Necrovalley active your whole Deck now turns online and we can look at how to win from this Position in the next Step. 

Sorry but you don't get to play Yugioh today

Thanks to Gravekeeper's Spiritualist you have an easy way to get to your main Fusion Boss Monster Gravekeeper's Supernaturalist. He's a chonky boy with 3100 to 3900 ATK/DEF depending on the levels used for it's Fusion summon. The good part is his ability to protect himself and Necrovalley against destruction effects and during the End Phase he can search for any Gravekeeper Monster or Necrovalley Spell/Trap Card. With Gravekeeper's Stele or Gravekeeper's Headman you can recycle the whole Fusion Setup to be used again easily too, making this Combo your Bread and Butter of the Deck. 

Now if you activate the continuous Spell Hidden Temples of Necrovalley both players cannot Special Summon except Gravekeeper Monsters. Combined with Necrovalley which gives 500 ATK/DEF to all Gravekeeper's prevents Moving of cards in any GY, banishing from the GY and Type/Attribute Changes in the GY, you got a very strong Lockdown which leaves almost every Deck wide open for attacks since most Decks cannot play the game under these circumstances. 

From this point with Gravekeeper's Supernaturalist you can keep making it worse by searching your omni negate Counter Trap Imperial Tombs of Necrovalley for anything the opponent might have left. Cards like Raigeki are not a problem for Gravekeeper's Supernaturalist and Harpie's Feather Duster can only remove Hidden Temples of Necrovalley if your Counter Trap is missing. 

You could also search Gravekeeper's Shaman who has a number of useful effects. She gains 200 DEF for every Gravekeeper in the GY, prevents destruction of your Field Spell cards, prevents the opponent from activating any Field Spells Himself and most importantly negates Monster effects which activate in the GY. She's easily summoned with Gravekeeper's Spy directly from the Deck and creates a perfect GY lockdown with Necrovalley together. 

Royal Tribute is not searchable with Gravekeeper's Supernaturalist and can only be activated when Necrovalley is active. It forces both players to discard every Monster from their Hand. This is obviously devastating since Necrovalley will leave all these Monsters from the opponent useless in the GY and you can simply recycle them with Gravekeeper's Stele or Gravekeeper's Headman.

These are the main cards needed for your lockdown and your strongest Strategy by far. So how about adding some options? 

Exploring the Depths of Necrovalley

Gravekeeper's are slow but often they can get enough time through their various lockdown cards to get things started for real. With Destruction, Recycling and Beatdown options they can achieve the victory in various slower ways. 

Gravekeeper's Oracle is a LV10 Monster which is an optimal target to fusion summon a Gravekeeper's Supernaturalist with 3900/3900 ATK/DEF. You can also tribute 1, 2 or 3 Monsters to summon him and activate in Order up to 3 effects based upon the Egyptian Gods themselves. Gain ATK equal to the Levels used to summon him based upon The Winged Dragon of Ra. Destroy all face down Monsters from the opponent based upon Obelisk the Tormentor and decrease the ATK and DEF of all opponents Monsters by 2000 based upon Slifer the Sky Dragon. Truly a big investment with quite the big payoff. 

Gravekeeper's Visionary is the other Big Boy which also only needs one Tribute to be summoned. For every Gravekeeper in the GY he gains additional 200 ATK and if he should be destroyed you can discard one Gravekeeper Monster instead. From all the Gravekeeper Monsters he can be the most strongest of them all in terms of ATK. If for some reason all your Gravekeeper's are in the GY and Necrovalley is active too he will have 6900 ATK. 

Gravekeeper's Ambusher has 2200 ATK with Necrovalley active making him your strongest Normal Summon. He can also get rid of one card in the opponents GY and recycle any Necrovalley card from the GY if he was flipped and leaves the field then. He's especially useful to recycle Imperial Tombs of Necrovalley.

Gravekeeper's Assailant is fascinating. The only thing he does is change the Battle Position of a Face up Monster when he attacks. This sounds super weak but the amount of times he saved me from a big otherwise unbeatable Tower Monster by running over it in defense Position is insane. Big Boys often don't have big defense stats. 

Gravekeeper's Descendant can tribute a Gravekeeper Monster to target and destroy one card from the opponent without a Once per Turn. He's your only in Archetype way to Deal with Backrow effectively which makes him quite important to have. 

Gravekeeper's Spy has 2500 DEF with Necrovalley active which is insane. He has a Flip effect which let's you Special any Gravekeeper Monster from your Deck with 1500 or less ATK. He's slow but certainly gets the Job done even nowadays. 

Gravekeeper's Guard "only" has 2400 DEF with Necrovalley active and his Flip effect allows to target and return one of the opponents Monsters back to his Hand. Certainly useful at times especially against Extra Deck Monsters. 

