Melffys to the Future - Deck Recipe and Guide

♪ Welcome to the Forest of the Melffy! ♪

The Melffy archetype, introduced in Rise of the Duelist, is an advantage- and disruption- based Beast archetype. All its monsters pop out of your hand to play during the End Phase, and then jump back to the hand when frightened by attacks or summoned monsters, in order to call out more friends.

Unassuming at first, and seemingly an advantage engine without any way to capitalize off it... but under the surface, Melffy decks are a high-execution deck capable of controlling and wiping boards, playing a huge variety of different monsters, and taking advantage of Synchro, Xyz, and Link alike! Let's get into it and see just what they're capable of!

(Note: This is not a tier 1 deck, but I've endeavoured over the last few months to experiment with assorted Melffy builds, and I can guarantee you that this is probably one of the most powerful variants you'll find on here!)

Table Of Contents:

1. Melffy and You - A Guide To Your In-House Cards


2. Melffy and Toolboxing - A Guide To Basic Control


3. Melffy and the Extra Deck - A Guide to Closing Out Games


4. Melffy and Variation - A Guide To Options And Side-Decking


5. Final Notes

 

-- Melffy and You -- A Guide To Your In-House Cards --

Melffy, as of now, is a deck composed of five Main Deck monsters (of which one is a vanilla), three Xyz Monsters, two spells, and a trap. This isn't the largest of archetypes, but with the consistency its two most important main deck monsters allow, it doesn't have to be. Let's take a look at them!

All main deck Melffy save Rabby (their vanilla) are LV2 EARTH Beasts (with nary any ATK or DEF) that share the same two effects, with hard Once Per Turn limits on each: During your End Phase, you can summon them from your hand, and when your opponent Summons a monster or declares an attack while you have Melffy on board, you can return them to your hand to do a certain effect.

• Melffy Puppy is the strongest, summoning from deck any Level 2 Beast, including any of your other Melffy! Run three copies and never look back.


• Melffy Cathy comes in second, searching any Beast from deck. Not just level 2 - ANY Beast. This allows for some very funny plays, as we'll look at later. You can argue anywhere from 1 to 3 copies of this, but I prefer to play 2-3.


• Melffy Pony and Melffy Fenny are tied for the lesser of the four, respectively getting a Level 2 beast from grave to hand or Special Summoning a beast from hand. We run one of each, for toolbox utility - with Melffy Puppy, you only really need one.

Next up, a look at their Extra Deck friends... or at least, the ones that have "Melffy" in the name. Melffy have a lot of viable ED picks, as you'll see very soon...

• Melffy of the Forest is their flagship Xyz, allowing an inhouse omnisearcher once per turn (that can also grab backrow!), as well as a clunky but powerful Fiendish Chain when you bounce a Melffy back to hand. This can't stop on-summon effects like a Halqifibrax or Conquistador activation, but it can lock down almost any other monster! Run 1-3.


• Excited Melffy (translation not official) is their newest piece of support, and at 2000 ATK their only real in-house attacker. Its first effect, being able to detach a material to grant Melffy direct attacks, is mostly useless given the archetype's low statline, but it's got a niche usage of setting up Negalogia AA-Zeus plays (more on this later). Its second effect, however, is far more important - being able to bounce a Melffy Xyz back to the Extra Deck to revive Melffy up to its materials! The full use of this ability will be discussed in full a bit later, but keep it in mind for now. Run 1, I'd say.


• And, uh... Melffy Mommy is bad. Sorry, but she's just not good! At 2 materials she's a 1000 atk waste of space, and if you get her up to 5 materials you get... a worse Yubel. Which was a card released in 2007/2008. Run 0.

Finally, let's look at their in-house backrow!

• Melffy Tag is a quick-play, archetype-locked Monster Reborn. This allows for a searchable revive at any time, even of your Xyz Monsters - and sets up a one-card Utopic Future Dragon play, as will be discussed later. It also allows for Zeroboros interaction, extra material, and simply getting your Puppy or Cathy back on the board when you need them. Run however many you wish, but I lean towards 2.


• Melffy Hide-And-Seek is a rather unique continuous spell. It grants all of your beasts protection from effect destruction once per turn, and also lets you shuffle three beasts from grave to deck once per turn to draw a card. Against decks that can't threaten your backrow efficiently, Hide-And-Seek (which I'll refer to as HAS) can constantly shuffle your Rescue Cats and garnets back into deck while gaining you advantage - and against decks that can, you can still just search it out to essentially turn Melffy of the Forest's effect into a recycle and a draw. Run any amount - some decks run 0, others run 3, I personally run 2.


