Today marks the 1 year anniversary of Rush Duels! To celebrate, here’s a guide to help potential new players get into the game!
Differences from Master Duel
As a reminder, Here are the differences between a Master Duel and a Rush Duel! Make sure to remember these!
1) At the start of your turn, you draw to 5!
The first player draws on their first turn in Rush Duel! Every turn you restock to 5 cards! If you already have at least 5 cards in your hand, you still get to draw 1 more card. There is also no hand size limit, but try to clear your hand as much as possible to keep drawing!
2) You can always Normal Summon!
You don’t have a limit to your Normal Summons! You can immediately summon 2 monsters and tribute summon your Boss!
3) Cards resolve instantly!
Immediately after paying the cost for your card, you resolve its effect! This means Chains do not exist! You cannot respond to the activation of a card in Rush Duels, only what that card does!
4) Deck Size?
Rush Duels have the same Deck Sizes as Master Duels, 40 cards minimum, 60 cards maximum! While there is an Extra Deck, we do not currently have any Extra Deck Monsters!
5) The Field!
Rush Duels take place on 3 column fields, with zones for your Deck, Graveyard, Extra Deck and Field Spell. You start with 8000 LP. Turns only have 4 phases, DRAW, MAIN, BATTLE and END!
L) Legend Cards!
You can only have 1 copy of 1 Legend card in your deck. This means if you run 1 copy of Blue-Eyes White Dragon, you cannot run 1 copy of Trap Hole!
M1) Maximum Monsters!
Maximum Monsters have 3 Pieces. The two side pieces will be marked as [L] and [R] in their name, while the Central piece will have a MAXIMUM ATK stat! Effects marked “Maximum Mode” only apply when they’re Maximum Summoned!
M2) Maximum Summons!
When you have all 3 pieces of the same Maximum Monster in your hand, you can Special Summon them all at once in Maximum Mode! This is called a Maximum Summon! If you have any monsters on your field when you Maximum Summon, they’re all sent straight to the graveyard!
M3) Maximum Mode!
A Maximum Summoned Monster is treated as a Single Monster with the MAXIMUM ATK stat and Level of the Central piece, and the effects of all three! However, they take up all 3 zones on your field, so you cannot summon any more monsters while you have one out, unless you use it as a single tribute! Like Master Dule’s Link Monsters, they do not have a DEF stat!
Deck Suggestions
A list of the game’s various themes and a rough pitch of them! There are many more ways to play not listed here too!
Sevens Road
Power up Sevens Road Magician by building up attributes in your GY, protect your Spellcasters with the powerful Dark Liberation. The protagonist’s main theme, so regularly supported! Has synergy with the Legend card, Dark Magician!
Lydacross
Use the Lydacross bosses to field high level Spellcaster and Warrior monsters, who in turn power up your field further! Synergizes well with Level 5-6 Spellcasters, including Hilt the Noble Arms Bearer, and Sheath the Scabbard of the Holy Swordsman!
Striking Dragons
Dragons focused on damage via Multiple strikes, with a toolbox of Level 7 bosses to deal with any situation! With access to Dragon’s Setupper and Dragon’s Upsetter, alongside Phoenix Dragon and Triad Drago, this deck has access to some of the strongest cards in the game. Clear Maximums with Dragonic Pressure, and even recover the Legend Card, Blue-Eyes White Dragon, from your Graveyard! There’s a reason we say it twice!
Psychic Musician
Manipulate your LP to pull off powerful fields! The lower you are the stronger you are! Use cards like Romance Pick to keep looping resources to your field! Use Esperaid in a pinch to clear away your opponent’s field, then use Chemical Cure Blue to recover life points to stay alive!
Fiendish Commanders
The best offence is a strong defence, prove it with a deck focused on 0 ATK stat! Control the board with Yameruler’s lockdown, Push for game with Kimeruler’s direct attack, or Semeruler’s swarm capabilities! Works well with the Legend card, Shield & Sword, and even contains support for it!
Masked Fiery Noodle
Strengthen your Pyro monsters with Gockboot, Burn your opponent with Kaedama Gockboot! Has synergy with more Pyro cards like the field clearing Cosmic String Noodle-Druidess and Magmax Mantle-Ayurveda!
