Skull Servants

Good evening, and welcome to a spooky preview of how to play Skull Servants in 2022....

I've been playing Skull Servants since 2014 on and off, and started bringing it to locals over the past year, so I'm very familiar with the core engine. This deck is made to be pure Skulls, and I'm sure a variant on this deck that runs Zombie World, Balerdoch, and Necroworld Banshee is probably more consistent, this is a more off-meta version. With that being said, let's break it down the cards, and look at some combos:

Skull Servant Core:

3x Wightbaking: This is the most important card in our deck, it must be at 3, and we want to be opening it in our hand at all times. Its only down-side is that the effect is once-per-turn, so we want to try and play around some negates before we commit to sending this to graveyard. Depending on our opening hand, typically we can summon Baking and link it off to send it to grave, and complete our full combo by adding Wightprince and Wightmare, then discarding Wightmare. Keep in mind that this card specifies that you add 2 cards to hand then discard 1 - you do not have to discard one of the cards added (though most time we do), we can discard any 1 from hand. We can also discard this from hand with Uni-Zombie, and if this gets negated, we'll be able to discard it on our opponents turn when he attempts to destroy Uni-Zombie. The protection effect this card also offers to all our level 3 or lower zombies is a huge bonus, as it can keep our King + Lady boards safe. In an ideal world, we can discard 1 from the deck and keep another in our hand to protect our King on board. This is the easy MVP of the deck.

2x Wightprince: The second most important card to this combo. Sending this to grave is our priority on turn 1, as it sends two Garnets from our deck and lets us special summon King. This is a good opener in hand as well: we can play the game when we open Baking, Prince, or Uni-Zombie. By opening either Prince or Baking in hand in addition to Uni-Zombie, it allows to send both, which gives us our best opening line. I run this, the vanilla Skull Servant and Lady each at 2 because they're too cloggy at 3 and sending all 3 I think is just win-more. You could put this at 3 and leave the garnets at 2 but the 3rd becomes a brick pretty quickly, so I think that's suboptimal. Wightprince's second effect is two banish itself + two skull servants to special summon King from the deck. If you've sent two princes on the same turn, I reccomend banishing two Lady in Wights for this effect, as we can special summon them with Wightprince, but we can't special summon the vanilla unfortunately. Being able to special summon the Lady's is nice for our extended combos.

3x Wightmare: The third most important card to the combo. The ability to summon a banished King or Lady is integral to our combos. The King is simply a beater without his Lady next to him, and the only way we’re putting Lady on the board face up is with Wightmare’s effect. I think this should be run at 3 because we can resolve 3 fairly easily, but because we add it to hand with baking, I can see an argument for putting it to two.

2x King of the Skull Servants: Our boss monster. We run him at 2 because we don't want to draw it, we always want to special it off of Prince's effect. We can't special summon him with Prince's effect if he is in the hand, as Prince's effect only summons from deck, so its typically not a very good draw. Getting King + Lady on the field protects him from destruction from battle, and the effects of spells and traps, so he is surprisingly difficult to out, which is the fun of playing this deck. If you full combo turn 1, King can hit 7,000 attack turn 1 pretty easily.

2x Lady in Wight is another important combo piece. Lady protects all our level 3 or lower zombies from the effects of spells and traps, and we can special summon her from the banished zone with the effect of Wightprince, making her a valuable piece to any board we set up. We don't want to draw into this though, so we keep it at 2.

2x Skull Servant: The boy himself. Absolutely never want to draw him, so we keep it at 2 to resolve Wightprince's effect twice. That's all we need him for.

Other Zombie Support:

3x Jack-o-Bolan: I love this card, I've been playing around with the ratios for a while now. Opening this card with a prince or baking lets us dump them without committing our summon, and this deck really needs that: in my experience playing, getting negated after our normal summon really holds us back. His effect to special a zombie to our field on our opponents main phase is a useful way to tag into Lady when necessary if we don't have her on our end board. His 7 levels make him an option for level 10 synchros as well: I haven't added one to this build yet, but I recommend looking into what level 10 synchros you could add to this deck (I'm thinking Baronne de Fleur). Additionally, this card is also a good target for Avendread Saviour, which we'll touch on later. I think 2x is the minimum for this, 3 could be a bit bricky so you can adjust as you see fit.