• Melffy Time is their only trap, and lets them remove materials from an Xyz to bounce to hand other cards on the field, as well as granting that Xyz 500 ATK for each during that turn only. It's... well, it's not good. At 1 material (such as with a Forest that's used its effect already), it's a 1-for-1 that only bounces to hand. Given this is a trap, it's inherently slow and prone to destruction, and the ATK boost will never matter since it's miniscule and you're probably using this on your foe's turn. Run 0 - you have far better disruption choices.

So that's all the Melffy. Now, the part you've been waiting for - how do I use these?

 

-- Melffy and Toolboxing -- A Guide to Basic Control --

The bread and butter of the Melffy archetype is making simple boards with a ton of recursion and disruption, locking the opponent out and then beating them down in the grind game. They function best going first, though they can also work going second if they need to.
To understand the potential of Melffy, we first have to take a look at what their two ace main deck monsters - Puppy and Cathy - can grab. So let's do that!

-Puppy's Pals- are few, but crucial.

• Kalantosa, Mystical Beast of the Forest is Puppy's best friend. When it's summoned by a beast, you can pop a card on the field. Yes, that's all it does - simple, reliable, on-summon removal. Time your Kalantosa summon just right, and you can nip your opponent's combo in the bud - have a Melffy of the Forest on the field, and you can negate a second monster along with it! Plus, you can use the Kalantosa for summons later. Run at least 1, but numbers vary - do you want to run multiple and potentially clog up your hand, or do you want to run 1 and risk it being banished or otherwise unavailable? Personally, I run 2.


• All of the other Melffy can be searched, and then proceed to fire their own effects the next time an opponent summons. This is great if your Kalantosas are locked in your hand and you need Fenny, or if you need Pony to grab something important from the grave.


• Valerifawn, Mystical Beast of the Forest is a tuner that can also discard dead cards in hand to revive beasts, letting you go into a Melffy Xyz or a level 4 synchro. It's not as useful on the opponent's turn, but if you manage to trigger Puppy during your turn, it can be smart.


• Finally, if you don't need any of them, Amazoness Baby Tiger can summon a second copy of itself from hand or grave when it hits the field, granting you extra material. It's very useful as a combo extender for other reasons, as we'll talk about later. I like running two of these.

-Cathy's Comrades-, not limited by the Level 2 restriction Puppy has, are far more numerous, to the point where choosing which to search smartly can separate victory from defeat.

• Rescue Cat is an absurdly powerful searcher (albeit one that takes up your normal summon), and can act as a searchable one-card setup for multiple monsters. You can even recycle it with HAS later to do it all over again! Run threeeee.


• But if you're looking for something more immediately useful, Hop-Ear Squadron can use itself from hand and a Beast on field to Accel Synchro during your opponent's turn, letting you immediately transform that Kalantosa on board into a Herald of the Arc Light for massive disruption.


• Danger! Bigfoot! is a thoroughly amusing option. Melffy can have trouble putting BIG NUMBER on the board and making spot removal besides Kalantosa, so having a way to cover both of those, get garnets out of hand, gain material, and cycle through your deck all in one is fantastic. Run 0-3, it's really up to you and can vary based on what Melffy variant you're running.


• Valerifawn is an option, but is typically outclassed by Rescue Cat.


• Once again, any other Melffy can also be searched, so if you have Cathy and really, really need Puppy, you can do that. Or just get it through Forest instead.

With Puppy and Cathy on board, you can easily pivot into destruction, negates, prep for your next turn... they're the dynamic duo of the deck, but they're not enough by themselves. How do you get them on board reliably? How do you make a board besides them?

Let's take a look at our summoning suite and how to use them.

• Rescue Cat we've already talked about, but a closer dive into it is important. It's searchable, has little to no limitations, and can make on the spot anything from a Naturia Beast to a Utopic Future Dragon based on the situation. In order to make the most out of it, we run two level 3 semi-garnets - Peropero Cerperus, which is a destruction enabler while in grave, and more importantly Mine Mole, which gives you a free draw whenever you perform a Synchro Summon with it. This makes Rescue Cat plus out of its mind.


• Obedience Schooled is a lot more spicy. You need to have no monsters on field to use it, and it only gets level 2s, and it locks you into only Beast monsters from the Extra Deck... but in return, it doesn't take up your Normal Summon, and gets you three monsters. You'll typically want to grab Amazoness Baby Tiger so as to get one into your graveyard (or get 4 for the price of 3 if you have one in grave already), but the other two monsters you summon are up to you.
  