Gravekeeper's Recruiter helps to search Gravekeeper Monsters with 1500 or less DEF to your Hand when he's send to the GY from the field. He can be used in various ways to use his search multiple times which is certainly nice to have. 

Gravekeeper's Nobleman has to be attacked and destroyed by Battle to be able to summon any Gravekeeper you like from your Deck in Face Down defense Position. He can be good at times too, to get a surprise Gravekeeper's Visionary onto the field. 

Gravekeeper's Headman summons a LV4 Gravekeeper from your GY back in Face Up attack Position or Face Down defense position whenever you summon him. He can help you to get a quick Fusion summon live if Gravekeeper's Spiritualist is already in the GY. He's overall very useful to get your Deck up to Speed and a welcome addition. 

With the Monsters out of the way there's a few things left to talk about in the Spell & Trap area. 

Necrovalley Throne not only searches for any Gravekeeper Monster, it can also instead Normal Summon one Gravekeeper Monster from your Hand giving much needed Field Advantage to your Deck. 

Gravekeeper's Stele as mentioned earlier will bring 2 Gravekeeper Monsters from the GY back to your Hand. Like that you can keep summoning your Fusion Boss and/or get Gravekeeper's Commandant back into the Hand to be able to use his effect again. 

Finally Necrovalley Temple will decrease the ATK/DEF of opponents Monsters by 500. Furthermore it can activate Necrovalley from your Hand and GY if you don't have it active. And if the opponent destroys your Necrovalley Temple you can set any other Necrovalley card you like directly from the Deck. 

Many of these cards need Necrovalley and Gravekeeper's in some kind of Combination to have all of their effects active. Beware of that if you decide to pick this Deck up. 

I'm aware of the existence of cards like Gravekeeper's Trap and such too but they do not fit into a pure Gravekeeper/Necrovalley Strategy like the one you see here. Rite of Spirit is another Story. That card is actually useful but I replaced it with Gravekeeper's Stele and Gravekeeper's Headman due to them being more versatile but less agressive for sure. 

The rest of the Extra Deck is up to preference and can be switched around to your liking. There's nothing wrong with adding generic stuff here. Just remember Hidden Temples of Necrovalley does prevent Special summons for anything which is not a Gravekeeper Monster. 

Zombie Breakout in the Necrovalley!

Did you know Gravekeeper's were the first real intended Archetype ever? So you can kinda imagine there's some trouble ahead. One of your key Cards Royal Tribute is unsearchable same goes for a card like Gravekeeper's Stele.

Some Gravekeeper's revolve around Flip Summoning which is way to slow to always work nowadays. You often find yourself in a Situation were you play your Flip Monster Face Up to get a Hidden Temples of Necrovalley active, since that card is to good to not be active. 

And maybe the biggest downside is the absolute necessity of having Necrovalley active at all times to have a Strategy that works well. 

Overall the Tempo of this Deck is slow and if you don't get to go first there's often trouble ahead. Be mindful of that when you consider trying this Strategy. Then again if you go first you will win against the most Meta relevant Matchups with ease. Special summoning and the GY are just to important nowadays. 

The Oracle has Spoken

All in all this Deck works just well and consistent most of the time. I used it to grind my way to Diamond in Master Duel once with it, but since then found other types of Decks more easy to get there. It's quite good and you might wanna give it a try if you like Lockdown Decks and dislike meta Decks. 

"Share if you play Gravekeeper's" Is a term we all know for a reason. 

Final Rating: 

★★☆☆☆☆☆ OTK Potential

★★★★★☆☆ Defensive Tools

★★★★★★★ Control Options

★★★★☆☆☆ Removal Options

★★★★★☆☆ Recovery/Recycling

★★★☆☆☆☆ Card Advantage

Overall Rating: ★★★★☆☆☆  26/42★

The Gravekeeper's Codex

Some of these cards follow some special Rules which I will list below: 

Gravekeeper's Supernaturalist: 1. You activate his effect during the Main Phase and resolve it during the End Phase. 2. If his effects get negated he will loose his ATK/DEF Boost permanently. 

Gravekeeper's Oracle: You cannot skip any of the ● effects. You have to resolve them in order. 

Gravekeeper's Assailant: Even if the attack is negated you can still change the Battle Position of the opponents Monster. 

Gravekeeper's Priestess: If the opponent has an active Field Spell, the field won't be treated as Necrovalley.

Necrovalley: This card had many errata in the past. In it's current errata no card in the GY can be moved to another place and types and attributes in the GY cannot be changed. 

Royal Tribute: 1. You do not show the Hand to each other's player anymore. 2. If the opponent is cheating and not discarding every Monster a judge can be called to verify both players Hands. It used to be a viable strategy to call a judge after using Royal Tribute if the opponent discarded 0 Monsters, since that's a very unlikely scenario.