3x Uni-Zombie is a must at 3 as well. It's the third card in here we're happy to open. I prefer to have baking or prince because one Veiler and our turn is over, but that is the pit-fall of this deck as a whole. Getting to send from the deck is exactly what this deck wants, and he sets it up easily, and we can full combo from there. I previously ran an additional 3 copies of Shiranui Solitaire as a way to special summon Uni-Zombie, but I don't like being left with a completely empty board when Solitaire is negated, so I cut them. As noted above, if Uni-Zombie does get negated, our turn is basically done but if we have a Baking in hand, it gives us at least something on our opponents turn.

1x Mezuki: Mezuki is a great extender - if we don't need to dump a combo piece from deck with Uni-Zombie, we can dump this instead to bring a card back for extending our combos. It's very nice to be able to dump, but we only need 1 copy in my opinion, we aren't recycling cards that often, plus Wightmare allows to do the same from the Banish pile.

Extras:

1x Destrudo: Fresh off the banlist, this card is cracked, very much worth running. We can get in grave easily, and search it off Halq too. Worth trying out.

1x Pankertops: We're happy going second, and this is a nice piece going 2nd as well. Our end-board is typically just 2 monsters so there's plenty opportunity to summon this vs meta decks.

Hand-Traps

3x Ash Blossom: needs no introduction, pretty much mandatory. All the ghost girls have nice utility as level 3 zombies in here as well, so its good to keep in mind.

3x Nibiru: this deck gets killed by combo players that can set up huge boards with negates and such, so I think we have to run 3 Nibiru in main to shut that down.

3x Impermanence: like Ash, needs no introduction. A nice piece of interruption, we don't want to let our opponents get set up.

Like always with hand traps, it depends what you're playing into. If you'd rather run Belle, Ghost Ogre, DD Crow, Droll, Veiler, etc that's your call. I previously ran Veiler in this build as a searchable level 1 tuner with Halqifibrax with the ability to synchro with Jack-o-Bolan but it didn't come up super often.

Spells and Traps

1x Foolish Burial: Best card in our deck, wish we could have more than 1. Starts our combos.

1x One for One: Another great starter piece for us, also limited to 1. Also starts our combos.

1x Monster Reborn: great extender if we send 1 Wightprince, we can reborn it and link it back to the grave and get the effect again as its not once per turn. Allows us to re-start combos with our grave if we top-deck it too. Would love more than 1 of this too.

1x Called by the Grave: Also limited to 1, great interruption, always feels like a game-winner to pull this

3x Where arf thou: Very nice extender. After sending Prince and special summoning King, we can activate this and normal summon to avoid the cost if we want. We're mostly fine with paying the cost if necessary though. Alternatively, if we can make our regular board already, use this to add Wightbaking at the end of turn to protect your King and Lady on your opponents turn – its well worth the 2000 life points.

1x Burial From a Different Dimension: We banish 3 to Special King. This returns 3 to the grave. Self explanatory I think. I've run this at 2 and 3, but its bricky at 3. You could run this at 2, but I'm happy with 1. Don’t forget to special summon Lady with Wightmare before activating this if you haven’t got her on board.

Extra Deck:

1x Linkuriboh and Salamangreat Almiraj serve the same purpose as link fodder to send a baking or prince off our board to open a combo. Use Linkuriboh in your King + Lady lines for one added line of protection. Use Almiraj if you’re planning to make Accesscode so you’ll have the fire attribute for his effect and you’re not making Phoenix, as Unicorn will give you the Dark attribute already.