  
  
  • Notably, with both Obedience Schooled and Rescue Cat, the effects of the monsters you summon are negated, and they die at the End Phase. This has some unique and not readily apparent synergies with HAS and Excited Melffy - the first will protect all of them from that destruction, letting you keep them on board for later material.. and the latter you can make using whatever you summoned and then convert it into the Melffy you summoned during the next turn, with their effects back! This can be a nasty surprise for enemies not expecting you to drop Puppy and Cathy onto your board out of nowhere!
  
  
  
  


• Ties of the Brethren is the odd summon out. By targeting a Level 2 EARTH Beast, you can get two more from your deck... but at the cost of 2000 LP and locking you out of Special Summoning for the rest of your turn. It's an ideal way to end your combos - after doing everything you wanted, target a piece of material on board and drop two Melffy directly from deck, ready to plus you all the way to a victory the next turn.


• We've mentioned Amazoness Baby Tiger a lot so far, so it's worth going over momentarily - when it's summoned, you get to summon another Baby Tiger from hand or graveyard. If you set one up in the grave with one of the above cards early, every time you summon it again you'll gain free material, letting you extend your combos beyond what Melffy would normally be limited to.

As you can see, this gives your deck a lot of summon flexibility. This variant of the deck runs 3 Obedience, 3 Cat, and 2 Ties, all but guaranteeing you'll see a few of them in your opening hand. You can open with Obedienced... then if your opponent negates it, fire off another one, or maybe a Rescue Cat, keeping the pressure on any deck that doesn't create a million negates.

Now that you've seen how Melffy can keep control of the board, why don't we look at... their Extra Deck options?

 

-- Melffy and the Extra Deck -- A Guide on Closing Out Games --

I will level with you - Melffy have a TON of Extra Deck options. Between Synchro, Xyz, and Link, many doors are open to them, and their toolboxing nature wants them to keep as many of those doors open as possible, so there's a lot of room for variation. But we'll go over the picks that this deck runs, in order to get a look at how the deck plays.
Also worth noting is that Obedience Schooled locks you out of anything but Beasts if it resolves, so if you've used it this turn, you'll have to make a board of the Melffy Xyz and perhaps a Missus Radiant, Sandayu, or Naturia synchro. Keep that in mind!

We'll start with the most important facet of their extra deck, and their main way to finish games with a bang: their two big non-Melffy Xyz Monsters!

-- The Xyz --

Number F0: Utopic Future and Utopic Future Dragon have been mentioned a few times during this guide, and for good reason. You can make them of any two non-Number Xyz of the same rank (so, your Melffy Xyz), and each has a powerful effect. Utopic Future takes control of monsters it attacks during the battle phase, letting you steal lethal if the opponent's trying to sit on one BIG monster, but the more notable one is Utopic Future Dragon - an indestructible 3000 ATK beater that can negate any monster effect... and then STEAL that monster, if it was on the opponent's board!

Summoning these in this deck becomes immensely simple if you have a copy of Excited Melffy or Melffy of the Forest in the Graveyard. Simply summon Rescue Cat (or Baby Tiger if you already have one in the graveyard), granting you the two material for Melffy of the Forest. Use its effect to search a copy of Melffy Tag, reviving the other Xyz from the graveyard. You only used one card from hand, and you now have all the material you need to summon your Future Dragon!

--

If Utopic Future Dragon was the big bad payoff for Forest, Negalogia AA-Zeus is the payoff for Excited Melffy. You can summon it using an Xyz Monster if you attacked with an Xyz Monster that turn... and oh, would you look at that, Excited Melffy lets itself direct attack! This lets you easily create a 3000 ATK beater that can wipe the entire board (and it doesn't destroy, so it gets around pesky destruction-immune things) quite easily.

--

We also have one other Xyz - Number 64: Ronin Racoon Sandayu creates powerful tokens that can copy your other big Xyz Monsters' ATK stats, clash into enemy monsters, or be used as material. It's also a Beast, letting you have more options while locked under Obedience - just remember since it's a Number, you can't use it to make Utopic Future.

Next up is their midrange options - Synchro Monsters!

-- The Synchros --

Herald of the Arc Light is a very, very good card, and you'll be making it off Kalantosa and Hop-Ear a lot. It locks off any deck that wants to discard or Foolish, and can also tribute itself to negate and destroy, well... essentially any effect! These two abilities make it something that's easy to make and useful in almost any circumstance, albeit one with very frail ATK and DEF. It also searches for Ritual cards when sent to the graveyard, TEMPTING you to give in to the jank and play Ritual Melffy, no matter how idiotic and janky it may be... (Note: Do not do this.) Overall, it's really good, and you can run anywhere between 1 and 3 of it, depending on how much Extra Deck space you're willing to allot.

