Tri-Hard (Master Duel)

Master Duel is wild.

So, the deck is a pretty simple, straightforward Tri-Brigade deck with a small Zoo splash. I'd call the deck aggressively midrange: Appollousa - Pass really shouldn't be as good as this is, but Revolt is an insane card. You also have some pretty wild combos, and often they rely on only 1 or 2 cards to have high impact, meaning we can jam good interruptions to fill out the roster. The Zoo engine is primarily for Zeus, which rounds out the going second plays, but being able to fill the GY with Beast-adjacent monsters for Tri effects is super clutch, and with Drident and Chakanine you'll often actually just use this engine to make Ferrijit while filling the GY. It does increase consistency quite a lot while improving your going second hands in general. The deck is the best deck in the format in my opinion, and it isn't even close - there are no extremely bad matchups, provided your interruptions are clutch, and even if you misplay bad the deck often has the pure power to push through for game anyways. You have to watch out for Trap based strategies when you're going second, and you have to really worry about strategies that can gain an enormous amount of advantage throughout a turn, like Prank-Kids for example, but the deck feels almost unstoppable going first, and pretty damn good going second.

Master Duel is a BO1 format, and that impacted the card choices. It is also a Maxx "C" format, which kind of makes a bunch of ulties basically mandatory. I feel like that actually serves this deck well, as Evenly is not commonly maindecked, not nearly as often as Harpies or Lightning Storm, which both can be obnoxious but are a far cry from a perfect answer. Evenly also isn't a perfect answer in and of itself. Hand traps are also kind of lower impact - Gamma doesn't mean much, Ash usually means less, and while Maxx "C" can be backbreaking the deck can make some plays without giving up too many free cards, which helps, depending on the matchup.

So, card choices.

3 Fire Formation - Tenki. This card is freaking nuts. So, with 3 of these and 3 Fraktall, +1 Rescue Cat we have 7 1 card starters for our Tri plays. But also, these double as more copies of our 4 Zoo monsters. I think they should probably limit this card, Tri is already pretty powerful without it, and this is the card that low-key pushes the Zoo builds way over the top. Rescue Cat is a better combo than just Fraktall, but in terms of mitigating the risks of interaction, I'd always rather see a Tenki or a Fraktall.

4 Zoo Monsters - 2 Thoroughblade, 1 Whiptail, 1 Ramram. The theory behind this is pretty simple - if I have to see 2 Zoo monsters, I'd almost always like to see Thoroughblade first, to mully while setting things up for a Chakanine. This is genuinely the maindeck zoo effect you will use most often. However, Ramram's Trap protection effect is clutch, if niche, and probably the best of the Zoos for when you're ending on Drident turn 1 just for its defense points. Whiptail makes the Zoo pile have another removal option built-in, but in reality I've used the "attach as material" effect more often than that. You could make a case that it should be 3 Thoroughblade or 3 Whiptail or 3 Ramram first IMO, depending on the meta. I think Thoroughblade is the best of them, but I like the utility of searching out the Zoos that are relevant.

3 each of each Tri (and a Kitty) - I've already talked a little bit about how Fraktall + Tenki + Cat gives 7 starters, but I really do feel like you have to max out on your  Tri monsters. With Almiraj pretty much any 2 Tris end up being full combo, so having high numbers of all of them are good. Also, you're sending lots of Tris to the GY, and banishing cards from the deck with Pot of Desires, so I do genuinely go through ALL of my tri names in a single game, sometimes.

3 Revolt - The best card in the deck. It is searchable off of Bearbrumm, and that's nice, but you'd almost always rather open it than search it, since Bearbrumm has some tough restrictions and also puts a card back into the deck. This is basically a Dinomiscus, except it generally adds 1 or more cards to your hand while setting up your GY instead of discarding a card. Nutty. Also, you can fire it off in response to Spell/Trap removal, to gain all that advantage and get ahead on the board. This card is wild.

2 Pot of Desires. You could maybe argue that I should be running 3, but tbh I've always found that even in decks where the first Desires is fairly "free", the second is usually not, and the third is dead. Yeah, you kind of want to open it more, but not at the cost of interaction or actual combo cards - the best part about the card is still that it is Ash bait. Still, this is a deck where Desires #1 is basically completely free almost all of the time, and where the second is often still pretty damn good, especially if you sequence your searches correctly. This is one of those silly cards, where on the one hand maybe they should limit it like in the TCG, but on the other hand you might actually be doing decks that run it a favour by limiting it. I like 2.

So, it's a Maxx "C" format, so we're on 3 Maxx "C" plus 3 Ash, plus 2 Called By for hand traps. Maxing out on the "C" seems obligatory - sometimes the card is a little bad or kind of dead, but it is game-winning when it resolves most of the time. The rhetoric for these numbers is simple - with 5 ways to answer Maxx "C" I am more likely to answer the Maxx "C" than they are to draw it, and by relying on Ash and Called By, these are really solid interruptions even if my opponent isn't on the insect. Meanwhile, I like free wins. Sometimes I draw 0 cards and the card still feels good. 3 Imperm fill out the hand trap suite, because Imperm is a hand trap that doesn't die to Called that is good for pushing through on your opponent's turn or your own, can't be negated by things that answer monsters effects, and is great as a generic Trap card to boot. If you're encountering more Maxx "C" than I am you could consider Crossout, but Crossout does require deckbuilding to be more centralized than it seems to be just on the ranked ladder - I'd be more inclined to play it in Tri in a competitive Master Duel event, but for laddering, it seems really hit-or-miss.

Lastly, we have a few tech options. I actually like Cosmic main a lot of the time even in BO3, but some kind of Spell/Trap disruption seems completely essential in BO1, and I think Cosmic is the best of the bunch. Solemn Judgment is kind of a pet card of mine, while Strike ends chains better, Judgment is just a good all-around answer that hits back-breaking Spells/Traps, while also answering most things that would hit the field in general. It feels really good here, since we're Apollousa spam and slightly weak to Lightning Storm, Harpies. I've used this on Twin-Twisters, I've used this on Harpie's Duster, I've used this on Boss Monsters, I've even used it on occasion just to kill Rotas in the absence of Ash. Very flexible card.

I think the Extra deck is pretty much completely optimized. You'd like 2 Bearbrumm or 2 Ferrijit or 3 Shuraig, but in reality, Accesscode Talker, Double Dragon Lords, and Almiraj are going to give you more ultility in the first 2 cases, and more consistency in the third case.