1x Avendread Saviour gives us another way to discard from the deck, so we can make this reasonably often. Having 3 level 7 zombies in the deck gives us a little more utility to this effect too for clearing boards.

1x Vampire Sucker: we can make this along a combo chain to draw a card as we’re summoning. The second effect of summoning from our opponents grave to their field is an underrated tool to bust up potential combos our opponents is setting up later than turn 1.

1x Knightmare Phoenix and Unicorn – need no introduction I think, they can go in any extra deck, and are basically mandatory for going into Accesscode.

1x Masquerena – Interruption for our opponents turn to go into Unicorn.

1x Halqifibrax – Great extender that we make with Uni-zombie fairly often, opens us up to Link 4s easily.

1x Apollousa, Bow of the Goddess – the best interruption we can make. Great end board card for our turn 1s, but we should look to make 4 negates where we can.

How to play Skull Servants:

This deck is very simple to play, we don't vary off of our main line too often. Our end board can typically be Apollusa and Omega if we want, or finish on King/Lady and other pieces.

The basic line:

Our basic combo is as follows: Send Wightbaking to grave (the two ways we commonly accomplish this is 1) normal Baking and Link-1, or 2) effect of Uni-Zombie, but foolish burial and one for one can get us there too). We then add Wightprince and Wightmare to hand, and discard Prince. -> Prince effect to send a skull servant and Lady in Wight -> Prince 2nd effect to Special Summon King of the Skull Servants. -> Send Wightmare from hand to Special Summon Lady in Wight. Now we have King at 2k and protected by Lady.

extended line:

our extended line is any line that pitches both Wightprinces. We can do this pretty easily by opening Prince or Baking in hand, and anything that lets us send it from the hand: One for One, Uni-Zombie, Jack-o-Bolan all give us this. Where Are Thou also lets us add one if we didn't open one in hand. In this line, we usually want to send Wightprince first, and Baking second to scout Ash, as we prefer Baking to resolve. We also want to send both Princes before Special Summoning King if we can. If we do so, it allows to banish both Lady's from grave and special them both if we opened with a Wightmare (in addition to adding one with Baking effect). Always keep in mind that Wightbaking is a once-per-turn effect, but Wightprince is not – if Baking is negated by Ash, we can’t send a second copy that same turn.

full combo (god-hand opening):

In terms of full combo, the biggest board we can finish on turn 1 is a King at 4k, an Apollusa with 4 negates and Psy Framelord Omega. A line that lets us do this requires Prince/Baking in hand with Jack-o-Bolan, Uni-Zombie as our normal summon, another way to send a prince, and Reborn or Foolish. We can make this board by pitching Baking to Special Jack-o-Bolan, complete our basic combo with Baking effect, and send our 2nd Prince. Special Lady with Wightmare, and you have a board of Jack, King, and Lady with no summon committed yet. We can normal Uni-Zombie and use effect to pitch Mezuki, Reborn Mezuki, synchro into Omega with Uni-Zombie and Mezuki. Use Mezuki to bring back a Lady and link-4 the remaining monsters to make Apollusa. Finally, you can activate your 2nd prince in grave and pitch both Ladys to finish with a King on board as well. In my experience, this is the biggest board we can make going first with the cards in this deck list. Depending on what you’re playing into, this kind of hand gives you endless options for what to do with your turn.

King and Lady on board vs Extra deck monsters?

One scenario you’ll face pretty often with this deck is you’ll have King + Lady on board as special summons, and likely one other piece (a linkuriboh or a Uni-Zombie that started your combo). With Uni-Zombie and Lady you’ll have the option to go into a Synchro 8 if you used both Uni effects, or link 2 into Halqifibrax and go into Apollusa from there. I’ve gone back and forth on what I think is better, but at the moment I think I prefer setting up King/ Lady and pass than making Omega or Apo with 3 negates. A big plus to finishing on King/Lady is if we can keep a Wightbaking in hand with this board – it gives full protection to an attempt to pop King or Lady from the board, and lets us resolve baking’s effect again on our opponents turn. In this scenario, they’ll have to commit further resources to removing King, and if we aren’t OTK’d, we’ll be able to make another King/Lady board on our next turn.