Old Entity Hastorr is a bit of a weird one. It's a decent body against lower ATK decks, and when it's destroyed by an enemy card, it becomes a Fiendish against an enemy monster that also lets you steal that monster if it's destroyed. It's mostly a way to deal with decks that Herald can't touch - they can't walk over it as easily, and have to deal with consequences if they do. You can cut it if you want, but I've found some nice success with it.

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Naturia Beast, however, is not a Hop-Ear summon but a Rescue Cat play! It needs an EARTH Tuner, meaning your Valerifawn, but at the cost of milling two cards can negate and destroy... ANY Spell Card. Yes. Any of them. Any amount of times per turn. This is useful against countless decks - locking off Field Spells, stopping Extravagance draws, countering combos.... You can make it easily by playing Rescue Cat and searching for Valerifawn and either Mine Mole (which lets you draw) or Peropero Cerperus (for later destruction).

You've also got Naturia Barkion, its Trap-killing equivalent, hidden in the Side Deck (along with a lv 3 tuner to make it doable with only two material off Cat). The reason it's not in the main Extra Deck is because, unlike what Big Eldlich might attempt to convince you of, most decks don't run many Traps! Plus, it banishes from grave instead of milling as cost, meaning it's more difficult to sustain. Still, spec it in whenever you need it.

Now, onto the last part of the extra deck - the Links!

-- The Links --

The main reason why Links work well with Melffy is because of I:P Masquerena. As Melffy summon themselves during your End Phase and mainly activate during your foe's turn, you can find that while you have a ton of advantage, you can't find a way to actually use it for anything... Masquerena solves that problem, letting you Link Summon in the midst of your opponent's plays to disrupt them!

Extra Deck room is tight, so we only really run three Links to capitalize off this, but they're still very good!

• Knightmare Unicorn spins whatever it wants back to deck, helping grab those things out of reach by Kalantosa.


• Topologic Zeroboros bombs the field the moment something plays next to where a Link points - by using a Melffy Puppy or Melffy Tag to summon something to its linked zones, you can banish the opponent's field on either player's turn, while still letting Zeroboros serve as a beater!


• Finally, Borrelsword Dragon is indestructible by battle or effects when made via I:P, and can easily wipe out enemies by itself.

Additionally, we have Missus Radiant, who is... I'll level with you, it's not great. It only gives your monsters an ATK boost, and recycles an EARTH monster from grave after it leaves the field. However, it's the only Link you can make under Obedience locks, so it's useful nonetheless.

--

That's it. You've now seen practically all this Melffy deck has to offer - recursion, advantage, field wipes, and more on-opponent's-turn effects than you can shake a stick at.

And yet, we're not done! Melffy have so many different options, deckbuild types, and side deck choices to keep in mind that there's probably no limit on varieties of this deck that can be made! Let's close out this guide by taking a close look at them!

 

-- Melffy and Variations -- A Guide to Options and Side-Decking --

First of all, we should cover this deck's primary three weaknesses.

Melffy has a problem with high ATK monsters. Anything above 3000 ATK that's resistant to destruction will need some smart plays to overcome - perhaps nuking the board with Zeroboros, or stealing that monster to take game early with Utopic Future.

Melffy also has a problem with boards that pump out a mass of negates. Reusable negates, in particular, hurts the deck bad - since their plays are spread out across both their own turn and their foe's turn, OPT negation effects become far stronger than they normally would be.

Finally, Melffy has a problem with things that stop them from gaining field presence. If your normal summoned Rescue Cat is negated, and you don't have an Obedience Schooled, you might be limited to just playing Puppy/Cathy from hand on end phase and passing, and that's often not enough.

In order to subvert these problems, adding in hand traps, tech cards, and utilising Side Deck space can be crucial. Dark Ruler No More in the Side Deck helps you go second, as does Evenly Matched and Nibiru. 3 Called by the Grave in the main deck cuts down renegade Ash Blossoms (of which you have some of your own, for if you're going second and can't make your disruption), and two Three Tactical Talents lets you further capitalize if you're up against a deck playing a lot of negates.

I also am currently running Effect Veiler for more disruption on the foe's turn, but that's a matter of choice, as is most of these - the world of Yu-Gi-Oh is vast, and there's many other tech choices to subvert the weaknesses of the Melffy!

Now, let's take a look at some other Side Deck cards, Melffy variants, and other choices that may not have made it into this decklist.