Bubble Era
Go back to the 80s and party all night with Young LIGHT Aqua versions of Classic monsters! Keep your LP topped up with Dian Keto the Gold Digging Master, while clearing resources your opponent held back with Dian Keto the Prison Master! Works well with a Deck Destruction/Stall strategy to completely outlive your opponent!
Beast Gear World
Use the Field Spell Beast Gear World to nerf common types, while bolstering your own Beast-Warrior monsters. Bring out the powerful Catapult Devilkong to clear your opponent’s defences, and run over their vulnerable monsters with King Convoy Ligeon! This theme can even turbo out it’s bosses with Beast Summoner or Trike Fox!
Royal Demon’s
Tribute summon beyond Tribute summon! Use level 5+ as tributes to field powerful Fiend-types that swing the duel, including the frightening Royal Demon’s Heavy Metal! Has good synergy with cards like Beast Gear World and the Legend card, Summoned Skull!
Fish
Manipulate stats with Fields like Umi and Big Ocean! Use Big Magurom’s Effect to make your little fish attack directly, then Use Survival Swordfish to boost them before they attack! Lots of stat manipulation all over the board!
Winged-Beast
Manipulate your opponent’s attributes to suit your needs, power up your monsters with Darkness Crested Hawk, or weaken your opponent’s with Lightning Bolcondor! Has access to the Boss-Turbo Monster, Beast Summoner, to help accelerate the strategy!
Providence
Dig through your deck with the Tron monsters to turbo to specific cards! Summon the ultimate Cyberse, Yggdrago the Heavenly Tree Dragon, to control the game with it’s high attack and constant damage!
Dwell Chairs
Flood your grave with 0 ATK monsters to fulfil the conditions on Throne of Darkness, field powerful bosses intended for one hit KOs! Has synergy with the Rulers strategy’s cards, along with the Legend card, Shield and Sword!
Washing
Revolve around the White Foam – Bleach Motor spell, burn your opponent repeatedly while weakening their monster, Attempt to deck them out with a budget santa! A deck that totally isn’t trying to get you to cheat!
Thunderbeat
Small Thunder-Type Beetles that hit big! Burn with Thunderbeat Gift, destroy their field with Storm-Calling Thunderbeat! Has good synergy with Dark Rooker and the Legend Card, Red-Eyes Black Dragon, even able to revive it with The Flute of Calling Daemon.
Cats
A Schrodinger’s Gimmick! Stun your opponent’s attacks with the unpredictable state of the top card of their deck, then go for direct attacks with Odd-Eyes Twintail Cat! Use Beast Summoner to turbo out your Beast-Type bosses, and Seis the Mighty King of Bestial Wings to nerf your opponents for a big offensive!
Mythic Sword
Power up Normal Wyrms with Shangri-La! Use the ace monster Build Dragon to revive Normal Wyrms and build high stat boards! Close the game with the Maximum Monster, Wurm EX-Cavator!
Gi-Ant Revolution
Spark a huge revolution with 100 ATK insects! Powerful traps like Gi-Ant Revolution protect them off-turn, while Rebelli-ant brings them up to Boss Monster level to go on the offensive!
Music Maidens
A sub-strategy of Warriors focusing on WIND attribute! Channel the power of your Normals in your grave to power up your WIND Warriors with Trumpetonfa! Really cut at your opponent’s stats with Nunchuclarinet! Dodge your opponent’s traps with Ensemble Fighter! Throw in some piercing damage to push for game with massive damage! You only need to say it once!
Tek Deity
Machines that pierce through defences! A solid defence with News Flash Machine Toughroid, which can be revived with Reporter Soul! Push for game with the Protagonist’s Tek Deity series, with the ace monster Mirror Innovator or the Maximum monster Magnum Overroad!
Maximum Only
Feast or Famine! Focus entirely on Maximum Summons to overwhelm your opponent! Draw heavily with Heavenly Protection, while doing extra damage with 10sion MAX!!!
Burn
Use the Devastating Dark Rooker to clear your opponent’s backrow and deal heavy damage, before blocking with his beefy backside! Loop Dragons Upsetter and Setupper to repeatedly summon him with little cost, then finish the duel with Inferno Fire Blast from the Legend Card, Red-Eyes Black Dragon!