Shorter/Alternative lines:

In my opinion, these going-first boards are fine, and we're happy to make them into combo decks, but we need a good opening hand. My feeling is that we're better off going second if we're not playing into an opponent setting up negates. A lot of our lines on turn 2 lead us into making Abyss Dweller (and into Zeus from there if we want).

If we’re going 2nd and we have a weak hand but we can muster 2 summons, we can make Avendread Savior and attack into our opponent to dump a prince or baking. Avendread is a good utility summon for this reason, and he’s also good because we can dump Jack-O-Bolan to decrease an opponents attack by 1400. This line doesn’t feel great but if we dump Baking from Avendread, we can set up our King + Lady in Main Phase 2 at least.

With Destrudo, I haven’t gotten a physical copy to test out combos with this, but it definitely adds a lot of options to our turns.

Upgrades and Changes to this deck

Main Deck:

Shiranui Solitaire: I previously ran this at 3. It’s 3 more chances to draw into Uni-Zombie and begin your combo, but I took it out simply because if this effect is negated after tributing itself for cost, you are left with an empty board. If you wanted to run this, I’d suggest running a heavier hand trap/trap ratio in the deck, and particularly adding Gamma and Driver into main as an option on your opponents turn to prevent an OTK. I could see this at 1 copy in the deck as a small consistency boost, but I don’t like to rely on it.

Wightprincess: The one monster from the archtype we’re not running: the effect of spending our normal summon to pitch Wightprince was nice at the time it was released, but its way too slow of a card to run now, and is functionally a weaker version of Baking. Being level 3 and 1600 attack, we can’t make a link-1 with this either. You could run this at 1, as the hand-trap effect to reduce the attack of all monsters is good in niche scenarios, but I don’t think that’s enough to warrant putting it into the main. Another reason to run this is that its another “Skull Servant” name that can be searched off Baking, so you get some utility from that. I don’t see room for it, but you can give consideration to adding 1.

Mathematician: This was a core card in the deck once upon a time, but we don’t run it now. You could certainly run 1 copy as a potential opener, but its completely dead to a hand trap at the cost of your normal summon, and the draw effect is unlikely to resolve too.

Allure of Darkness: I just recently cut this, but you could find room for 1 or 2 copies for the draw power. My issue is that after we do our opening combo, there aren’t a lot of good DARK targets left to discard in the deck. We run 15 DARKs, but a Uni-Zombie opening combo will use up 7 of them at least, so we’ll discarding our hand pretty often.

Crush Card, Deck Devastator, Eradicator Epidemic Virus: All the virus cards are live with this deck thanks to King. They’re an interesting tech option for certain matchups: the added “look at your opponents hand” is a huge plus and you can discard a lot of cards off this. However, running them in main is a crap shoot, and if you’re playing a deck that wants to be discarding cards like we do, you’re in big trouble.

Extra Deck:

1x Baronne De Fleur is a very pricey card, but would undoubtedly be incredibly strong in this deck, as he is in many others. This deck would love a level 10 Synchro and Baronne is the best of the bunch. The reason we love a level 10 is because we have Jack-o-Bolan at level 7, and we have six tuners (3 Ash and 3 Uni-Zombie) that are level 3 to make Baronne easily. If you have the cash, put this in, and take Scarlight out.

1x Relinquished Anima is a good alternative at link 1, its your preference in that category.

1x Coral Dragon is a level 6 synchro I used to run in this deck, its very good, I only cut it for space. Lady in Wight + either tuner in the deck make this easily, and its ability to discard 1 is always something we like in the deck to start combos. If there’s card in this extra deck you don’t like, this is something you can sub in with ease.

1x Trishula has been cut from this deck for space too, but it’s a nice option going second. If you alter this build to be more oriented to going second, consider adding it back in. At level 9 + 3 materials required, it’s a little steep, but its easily made with Uni-Zombie (after resolving both his effects), Lady + King as materials.