• Leo, the Keeper of the Sacred Tree is a Level 10 Synchro with juuuust over 3000 ATK and targeting immunity as long as it's not your MP2. You can make it easily with Danger! Bigfoot! and Hop-Ear (or Valerifawn) and it's annoying to get rid of, so you can run it if you want.


• A larger Danger! package can also be considered, including Danger! Jackalope! as another Beast-type searchable off Cathy, but I tested it and found it not really worth it - 3 Bigfoot covers yourself nicely enough.


• The Fabled Cerburrel is a Level 2 Tuner that summons itself when discarded! If you're running more copies of Twin Twister or the aforementioned Danger package, you can use it as a way to get free material if you find yourself discarding reliably. Keep in mind that since it's LIGHT, you can't summon Naturia Beast with it. If you really want to be spicy, you can proceed to run The Fabled Unicore, which negates all enemy cards and destroys them while each player has even amounts of cards in hand, and use discard effects and Melffy self-bouncing to try and match hands. It's not good, but it IS funny.


• Gizmek Uka, the Festive Fox of Fecundity is a 2250ATK mechlad that can be dropped from the hand if either player summons a monster from the Main Deck (HINT: PUPPY). You can then summon a monster from your Deck with DEF equal to an enemy monster's ATK and with a matching attribute - this sounds absurdly specific, and it is, but there's a lot of format-specific jank you can pull with it, so keep it in mind!


• Closed Forest stops your opponent from using Field Spells as long as it's around (and for a turn if it's popped). It's a silver bullet, and you can cut it for more Side Deck room, but it IS hilarious when it works.


• Tribrigade Melffy is a deck hybrid that can work pretty okay. It does run into problems with Obedience Schooled, so cut that down if you want to use it, but it's still good... though you should probably run a different Tribrigade variant, at that point.  Out of the two pure beast Tribrigades, Tribrigade Ceras can summon itself by discarding (something something Cerburrel synergy?!), and can use your graved Beasts and Beast-alikes to Link Summon, which is cool, but means you can't use that graveyard stuff for Melffy Tag or HAS or the like. Tribrigade Felidgette, the Fruitless Flower is an interesting Missus Radiant alternative, offering summoning from hand and a janky hand-cycling effect in place of Missus's attack boosting and grave recycling. Either of these can be run as tech choices in a "pure Melffy" deck like this one if you want!


• You can run a Melffy Ojama build if you want, but I find that typically Ojama have better things to hybrid with and better ways to mass-search themselves in archetype with tools like Ojamatch and Ojamagic, and Melffy have better things they could be searching than mostly-Normal monsters.


• Of the other things you can search with Melffy Cathy, there's two main notable ones - Red Hared Hasty Horse is a decent body that's easy to summon, easy material, and can help you steal lethal even earlier alongside Excited Melffy. More notably, however, King Tiger Wanghu is a hilarious stun piece, outright declaring "no, you lose" to decks that run mostly monsters under 1400 ATK in the Main Deck and have no ways to out it.


• Super Rush Recklessly was a stun choice I ran in previous variants of Melffy. It's a trap that lets you destroy a beast you control to spin an enemy's card back to the Deck... but since it needs that destruction to happen in order for the spin to trigger, it whiffs if you have a HAS on the board, and since it's a trap, it's slow and vulnerable to destruction. If you're not running HAS, though, feel free to take it for a... spin.


• Since Negalogia AA-Zeus can attach monsters from your Extra Deck when a card you control is destroyed, you can run a single copy of Elder Entity N'tss to allow pops if Negalogia goes down.


• If you really want to run Melffy Rabby for the cute factor of it, you can do it alongside Rescue Rabbit, but I find it's bricky and a little redundant when you already have Rescue Cat.

-- Final Notes --

And... that's it. You should now have a comprehensive idea on how to start up, use, and experiment with a Melffy tempo deck!
The Melffy archetype is an adorable font of potential and interesting deck strategies, and I've honestly loved experimenting with it ever since the first cards were shown in Japan - if it gets more new cards in the future, I'll be sure to take a look at them! I hope reading this has convinced you to take a trek through the Forest as well, and see just what interesting choices you can find there!

I'd like to thank QuincyMcCoy from the YGOrganization on the idea to use Amazoness Baby Tiger - he makes fantastic creative deck build ideas, be sure to check them out!
Additionally, if you'd like to check out a completely different but still unique and powerful Melffy deck idea, why not go look at Renren's Halqifibrax build?

Thank you for reading! If you've come this far and enjoyed this deep dive into the archetype, a like or comment would be thoroughly appreciated! Ciao!