Dragoncaster
The generally accepted Meta deck. Use a Spellcaster core to push Dragon bosses, take advantage of the powerful offence of Dragias the Striking Dragon, with the powerful defence of Dark Liberation!
Legends
A list of the game’s Legend Cards and where they fit in best! Remember, you can only pick one for your deck!
Blue-Eyes White Dragon
3000 ATK is a huge deal, especially with 2500 DEF to back it up! Every deck should include a way to get past this card, and it can serve as an easy extra boss monster to any deck that needs one! Try running with Phoenix Dragon to get it back from the Graveyard!
Dark Magician
While weaker in ATK than Blue-Eyes, he comes with some powerful spells! Use Dark Magic Attack to clear all your opponent’s Spells and Traps, or use Thousand Knives to get rid of your opponent’s monsters outside of the battle phase! Mostly fits into Spellcaster decks, but has synergy with most of Sevens Road Magician’s support!
Red-Eyes Black Dragon
The weakest 2 tribute Legend, but comes with some powerful support. Black Dragon’s Chick lets you bring it out at little cost, even dodging Anti-Tribute strategies! Inferno Fire Blast lets you do huge damage outside the battle phase to dodge powerful battle traps, and is even able to be used multiple times in one turn! Best placed in Dragon or Burn based decks!
Summoned Skull
2 tribute stats on a 1 tribute body, Summoned Skull is an easy choice if you just want quick stats! Synergizes well with Beast Gear World, which places him at 2800 ATK, while Blue-Eyes goes down to 2700! Work well with any deck running Beast Gear World, or Fiend Decks that can recover him and work him into their strategies!
Jinzo
100 less ATK than Skull for 300 more DEF. Overall, still a very strong monster, especially with the Continuous effect to kill Traps as long as he’s about! He even comes with the same Beast Gear World Synergy, placing him up to 2700 as long as it’s up! Powerful in decks that struggle to deal with Trap cards, but can be placed just about anywhere!
Shield & Sword
Even if the effect seems weak, it can quickly turn the tide on a duel. Combined with support cards like Sword & Shield to recover it, it becomes an easy staple for decks focused around a low ATK, high DEF strategy!
Card Destruction
The classic deck destruction card, clear your opponent’s hand of things they may have saved while stocking up your graveyard with what you’ve left in your own! Good for cycling through your deck to get to cards you want to see, or setting up your graveyard for powerful effects using the grave as a resource!
Monster Reincarnation
A classic recovery card! In exchange for having 1 less card in your hand, you get to reliably get something back from your Graveyard! Very useful to help recover Maximum pieces to finish your hand, or recover an ace monster to push for game! Can probably be used in just about any deck!
Trap Hole
The easy choice. 1 slot in your deck dedicated to telling your opponent ‘Nope’. In a game with no negation, Trap Hole easily compares to the Solemns of Master Format! Auto-include in your deck unless you can justify one of the other Legends, especially use in any decks that want to protect something on the field!
Generic Staples
A list of generic goodstuff cards to consider for your deck! These should work with anything, but might not always be the right option for you!
Fodder Generators
Gets you an extra card into your hand to use as discard or tribute. The Go to Padding monsters if you need more low levels! Examples of this are Kuribott and Dragons Setupper/Dragons Upsetter. More like this exist, but are more recently being balanced to be locked to their type in some manner.
Stat Manipulating Fodder
Low Levels monsters that mess with your opponent’s stats. These can be useful to give your deck’s boss monsters an extra boost over monsters they wouldn’t normally beat! Examples are: Thunder the Lightning and Sevens Road Mage.
Generic Bosses
Remember that you can technically throw any boss monster into any deck! Monsters such as Dragias the Striking Dragon or Wicked Shadow – Dark Rooker can be used to bolster the amount of high level monsters you have and provide powerful effects. Alongside generic bosses that are not locked by requirements, make sure to look for synergies with monsters you wouldn’t normally consider too!
Dark Liberation Core
By including a few Spellcasters (Typically, this includes Mystic Dealer, Sevens Road Mage, and anything else that may best suit your play style!), you can run the incredibly powerful Dark Liberation in any deck. This works better in decks with less required cards, using the low level Spellcasters as your fodder to get to the bosses you’re running anyway.