1x Clear Wing Synchro Dragon is a great generic level 7 synchro, we make it easily with Uni-Zombie + Lady, and the effect is very good. When I ran it, I almost never made it though, so I cut it for that reason.

Rank 1, 2, 3 & 4 XYZs: Uni-Zombie’s ability to boost its own level plus Lady’s level means the door is open to any Rank 3 or 4s: if you summon two level 1 monsters, Uni-Zombie could boost them both to level 2 for rank 2s as well, though this is a much less likely occurrence. There’s a huge selection of XYZ monsters to select from, so its worth your time having a look, particularly Rank 4s. I settled on Dweller and Nightingale as my 2 XYZs for getting to Zeus, but other XYZ monsters I’ve rotated in and out include:

1x Break Sword: A 2k beater that can pop a card from your opponents field if necessary, it’s a nice card for transitioning into Zeus with added utility from its effect. This could easily fit right in this deck.

1x Leviair the Sea Dragon: used to feature in this deck. Really good, but when I want to make an XYZ, I lean to a preference to Dweller, but Leviair is a great fit too.

1x Castel the Skyblaster: I love Castel so much, I put him back in every so often, he’s the 16th extra deck monster of this deck for me. 2k attack makes him a great Zeus buffer, and his effect to book-of-moon something so you can essentially attack for free makes him a great option.

1x Downerd Magician: No explanation needed really, one extra material for Zeus. I don’t see room for this but if you want to play more towards Zeus turbo, slide it in.

1x Sylvan Princessprite: A good option for a rank 1 – detaching a material is a good way to put 1 card in the graveyard, and the effect of excavating one benefits us a lot of the time, whether we add a spell or send a monster to the grave. I have run this, but I prefer Nightingale for making Zeus.

Strengths and Weaknesses:

Strength – Big Number go brrr: Even against meta decks, you’ll be surprised with how often 5,000 attack and cannot be destroyed by battle becomes a difficult obstacle, especially with Lady on the field, and a Baking in hand. Additionally, our King can push 10k off of full combo, so an OTK is in our reach as well, so we can upset meta decks if they brick an opening hand

Strength – low summon count: Unless we want to make the full Apollusa combo, our standard King + Lady summon combo will cost us 4 summons, so we dodge Nibiru quite comfortably.

Weakness – consistency: the Lady in Wight’s and Skull Servant’s are basically 4 garnets in this deck, and the Wightmares are only extenders, not openers, so we brick quite a lot. Running up to 15 hand traps may be a better alternative approach to this deck to help survive, because there aren’t more engine cards to include, except maybe a 3rd copy of Wightprince, which itself becomes a brick if we combo successfully.

Weakness – Negates: We can’t play through negates, that’s all there is to say. If we get Ashed or Impermed or Veilered on our opening move, we’re toast pretty often. If our opponent sets up Apollusa or anything that negates effects on their turn, we’re not getting off the ground.

Weakness – Negates of our own: Baronne would help with this, but we equally don’t set up enough negates of our own. I added Apollusa to help this, but it takes a big combo to make 4 negates with her. Consider adding more interruption to this deck to overcome this. Combo decks can really play through us with relative ease in my experience.

Conclusion

Skull Servants are a super fun deck, and I absolutely love them. They’re not tier 1 by any means, but I have fun with them at locals for the most part. I feel like a smarter player than me could find ways to make this more consistent: in particular, we’re really craving more ways to special summon or send from the deck, so our opening turn doesn’t get shut out by negates so easily. That said, if you can make a board, you’ll win plenty of games.

So that’s it! If you have any thoughts or suggestions for the deck, I’d love to hear, as I’m always looking for improvements to make. For starters I’ll need to experiment with Zombie World in here, but I’d love to hear more builds for a pure Skull Servant deck.

If you read this all the way to the end, thank you so much for reading!