Hammer Shot
Generic Spell/Trap removal, deals with any backrow at the cost of one discard. Often used alongside the non-generic removal to boost to 6 copies. Definitely use if your deck doesn’t have access to an alternative!
Ancient Barrier
An alternative to Hammer Shot. While it doesn’t get rid of your opponent’s set spells or problem traps or fields, it does mean the selected monsters won’t be threatened by the likes of Dark Liberation or Counteroffensive Dragonstrike. It’s also capable of recovering monsters that would usually be locked in your Graveyard after use, if your deck is concerned about that.
Geological Survey
A quick glance at the top of your deck can completely alter the next turn, helping make sure the next card you send from deck to grave is something you want, or rejecting a hand in favour of a new one. For the lengthier games of Rush Duels, this can help prevent you from getting into a pinch!
Psycho Burial
While less useful for most decks, if your deck has need to get certain things in the graveyard, this can help set you up faster!
Heavenly Protection
Clear your hand of monsters you don’t need, and if you send enough, Draw a couple of replacements. Works best with Maximum decks, but also provides a way to push card from your hand to the GY for effects.
Stat Changers
Various cards such as Right Magic and 10sion MAX!!! let you manipulate the stats of your or your opponent’s monsters! If you need an extra bit of damage regularly, consider looking into these!
Piercing Cards
Very simply, these cards grant a monster piercing damage. Very useful effect if you want to work through your opponent’s defences. Each has a slightly different niche!
- Piercing! is the most basic, and only grants piercing. However, it has absolutely no cost other than itself, so if all you want is piercing damage, this is the go to!
- Greater Piercing!! has greater cost and more specific requirements, but grants piercing to multiple monsters. Great for more specialist decks that want to attack Defence position monsters.
- 10sion MAX!!! has the same cost as Greater Piercing, but comes with an attack boost too. The big benefit of this is if used on a Level 10 Monster, it also does a big burn! Great for decks running a Level 10 monster, such as the Central pieces of Maximum Monsters!
Field Spells
Most Field Spells are designed generically. As these affect every monster on the field, even a small stat boost of 200 adds up, and can help strong monsters become even harder to take down! They also make easy discard fodder when you already have one active, and can replace the one already in your Field Spell Zone to clear themselves out of your hand! Look to see what Field Spells can help your deck!
Spirit Shackles
Generic ATK reduction trap, very effective against mono-type decks. Use this to help keep your monsters alive longer! The go to padding trap, but remember it’ll be less effective on Hybrid decks such as 0ATK or Dragoncaster!
Counter Bomb
Punish your opponent for attacking! Clear your hand of bricking cards while making your opponent take damage based off the level of the attacking monster! Can be a nice trap to bolster your deck if you’re lacking cards.
Lost Cat
While more debatable on how good it is, Lost Cat can be used to give you a chance of negating any one attack. If you’re strapped for ways to protect monsters, this is an option, however you should consider your chances of success seriously when debating usage.
Echoing Whispers
The graveyard plays a valuable resource for many decks in Rush Duels, many powerful effects requiring cards in the GY to activate. This trap lets you mass clear monsters from either Graveyard, either getting rid of monsters from your opponent’s to prevent their effects, or recovering monsters from your own to restock your deck! Make sure to think about how draws will be affected by what you return!
Triangle Reborn
A powerful trap that can bring back almost any monster from your graveyard! Very powerful for almost any deck, it’s requirements being met by most of your standard fodder monsters! Remember, the monster you summon doesn’t have to be the same type as the monsters you shuffle!
Afterword
Thank you for reading this far! Most of this guide was written a few months ago, prior to the first reveals of RD/KP05, “Deck Modification Pack – Dynamic Eternal Live!”! This guide is written with the intent of being applied to the card base released as of the year anniversary of Rush Duels, and such ignores anything released after. As of writing, KP05 looks to contain plenty of cards to counter the 3 most prevalent strategies of the game: Anti-Backrow cards to counter Dark Liberation, Buster Blader punishing splashing Dragon Bosses such as Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Dragias the Striking Dragon, and Monster Removal/Huge Stat manipulation to get past Maximums. Though Maximums themselves get a huge boost as a standalone deck too. Perhaps in a year’s time, I’ll do an updated guide to mark the second anniversary!
Thanks go to the members of the YGOrganization and NAC discords for helping to compile information about decks I’m less familiar with!
